Life with Complex PTSD

I don't hide my illnesses from the people in my life. Most people who know me know about at least one of my mental disorders. I use my own mental health issues as a platform for reducing stigma by living with it in plain view, sharing about it, and helping others to understand what mental illness is really like.

So here's a story of who I am. This time around, I'll tell you about my complex PTSD (CPTSD). I'll tell you about how I cope and when I have failed to cope well. I'll tell you about what goes on in my head at times and the terror that can overcome me without even a moment's notice.

Most days, I can get through with little or even no impairing symptoms. Part of that is due to medication and part of it is due to the skills I have learned.

I take time almost every day to thank God for the blessings in my life because I know that research has shown that practicing gratitude improves overall mood and reduces negative feelings (such as anxiety). When I begin to feel like anxiety is trying to overpower me, I use deep breathing, or progressive muscle relaxation. Progressive muscle relaxation is a technique in which you tense up one part of your body, such as your left shoulder, letting yourself really feel all the tension your body holds in just that one place, then slowly release the tension; you can repeat this in different parts of your body, as many times as you need. Recently, I have begun asking someone nearby to feel my pulse and tell me if it feels normal because I find myself feeling like it's racing and like I can't breathe, so I reach out for help. I ask a friend to get coffee or lunch bc I need to talk. I facetime friends to distract me from my own brain.

I also often cope in ways that aren't so great. In moments of sudden anxiety, I will often dig my nails (which I usually keep very long) into my skin, usually the inside of my hands but also sometimes in my arms, legs, back, or stomach. I may even carve deep scratches if the anxiety is bad enough and I am just floundering. I will also shut down emotionally, not allowing myself to care about things going on around me or tasks I am currently completing because all I can handle giving my focus to is the anxiety. It can even become so overwhelming that I dissociate, which for me means either losing my sense of self or my sense of realness. I can feel unreal, almost like someone else is controlling my body but I'm still there and I know what is happening. I can also feel like I'm in a dream, like what's happening around me is not totally real. Occasionally, I even find myself losing time, albeit only a few minutes.

But you see, I can go months without a single flashback or any re-experiencing symptoms. I can live in the present. But it never lasts. It can’t last. When life starts to get tough, my brain joins in. Every time I try to sleep, here they come. When I’m cooking dinner and something burns, here they come. When I go to church on a Sunday morning, sitting around familiar faces that only know half of me, here they come. At work, trying to help a customer who's behaving angrily towards me or even just towards the person with them or on the other end of the phone...you guessed it, here come the flashbacks. There's more to say about having this disorder than I can say in just this one blog post, so I will probably write on this again in one of my soon-coming posts.

Mental disorders is my reality. I've accepted it, even though there are days I hate it. But I'm glad I know what I know. I'm glad I can use my own experiences to help others. I hope my blog helps you. I hope you feel a little less alone knowing I'm struggling too. We're stronger together, so please join me in this journey. Please subscribe and share my blog if you feel like it benefits you. Thanks y'all!

Loving the Body I Live Inside

I started seeing a new therapist. I said something that led him to ask if I had any concerns about my relationship with food. Confidently, I said, "No." It wasn't a false confidence. I really believed my relationship with food was fine; I had never examined this area of my life closely enough to think it needed to be worked on. In fact, he wasn't even the first health professional to ask something along these lines, but I had been certain this was one area where I didn't have a problem. But for some reason, this time I couldn't get it out of my head. "Should I be concerned?" I thought. "What if I do have a problematic relationship with food? Maybe I do need to work on this." So I went back the next week, telling him that I think I was wrong about what I had said, that maybe there was a problem. I told him how much weight I had lost in the previous couple of months. See, at that time, I wasn't particularly concerned with my weight or my body overall, but I had basically stopped eating. Something about eating brought me anxiety. I only ate small amounts of food and only once or twice a day. Like a smoothie in the morning and a few chicken wings at some later point in the day- and that was a good day. Even the food I liked most didn't entice me. I even began puking when I didn't like that I ate something in particular; it made me feel gross, gave me anxiety after eating it. I was lucky enough to have a great therapist, who knew what resources were available to me, who got me connected with the resources I needed. It was a long process, several months long, learning to eat again. For the whole first semester of my senior year of college, I would have hot chocolate for dinner. I would make Mexican hot chocolate on the stove, with milk because it was one thing I knew I could tolerate and get some of the nutrients I knew I needed. This was the start of my healing journey, though not the beginning of my troubles with food or my body image.

