Showing posts with label 12-step. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 12-step. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
An open letter to someone looking to help a loved one with ptsd
Hi,
Since you did not post anonymously and wanted to get a hold of me I won't publish your comment but will respond to your email. If you want to repost anonymously, you might get some help that way too, so if it comes through again anonymously I'll publish the comment. I never had Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT), and have heard nightmarish stories about it, even in the new and improved version. If it is not having a helpful effect, please reconsider it!
First off, sorry to hear you and your wife are having such a tough time. When I went through the worst of the flashbacks and other stuff I was very difficult to deal with and a real burden. I am fortunate my wife recognized what was going on as similar to what happens to battered women (she had done some work in the domestic violence field) and people who have been abused, but we had no idea when it went down what PTSD or flashbacks were. It was incredibly frightening...I thought I had just gone crazy. That is why I publish the blog, so that if people are hunting around they will know that what is happening is not unique and that there are ways through it. The only way out, unfortunately, is through.
It put me out of work for 1 and 1/2 yrs, and I had to go to inpatient. We basically maxed out credit cards and borrowed from friends and my wife's family. Insurance would not cover anything. I looked into but did not get social security for a disability, we were too busy with the symptoms to be able to go through with that when it actually could have helped. My family of origin was in such denial they did not help and went on a sort of in-the-family PR campaign to discredit me and my wife. I don't talk to them at all any more. That whole things was weird, because the immediate causes of my ptsd were not directly anything to do with family other than raising me so I couldn't recognize psychopaths when I encountered them. We had ok credit but not much income at the time and basically maxed out the 0% introductory offers and juggled them around for a couple of years before paying them off. No fun, but it worked.
If you can go that route, do careful research on the place. I went to Life Healing Center in New Mexico. Some people, like me, have gotten a lot out of it, others, not so much. It did not cure me, but it did give me enough tools to manage the worst of the symptoms and set up a structure of recovery, which slowly happened (with lots of work from me) over the next five years. I have not had a flashback in bout five years, but I know that seems like forever from the other side. With help though, it can and does get better. Without help it will not ever get better, and would have resulted in incapacitation, institutionalization, and death for me if left untreated any longer. It kills lots of people through suicides and addictions, and the stigma prevents the experience from helping others.
About the careful research, look at the comprehensive list of treatment centers. You might contact Life Healing Center and ask where to go or what you can do. They were supportive when we called. The Sidran Institute that is listed at the top of that page serves as a clearinghouse of info and advice on getting help with PTSD. They have a great help desk. I would also check "how to choose a therapist" on the blog. While setting up longer term plans, try to get short term support in place. If Kaiser will pay for therapy, try to get a referral for PTSD. There are lots of positively harmful mental health professionals, I would say the majority of them, so if you get a bad vibe with one try another. It is not you! Other people I know on Kaiser have managed by trial and error to keep trying the therapist they assign and if that one does not work ask for another. Make the first session an interview. You may want to attend with your wife, because if she is now like I was a few years ago, I would pick abusive therapists! Ultimately though it has to be someone she feels she can work with, so you can only support, not do it for her. But she has a right to get appropriate treatment specific to her case, and might need help to do that.
Kaiser may want to do an economy one-size fits all solution, but you have the right to get the help you guys need. Especially be careful with psychiatrists prescribing meds. If you get a sense they are just prescribing this week's pharmaceutical company offering and not listening to you either before during or after you start on meds, clear out fast! I'd say psychiatrists approach closer to 90% incompetent. I really had to hunt to get a good one that would actually listen. My wife helped me find a good one, and the "how to pick a shrink" page is what we learned about how to find one and interview her or him. Meds are an important part of my recovery today though. But if one gets overmedicated, it is just zombifying, and if your wife gets on the wrong meds and the psychiatrist does not listen, it is horrible.
Also, check the laws in your state. In my state, major depression, which I had from the PTSD, qualified for more intensive treatment and the insurance company had to pay for unlimited sessions, not just the usual 24/yr or whatever. The insurance company of course will not tell you this, so check the laws and the fine print of your policy on it. I went twice a week sometimes when things were just starting to get better.
If there is addictive behavior involved, tread very carefully around 12 step programs. They have little to no understanding of trauma issues and even if it works for the addiction, like it did for me (I went to 12-step groups for 16 years), the cure can be worse than the ailment, and charlatans and @$$holes abound. That is not to say don't use it as a resource if it works for halting the addictions, because the addiction, particularly to drugs or alcohol, will prevent any progress in recovering from the ptsd. Just don't drink the kool-aid that says it is a cure-all and if you are not happy joyous and free in 6 months you are doing it wrong. That is positively harmful and very prevalent. Get help with the PTSD elsewhere.
With that said, a number of treatment centers are incorporating trauma work into their inpatient programs. The meadows in Arizona and the Caron Foundation rehabs in PA are two examples. Places that work with trauma primarily often won't take a person with substance abuse issues until they have come through a rehab for that. When I went to Life Healing Center I was already 16 years sober and had to do a bit of convincing to get in without having to go through another drug and alcohol rehab! Without the sobriety, the other work is impossible.
I am forever grateful that my wife and my friends I had made outside of 12 step groups came through and stuck with me. I did get better over time and returned to being a more-or-less fully functioning adult again. It was (and still is) a long slow process, but things do get better. My wife was for me when I was not, when I was hopeless, she supplied the hope, and we came out the other side of it fine after some couples counseling. Don't underestimate the strain on yourself and inequitability of what is happening. It is not fair that you should be stuck cleaning up trauma that you had nothing to do with, and Christian strategies of turning the other cheek and repressing anger will backfire, coming out sideways and destructive. It is a tremendous strain to live with someone going through PTSD, to the point they have a name for it, secondary PTSD. So please, if you are going to support your wife, remember that you need to take care of yourself ultimately too. That can get lost in the cycle of crisis, but it is crucial if you are to be supportive and if the relationship is going to come through in the long run. It can and does happen, even if it seems hopeless now. Having come out the other side, it was an awful expereince, but once we sorted things out, with a lot of emotional work from both of us and short term guidance from a good couples therapist when we got stuck, we are stronger in the relationship than ever, and I owe my recovery in large part to my wife's unstinting support. I'm not advocating martyrdom though, please be clear. I had to work hard at my recovery and do a lot of work in restoring the relationship. If I had not done that work, even when I saw no point in it, nothing would have gotten better between us.
I hope this is of some help. I know PTSD is terrifying and awful, so please hang in there. All the struggles and hardships paid off for us in the long run and I hope they do for you too. I'll probably post this as an open letter on the blog without hooking it up to your comment. Thank you for writing.
Monday, July 06, 2009
god and stuff
Catherine wrote in a comment here, "Does this mean the steps don't work? Does this mean God does not exist?" I tried to answer briefly but it turned into a post.
