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I would like to get real with you for a minute.
All my life I’ve struggled with crippling anxiety and depression. For no rhyme or reason, I will drop to the floor, feeling like my heart is going to give out, hyperventilating, tears streaming down my cheeks in rivers. Other times I wake up in the middle of the night screaming, my t-shirt drenched in a medallion of sweat. My thoughts are invasive, like a swarm of angry hornets, trying to remind me of how undeserving I am of the good in my life.
The illegible facial expression of the lady working the register at Trader Joe’s could be a trigger. Standing in the dimly lit elevator on my way down to the lobby of my apartment could be a trigger. Having a conversation with my roommate about existential crises could be a trigger. Anything and everything could be a trigger. And when that happens, I’m either hopelessly morose or needlessly aggressive. When I’m angry, my fury often has me shouting or smashing whatever is within reach. It makes me cold and distant toward the people I love, for reasons none of us can fully comprehend.
In summary, all these experiences have made me feel like I’m this broken thing, part needy and insecure, part untamed beast. I often wonder which of these identities is the real me, the sad girl, or the enraged one. When I’m not upset, I fall somewhere in between, stuck in a fog state where I feel like I’m watching my life through a television screen, as if it’s not really happening to me. My senses go limp, and I became an observer rather than a participant in the bustling scenes that swirl around me.
In my relationships, I constantly need to be reassured with flowery affirmations that I’m loved and won’t be abandoned in the middle of the night. In my job, I do the same thing with my boss, frantically checking in to make sure I’m working according to his standards.
I keep myself busy with my full-time job as an educational travel consultant, volunteering part-time for the emergency response line, my writing, and my side hustles (selling secondhand vintage furniture and my print-on-demand boutique on Etsy). I am consumed by the constant hum of distraction, hoping that by filling the voids of brief interludes with busy work, I’ll be able to silence that loathsome voice in my head.
If you ever read my memoir, Lost on Purpose (not yet published), you will know that I refer to this voice as DIM, my Demonic Inner Monologue. DIM is the one who reminds me of my meagerness. My lack thereof. Raining on my parade of joy is her favorite hobby, and no one does it quite like she does. Just to be clear, I do not hear voices in my head. I simply have an uninvited house guest living rent-free in my brain. We all have one, though I suspect some are more intrusive than others. I also suspect this is why I drink more than I should, though luckily the weekly blackouts are a thing of the past.
You might be wondering why I’m unleashing all of these truths on you. Well, before I delve into that, I wanted to ask you a question first. Have you ever read a book that changed your life forever? I don’t mean a juicy murder mystery with a dramatic plot twist that had your wheels turning until dawn. I mean a book that actually made you a different human from the time you started reading it.
After thirty years, there was only one book that I found transformative in the way that I’d heard books had the potential to be, and that book was called What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo. Stephanie is an acclaimed radio producer, well-known for her work on This American Life. Personally, I didn’t know Stephanie before I bought her book. I only knew that I had to read it because she had written over three hundred pages about the diagnosis she received at age thirty – CPTSD or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; a diagnosis that I also received at age thirty. It ended up being one of those reads that made me feel like I found my tribe and gave a voice to all my pain. Not to mention, with the help of Foo’s dedication, thorough research, and investigative journalism skills, it explained the very reasoning behind why I am the way I am today.
Before reading Woo’s book, I had been on waitlists for over six months to try and see a therapist who could help me round up my demons. While I waited for my top choice, a middle-aged woman who specialized in anger management, used a holistic approach in her healing, and had over forty years of experience, to have space in her schedule for a new patient, I experimented with a few other therapists. I was desperate, and DIM was ruthless.
The first therapist I saw, Judy, was in her mid-thirties. She was a bit inexperienced for my taste, but I went in with a willing mind anyway. She spoke so starkly, that she made my whole body tense up. I liked that she told me how it was, or at least, how she perceived it was, but it also didn’t make me overly enthused to be vulnerable with her.
Before our first appointment, I had been administered a series of questions that asked me about the very issues I wrote about in the early section of this article. According to Judy, this was the same test given to war veterans (also known as the PCL-5), and I scored similarly to someone who’d returned home after a gruesome battle.
“You have Complex PTSD,” she told me apathetically, just three minutes into our session. “It’s going to be a long road to recovery for you, and you’ll likely have to see a therapist for the rest of your life if you don’t want to end up a drug addict or suicide statistic.”