I began struggling with my body image when I was in middle school, common I know. But what may be less common is that I started to have disordered eating at that point too. I had stretch marks, and I was one of few girls at my school who weren't basically a size 0. Girls talked garbage about other girls' bodies. My sister talked about my big butt a lot, which wasn't necessarily a positive or negative; it wasn't something a 12 or 13 year old needed to be told constantly. One of my brothers would say that every woman should be a size zero, and most of the girls he dated were at least close to that. I didn't think I was pretty. I didn't believe I could be. But I knew I could go hours without eating, and the way my life was structured at that time, I worked out three times a day, about 4-5 hours in total. Sometimes I'd skip meals, other times I'd cut out certain foods. Either way, I was constantly undernourished. But I still always felt a little overweight. I felt out of place in my small private school, and somehow no one ever noticed the pain I was in most days. This behavior stopped for a while, but resurfaced in my senior year of high school. I lost 11 lbs in about 2 months, working out most every day and limiting myself to 1300 calories. I thought I was just being healthy, getting back in shape or whatever. It wasn't until a few years later, after I started therapy and my journey to repair my eating, and was deep in studying psychology (my major), that I realized I had had an eating disorder all those times. I had had no idea. But now I do. Now, I forgive myself for all the harm this did to me. It's time for me to move on and so I am letting go, braving a new day in the skin I am finally learning to love.

I have loved and hated myself throughout the years of my life. But I'm working hard these days to love, always and only love myself, body and soul. There are still days that I wish I didn't have the stomach I have or that I want to weigh what I did when I was in middle school. But the reality? I'm a woman in a woman's body. I have curves and angles. I have a body that is meant to carry babies and be strong. I have a body that is able to take on the hurdles of life. And honestly, I need to be able to accept that. I want to be able to accept that. I want to see myself as my husband does. I want to see the most beautiful girl in the room, every time I look in the mirror, no matter who is around me. I want to know my own strength. Don't you want that too? Ladies, we are in this together, whether you're 16, 26 or 63. We all need a reminder, sometimes, that we are beautiful. So here is your reminder: You are beautiful. You are lovely. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are loved. You are important.

Life without eating

I have an eating disorder. I have had eating disorders multiple times over the last decade or so of my life. It started in middle school. I hated my body from the time I was 11 or 12. I have always been curvy and as such, I was thicker than the other girls. I couldn’t stand being “fat.” It was only the beginning. My self-hate had many years of growth ahead still. Even now, it’s a daily battle to stop the hate.

 The first time I had a disorder, I would refuse to eat certain foods and if other foods were unavailable, I would not eat. Some days, I wouldn’t eat until I got home after 6 in the evening, after having worked out 3 times that day. This happened a few times in middle school, but always for short periods of time because my older sister was obnoxiously good at noticing my habits. I was always active, playing sports year round and spending much of my free time riding my bike. But it made no difference. I never got any skinnier, no matter how much I avoided eating or how many calories I burned. The only thing that ever changed was my perception of myself. I looked uglier every time I glanced in the mirror. Clothes stopped looking good on me. There was even a period where I didn’t want my husband to see me naked. It didn’t matter what others told me. It only mattered what I told myself. I said I was ugly. I said I was fat. I said I couldn’t possibly be attractive. When my husband grabs me, I wince. No, he isn’t abusing me. (I’m abusing me.) It just reminds me of my “problem areas” which is like every area, or so I’ve thought.
I have been literally, physically repulsed by food because it would only lead me to thinking about how fat I am and how good has made me that way. If I felt uneasy after eating, I’d make myself throw up right after. That was one of my eating disorders. I had to find a way to make myself get some kind of nutrients. I made myself Mexican hot chocolate on the stove every night one semester and called that dinner. It was the only way I knew I could get myself some protein and other stuff that milk is good for. This may have been the longest lasting disorder, and after I beat it, it came back again and again. It is the first time I recognized that my relationship with food was unhealthy. I’d had multiple therapists ask but I’d thought food and I were fine. I’d done such a good job of lying to myself that I really truly believed it. This wasn’t the first disorder and it wouldn’t be the last.