"God is dead" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead" - God
I always liked that even if I disagree with the moral of it. I have come to more or less of a truce about spirituality. I have no way of telling whether or not any deity exists other than subjective guessing, which I have seen is often wrong when I do it and when others do it. In fact, the most harmful people in 12 step rooms for me were ones who were convinced they knew and were carrying out "God's will" saying things like "I like to think things happened for a reason" when the reason was that they did it: god as cop out in other words. So I have suspended judgment. If there is one (or more) or not is apparently not my business. My job is to do the best I can with what I have got, and belief in a deity has just not been sustainable for me, though I don't see disbelief as being any more supportable in my own case. In other words, I am not an atheist, I just don't know (which I think is the literal meaning of agnostic, though I am not keen on that label either). I am not one to substitute a faith that god does not exist for a faith that one does. Same goes for faith in science or AA or anything else as the answer to everything too. I don't think the whole world is reducible to the observable, but again, I don't know. I just don't know, and that is fine.
A higher power is a different story, I just don't need to deify it for it to work in my life...it is just the admission that I can't do it all, know it all, be it all, myself. I need others, their perspectives, their help sometimes, their human frailty at others, and mostly their love (that last one is hard to admit and write even now -- trauma has taught me so many times that I must be self-sufficient because I can't trust anyone). Finding a few people I can risk trusting in this regard has changed the everything for me and allowed me to get better even when faith and 12 steps failed me.
I know this is not everyone's path, and I hope I am not going to draw and evangelical types by my stating my lack of belief, but it has worked for me when all else failed and I have some peace of mind, whereas before, for me to believe at all, I would have had to have bought into the idea of a punishing (or very stupid and powerless) god that pretty much wanted me to suffer in order to test me. If so, I failed the test, or maybe I aced it, I don't know, which is the point. If the deity I used to believe in is in fact the case, nothing I can do about it, but I don't have any compelling reason to place my life in the hands of some invisible malevolent-for-my-own-good deity any more. Been there, tried real hard to make it work, results not so good. I have had to find my higher power in people around me, human and imperfect as they (including me) are. That has sometimes worked and sometimes not so much, but it is good enough for me right now.
What does it have to do with PTSD? Well for one thing, many of the tools that self-help have to offer rely on on putting your trust and faith in a deity of some sort, however contrived. Professionals rely on this to some extent too, especially ones who don't have proper training or better tools to offer. Some of the trauma I suffered had to do with spritual abuse of the first order, people invoking a spiritual higher power to gain trust and to then do extremely harmful things that truly f***ed up my life. And it was done as part of my seeking to recover from earlier trauma. So the tools I was supposed to use to get better were turned on me. Talk about having trust issues. Same sort of thing happened, in a related way, with therapists. And the end result was that "very spiritual" people put a big head trip on me, so that I was supposed to (and did for a time) believe that things happened the way they did because of my failures and shortcomings and god's will (constructed in the usual new agey fashion...I never got into church since being raised as a strict Catholic as a child).
This left me in the most forlorn place in my life, worse than the black hole of addiction because there was no addictive pain relief and no reason for any of it that made sense other than that I sucked. Nothing made sense anymore. Everything that I was taught would make me "happy joyous and free" made me miserable...I got the feeling of being some kind of alien, the butt of a joke I did not get, plopped down in a world meant for others that worked for them but not for me. That was the effect of spiritual and emotional abuse I now understand, but it led to a feeling of nearly complete abandonment and years of suicidal depression as I labored under the beliefs I had learned in early recovery.
I won't say too much about how I got through it, but after a suicide attempt that could have been successful, when I chose (a few moments away from not being able to come back), to go to the hospital, I made a very willful decision. They held me at the psyche ward until I promised to be good, that was about all, other than some horrible group work and an attempt to torture me physically in the name of an EEG by sticking an electrode on the end of a tube through my palate and into my nose. But while thereI basically made a decision that if I wanted to kill myself that I would have, that I had my chance and failed even at that, and that I just would not try killing myself to relieve pain any more, no matter what I had to do. This was not easy, because for the next nine years I suffered from ptsd without knowing what it was, getting (mis) treated for whatever this week's malady was with last week's pharmaceutical offering. I walked around suicidal for nine years, figuring that that is how I would live out my life. If I felt so bad I thought I would act out on it, I spoke up, not because I wanted to get better -- I had no such illusions by that point, but because I had promised myself not to and yelping for help was the only way I coulds see not acting out on the desire to stop hurting. The one thing I did right was I kept showing up as best I could. The other thing I did was change my friends and gradually, fitfully, and with much guilt and worry, clear out of 12 step rooms. Finding out about ptsd was like a cover being removed from my eyes. Things that made no sense finally did. That is why I write this blog, on the chance that someone else in the same state as I was might find out what the hell is going on in their life and skip some of the forlorn-ness of it all without checking out permanently.
As for the steps, they work for some people, though not nearly as many as 12 steppers claim, and I see value in them as a way to "clear the wreckage of the past" but they alone were not enough for me. I kept going over the same things, working the steps as well as anyone, and things kept getting worse. The reason was that I was taking responsibility for things that were not mine and stuffing anger because the literature said it was a "dubious luxury we can ill afford." One of the things I heard in 12 step rooms was that if you keep doing the same thing over and expect different results, that's insanity. I finally had to apply that to how the steps (did not) work in my life after a point. PTSD complicated matters and the steps did not and were not designed to help with it. I needed to do something different, but the only solution 12 steps had to offer was more step work. So my short answer to Catherine's question, "Does this mean the steps don't work?" is that they did not work on PTSD for me. A lot of the stuff was simply not my fault, and any attempt to take responsibilty for it just aggravated the problem. I needed to get good and angry, and I did not and still do not have any need to forgive or forget, much less make amends to these people. My life did not fall apart as dire warnings from the literature and the rooms said it would. In fact, getting angry and placing responsibility where it belonged was a true first step toward my ongoing recovery from PTSD and a return from the brink, or maybe over it, of insanity.
This turned into a way heavier post than I intended, but there it is for what it is worth; it is my experience and your mileage may vary.
"God is dead" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead" - God
I always liked that even if I disagree with the moral of it. I have come to more or less of a truce about spirituality. I have no way of telling whether or not any deity exists other than subjective guessing, which I have seen is often wrong when I do it and when others do it. In fact, the most harmful people in 12 step rooms for me were ones who were convinced they knew and were carrying out "God's will" saying things like "I like to think things happened for a reason" when the reason was that they did it: god as cop out in other words. So I have suspended judgment. If there is one (or more) or not is apparently not my business. My job is to do the best I can with what I have got, and belief in a deity has just not been sustainable for me, though I don't see disbelief as being any more supportable in my own case. In other words, I am not an atheist, I just don't know (which I think is the literal meaning of agnostic, though I am not keen on that label either). I am not one to substitute a faith that god does not exist for a faith that one does. Same goes for faith in science or AA or anything else as the answer to everything too. I don't think the whole world is reducible to the observable, but again, I don't know. I just don't know, and that is fine.
