“My mind just doesn’t want to be broken anymore.”
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a mental health condition I have recently been diagnosed with, alongside Borderline Personality Disorder and anxiety. It can often develop following a single, or a series of, traumatic events such as a severe car accident, or an assault. In my case, I have suffered multiple traumas in the past including witnessing the suicide of a partner and finding my parents’ dead bodies, as well as enduring abusive relationships and historical abuse. However, people may develop PTSD following a variety of painful experiences.
Any one (or many) of these traumatic events could have led to my diagnosis, however, I think the way the mind processes these traumatic events differs from person to person, in turn affecting the mind’s emotional response in years to come and their eventual development of the core elements behind PTSD.
The likelihood of developing symptoms of PTSD is heavily influenced by the ways in which that person deals mentally and physically with the aftermath of the trauma. Some people, for example, may attend bereavement counselling sessions to find some sort of acceptance and closure following the loss of a family member. This would be considered a healthy coping mechanism, and they may find they are able to live somewhat at peace with their emotions following the traumatic event. They accept the memory and they put it to bed.
Others, however, may turn to substance abuse or alcohol. In my case, I have simply blacked out parts or all of the event(s) in order to live a reasonable lie; that everything is as fine, or ‘normal’, as ever. This, despite often seeming like a ‘quick fix’ within the subconscious, can often cause deep seeded suppression. This in turn leads to disturbing symptoms, such as those found in sufferers of PTSD.
Ever since I was a small child, I suffered from terrible nightmares. I would wake up screaming, shaking and sweating. This got progressively worse as I developed into an adult, and I began to suffer from terrible flashbacks, which at first I doubted. I would assume they weren’t flashbacks or memories; but simply strange thoughts in my head manifesting due to an overactive imagination.
People around me would dismiss it or call my night terrors ‘bad dreams’ that ‘everybody gets’. In some cases, I would lose consciousness for no apparent reason, and simply black out. Nobody ever questioned why this was happening. As I matured, my symptoms significantly began to affect my daily life.
Several years ago, my twenty year old partner took his own life by lying in front of a train, following an argument we had had. Ever since that day, I will become overwhelmed with feelings of panic and guilt if I am to face a train station or a train journey. This can be referred to as an ‘external trigger’ – a situation, item, or person even, which can cause the subconscious to sort of freak out and be suddenly transported back to the painful mindset they were going through in that moment of the traumatic event taking place.
Another example of this, could be a person hearing a loud bang, and suddenly feeling taken back to a moment involving a similar sort of sound – perhaps the sound of a gunshot, or an aggressive partner punching a hole in a door. To any outside observer, this sudden fear response may seem odd and unwarranted – especially as, more often than not, the person experiencing the fear response may not know precisely what it is causing them to suddenly feel this way. It could be something so small; a smell of something reminiscent of that day, the colour of somebody’s hair…that to react in such a way is frightening and seemingly erratic to both the people surrounding the person, and the person themselves.
Regardless, though, of however miniscule the trigger seems to an outsider; the traumatic event having taken place will be, more often than not, an event that caused the person to fear for their life, or in the very least, completely overcome with feelings of helplessness. This extreme panic may cause the person to avoid anything relating to the external trigger, in fear of reliving these horrific emotions again and again. In my case, I often do not realise exactly what the trigger was until I really think about the events leading up to the anxiety attack. If I do eventually work out what the trigger was,
I will go out of my way to avoid ever feeling that way again; refusing to go to certain places, or do certain things, which bring back those memories my subconscious tried so hard to push back into a little storage box of jigsaw pieces relating to that event or events.
It feels almost poignant to me that I consider that a damaged mind can be easily compared to a child. Imagine a child, for a moment, breaks an expensive ornament by accident. He panics, and hides the pieces of the broken ornament in fear of the parents finding out. He feels better that the object is hidden, because he a) no longer sees it, b) he is able to avoid the perceived wrath of his disappointed parents. He will do anything to hide the truth from his parents; denying any involvement to save himself from the inevitable punishment he fears.
I feel my mind is a little like this child; it will do anything it can to make those bad memories go away. It will do anything to stop the confusion and the hurting and the pure fear of reliving that memory. It immediately chooses ‘flight’ over ‘fight’ and bails out of there, blocking any linear memory of the event in question, and simply saying ‘nope’ when confronted with any reminder of that day which could dig up those suppressed memories. It’s tragic and tiring, but it does make sense to me. My mind just doesn’t want to be broken anymore.
It could be argued that all of my conditions – personality disorder, my anxiety and panic attacks, the PTSD – are linked to past traumatic events, despite there being evidence to suggest that a lot of mental health problems are hereditary. I have read that many people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress have multiple diagnoses which often stem from similar trauma – particularly trauma taking place early on.
PTSD is only a recent diagnosis of mine and I certainly do not feel I can speak on behalf of everyone suffering from these symptoms. Like people with BPD, everybody experiences this condition differently. I merely aim, in writing this post, to depict an individual’s experience of PTSD who simultaneously suffers from other mental health conditions. I hope that this will shed a bit of light for those interested in reading about those with PTSD, without it being from a regurgitated NHS booklet.
