#post traumatic stress

[zee-rambles]

———-

“He wanted to get better.”

First I Prev I Next

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“The lesson taught by the war was clear: to be human is to be small, powerless, and subject to the forces of randomness.” ― David J. Morris, The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

+

“Trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards into an eddy or bouncing like a rubber ball from now to then to back again. ... In the traumatic universe the basic laws of matter are suspended: ceiling fans can be helicopters, car exhaust can be mustard gas.” ― David J. Morris, The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

+

“The act of writing, especially of putting pen to paper, has always had a sacred quality. The process by which one creates a paragraph-of conceptualizing, framing, and sequencing a moment in time-is the same process that governs some of the most sophisticated psychotherapies.” ― David J. Morris, The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

[callaeidae3]

Whumptober2024 Day 8: Sleep deprivation

Isolation Chamber | Forced to Stay Awake | "Leave the lights on." (Coldplay, Midnight)

After the Ninao incident, Yuuki hasn't been able to sleep without the lights on.

Flashbacks tend to get worse in the dark.

Nightmares do, too.

[sugarfiendgfx]

So it appears has though my creativity was like a dormant volcano.

In the space of week, since unleashing my pent up sadness/rage/guilt I have ...

-write a DND campaign (short, 5 sessions)

-gotten a kids book idea from brainstorming with my son.

-started reviewing the silversong chapter rewrites (not the existing content, the unpublished stuff)

-been brave and attended a illustrator meetup and hoping to go to more.

[traumamagpie]

You're always told where to be and when to be there. You're told what you're going to do and with whom. You have to ask if you're allowed to pee, can only eat and drink when allowed, only enjoy the media allowed by those above you. You're constantly punished for not living up to their standards. You're left hungry and exhausted with absolutely no remorse. There's no escaping the punishments. There's never an escape.

And they still try to tell me it's not traumatic.

[silversongcomic]

2018, that was my last post. I've been doing a lot of soul searching the past few years. Life's been hard, but who here hasn't felt the that things have gotten rather tough?

So what the excuse for the absence? Why did I stop drawing) why did I let my comic ROT! Just good old trauma. You know the saying that the grass is always greener on the other side? Well I guess I fell for that old adage. I took a job, closer to home with better pay and seemingly better prospects, and within 18 months it began to eat away at me from within. All my flaws left magnified, my every step under scrutiny. At first you tell yourself to grown up and get on with it, be an adult and learn to cope. But it's taken until now to truly understand that a part of me knew something was wrong and that I was hollowing myself out.

I got pregnant in 2018, had my boy in 2019 which was classified as a traumatic birth. We both nearly died and mainly due to noone hearing my concerns, I knew something was a miss and I was right. I won't get lost in the weeds. Tired and in survival mode I trudged on, went back to work.

Then you spot it, the same pattern, the way the company likes to remove people they don't think are a good fit. No meetings addressing the issue, just cutting their involvement in mainline projects, assigning their work to others, cutting their dept budgets or assigning them unreachable goals and then you see it happening to you, and you KNOW what comes next. It either a 'redudancy' or an off-site sacking followed by a fake ass company wide email about how YOU decided to leave the company to pursue your passions.

I get pulled into a manditory 6 months review meeting to check how I'm doing after coming back from maternity leave, only to served a redundancy marked the same day as my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! 🎉

I saw it coming, but it STILL stung. "It's not you, it's just business" but you know that's not true. These smiling assassins have performed this play by the book to everyone else who wasn't well received or who didn't play ball. But they don't like confrontation, they'd rather the problem just disappeared. They want me to disappear...

Cue COVID!

The chaos, the stress, the fear, the isolation. The world changes, but you're still hurting. The healing doesn't really come. You feel broken and damaged but you have a child to look after, so you're stuck survival mode.

I had not found joy in my creations for sooooo looooooong, and that hurt. The guilt, the anger, the sadness trapped in a loop.