A higher power is a different story, I just don't need to deify it for it to work in my life...it is just the admission that I can't do it all, know it all, be it all, myself. I need others, their perspectives, their help sometimes, their human frailty at others, and mostly their love (that last one is hard to admit and write even now -- trauma has taught me so many times that I must be self-sufficient because I can't trust anyone). Finding a few people I can risk trusting in this regard has changed the everything for me and allowed me to get better even when faith and 12 steps failed me.
I know this is not everyone's path, and I hope I am not going to draw and evangelical types by my stating my lack of belief, but it has worked for me when all else failed and I have some peace of mind, whereas before, for me to believe at all, I would have had to have bought into the idea of a punishing (or very stupid and powerless) god that pretty much wanted me to suffer in order to test me. If so, I failed the test, or maybe I aced it, I don't know, which is the point. If the deity I used to believe in is in fact the case, nothing I can do about it, but I don't have any compelling reason to place my life in the hands of some invisible malevolent-for-my-own-good deity any more. Been there, tried real hard to make it work, results not so good. I have had to find my higher power in people around me, human and imperfect as they (including me) are. That has sometimes worked and sometimes not so much, but it is good enough for me right now.
What does it have to do with PTSD? Well for one thing, many of the tools that self-help have to offer rely on on putting your trust and faith in a deity of some sort, however contrived. Professionals rely on this to some extent too, especially ones who don't have proper training or better tools to offer. Some of the trauma I suffered had to do with spritual abuse of the first order, people invoking a spiritual higher power to gain trust and to then do extremely harmful things that truly f***ed up my life. And it was done as part of my seeking to recover from earlier trauma. So the tools I was supposed to use to get better were turned on me. Talk about having trust issues. Same sort of thing happened, in a related way, with therapists. And the end result was that "very spiritual" people put a big head trip on me, so that I was supposed to (and did for a time) believe that things happened the way they did because of my failures and shortcomings and god's will (constructed in the usual new agey fashion...I never got into church since being raised as a strict Catholic as a child).
This left me in the most forlorn place in my life, worse than the black hole of addiction because there was no addictive pain relief and no reason for any of it that made sense other than that I sucked. Nothing made sense anymore. Everything that I was taught would make me "happy joyous and free" made me miserable...I got the feeling of being some kind of alien, the butt of a joke I did not get, plopped down in a world meant for others that worked for them but not for me. That was the effect of spiritual and emotional abuse I now understand, but it led to a feeling of nearly complete abandonment and years of suicidal depression as I labored under the beliefs I had learned in early recovery.
I won't say too much about how I got through it, but after a suicide attempt that could have been successful, when I chose (a few moments away from not being able to come back), to go to the hospital, I made a very willful decision. They held me at the psyche ward until I promised to be good, that was about all, other than some horrible group work and an attempt to torture me physically in the name of an EEG by sticking an electrode on the end of a tube through my palate and into my nose. But while thereI basically made a decision that if I wanted to kill myself that I would have, that I had my chance and failed even at that, and that I just would not try killing myself to relieve pain any more, no matter what I had to do. This was not easy, because for the next nine years I suffered from ptsd without knowing what it was, getting (mis) treated for whatever this week's malady was with last week's pharmaceutical offering. I walked around suicidal for nine years, figuring that that is how I would live out my life. If I felt so bad I thought I would act out on it, I spoke up, not because I wanted to get better -- I had no such illusions by that point, but because I had promised myself not to and yelping for help was the only way I coulds see not acting out on the desire to stop hurting. The one thing I did right was I kept showing up as best I could. The other thing I did was change my friends and gradually, fitfully, and with much guilt and worry, clear out of 12 step rooms. Finding out about ptsd was like a cover being removed from my eyes. Things that made no sense finally did. That is why I write this blog, on the chance that someone else in the same state as I was might find out what the hell is going on in their life and skip some of the forlorn-ness of it all without checking out permanently.
As for the steps, they work for some people, though not nearly as many as 12 steppers claim, and I see value in them as a way to "clear the wreckage of the past" but they alone were not enough for me. I kept going over the same things, working the steps as well as anyone, and things kept getting worse. The reason was that I was taking responsibility for things that were not mine and stuffing anger because the literature said it was a "dubious luxury we can ill afford." One of the things I heard in 12 step rooms was that if you keep doing the same thing over and expect different results, that's insanity. I finally had to apply that to how the steps (did not) work in my life after a point. PTSD complicated matters and the steps did not and were not designed to help with it. I needed to do something different, but the only solution 12 steps had to offer was more step work. So my short answer to Catherine's question, "Does this mean the steps don't work?" is that they did not work on PTSD for me. A lot of the stuff was simply not my fault, and any attempt to take responsibilty for it just aggravated the problem. I needed to get good and angry, and I did not and still do not have any need to forgive or forget, much less make amends to these people. My life did not fall apart as dire warnings from the literature and the rooms said it would. In fact, getting angry and placing responsibility where it belonged was a true first step toward my ongoing recovery from PTSD and a return from the brink, or maybe over it, of insanity.
This turned into a way heavier post than I intended, but there it is for what it is worth; it is my experience and your mileage may vary.
Friday, March 13, 2009
exploitative folks in 12 step programs and elsewhere
Once again, somebody's comments sparked a post from what started as a simple response. Anon, thanks for your comments on this page and and on the "type A&B" page. In a nutshell, she said thanks for the heads up as she tended to trust 12 step folks blindly and had not realized there were some exploitative types in the rooms.
I really need to tread a fine line...AA and 12 step programs saved my life at one time, but nearly cost it another. I managed to get sober there when I could not under my own steam no matter how hard I tried. I'm forever grateful for that, because it has made the rest of my life possible, painful as parts have been.
That said, the most manipulative, scheming, two faced, fair weather friend type people I have ever met, straight or high, have been in 12 step programs or the addictions recovery field. I had the blind trust anon talks about -- after all, these people had literally saved my life and I knew it! And there are some great, decent, and honest people in AA. There are also used car salesmen (I bought a lemon from a guy who used 12-speak and AA "seniority" to get me to trust him when making a purchase I wished I hadn't), spiritual abusers ("when I f&%*ed you over it was God's will"), therapists ( did anyone ever notice that the word spells "the rapist?" -- just kidding sort of...while several of my therapists were akin to rapists, others I have learned to choose have been remarkably helpful) willing to rip up families to make a few thousand bucks, even to the point of driving the abandoned ones to suicide ("oh she was messed up...good thing he left her when he did!"), and this is before even getting to romantic relationships, where as I said, because of my tendency toward trauma repetition, and never having been around healthy people to know any better, and my blind trust in 12 step folk, I got involved with the sickest most twisted people I have ever met in my life. I'm still trying to sort it out 15-20 years later!