This was an early point in my journey. I was only just beginning to see that I saw myself as a problem. I have always carried myself confidently, and it convinces not only myself but also everyone around me that I love me. But it’s a lie. I have hated my guts since I was a kid. Adolescence made it worse, and the life inside my head only found reasons to continue to destroy myself. Even now, at 25, I struggle with counting my calories and restricting and purging (with or without a binge) and criticizing my reflection and deciding not to go to events because I feel THAT self-conscious in every single outfit I pick out and crying because of it all.

Living Dead

When all you want to do is die. When staying alive takes every ounce of energy you have and all vitality is gone. When you want to take your own life but just don't even have the energy to do it. When your greatest desire is to fall asleep and simply never wake up, but sleeping often feels impossible because you're also afraid that you may actually get what you want.

Life doesn't just feel empty. It feels dark and void. It feels pointless. You see no good in being alive, yet feel you must go on with it anyway. You hate every moment you're awake and you are dying inside, slowly painfully dying.

I could say that I’ve been there, but that’s not the whole truth. In reality, I revisit that place so very often. I used to think I was in a bad place, but when I end up there now, it’s even worse. I no longer just feel the pain of the present, but also of the past. I have PTSD and it causes me to have flashbacks and re-experiences of traumas I’ve lived through. There are nights I can’t get to sleep because the past shows up like a movie across my eyelids every time I close my eyes.

No matter how much I just want to end it all, I know I never could. I could never do that to my husband, the one person who has always stuck by me and never once made it about himself. He tries so hard to be whatever I need in any given situation, even when that need changes moment to moment. When I crumple on the floor because the dog won’t listen or a jar won’t open, he takes care of it and lifts me back up, both literally and figuratively.

Sometimes I can go months without falling into this cavern, but I always end up back in there. I am broken. But there is still some amount of hope in me. It’s the size of a mustard seed most days, but it’s there nonetheless.

Living Lonely

It's fine. I'll just go to my side, and wrap myself on the old familiar loneliness. At the edge of the bed.

I'll be afraid all by myself. I'll sleep to avoid reality, but force myself awake to end the n8ghtmares. I won't ask for help because you wouldn't know how to help anyway. 

So I'll be alone and lonely. I'll drink so I can sleep. I'll become an addict because I have no one there for me in my hour of need. You say I just have to ask, but when I do, you leave me lonely. 

I'm afraid to go outside. I'm afraid to be home alone. I'm afraid to split up when we go run errands. I'm honestly afraid of even being alive. I'm lonely and terrified because I have no one there when I need, and this world is far too upsetting for me.

Living Sick

I'm sick. I'm sicker than I care to admit. I'm too sick to function most days. I can't sleep. I can't eat. Sometimes, I literally can't breath. On occasion, I'm unable to breath just long enough for my knees to give way, and I start to collapse, but I come to before they completely give out. And somehow, I find myself disappointed. I'm disappointed that I didn't faint, that I didn't hit my head and end up in a coma. I'm disappointed that every ounce of anxiety is still there and nothing has changed in my life to relieve it.

When I say I'm sick, I mean my mental health is failing. I mean that it takes every bit of energy I have to make it through the day, even if all I do is lay in bed, maybe go to the living room to watch tv. It means that all vitality has left me. My mind is so full that it causes an overwhelm that leaves me too numb to process anything. I can't go shopping anymore because within ten minutes, I'm having a panic attack. I can't study anything because my mind won't focus.

For me, being sick means that it takes every ounce of self-control that my weak mind can muster, just to stay alive. It's painful. It's so, so painful. I cut because I think it'll help me express myself. I cut because it keeps me from doing something worse. I cut because I know it can help me feel better.
But I resist cutting because it scares my husband.

I pray and I pray and I pray, but the pain doesn't go away. I don't feel strengthened. I cry out, I beg for a lighter cross to carry, but it seems that this burden is what I'm meant to carry. It seems that my hope is in vain, and this is the death I am forced to live.

