Put a STOP to it!
18 May 2012 2 Comments
in Survival Tags: anxiety, change, coping, fear, friendship, post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, stress, suicide, the life of erin, tips
(written a few nights ago)
Listen to your feelings. They are telling you something. With practice you can learn to deal with anything, even the impulse to commit suicide.
Today I’m visualize inflicting violence upon myself in some drastic way, but not as a way to kill myself. I just want everything to STOP. The greater the force behind that giant STOP sign the better.
Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to [jump from] tall buildings in a single bound!
Suicide and Superman have a lot in common. Maybe. I actually don’t know very much about Superman but that tag line captures my impulse towards self-harm.What if we imagined ourselves surviving superhero-style? Our impulse to inflict pain can be equally stopped with a fantasy of being faster than our impulse to die, and counteracting it with something stronger.
I feel better recognizing that I don’t actually want to die but that I want things to STOP. During my treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I remember learning that if you say, “STOP!” loudly and put your hand straight out to accompany it, it’s much easier to stop your feelings, if only for a moment.
I can handle this. So where do I need to put a few STOP signs in my life?
- I am stressing about my future, because it feels like I don’t have one.
- I am stressing about money, because it dictates my future in many ways, and I don’t have enough money to keep living like this.
- I’m stressing about relationships, because they too will make my future worth living or not worth living.
Those things are big — they are worth stressing about — but not to the point of pushing myself over the edge. And this is where things get tricky, because if I don’t think about my future then my life will continue going in a direction that I don’t want it to go. But must I have my whole life figured out right now? No, no I do not.
Here’s the spot where I can STOP my all-or-nothing thinking, but dammit, I can’t. It’s too much of a habit. Maybe I can at least try to be more aware of thinking in black and white. I can try to think about how much money I need to get through this month or this week or just this day.
What can I do today to make money tomorrow? What’s one teensy tiny thing I can do? I can work on filling my Etsy orders. That’s a start.
And relationships. Well, I feel like being a hermit but at least I have plans to meet up with an old friend on Wednesday. It’s scary but it’s one teeny tiny step.
Now I feel a little better, but not a lot. I’m still really stressed out. But now that I’m done writing this post, it’s bed time. Time to put my worries on the shelf and have some rest. Enter the land of STOP, but not permanently. My bedtime medication ensures sleep, which is nice and predictable. Yes, I’m probably going to have nightmares again tonight but hey, I might not.
And what can I do until I fall asleep? Breathe. Breathe one breath at a time.
My thoughts tonight make me feel insane, but this is how to survive that insanity. Minute by minute. Maybe tomorrow my road will have more STOP signs, more than today’s road. That’s worth looking forward to. Those maybes.
Where do you need some STOP signs in your life?
We Still Burn
26 Jan 2012 6 Comments
in Survival Tags: poetry, PTSD, quotes, trauma
Let me tell you something about trauma. It’s an event or a series of events that turn your world upside down. Then even when you’re back on your feet standing around with everyone else, you aren’t sure what’s really up and what’s really down. You never regain your proper balance or perspective.
That’s bad enough but what’s worse is that the response to your trauma is so intense that it becomes everything. Life becomes divided into two categories: “before it happened” and “after it happened.” You see a piece of it in everything you do and everything you’ve ever done. You have no idea who you are because who you are was compromised and since then you’ve become a stranger to yourself. Trauma changes the brain, and so you never really got a chance to grow into who you were supposed to be.
But maybe what you’re supposed to be is different. Maybe what you’re “supposed” to be is whatever you are, or whatever you want to be. It’s wherever you’re headed. We can’t change our past but we can change our future.
But trauma can make the future seem pretty bleak. It can make life feel like nothing but a series of threats to our safety. And maybe it is, at times. But as long as there is a threat, at least we know we are alive. At least we know that we have survived, if for no reason but to spite those who tried to extinguish our flame. We still burn and together we shed a light that dispels the darkness all around.
A Litany For Survival by Audre Lorde
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s minds
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid.So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
Remembering the Montreal Massacre
06 Dec 2011 7 Comments
in Hindsight Tags: abuse, change, fear, PTSD, school, suicide, violence against women
Today is the twenty-second anniversary of the Montréal Massacre, during which a twenty-five-year-old male, Marc Lépine entered the École Polytechnique and after separating the men and women, opened fire on the women. He shot twenty-seven people, killing fourteen women total.
My family lived in Montréal the year before the massacre, but moved here to London, Ontario in 1989. Since I was only four at the time I don’t remember hearing about the tragedy when it occurred but certainly learned about it as I grew up.
The usual knot in the pit of my stomach is tighter today but I can’t name the feeling. Fear? Anger? Disgust? All of the above.
The Wikipedia article touches on the fact that a psychiatrist visited the shooter’s family, trying to make sense of why Marc Lépine committed such a heinous crime. Other psychiatrists analyzed his suicide note and researched Lépine’s childhood abuse, questioning whether he had a personality disorder or was experiencing psychosis that caused him to turn violent.
I feel angry when mental illness is a topic of conversation around murder. Yes, there is always the possibility that mental illness plays a role in murder (as in the recent Greyhound murder of Tim McLean) but the truth is that nine times out of ten, people want to explain the inexplicable by calling the murderer “crazy.” It’s safer to think that someone out of their mind would do such outrageous things, not just a regular person. Not your neighbour down the street, not someone that goes through the Tim Horton’s drive thru every morning. But up until December 6th, 1989, Marc Lépine was just like anybody else.