I would never tell anyone to avoid all relationships with recovering people...there are some healthy ones I am sure (plus I'm one!), but tread carefully! Trust slowly and cautiously if at all. Trust is earned and provisional, based on actions not words, and not granted eternally, just for now. Pay attention...don't disregard your common sense and intuition...a major part of my recovery has been to slowly reclaim those things...if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The thing is, I was so needy and vulnerable, even 5-6 years into recovery, that I ignored all this and rather than waiting and going slowly, I dove in and trusted blindly because I did not know how to develop earned trust over time rather than just give it or withhold it arbitrarily. As a result, I got in traumatic relationships again and again (twice in recovery, to be exact) that I am still struggling with much later. They very nearly cost me my life. They did cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost work time when I just could not function because of the results of them. They caused unbearable and completely unnecessary pain and a number of trips to psyche wards and a trauma treatment center. When I have told people the details, they have been amazed that I didn't pick up over this stuff...many just assumed I had. One person I respect a lot, an earth person (i.e., not in 12 step programs) said the last perpetrator was an emotional rapist.
But honestly, I don't know if I could have taken the advice I am giving now, because I was stubborn and thought if I did not get somebody *now* I'd be alone forever. Looking back, I would have been better off alone, but I needed to learn it the hard way I guess. And even today, knowing what I know, I don't know that if I were single and put in the same situation I wouldn't repeat my mistake again. I like to think I have learned better, but I don't know that. I am just glad I am in a healthy non-abusive relationship for a long time and don't have to face that particular weakness in myself.
It is a funny thing...the healthy relationship didn't come with all the drama, risk, and emotional highs -- or lows -- that the sick relationships did, so it took me literally years to figure out that all that drama and ball of hurt I was used to was not an intrinsic part of human relationships! I thought I was missing something and I guess I was. To be honest I missed the rush, just like a drug, but also to be honest, I have learned I certainly don't miss the consequences.
I just have to say, over the few years I have intermittently written this blog, I have been continuously gratified that there are other people who understand. One of the worst parts of my PTSD was thinking I was alone and hopeless and crazy. So thank you to all of you who have commented over the years. You keep me thinking and writing about this stuff, which helps me work stuff through, and I am grateful that something helpful to others has come out of something so insufferable.
I really need to tread a fine line...AA and 12 step programs saved my life at one time, but nearly cost it another. I managed to get sober there when I could not under my own steam no matter how hard I tried. I'm forever grateful for that, because it has made the rest of my life possible, painful as parts have been.
That said, the most manipulative, scheming, two faced, fair weather friend type people I have ever met, straight or high, have been in 12 step programs or the addictions recovery field. I had the blind trust anon talks about -- after all, these people had literally saved my life and I knew it! And there are some great, decent, and honest people in AA. There are also used car salesmen (I bought a lemon from a guy who used 12-speak and AA "seniority" to get me to trust him when making a purchase I wished I hadn't), spiritual abusers ("when I f&%*ed you over it was God's will"), therapists ( did anyone ever notice that the word spells "the rapist?" -- just kidding sort of...while several of my therapists were akin to rapists, others I have learned to choose have been remarkably helpful) willing to rip up families to make a few thousand bucks, even to the point of driving the abandoned ones to suicide ("oh she was messed up...good thing he left her when he did!"), and this is before even getting to romantic relationships, where as I said, because of my tendency toward trauma repetition, and never having been around healthy people to know any better, and my blind trust in 12 step folk, I got involved with the sickest most twisted people I have ever met in my life. I'm still trying to sort it out 15-20 years later!
I would never tell anyone to avoid all relationships with recovering people...there are some healthy ones I am sure (plus I'm one!), but tread carefully! Trust slowly and cautiously if at all. Trust is earned and provisional, based on actions not words, and not granted eternally, just for now. Pay attention...don't disregard your common sense and intuition...a major part of my recovery has been to slowly reclaim those things...if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The thing is, I was so needy and vulnerable, even 5-6 years into recovery, that I ignored all this and rather than waiting and going slowly, I dove in and trusted blindly because I did not know how to develop earned trust over time rather than just give it or withhold it arbitrarily. As a result, I got in traumatic relationships again and again (twice in recovery, to be exact) that I am still struggling with much later. They very nearly cost me my life. They did cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost work time when I just could not function because of the results of them. They caused unbearable and completely unnecessary pain and a number of trips to psyche wards and a trauma treatment center. When I have told people the details, they have been amazed that I didn't pick up over this stuff...many just assumed I had. One person I respect a lot, an earth person (i.e., not in 12 step programs) said the last perpetrator was an emotional rapist.
But honestly, I don't know if I could have taken the advice I am giving now, because I was stubborn and thought if I did not get somebody *now* I'd be alone forever. Looking back, I would have been better off alone, but I needed to learn it the hard way I guess. And even today, knowing what I know, I don't know that if I were single and put in the same situation I wouldn't repeat my mistake again. I like to think I have learned better, but I don't know that. I am just glad I am in a healthy non-abusive relationship for a long time and don't have to face that particular weakness in myself.
It is a funny thing...the healthy relationship didn't come with all the drama, risk, and emotional highs -- or lows -- that the sick relationships did, so it took me literally years to figure out that all that drama and ball of hurt I was used to was not an intrinsic part of human relationships! I thought I was missing something and I guess I was. To be honest I missed the rush, just like a drug, but also to be honest, I have learned I certainly don't miss the consequences.
I just have to say, over the few years I have intermittently written this blog, I have been continuously gratified that there are other people who understand. One of the worst parts of my PTSD was thinking I was alone and hopeless and crazy. So thank you to all of you who have commented over the years. You keep me thinking and writing about this stuff, which helps me work stuff through, and I am grateful that something helpful to others has come out of something so insufferable.
Friday, August 03, 2007
a loving and supportive network of friends
In a comment to this post, anonymous wrote:
This is true, sharing with others who have been there, or who have other ways of understanding, is a tremendous help. If you look through the rest of the blog, you will see that my recovery has come a long way. I do have a lot of support but it is not formalized in a "group" right now and that is fine with me. What I do have is a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Groups have served their purpose in my recovery, and I have done them in several different forms and may do more if I see an opportunity to get better by doing so.
But groups have also been fraught experiences for me. I've said enough elsewhere on 12 step approaches, but even in therapeutic groups, the nature of a lot of my trauma and its manifestations is often threatening to other male group members' sense of their own masculinity and they have often gone out of their way to not identify with me, distancing themselves as much as possible. From what I gather this is their issue, not mine, but I'm not there to have them play out their idea of what a man is by being hostile to me or undermining my sense of who I am and what I have been through. Its counterproductive and whatever the opposite of affirming is.
Here is what I do have though, a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Most untraumatized people grow up with the family part and develop the friends part as a matter of course. I had to spend decades to learn how to do it, and it had to be with a new family of my own creation, not my family of origin. I was able to manage this by reaching out to people as people, not as alcoholics, drug addicts, or trauma survivors.. Some had some of these issues mind you, but I reached a point in my life where that no longer needed to be the primary basis for a relationship.
