Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Mar. 20th, 2009 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichThis is an open entry but I'm putting it behind a cut - I'm trying to come to terms with the idea of it so would welcome dialogue but at the same time, I know that many of my friends would rather not read about it. Thus,
Last week while I was in session with my therapist, she made an off-hand remark about something I had said as "to be expected, since you are dealing with PTSD". Arn just nodded as if it were something he had known and taken for granted. Me, I was floored. Floored. And I still am.
I won't deny I had a rotten time of it for my first 20 years of life or so. And a while back, I'd written about a reaction I'd had to something really trivial that had left me shaking and crying - a sweet friend wrote to me and said that of course it was not silly to have that reaction, that it was obviously a PTSD one and I was not to scold myself for it. And she offered cyber-hugs. It was very kind and relieved my shame/feeling stupid about my reaction considerably. I thought, "yeah, it was like that." The idea that it was 'kinda like that' was comforting in a 'you are not being self-indulgent, or a drama queen' sort of way.
But now I'm all wrangled up... because it is not "like that" - it "IS that".
I'm not feeling ready to accept the diagnosis. Or the feelings that arise when I think about it. There's sand under my metaphoric feet now. How much of my behavior, of my feelings, are 'true' and how much of it all are just symptoms of this disorder? Am I really a nice person? Or is that just a defense mechanism? When I reach out to soothe someone who is distressed, is that a true desire to help or am I merely reducing the chances that I will be involved in stressful drama? When I stay at home, hermit like, is that because I really am an introverted person or has that been a self-protective mechanism imposed on me by conditioning?
What the heck am I? And how much of me does it change to have to realise that this thing that I associate with terribly traumatised, emotionally mangled people, fragile beings - that this thing is a part of me?
It seems like it shouldn't make a difference, to have a particular label for what has been affecting me. It was a lot easier, so much easier, when I was thinking of myself as "menopausal, hormones are dredging up old stuff that you laid to rest long ago" than it is now when I have to face that a lot of what I do and have done is dictated by fear I apparently have never actually laid down.
I don't like it. And I'm not sure I really want to accept it.
Last week while I was in session with my therapist, she made an off-hand remark about something I had said as "to be expected, since you are dealing with PTSD". Arn just nodded as if it were something he had known and taken for granted. Me, I was floored. Floored. And I still am.
I won't deny I had a rotten time of it for my first 20 years of life or so. And a while back, I'd written about a reaction I'd had to something really trivial that had left me shaking and crying - a sweet friend wrote to me and said that of course it was not silly to have that reaction, that it was obviously a PTSD one and I was not to scold myself for it. And she offered cyber-hugs. It was very kind and relieved my shame/feeling stupid about my reaction considerably. I thought, "yeah, it was like that." The idea that it was 'kinda like that' was comforting in a 'you are not being self-indulgent, or a drama queen' sort of way.
But now I'm all wrangled up... because it is not "like that" - it "IS that".
I'm not feeling ready to accept the diagnosis. Or the feelings that arise when I think about it. There's sand under my metaphoric feet now. How much of my behavior, of my feelings, are 'true' and how much of it all are just symptoms of this disorder? Am I really a nice person? Or is that just a defense mechanism? When I reach out to soothe someone who is distressed, is that a true desire to help or am I merely reducing the chances that I will be involved in stressful drama? When I stay at home, hermit like, is that because I really am an introverted person or has that been a self-protective mechanism imposed on me by conditioning?
What the heck am I? And how much of me does it change to have to realise that this thing that I associate with terribly traumatised, emotionally mangled people, fragile beings - that this thing is a part of me?
It seems like it shouldn't make a difference, to have a particular label for what has been affecting me. It was a lot easier, so much easier, when I was thinking of myself as "menopausal, hormones are dredging up old stuff that you laid to rest long ago" than it is now when I have to face that a lot of what I do and have done is dictated by fear I apparently have never actually laid down.
I don't like it. And I'm not sure I really want to accept it.