Lest We Forget: PTSD
11 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Diagnosis Tags: anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, war
Today is Remembrance Day. For most of my life I saw today as a day to go to an assembly at school and watch black-and-white videos of soldiers in the first and second world wars. I tried to understand what those men and their families went through but the video quality made me feel like we were learning about dinosaurs.
Last spring I did a few information sessions on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, where I met a lot of war veterans and soldiers on leave of absences. I met both men and women who fought overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan who had been through significant trauma. One man’s job had been to dismantle bombs – I could only imagine the horror he saw. Another civilian tried to make one soldier feel better by suggesting that they must have seen some cute kids while over there because some did work with families. One man quietly replied, “Yeah, I got to hold some cute kids…before putting them in body bags.”
Wow.
So what is post-traumatic stress disorder? It’s an anxiety disorder brought on by witnessing or experiencing a life threatening situation. Obviously there are a lot of life threatening situations for those in the military, but civilians suffer can from PTSD too. Being in a car accident, witnessing a shooting, or experiencing a sexual assault can trigger PTSD. Even if the car accident was minor and no one got hurt, for a moment, it may have felt like your life was truly in danger. That’s all it takes for your mind to get overwhelmed and suspend you from reality. Have you ever heard of someone talking about an “out of body experience,” where they looked down on their body from above after something traumatic happens? That is called dissociation and it’s a survival mechanism. Our minds have to disconnect and temporarily step outside of the situation to cope. Someone with PTSD can experience dissociation often and may also have an exaggerated startle response. It’s not uncommon for a war veteran to throw themselves down onto the sidewalk and cover their head when a car backfires on the street. In their mind, that noise sends them right back to war and they are scared for their life.
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Tangible Tv Land
19 Jul 2011 1 Comment
in Day-to-Day Life Tags: fear, Law and Order: SVU, movies, PTSD, television
“You told me about the movie Outbreak when we were about eleven years old and the concept scared the shit out of me. Fifteen years later, I’m finally watching it…and it’s scaring the shit out of me!” I texted my cousin Sunday night.
“Hahaha, That’s amazing that you remember that! I can’t even remember what the movie is about :)”
“A deadly virus spread by a monkey. It has Dustin Hoffman and Kevin Spacey in it. The circa 1995 laptops in the movie scare me the most, though!”
When Cuba Gooding Junior’s character first sees a victim of the deadly virus, he throws up within his airtight antiseptic suit. It was at that moment I asked myself whether it was a good idea for me to be watching such a dark movie. After all, don’t I have a pretty cynical view of the world, one that I’m trying to change? And sure, with my social anxiety, mass amounts of people stress me out, but that doesn’t mean I want mass amounts of people to die to ease my anxiety. And who wants to think about puking in a space suit? Yuck! I did watch the whole movie, though.
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Respect My Space
15 Jul 2011 6 Comments
in Relationships Tags: boundaries, PTSD, strangers, trust
Sometimes I want to get this Natalie Dee drawing tattooed on my forehead. Or else print it out and mail it to everyone in the whole world. Not only do I not want people to stand in my space, I also do not want them to touch me. Please do not touch me if you don’t know me, and if you do know me, touch me only after asking. You may shake my hand if I extend my hand. No exceptions, no refunds.
Tonight I went to a poetry slam by myself. My social anxiety is pretty bad at things like that but tonight I made myself go anyway. I’m always glad that I attended once I get to slams so I thought I’d be in the clear if I went a little late and therefore didn’t have to talk to anyone. I was doing all right until there was a ten minute break during which everyone got up to buy more beer. I was sitting there, minding my own business, when this older man came up to me. He was probably sixty-five. He squeezed past my chair and I thought he was going to get a chair from behind me, but instead he put his arm around me and started rubbing my back!
“You did such a great job performing your poem so don’t be sad you didn’t get higher scores.” His face was about three inches from mine.
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Fight or Flight
13 Jul 2011 9 Comments
in Book Reviews, Symptoms and Side-Effects Tags: mindyourmind.ca, PTSD, stress
Someone today thought they were educating me about Cortisol, the stress hormone, and it took all of my energy not to burst out with facts about zebras and pooping.
Wait, what?
Once again, I need to refer back to a post I wrote originally for mindyourmind.ca. It’s only fair that I let you in on the science behind why we need to poop when we’re nervous. You know you’re curious!
This whole stress hormone thing has been a huge issue for me in the past few years with my headaches and stomach problems. In my frustration over not being able to cure my ailments, I eventually went to the library looking for answers. There I found a book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky. It had a ton of information on the fight or flight response, which up until then I’d only heard about in science class.
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What’s “Crazy?”
12 Jul 2011 7 Comments
in Stigma Tags: crazy, PTSD, stigma, terminology
According to dictionary.com, the medical definition for “crazy” states that the word means “mad” or “insane.” The word origin comes from the 1570-1580s, stating that crazy means “diseased, sickly, from craze; meaning “full of cracks or flaws”; the definition of crazy meaning that of “of unsound mind, or behaving as so” is from 1610s. People have labeled others as “crazy” for a very long time.
So, am I crazy? I see a shrink, have been in a mental hospital. I take a lot of pills and have participated in self-harming behaviour. Crazy?
I am really “full of cracks and flaws”, but I do not believe I am “of unsound mind”. That’s what “crazy” means to me. Some mentally ill people are very sensitive about the word general, and do not like to hear it used for anything, not even “Whoa, that movie was crazy!” I don’t really care about the usage of the word unless it is used in an insulting manner. If anyone called me “crazy,” I would assume that the person didn’t understand mental illness at all. Now, if a doctor called me “crazy” then I would believe it and feel devastated. If someone called my friend crazy I would be outraged. It totally depends on context for me.
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