When the PTSD came on hard, I involuntarily had to lean on this network for all it was worth, and these friends and family were there for me and came through for me in ways that my family of origin and my old frineds, both as an active addict and as a person recovering within the frame of the twelve steps, did not. What I like to think is that I had gotten well enough to operate in the world of "earth people" -- normal folks, in other words -- as one of them, instead of identifying as an addict or a victim or a survivor first and foremost. One of the goals of recovery is to reintegrate into society as a useful member, and over the course of many years that is what I have done. I'm just a person among people. Like everyone, I've got my own unique history, and I act in some particular ways...for example, not drinking or drugging. But I am more or less just a regular person, as long as I take care of myself.
So anyway, when doing EMDR, I was having difficulty facing some of the trauma yet it was intruding in my life in the form of flashbacks, seizure-like things, hypervigilance, and a host of other things. We did what is called installing resources, and the resource that I came up with was to think of my firends as a literal net, holding me up and protecting me from falling when I could not do so myself. This resource or whatever has helped me immensely, and my earth-friends have come through for me again and again to the point where I don't have to rely on that net anymore. It is good to know it is there though. Actually, it kind of reminds me of the end of Harry Potter (spoiler alert) where he goes and faces the evil Voldemort alone sort of, but with the sort of mental company of supportive and loving friends and family that carry him through things he did not believe himself capable of. Even when the are not there they are there.
Perhaps that image...a literal net made up of supportive and loving friends and family...is one that will help others get through the trying times of PTSD like it did me. It was not a cure, and it did not make it easier or less painful, but it did enable me to get better and to face some pretty horrific stuff to know I wasn't -- and still am not -- in it alone.
also maybe you just haven't found the right support group yet. There's nothing like sharing with others who have endured similar experiences
This is true, sharing with others who have been there, or who have other ways of understanding, is a tremendous help. If you look through the rest of the blog, you will see that my recovery has come a long way. I do have a lot of support but it is not formalized in a "group" right now and that is fine with me. What I do have is a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Groups have served their purpose in my recovery, and I have done them in several different forms and may do more if I see an opportunity to get better by doing so.
But groups have also been fraught experiences for me. I've said enough elsewhere on 12 step approaches, but even in therapeutic groups, the nature of a lot of my trauma and its manifestations is often threatening to other male group members' sense of their own masculinity and they have often gone out of their way to not identify with me, distancing themselves as much as possible. From what I gather this is their issue, not mine, but I'm not there to have them play out their idea of what a man is by being hostile to me or undermining my sense of who I am and what I have been through. Its counterproductive and whatever the opposite of affirming is.
Here is what I do have though, a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Most untraumatized people grow up with the family part and develop the friends part as a matter of course. I had to spend decades to learn how to do it, and it had to be with a new family of my own creation, not my family of origin. I was able to manage this by reaching out to people as people, not as alcoholics, drug addicts, or trauma survivors.. Some had some of these issues mind you, but I reached a point in my life where that no longer needed to be the primary basis for a relationship.
When the PTSD came on hard, I involuntarily had to lean on this network for all it was worth, and these friends and family were there for me and came through for me in ways that my family of origin and my old frineds, both as an active addict and as a person recovering within the frame of the twelve steps, did not. What I like to think is that I had gotten well enough to operate in the world of "earth people" -- normal folks, in other words -- as one of them, instead of identifying as an addict or a victim or a survivor first and foremost. One of the goals of recovery is to reintegrate into society as a useful member, and over the course of many years that is what I have done. I'm just a person among people. Like everyone, I've got my own unique history, and I act in some particular ways...for example, not drinking or drugging. But I am more or less just a regular person, as long as I take care of myself.
So anyway, when doing EMDR, I was having difficulty facing some of the trauma yet it was intruding in my life in the form of flashbacks, seizure-like things, hypervigilance, and a host of other things. We did what is called installing resources, and the resource that I came up with was to think of my firends as a literal net, holding me up and protecting me from falling when I could not do so myself. This resource or whatever has helped me immensely, and my earth-friends have come through for me again and again to the point where I don't have to rely on that net anymore. It is good to know it is there though. Actually, it kind of reminds me of the end of Harry Potter (spoiler alert) where he goes and faces the evil Voldemort alone sort of, but with the sort of mental company of supportive and loving friends and family that carry him through things he did not believe himself capable of. Even when the are not there they are there.
Perhaps that image...a literal net made up of supportive and loving friends and family...is one that will help others get through the trying times of PTSD like it did me. It was not a cure, and it did not make it easier or less painful, but it did enable me to get better and to face some pretty horrific stuff to know I wasn't -- and still am not -- in it alone.
Friday, November 11, 2005
ptsd and meds
[2/2010: one reader asked for people to share what has and has not worked for them concerning meds. If you have had good or bad experience with any particular prescribed meds, share it in the comments please.]
I've been some sort of human guinea pig for the better part of a decade. After one trip to the mental hospital I went on Prozac when that first came out. I didn't like it and quit after a few months. At the time I had no insurance to speak of and didn't trust the mental health profession at all. A few years later, I was trying to get things under control and got diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). They put me on a clinical trial for a drug that was used for something else altogether. I got markedly suicidal, and when I reported that, the doctor would interpret his questionaire number scores and say I was improving, completely ignoring what I was saying! I discontued the drug and the trial. A year or so later, I went to a shrink. The shrink sent me to a psychiatrist, who was this guy who smoked in his office. He barely even met with me and put me on Zoloft. I took it and got suicidal. He upped the dosage, things got worse, so he upped the dosage again and things got worse again. He wanted to up it some more. At this point I quit...He wasn't paying any attention to what was going on with me, just following some formula with the drug being pitched by the pharmaceutical companies that week.
A few years later, right before the ptsd got really bad I decided to go back into therapy, this time with a psychiatrist so he would actually listen to what I was saying. The guy wanted to put me on Celexa and pulled out this tinker toy model of a neurotransmitter reaction (serotonin reuptake inhibition, to be exact) that was right out of the Parke Davis sales kit. It was like Amway or a tupperware party or something. He turned out to be a real jackass and I cursed him out and left mid-session after he did something really unethical concerning my privacy.
After that the ptsd kicked in with the flashbacks and all the other stuff I described yesterday. I didn't want to take any drugs at this point, but we were desperate. My wife did some research and found out some stuff about picking psychiatrists and psychologists and called around, interviewing some people. We finally found a good psychiatrist and therapist. The psychiatrist actually listened to what I said about the previous drugs and tried one that acts on something other than serotonin. So we started with effexor. No side effects from this, but not much in the way of front effects either. I had done some research and suggested we try Naltrexone, a drug used to stop cravings in addicts, thinking that some of my problems (picking and ripping out skin, compulsive masturbation) were maybe related to addiction problems) It helped with those things a little, but not with the main problems.
