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From my cptsd bucketlist, you know that I suffer from several forms of cptsd, which, despite barely scratching the surface of this topic, I have discussed many times all over this blog.
In all those previous entries, I used rather clinical or emotional terms, to describe my traumatic experiences and some of the struggles they caused.
Today, I want to discuss how all these interact and impact me on a daily, or regular basis.
Before I do that, this is my fourth entry in daily impacts of mental illnesses. The first was for emeto & 3 other phobias. This series is inspired by Jodie's "what it feels like series" on her blog.
Suffering from post-traumatic stresses, "regular" or "complex" alike, is no picnic in the park ; It's quite tough and some days are unbearable. There are mild differences between the two types of post-traumatic stress ; the first form tends to result from one-time traumatic event, and the second can be from repeated traumas, or experienced in childhood, and/or lack of support resulting in worsening of the condition.
Each person who suffers from either (c/)Ptsd may experience very widely varied symptoms - though some are more common than others.
My own symptoms include, in varied levels of intensity and frequencies:
- hyper-vigilance (resulting in GAD),
- intrusive/pervasive thoughts and nightmares, with graphic gory details that add to my hemophobia (phobia of blood) ;
- or flashbacks that come with no warning and can hit me anywhere, anytime, in multitude of levels,
- depersonalization ; dissociation ; feelings of surroundings and/or myself isn't real ;
- time distortions ; psychotic episodes
- mood swings ; alternating between opposite extremes, such as emotional numbing, or hyper-emotional outbursts, or moments of rage switching to total apathy ; chronic depression ;
My hyper-vigilance and GAD mixture are direct results of multiple traumas. They left me feeling vulnerable, a huge portion of my life, more or less daily, more or less in any given situation. This is exacerbated in new situations where the unknown factor plays tricks and keeps me alert as to possible negative outcomes - which I indeed fear and tend to expect that something will go wrong ; but also in well known situations, where a repetition of a traumatic experience from the past may repeat itself. Thus, hyper-vigilance is like that red alert that is tough to shut off, even by clicking multiple times on a button.
As part of my traumas are about domestic violence, I cannot watch it happening in real or in fiction ; couples bickering in the streets, or movies/ tv shows where DV is the main plot, I cannot watch, as it systematically triggers me.
Another part is growing up in a religious cult. I have a radar for people who may belong to cults and who may want to address me to save my soul, or worse, to be sent by my father to convince me to go back to him, or to kill me if I resisted the offer of divine Amnesty... In this regard, I have developed a highly-targeted paranoia that is tough to break, even if I started to attack the inherent fears that my father will find and try to get me, one way or another.
The part of me that grew up in a tense political environment, my hyper-vigilance sends me eyes searching, like a bird of prey, for any possible threatening person who may commit acts of violence. I narrowly escaped a couple attempts on my life when I was younger ; I walked in unwanted neighbourhoods after getting lost ; and now, I look around me for anyone susceptible to do that. I stand farther away from the street curbs that the average ; I scan around ; I make sure no vehicle is arriving faster than it should (as it could mean something). I hate being lost or out of control of situations, so I research everything ahead of any trip to new areas.
Hyper-vigilance is the result, I believe, of past difficult experience/s where danger wasn't warned as it couldn't have been anticipated, and as it occurred nonetheless, so our brain wants to warn us "just in case".
Intrusive, pervasive thoughts or nightmares are those that enter our brain (respectively in conscious or not state) and lingers against our wishes. Again, like that family member, or that person we never wanted as a friend but is there every day, or often enough to be a nuisance.
Flashbacks can also occur, and strike with no warning, even in the most innocuous daily routine activities, or pleasant ones for that matter : during flashbacks, a trauma of the past becomes a new present, lived over and over again, with intrusive and pervasive images hitting my mind, or sensations traversing my body despite my best attempts to ward them all off.
For instance, one of my worse possible moments for a flashback was when crossing the street on my way to the organic store. Problem ? my pedestrian light was red and a car was arriving, fast.
Flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and nightmares are moments where I re-live and re-experience the traumatic moment, sometimes in repeated loops, during which I'm not here anymore.
When flashback occur, the past makes a flash-forward ; it jumps and connects the past to the present moment, and it becomes utterly difficult, if not impossible, to distract away from it once it's here, as the onslaught of images and sensations take control and I become uncommunicative, as I'm no longer in the present moment, but brought into the past, in a trip that is faster than any scifi means to time travel, and without the artificial tools to achieve it.
Sometimes, the flashbacks create an actual, physical sensation of the traumatic event. For example, flashback of my father beating me up leaves me feeling the physical pain and not just seing it in my mind. That's the most common form for me. In other cases, I felt physically constrained or that the walls were closing-in on me from all directions, at the same time as the distance between floor and ceiling would reduce, just like when he'd given me hallucinogens as part of his control over me, and "to get closer to god".
When nightmares occur, they tend to be related to my traumas. In their majority, I used to be beat up badly by my father, and presented the same kind of violent imagery as my intrusive flashbacks. They had, however, extended versions, just like movies, where additional scenes would make it all a lot longer, or add a portion where I was first hunted down by him.
In time, as I partially worked on my traumas, these nightmares included more and more often my fighting back against him, but all those were a lot bloodier and gorier than my previous forms of nightmares.
I've woken up for cptsd nightmares in a sweat ; I've seen scratches on my arms and was told by my wife that I had them on my back as well. I'm still not sure how I'd even managed to reach those areas in my sleep, as I cannot do that in my waking! At least, I don't get those scratches anymore, but a few years ago, they were systematic.
Once, in a nightmarish struggle, I actually punched my wife (in real life), and I felt horrible, even though I knew I wasn't in control. She was understanding and forgave me, and my feelings of guilt lasted longer than her physical pain. Ever since, I'm always scared to renew this experience. But, due to several other factors, we now sleep separately most of the night ; significantly reducing the risks for repeats.
As for depersonalization ; dissociation ; feelings of surroundings and/or myself isn't real ;
time distortions ; psychotic episodes; all these are those moments where my person, or my life, or my surroundings, appear outside of me, and not me ; things feel like I'm not real and never were, and are ways my brain tries to deal with the overload of trauma, by shutting down my perceptions of reality. These were also those times I had psychotic episodes, which I thought were real mystic experiences ; but were actually the result of a mix between cptsd un-reality, and growing up with new-age mystical lies. I won't go into those at moment, but I'll say that they are no longer experienced.
Mood swings and alterations are probably my most permanent and repeated symptoms. I alternate between opposite extremes, such as emotional numbing, or hyper-emotional outbursts, or moments of rage switching to total apathy ; and have lived with chronic depression all my life. Mood swings can mean that I feel ok one moment but sad, depressed the next, or raging with anger yet another moment. My mood swings shall have their own entry.
Cptsd increases awareness of my surroundings ; it creates hyper-vigilance and paranoid tendencies ; I experience difficulties with concentration, memory (especially of non-traumas), sleeping issues (especially due to all those nightmares, but also due to the hyper-vigilant, busy-brain mode), feeling jumpy and ready for fight, or rather flight, as I tend to avoid situations as much as possible.
All those experiences leave me very fatigued, but cptsd's symptoms aren't the sole factors in this, as I suffer from other mental illnesses, which are sometimes compounded by over-stimulation and, lately, also B12 deficiencies.
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