Naturally, upon hearing this, I decided to end our partnership. The diagnosis felt premature, and she was jumping to conclusions before even getting to know me or my story.
A few months later, after adding my name to a few more disheartening waitlists, I received a call back from a different woman, Raina. Raina was also young, but her demeanor was soft and non-threatening. I melted like butter in our first session, wildly sobbing when she asked me to open up about my abusive childhood – something no therapist had ever made me do in their presence.
Towards the end of our session, she said she was ready to tell me my diagnosis. She, too, had administered a test before meeting me, and guess what? She confirmed that I do, in fact, have Complex PTSD. Just to clarify, Complex PTSD is not the same as standard PTSD. PTSD occurs when there is single-incident trauma, whereas Complex PTSD is the result of repeated trauma, occurring over and over again. This is what makes CPTSD a more challenging condition to recover from. As it often starts at a young age and then persists throughout adulthood.
What I learned from our future sessions, my hours of research, and the many books I read, was that CPTSD is likely the culprit responsible for much of my pent up rage, my depression, my anxiety, my insecurities, my dissociation, my substance abuse, and so on.
Since I received this diagnosis, not once, but twice, it made me take it more seriously. Maybe I’m not a broken thing or an untamed beast. Maybe my feelings are the outcome of a medical condition. And maybe, all that I’ve been experiencing isn’t actually my fault (even if it is my responsibility). But more importantly, if mental illness is the reason behind the majority of my internal and external hardships, for the cycle of despair I’ve trapped myself within, then maybe I can fix it.
I’m not naïve enough to think that there’s some magical cure out there to make me somehow forget about the bullying, beatings, parental abandonment, homelessness, hospitalizations, or multiple sexual assaults I’ve endured. Though, I have briefly considered electroshock therapy, once or twice. But just knowing that I am not alone in this, that this ugly thing that has hitched itself to me is not me at all, but rather, a byproduct of years of suffering, brings me great relief.
People with any sort of PTSD have an overactive amygdala compared to people without PTSD. This makes sense when you consider how the amygdala is the primitive part of our brain responsible for our fear responses and emotional processing. Think, fight, or flight. It’s how we respond to danger. Someone who experiences repeated trauma will lose the ability to distinguish harmful from harmless, because everything feels like a threat.
It doesn’t help that another side effect is decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is the center responsible for rational thought and decision-making. It’s the part of our brain that helps us regulate our emotional responses and control our impulses. You can see how this might make for a dangerous combination. On top of all this, a person with PTSD or CPTSD will also have a shrunken hippocampus. This is the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning. Great, I thought upon learning this. So, on top of everything else, my traumas have made me less intelligent.
As Foo discusses heavily in her book, there are minimal studies on CPTSD. In fact, not even the American Psychiatric Association officially recognizes CPTSD as a distinct diagnosis from PTSD yet, as the disorders share too many resemblances. This makes long-term solutions feel out of reach. So far, all I’ve been able to locate on my own are links to suicide hotlines and blogs with well-intentioned suggestions for cognitive behavioral therapy, vinyasa yoga, gratitude buddies, and hallucinogens. Things I already participate in on and off.
Don’t get me wrong, I am nothing if not an advocate for the practice of mindfulness, but I was hoping for a more drastic fix. Something that doesn’t involve Prozac or psych wards, but maybe something in between. A ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat maybe? A prescription for a healthy dose of soul-awakening Ayahuasca? A time machine that will bring me back to my child-self so that I can have a real talk with her? My own personal shaman?
For right now, I don’t have a solution that goes beyond the usual mindfulness techniques that I write about. But I am open to trying some of the latter, such as a Vipassana meditation and/or Ayahuasca retreat. I’ll be sure to write about those experiences in strong detail if and when I have them.
In the meantime, if you’re reading this and you can either relate to my diagnosis or its symptoms, or even know someone else who can relate, please reach out either in the comments section or the contact form of this blog. I promise I will respond. Survivors need to stick together. There is comfort and solidarity in knowing that there is someone else out there going through the same thing.
As I become aware of new answers, I will share them on here. Hold tight, and thanks for reading.
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Photo by Soragrit Wongsa inc. on Unsplash
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