Then I went to the treatment center I mentioned yesterday, and there they slowly got me on a total cocktail: Effexor, Naltrexone, Wellbutrin, Trazadone to sleep, and zyprexa, an anti-psychotic that finally helped with the flashbacks. Later, we switched the zyprexa to geodon, a related anti-psychotic without some of the side effects. Then a year or so ago, we added seroquel to the mix at night and I worked my way off the trazadone. That helped with the intrusive thinking. So until recently my drug cocktail looked like this: 450mg Welbutrin, 300mg Effexor , 100mg Naltrexone, 140mg Geodon, and 100mg Seroquel. I finally started to get some stability.
My favorite discussion of the drugs is the two anti-psychotics, because the doctors always said it like one word: It is an anti-psychoticbutyournotpsychotic. The flyers for these (the seroquel and the geodon) are kinda scary, because the FDA hasn't approved them for anything but schizophrenia, so that is all they talk about. A little searching around on the web showed anti-psychotics were being tried for ptsd as a "second line" if serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac and Zoloft didn't work.
Lately I have been trying to cut down some of the dosages. We started with the Geodon, because that made me dopey and gave me a real flat affect. Got that down to 20mg, but the ptsd, depression, and anxiety started to come back so the dose went back up to 40mg. That seems ok. Now We are trying reducing the Seroquel, the other real powerful one. I am down to 50mg on that and so far so good.
[update...Feb. 2010. I am off the Seroquel, but had to reintroduce the Trazodon...I know split the lowest dosage pill (5MG?) in half and take one of those to sleep. Just can't seem to sleep otherwise. I take Seroquel about once every three months or so if I have a really bad day and I'm having intrusive thoughts that won't stop through non-chemical means. Most recently, I phased out the Naltrexone, which seemed to make no difference. Earlier, when I tried to get off Effexor, it was a disaster, so that is staying for the foreseeable future. You should read the two posts on Effexor (Battle of the Effexor and Joy of Meds: Effexor withdrawal) BEFORE going on it, though, so you know what you are in for. So now the cocktail is 40mg Geodon, 150mg Effexor, 300mg Wellbutrin, and 2.5mg Trazodone.] Mazeltof!
What is it like taking so many drugs? My sex drive changed a lot...It kind of went to hell for the most part, but the compulsive parts stopped too, so its a mixed bag. It takes me a year to pee -- no water pressure, -- and I am constantly mildly constipated (sorry for the details). People have noticed I am a lot livelier since cutting down on the geodon, so that is good. Ultimately I'd love to be off them all, but that might not work, and at this point I am willing to face that rather than facing a return to the worst of the ptsd symptoms.
It kind of sucks to have gotten sober for so long and then be reliant on drugs to be able to function, but that is the way it goes. Anyway, any 12-stepper who actually reads the literature knows that if a doctor tells you to take a medicine that you take it, as directed, which is what I do. Some 12 step folks think it is cheating or a cop out, but they don't have to scrape me up off the floor after a flashback either so they can go s....well never mind.
For me, the point of all this is that it paid off to be persistent in finding good people to help me and to have some really supportive people around. I have been really lucky that way. 12 step people talked about being there, but weren't. I was sober for a long time and it freaked people out that I was having problems. Some of them were nice and understanding, but the people that took care of me for real had nothing to do with 12 step programs. They just talked the talk with me and seldom came through. I don't want to get too down on the program, because it did save my life earlier, but it also really screwed me up in terms of trauma and recovery from it. Maybe I'll go into that some other time.
Also, I am privileged. I am at a point in life where not only do I have people that care about me enough to give me the support I need (a lot less these days), but I have insurance to cover the therapy and the real expensive drugs, and found the financial wherewithal to go to treatment even when it wasn't covered by insurance (even though we went into lots of credit card and family debt...my wife's family...my family wouldn't acknowledge that there was a problem). If I hadn't gotten those things, I'd probably be dead, locked up, or homeless. So I am pretty privileged to be walking around and functioning like a regular human being, and I think about that when I see people who are homeless or down and out. That's something I'll have more to say on at some point.
Anyway, if you have read this far, thanks! Let me know that you read it, ok?
I've been some sort of human guinea pig for the better part of a decade. After one trip to the mental hospital I went on Prozac when that first came out. I didn't like it and quit after a few months. At the time I had no insurance to speak of and didn't trust the mental health profession at all. A few years later, I was trying to get things under control and got diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). They put me on a clinical trial for a drug that was used for something else altogether. I got markedly suicidal, and when I reported that, the doctor would interpret his questionaire number scores and say I was improving, completely ignoring what I was saying! I discontued the drug and the trial. A year or so later, I went to a shrink. The shrink sent me to a psychiatrist, who was this guy who smoked in his office. He barely even met with me and put me on Zoloft. I took it and got suicidal. He upped the dosage, things got worse, so he upped the dosage again and things got worse again. He wanted to up it some more. At this point I quit...He wasn't paying any attention to what was going on with me, just following some formula with the drug being pitched by the pharmaceutical companies that week.
A few years later, right before the ptsd got really bad I decided to go back into therapy, this time with a psychiatrist so he would actually listen to what I was saying. The guy wanted to put me on Celexa and pulled out this tinker toy model of a neurotransmitter reaction (serotonin reuptake inhibition, to be exact) that was right out of the Parke Davis sales kit. It was like Amway or a tupperware party or something. He turned out to be a real jackass and I cursed him out and left mid-session after he did something really unethical concerning my privacy.
After that the ptsd kicked in with the flashbacks and all the other stuff I described yesterday. I didn't want to take any drugs at this point, but we were desperate. My wife did some research and found out some stuff about picking psychiatrists and psychologists and called around, interviewing some people. We finally found a good psychiatrist and therapist. The psychiatrist actually listened to what I said about the previous drugs and tried one that acts on something other than serotonin. So we started with effexor. No side effects from this, but not much in the way of front effects either. I had done some research and suggested we try Naltrexone, a drug used to stop cravings in addicts, thinking that some of my problems (picking and ripping out skin, compulsive masturbation) were maybe related to addiction problems) It helped with those things a little, but not with the main problems.
Then I went to the treatment center I mentioned yesterday, and there they slowly got me on a total cocktail: Effexor, Naltrexone, Wellbutrin, Trazadone to sleep, and zyprexa, an anti-psychotic that finally helped with the flashbacks. Later, we switched the zyprexa to geodon, a related anti-psychotic without some of the side effects. Then a year or so ago, we added seroquel to the mix at night and I worked my way off the trazadone. That helped with the intrusive thinking. So until recently my drug cocktail looked like this: 450mg Welbutrin, 300mg Effexor , 100mg Naltrexone, 140mg Geodon, and 100mg Seroquel. I finally started to get some stability.
My favorite discussion of the drugs is the two anti-psychotics, because the doctors always said it like one word: It is an anti-psychoticbutyournotpsychotic. The flyers for these (the seroquel and the geodon) are kinda scary, because the FDA hasn't approved them for anything but schizophrenia, so that is all they talk about. A little searching around on the web showed anti-psychotics were being tried for ptsd as a "second line" if serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac and Zoloft didn't work.
