The PTSD chain

The chain tightens around my neck once more. Sometimes, it sits so loose and I am so used to its weight I almost forget that it’s there, until it clasps back around my throat and I am gasping for breath. It can be the smallest things that wrench upon the end, capturing me in my noose, an act of violence on the television, an unusual smell, a taste, and suddenly I am overwhelmed. I might not even realise it’s tightened sometimes as I stare blankly, sweltering my own feelings trying not to let them show whilst my heart hammers against my rib cage “They can hear it, surely they can hear it!”.

On my own, I can fight against the chain. I prise my fingers between the cold and my skin, but the more I wriggle and fight, the tighter the chain gets. 

 I long to put this chain down so much. 

Advertisement

Eating disorders: control and shame

I think for me, ‘disordered’ eating has always been to some extent about control; a fairly common theme, I know.

It makes kind of logical sense in some ways. I dread the stereotypical ‘wanting to be in control of your body because of times when you haven’t’, though I do accept this theory. For me, I’ve been thinking more and more about exactly what it is I want to control: is it my weight, my appearance, my eating desires? Is it about wanting to see how far I can push myself, how much discipline and control I have over myself? 

These were all things I used to think I wanted to be in control of. From a young age I learnt to control myself in so many ways and ‘controlling’ food helped me to continue this; which is something I felt I should do. 

Suddenly though, I realise it is not just about these things. It is about controlling me. It’s about holding me back. Keeping the little battered me inside. 

I feel so utterly branded by shame on the inside that I must hide myself; I must not have desires or be who I want to be. 

It feels as though every part of my soul has been seared and scarred by shame and I darent share it with anyone for fear of repulsion. My eating disorder has cut over scar after scar of shame and kept me quiet, kept me hidden. 

Do you remember the wounds?

It makes physical sense that a scar won’t look the same as the wound, nor the skin before. The tissue, damaged then inflamed seeks to heal and creates a substitute tissue to stand in the originals place. Thick and non-functioning, it fills a void. Do you remember the wounds before them? Remember the wounds your scars replaced, what they stand for? Do you remember the pain of them, how they came about? Do you even remember the story they tell?

Many scars tell a good story, but many more tell a horrible one. 

And what of the emotional scars, the ‘psychological’ ones? Do we remember what stood before them? Do we remember ourselves before that trauma? Our emotions, our thoughts, thick and hardened through the hands of abuse not dissimilar to the scars on our skin. The bodies inate, desperate mechanisms to heal and heal quickly. To survive. 

Can we change them? Can we soften the scar tissue in anyway? Can it be treated? Can we remember what was there before, can we remember the wounds? Would it help to?

What is it like to be covered in scars you don’t remember receiving, wounds that have healed behind your back without your knowing? Perhaps that is unanswerable. 

Talking out

It is not often I see the pros of ‘talking out’, of telling or sharing my story. I am all to easily silenced by myself or others, but a recent blog post has made me think a little more. 

When you have a thought or memory endlessly cycling in yor head it can be near impossible to get it out. If you picture it physically, you can almost see it there inside your skull bouncing of the walls trying desperately to get out, but with your mouth tight shut it has no where to go, no escape. By opening your mouth you allow it out. You create a tangent for your memory to spin off and finally end its repititive circling. Or you can cry it out, I suppose. If you know how. 

That is all. 

What does abuse do to you?

This is a very difficult post for me, even anonymously, to share publicly. The word ‘abuse’ is a big and scary one and I wouldn’t classify anything I’ve been through as that, though I know others would disagree. 

In light of my recent post ‘recovery’, I’d like to be able to follow it up with a second post that looks more honestly at the shadows behind that word. In many ways, I think DBT (dialectical behavioural therapy) has actually been unhelpful to me. I feel almost as though the past year has taught me how not to cry, how not to react to terror and torment and so reinforced many of the lessons I learned as a child. My therapist, possibly not to her fault, actively discouraged me talking of anything vaguely traumatic and helped gloss over everything that is my life. This has helped me in some ways, it’s arguable reduced some of the ‘BPD’ symptoms (though, I am not sure if I have just made allowances for this elsewhere). The thing it really hasn’t helped me with, and if anything has pushed me further into the hands of denial with, is my PTSD. 

Post traumatic stress disorder. What a phrase. 

I’ve suffered this arguably since I was a child, though obviously I wouldn’t have seen it that way then and I still don’t really now. I have nightmares every night, sure. I have night terrors still, like a child and wake myself up screaming and fighting. And then there’s the day times. Every half step, something seems to trigger my memory and I find myself wincing or bracing to fight my way out. It’s exhausting. It sounds like something out of a movie, but it’s not. It’s really not. This is my life. 

I feel like I am trapped in my childhood, and that wasn’t a good place to be. 

So these are some of the symptoms DBT has not helped me deal with. These are the manifestations of a constant overflow of traumatic memories, one after the other flooding my brain and frying it’s circuits. 
What is it like to have PTSD? It’s exhausting. 

And what of the original trauma? 

Now that I have finished DBT, I am allegedly ‘robust’ enough to start dealing with it. I am not gloating in anyway, but I have ‘survived’ a childhood of abuse, neglect, homelessness but now after a year of DBT you think I might be robust enough – thanks. 

Anyway, so this means onward referal, which I am entirely grateful for. The downside being I must now try and share my story again. 

If admitting to having PTSD is hard, admitting to having been thtough any trauma is impossible. I just can’t do it. So I start scraping around the top of the barrel for some lesser, more acceptable memories. I need to portray to this team I am struggling, but my inner autos kick in and I simultaneously need to portray that I have never been abused in any way shape or form. 

So what does trauma do to you? This. 

It terrifies you to talk and terrorises you to not. 

Even the memories I class as lesser, the one offs, even they terrify me. And it’s only just dawned on me how freaking scary this all is. 

This is all I can share for now. Thanks anyone who reads.