But in the past year or so, I've felt that spark start to ignite again. The path to healing hasn't been straight forward but similar to that of an artist. The wobbly line that climbs upwards so you progress. with leaps and setbacks along the way but the healing is happening and I am starting to recover, I'm starting to feel 'me' again.

Why'd it have to take years? Who knows, but looking back on this blog, my deviantart account, my comic, I'm feeling that enjoy again. That cruel voice in my head quietening. I've lost so much time, or have I? Is this what was needed, this very painful journey or growth? Had that toxic job consume too much unnoticed and this was what was needed to repair? Who knows.

What I do know is that I took a look and decided on what I wanted to be not want people expect. I did the same for my art. The worse part was that I ever let them make me believe my art wasn't good enough. Perhaps I wasn't the right fit, but I and the art was still good.

Getting this out has been healing. And once I hit post it'll feel real. And even if noone reads it, I'll know it out there in the void, it's been aired and I can move on finally and stop dwelling on the past and get on with it all!

If you stuck it out this far, kudos! Give yourself a pat on the back! That was a long read!

[cynthiabaileyrug]

Repeatedly Experiencing Grief After Narcissistic Abuse

There is a term known as regrief.  This describes when someone experiences the death of someone they love as a child & they grieve, but later the loss comes back to them at other developmental stages in their growth.  It also can happen with adults as we age & change. When I read about this regrief phenomenon, I thought about something.  Survivors of narcissistic abuse can experience this as…

[unityghost]

I have a thin skin but a good poker face.

[imaginarylungfish]

as an anxious child who turned into a recovered chronically ill adult, i forget that some people don't beat themselves up for needing to take a day off work when they are acutely sick.

like, a few years ago, i just had to push through immense pain and fatigue every day to do my wfh job. i couldn't go out and have fun. i had to use my energy to make money. was it bleak? oh yeah. did i use my dissociative skills to get through? you bet.

but now i am physically better (thanks, xolair). yet my mind is still stuck. it still thinks i'm sick.

i now know i have ptsd. but it's still hard to accept sometimes. i thought the nightmare (being physically chronically ill) ended, but there's another nightmare ahead (dealing with the mental repercussions of being sick for so long). it seems never-ending.

i know i'll get through it cause i got through some horrible physical symptoms and i'm still here. but damn, it's so fucking exhausting.

[lau-per]

[callaeidae3]

An old WIP comic I don't think I'll ever finish haha

This scene is about six months after the Ninao kidnapping incident: in the summer following Yuuki's kidnapping ordeal, Yuuki collapses at the Harrison family's house as the exhaustion of post-traumatic stress and the insomnia that's been plaguing him hit him.

The dialogue scribbled on the art differs slightly from what I wrote in the novel version of this scene, but reads:

"Yuuki, are you alright?" "I'm fine." ...just a little light-headed ...from this trauma that won't go away.

[sugarfiendgfx]

Trauma's a bitch ...

2018, that was my last post. I've been doing a lot of soul searching the past few years. Life's been hard, but who here hasn't felt the that things have gotten rather tough?

So what the excuse for the absence? Why did I stop drawing) why did I let my comic ROT! Just good old trauma. You know the saying that the grass is always greener on the other side? Well I guess I fell for that old adage. I took a job, closer to home with better pay and seemingly better prospects, and within 18 months it began to eat away at me from within. All my flaws left magnified, my every step under scrutiny. At first you tell yourself to grown up and get on with it, be an adult and learn to cope. But it's taken until now to truly understand that a part of me knew something was wrong and that I was hollowing myself out.

I got pregnant in 2018, had my boy in 2019 which was classified as a traumatic birth. We both nearly died and mainly due to noone hearing my concerns, I knew something was a miss and I was right. I won't get lost in the weeds. Tired and in survival mode I trudged on, went back to work.