Lately I have been trying to cut down some of the dosages. We started with the Geodon, because that made me dopey and gave me a real flat affect. Got that down to 20mg, but the ptsd, depression, and anxiety started to come back so the dose went back up to 40mg. That seems ok. Now We are trying reducing the Seroquel, the other real powerful one. I am down to 50mg on that and so far so good.
[update...Feb. 2010. I am off the Seroquel, but had to reintroduce the Trazodon...I know split the lowest dosage pill (5MG?) in half and take one of those to sleep. Just can't seem to sleep otherwise. I take Seroquel about once every three months or so if I have a really bad day and I'm having intrusive thoughts that won't stop through non-chemical means. Most recently, I phased out the Naltrexone, which seemed to make no difference. Earlier, when I tried to get off Effexor, it was a disaster, so that is staying for the foreseeable future. You should read the two posts on Effexor (Battle of the Effexor and Joy of Meds: Effexor withdrawal) BEFORE going on it, though, so you know what you are in for. So now the cocktail is 40mg Geodon, 150mg Effexor, 300mg Wellbutrin, and 2.5mg Trazodone.] Mazeltof!
What is it like taking so many drugs? My sex drive changed a lot...It kind of went to hell for the most part, but the compulsive parts stopped too, so its a mixed bag. It takes me a year to pee -- no water pressure, -- and I am constantly mildly constipated (sorry for the details). People have noticed I am a lot livelier since cutting down on the geodon, so that is good. Ultimately I'd love to be off them all, but that might not work, and at this point I am willing to face that rather than facing a return to the worst of the ptsd symptoms.
It kind of sucks to have gotten sober for so long and then be reliant on drugs to be able to function, but that is the way it goes. Anyway, any 12-stepper who actually reads the literature knows that if a doctor tells you to take a medicine that you take it, as directed, which is what I do. Some 12 step folks think it is cheating or a cop out, but they don't have to scrape me up off the floor after a flashback either so they can go s....well never mind.
For me, the point of all this is that it paid off to be persistent in finding good people to help me and to have some really supportive people around. I have been really lucky that way. 12 step people talked about being there, but weren't. I was sober for a long time and it freaked people out that I was having problems. Some of them were nice and understanding, but the people that took care of me for real had nothing to do with 12 step programs. They just talked the talk with me and seldom came through. I don't want to get too down on the program, because it did save my life earlier, but it also really screwed me up in terms of trauma and recovery from it. Maybe I'll go into that some other time.
Also, I am privileged. I am at a point in life where not only do I have people that care about me enough to give me the support I need (a lot less these days), but I have insurance to cover the therapy and the real expensive drugs, and found the financial wherewithal to go to treatment even when it wasn't covered by insurance (even though we went into lots of credit card and family debt...my wife's family...my family wouldn't acknowledge that there was a problem). If I hadn't gotten those things, I'd probably be dead, locked up, or homeless. So I am pretty privileged to be walking around and functioning like a regular human being, and I think about that when I see people who are homeless or down and out. That's something I'll have more to say on at some point.
Anyway, if you have read this far, thanks! Let me know that you read it, ok?
Thursday, November 10, 2005
ptsd and me
OK, the description by the title says a lot about what I want to do here, but let me tell you a little about me. I'm a white guy (but a bit of a race traitor), mid-40s, good job that I'll never get rich from but pays the bills and is fun. I'm happily married, live in a beautiful place, and life is pretty good -- when I can be present for it.
I also have severe, chronic, complex, delayed onset ptsd. It makes my life challenging, but now that I know what it is, I at least have a handle on what was and is happening to me. PTSD is of course, post-traumatic stress disorder. Let me go through the other parts.
Severe? The last major run-in with it put me out of work for over a year. I had about 120 flashbacks over the course of about seven weeks, what get called pseudo-seizures -- they look like regular seizures but I remained somewhat conscious and aware of my surroundings, though sometimes delusional about that. When I came out of them I wouldn't know what day it was or be able to remember how long ago they happened. Maybe I'll go into more detail about them sometime, but they totally freaked us (my wife and me) out. We had no idea what these were or what to do about them at first.
There was more: intense crying jags, incredible bodily pain (I had an operation for hemorrhoids, which is supposed to be about the most painful recovery you can imagine, and ptsd was worse -- though I wouldn't want to repeat either), and something called intrusive thinking...memories of traumatic events triggered by anything, everything, and nothing; lost forty pounds, couldn't sleep, sex life totally fucked up (part of my trauma is sexual abuse, something I'm still trying to deal with), couldn't focus enough to read, self harm (ripping chunks of flesh out for example), and there was probably more I cannot remember. Ummm, no fun.
We (actually, mostly my partner) did a lot of research when the flashbacks started and I ended up in a treatment center for ptsd (Here's another good one, and a comprehensive list for the US). It didn't cure me, but it gave me some tools to help manage things. Slowly, with lots of medication (which I struggled against), therapy, and lifestyle changes, some of the harsher symptoms have gotten better over the past few years.
Chronic? I have come to realize that I have had some version of ptsd for most of my life, but it has been treated and mistreated and outright abused under a bunch of different names.
Complex? Well, let's see...It starts with childhood sexual abuse (which I still struggle with identifying because as a kid I normalized it and my family of origin is in complete denial -- so much so that I am no longer in touch with them -- too crazy-making), neglect, emotional and verbal abuse, depression, and substance abuse. I left home at a young age and added physical abuse and more sexual abuse onto that from street life. I developed a nasty drug and alcohol addiction, something pretty common for ptsd sufferers (I've been clean now for more than twenty years, but other addictive behaviors have haunted me) and became occasionally homeless. The depression continued, I was suicidal. Substance addictions, sexual acting out (nothing violent, but stuff that I'm ashamed of) combined with intense isolation and loneliness contributed to having a really miserable existence.
After getting clean in 12 step programs, my attraction to sick, twisted people (also part of my ptsd) caused more trauma, some of it worse than the substance abuse addiction. Cult abuse, some serious, life changing betrayals by people I trusted and opened up to, suicide attempts, two three-week stays in the loony bin: I wasn't getting the "happy, joyous, and free" promised by 12 step programs. For their part, 12-steppers (and I guess my own internalized twelve step training) often blamed me when things didn't work, saying I was just not doing things right somehow rather than seeing something was wrong that the program couldn't -- and wasn't designed to -- fix.
Severe spiritual and therapist abuse compounded the traumas rather than treating them. This has been a major challenge in my recovery from ptsd. Trust is a problem. A lot of times I don't even trust that the world is not going to disappear beneath my feet. On bad days, every step is an adventure, like walking on a rotted out rooftop or thin ice.
So yeah, its complex.
