Let’s have a chat about PTSD.

Let’s talk about PTSD.

Disclaimer: I am not a therapist or doctor and can only speak from my personal experience. There are mentions of trauma, violent panic attacks, and self harm. Please be safe and take care of yourself!

What is PTSD? Post traumatic stress disorder is the result of a traumatic event. Psychiatry.org characterizes four categories of symptoms: the intrusion of thoughts and flashbacks, avoiding things that make you think of the traumatic experience, not remembering aspects of the traumatic experience, and reckless or self-destructive behavior.

Let’s start by talking about what a traumatic event even is. In my opinion, it can be anything that can cause those symptoms. For me, I have really bad memories associated with a string of panic attacks I had last new years that were traumatic for me. If I let my mind go, I can still remember what it felt like.

Last Christmas Eve I was alone in the house that I grew up in and I had one of the worst panic attacks I have ever had in my life. My anxiety had taken over and made my fear of getting physically sick to my stomach unbearable. I was nauseous, hungry, and could not stop coughing, a coping mechanism that I developed to try to convince myself that I was okay, because if I cough enough and don’t throw up, it’s not likely to happen. The thing is, it didn’t help that night, or any night during the weeks following that Christmas Eve.

The body’s response to anxiety can make you nauseous and weak, two things that I associate with getting sick, as I believe many people can. The thing is that for me, these physical feelings are amplified and makes the panic I feel when I think about throwing up even worse. These feeling combined made me cough and shake uncontrollably, I simply could not control my body and my crying sounded like screaming to my ears. If I close my eyes I can still hear it ringing around my head, echoing until it’s the only thing I can think about. I still cough to this day when I am anxious and it drives my fiancé crazy. I’m not normally very open about those nights and panic attacks because of how personal it is, they are the nights that make me shiver with fear.

A pattern that I have noticed with the holidays is that I always regress back into a state of bad mental health, and to be honest, I think it can be tied back even farther to when I was 12 years old and the first traumatic events I experienced. That winter was the first time that I self-harmed. It’s not something I like to talk about, I’m embarrassed by it to be honest. You see, I believe that those events way back when I was 12 have made every december and January up to this date incredibly hard to get through. That December all those years ago I also started seeing the therapist that sent me to the hospital when I was 15, another traumatic night which I talk about in these posts: The Things I learned in the ER, and Let’s have a chat about trauma.

What I guess I’m trying to say while talking about these traumatic events in my past is that anything can lead to PTSD. If it was traumatic enough that you still have flashbacks, such as the screaming I can’t get out of my head, the first time I hurt myself, and the fact that I dread the holidays every year because they always remind me of the darkest years of my life, then it can lead to PTSD.

I am scared to go backwards. I don’t want to relive my past every December and January, but the months are going to keep going by and eventually the holidays come around again. I don’t want them to, I don’t want to remember the first time I put a blade to my skin, or the time I couldn’t stop coughing and sobbing alone in my childhood house, but the world is going to continue to turn, it will revolve around the sun until the day it stops, and I have to find new ways to cope with these symptoms of PTSD and the memories that are still way too fresh. It’s hard, but we have to fight our demons every day.

With the help of our friends and family we can do this. It’s not easy, hell it’s far from it, but we can get to that place we want to be. I am going to get to marry the love of my life, I get to live in the same city as my best friend, and I am close with those who mean the most to me. We can do this. Keep your friends close.

Until we meet again,

Stan (they/them/theirs)