Then you spot it, the same pattern, the way the company likes to remove people they don't think are a good fit. No meetings addressing the issue, just cutting their involvement in mainline projects, assigning their work to others, cutting their dept budgets or assigning them unreachable goals and then you see it happening to you, and you KNOW what comes next. It either a 'redudancy' or an off-site sacking followed by a fake ass company wide email about how YOU decided to leave the company to pursue your passions.

I get pulled into a manditory 6 months review meeting to check how I'm doing after coming back from maternity leave, only to be served a redundancy marked the same day as my birthday. Happy birthday to me! 🎉

I saw it coming, but it STILL stung. "It's not you, it's just business" but you know that's not true. These smiling assassins have performed this play by the book to everyone else who wasn't well received or who didn't play ball. But they don't like confrontation, they'd rather the problem just disappeared. They want me to disappear...

Cue COVID!

The chaos, the stress, the fear, the isolation. The world changes, but you're still hurting. The healing doesn't really come. You feel broken and damaged but you have a child to look after, so you're stuck survival mode.

I had not found joy in my creations for sooooo looooooong, and that hurt. The guilt, the anger, the sadness trapped in a loop.

But in the past year or so, I've felt that spark start to ignite again. The path to healing hasn't been straight forward but similar to that of an artist. The wobbly line that climbs upwards so you progress. with leaps and setbacks along the way but the healing is happening and I am starting to recover, I'm starting to feel 'me' again.

Why'd it have to take years? Who knows, but looking back on this blog, my deviantart account, my comic, I'm feeling that enjoy again. That cruel voice in my head quietening. I've lost so much time, or have I? Is this what was needed, this very painful journey or growth? Had that toxic job consume too much unnoticed and this was what was needed to repair? Who knows.

What I do know is that I took a look and decided on what I wanted to be not want people expect. I did the same for my art. The worse part was that I ever let them make me believe my art wasn't good enough. Perhaps I wasn't the right fit, but I and the art was still good.

Getting this out has been healing. And once I hit post it'll feel real. And even if noone reads it, I'll know it out there in the void, it's been aired and I can move on finally and stop dwelling on the past and get on with it all!

If you stuck it out this far, kudos! Give yourself a pat on the back! That was a long read!

[dietpillsanddietcoke]

“Wound, Restored”

But what could trauma, healed, even look like?

The mere thought seems 

blasphemous

impossible

A fever dream.

If trauma in Greek means wound,

Can a wound ever heal, restored?

Maybe healing isn’t a miraculous and spontaneous event,

But the slow and arduous transformation

From wounded to Adapting. 

Maybe trauma, healed is really trauma, transforming.

Present tense. 

Ever evolving. 

Ever adapting.

Ever reinventing itself to meet the healers needs.

Trauma never had a reason,

But with the willing help of the healer it can transform

Into a Great Strength. 

Like a broken bone that reforms, stronger

A wound to the heart can leave the

Once-injured 

With a tool unlike any other…

Compassion for self and others,

Joy for moments of lightness and hope,

And an ever-present searching 

For the people who are a soft spot to land. 

Because home is not a place, it is a people.

And trauma, healed, happens

When we have found home. 

[cklifeskills]

Rising from the Ashes: Turning Heartbreak into Healing

Dr. Gupta: Hema, thank you for sharing about your recent breakup. It takes a lot of courage to confront these emotions. Can you tell me more about what you’re experiencing right now? Hema: (tearfully) I feel like a failure, Doc. I thought we were meant to be, but it all fell apart. I keep replaying what I could’ve done differently. Dr. Gupta: Hema, I understand that the relationship was complex…

[cynthiabaileyrug]

Signs Of High Functioning Depression

Depression is not always easy to spot.  People with high functioning depression may appear to be successful & happy on the outside, but inside they are struggling with a constant battle against negative thoughts & emotions.  This type of depression is sometimes referred to as smiling depression, as individuals may appear to be “very together” but are struggling on the inside.  One of the most…

[starfishinthedistance]

I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.