Delayed onset? The flashbacks started nine years after the events that caused them, long after I was supposedly "over it." In hindsight, I was displaying symptoms of ptsd the whole time, but no one recognized them as such. I got diagnosed with depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a few other things and got put on whatever drugs the pharmaceutical companies were plugging that week with awful results.
I thought I was a sex addict and went to those meetings for a while, but they all had sex with other people. My problem was with porn and compulsive masturbation. I used this as a painkiller because nothing else worked and I was not about to give up sobriety -- too scared of people to act out any other way. Sometimes internet porn would eat up whole days every day. It is something I still struggle with and will write about more, but I didn't feel safe or supported in the twelve step rooms for sex addicts. My sponsor there was hitting on me under the guise of male intimacy and spirituality and others were perpetrators of stuff that I had been a victim of and were having a hard time seeing it as a problem. Not a safe place for me.
I'm actually pretty fed up with twelve step programs even though at the time I got sober they no doubt saved my life. Here's what one study (.pdf file) has to say about it:
I also have severe, chronic, complex, delayed onset ptsd. It makes my life challenging, but now that I know what it is, I at least have a handle on what was and is happening to me. PTSD is of course, post-traumatic stress disorder. Let me go through the other parts.
Severe? The last major run-in with it put me out of work for over a year. I had about 120 flashbacks over the course of about seven weeks, what get called pseudo-seizures -- they look like regular seizures but I remained somewhat conscious and aware of my surroundings, though sometimes delusional about that. When I came out of them I wouldn't know what day it was or be able to remember how long ago they happened. Maybe I'll go into more detail about them sometime, but they totally freaked us (my wife and me) out. We had no idea what these were or what to do about them at first.
There was more: intense crying jags, incredible bodily pain (I had an operation for hemorrhoids, which is supposed to be about the most painful recovery you can imagine, and ptsd was worse -- though I wouldn't want to repeat either), and something called intrusive thinking...memories of traumatic events triggered by anything, everything, and nothing; lost forty pounds, couldn't sleep, sex life totally fucked up (part of my trauma is sexual abuse, something I'm still trying to deal with), couldn't focus enough to read, self harm (ripping chunks of flesh out for example), and there was probably more I cannot remember. Ummm, no fun.
We (actually, mostly my partner) did a lot of research when the flashbacks started and I ended up in a treatment center for ptsd (Here's another good one, and a comprehensive list for the US). It didn't cure me, but it gave me some tools to help manage things. Slowly, with lots of medication (which I struggled against), therapy, and lifestyle changes, some of the harsher symptoms have gotten better over the past few years.
Chronic? I have come to realize that I have had some version of ptsd for most of my life, but it has been treated and mistreated and outright abused under a bunch of different names.
Complex? Well, let's see...It starts with childhood sexual abuse (which I still struggle with identifying because as a kid I normalized it and my family of origin is in complete denial -- so much so that I am no longer in touch with them -- too crazy-making), neglect, emotional and verbal abuse, depression, and substance abuse. I left home at a young age and added physical abuse and more sexual abuse onto that from street life. I developed a nasty drug and alcohol addiction, something pretty common for ptsd sufferers (I've been clean now for more than twenty years, but other addictive behaviors have haunted me) and became occasionally homeless. The depression continued, I was suicidal. Substance addictions, sexual acting out (nothing violent, but stuff that I'm ashamed of) combined with intense isolation and loneliness contributed to having a really miserable existence.
After getting clean in 12 step programs, my attraction to sick, twisted people (also part of my ptsd) caused more trauma, some of it worse than the substance abuse addiction. Cult abuse, some serious, life changing betrayals by people I trusted and opened up to, suicide attempts, two three-week stays in the loony bin: I wasn't getting the "happy, joyous, and free" promised by 12 step programs. For their part, 12-steppers (and I guess my own internalized twelve step training) often blamed me when things didn't work, saying I was just not doing things right somehow rather than seeing something was wrong that the program couldn't -- and wasn't designed to -- fix.
Severe spiritual and therapist abuse compounded the traumas rather than treating them. This has been a major challenge in my recovery from ptsd. Trust is a problem. A lot of times I don't even trust that the world is not going to disappear beneath my feet. On bad days, every step is an adventure, like walking on a rotted out rooftop or thin ice.
So yeah, its complex.
Delayed onset? The flashbacks started nine years after the events that caused them, long after I was supposedly "over it." In hindsight, I was displaying symptoms of ptsd the whole time, but no one recognized them as such. I got diagnosed with depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a few other things and got put on whatever drugs the pharmaceutical companies were plugging that week with awful results.
I thought I was a sex addict and went to those meetings for a while, but they all had sex with other people. My problem was with porn and compulsive masturbation. I used this as a painkiller because nothing else worked and I was not about to give up sobriety -- too scared of people to act out any other way. Sometimes internet porn would eat up whole days every day. It is something I still struggle with and will write about more, but I didn't feel safe or supported in the twelve step rooms for sex addicts. My sponsor there was hitting on me under the guise of male intimacy and spirituality and others were perpetrators of stuff that I had been a victim of and were having a hard time seeing it as a problem. Not a safe place for me.
I'm actually pretty fed up with twelve step programs even though at the time I got sober they no doubt saved my life. Here's what one study (.pdf file) has to say about it:
Messages in substance abuse treatment such as Dont work on the PTSD until youve been clean for a year or Substance abuse is the only problem you need to focus on, while well-intentioned, can be perceived as invalidating of clients trauma history. . . clients and clinicians report that when a client has PTSD, getting clean and sober is a bigger hurdle and such traditional methods may not work as well. For example, the tendency for PTSD memories and feelings to worsen as clients get clean is a common phenomenon. . . . Sadly, clients with the dual diagnosis of PTSD and substance abuse have worse outcomes than those with either disorder alone, and may internalize a sense of failure when they do not succeed in standard treatment programs that work for others. Feeling crazy, lazy, or bad is common-- a sense of demoralization, self-blame, and a feeling of something being terribly wrong with them. . . . initial evidence suggests that working on PTSD and substance abuse in an integrated fashion results in positive outcomes in both of these disorders, as well as related areas. Contrary to older views, treating both PTSD and substance abuse at the same time appears to help clients with their substance abuse recovery, rather than derailing them from attaining abstinence.
I got sober under the "older" model. Against the odds, I didn't pick up. When people at the treatment center heard my story, they were amazed that I stayed sober through it. But drugs and alcohol were a hell I didn't want to go back to.
Anyway, that's a little of my "war story." One last thing for now: I have talked to people who have combat ptsd, and the symptoms don't seem a whole lot different, even if the causes seem different. My ptsd is pretty un-macho, though, so if that offends or you can't deal or you think I just need to get over it, maybe you need to look elsewhere or start your own blog. I have no desire to play the ptsd version of what Elizabeth Martinez calls the "oppression olympics."
I guess the next thing I'll do is post some links. Leave a comment if you read this, let me know someone is there.
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