I'm simultaneously depressed and anxious. I'm both unable to care about anything and worried about everything. It's hell  Each day, I feel as though I'm living through hell. Sometimes, so rarely that I often forget they can exist, there's a day when I don't feel like crying, I don't have a panic attack, and death doesn't overtake my thoughts. On those days, I actually believe I'm alive, that I have a purpose, that things may actually be okay again. But I haven't seen that kind of day in so long, and I wonder if I ever will again. I wonder if I'm destined to live in fear of life and dread of a future.

Will I forever wish to be dead? Please, God, don't let it be.

From a Christian in Therapy

I hear about it all the time. "Therapy isn't the answer;" "Find a Christian counselor;" "Read the Bible;" "Have you prayed about it?"

I'm sorry, but please shut up. I'm a Christian, and I pray and read the Bible and listen to worship music. But that doesn't get at the underlying issues. I wholeheartedly believe that God wants us to find the root of our issues and learn how to heal from and overcome our life difficulties, which is the purpose of therapy.

Don't tell me that the answer isn't in therapy, because it is for many of us. When I meet with my therapist, I learn about myself. I learn why I have the insecurities that I have, why I shut down or dissociate when I feel like I have no voice, and how to better work through future stressors.

Therapy improves my relationships, including my relationship with God. I wouldn't know how to pray for myself if I didn't know whatis really going on with me. It allows me to pray for specifics. It has also made my relationship with my fiancé better because I am learning how to tell him what's going on with me, to help him understand what I'm feeling, to have patience when we disagree, and to work on our communication as a whole. It has taught me to open up more, to let friends in, and even to ask for help when I need it.

I have Bipolar type 2, PTSD, and an eating disorder.

Believe it or not, I can't just read a couple chapters in the Bible and suddenly be healed. Sure I can listen to worship music for a couple hours to help me feel less stressed about an exam or help me calm down when I'm worried about an upcoming event. But it won't heal all the pain I have and make all the abuse and neglect I sufered through as a child and adolescent just vanish from my memory.

When your friend is diagnsed with cancer, would you tell them that chemo isn't the answer, that they should talk to a pastor instead of an oncologist?

NO.

You would most likely pray for them, but you would also agree that the doctors know how to treat the disease.

So why do we treat mental illness as something other than what it actually is, a DISEASE? Is it because people just don't understand, or because they think it's a choice, or because they don't know how to respond, or do they believe that it's always and only a spiritual thing?

Sometimes, there could be a spiritual element to it, but when praying all day doesn't make it go away, it means that there's a physical element to it.

And let me make one thing very clear: It is NEVER a choice. It was not my choice to have a mother who is controlling, physically and verbally abusive, and just plain angry. It was not my choice to have a father who avoided our family as much as possible, choosing work over us. It was not my choice as a child, to learn that the only way to cope was to disguise my sadness as anger, and dissociate when it all became too overwhelming. It is not my choice to be haunted by memories of my past. It is not my choice to have depression and mania, or to see food as aversive, despite the fact that I know that I need to eat.

Each day, I get a little better. I have to fight, and it's not easy when it feels like the rest of the world thinks it's a made up battle. It's not easy when the battle is within, where you can never escape from. I am sick, no matter how you look at it. I have flashbacks most weeks, feel on edge as I walk down the street, and cry some days because I don't know what else to do. Some weeks, I have to fight just to get out of bed, and even more so to stay out of bed until night. I have to force myself, against my will, to go to class. Sometimes, I even struggle to shower or brush my teeth. The thing that has helped me be able to do these things when I don't think I can? Therapy. I have grown leaps and bounds in my ability to cope with life, thanks to therapy. I work very hard, with the help of one other person, to gain insight, build new connections, and grow. That's what it means to be in therapy, to grow.

If you don't know how to respond, ask people with mental disorders what they would like from you, or how you can help. Don't give advice if they don't ask for it. Ask them if they're ready to get help, and then ask them what kind of help they believe they need. Some people may want to talk to a Christian counselor, some may want to get medication from a psychiatrist, and others may want to see a therapist. Whatever they believe they need is okay because they know best what they need. I don't think there's anything wrong with seeing a Christian counselor, but what needs to be understood is that it isn't for everyone who's Christian.