Living with PTSD
PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is generally associated with this image and media’s portrayal of soldiers coming back from war and seeing too many deaths at one time. But, the reality is you can get PTSD at any age from (unfortunately) a number of different traumatic events. I got PTSD at the age of 18. I was in denial about it for many years because I figured I was just anxious and severely depressed and those feelings can be pushed away. But, as life went on I was attracting negative energy and just continued life feeling this way.
I finally took the next step towards therapy and found it was helping me recognize the signals my body was sending me, what they meant, and how to cope with them. The way I describe PTSD, for those who don’t know, it is the feeling of sudden body triggers that can make your heart race, cause major anxiety, and take you back to that place of trauma. Sometimes it can be as little as a word or a place that bring back that feeling of trauma and PTSD.
Being someone in my mid-20s, it’s been difficult to share this with others. What will people think of me? I don’t want to become this pity party or seen as a victim. Then I realized, the trauma that caused my PTSD was not in my control, nor does it define me. I’m not broken. What does define me is the courage to share this and how I treat myself and others.
Now onto what it feels like living a “typical” life with PTSD. I live alone and work. I’m able to function and contribute to society. The only thing that has a stronger impact are the tiny triggers of my PTSD that feel like severe anxiety. Sometimes, I feel my heart race so much that I wonder if I am having a heart attack. Or, little triggers of anxiety can become so draining to my body that I feel exhausted at the end of the day. Personally, I have become better at recognizing the triggers and what they mean/ why they come up. But, the times where I am having fun, for example at a party, and a rush of anxiety comes up out of nowhere, I get a mixed feeling of emotions. I want to run away to my home and sleep on my bed. I get frustrated that in the middle of having fun this anxiety bubbles up. To sum it up, it’s like fighting these rushes of feelings and discomforts on a regular basis.
The leap from a low functioning teenager with PTSD to a high functioning woman in her mid-20s didn’t happen overnight, it took a tremendous amount of work. One thing it has taught me is not only to be gentle with myself but recognize that you don’t know what others are going through. I fought this in silence for too long and as I got older the more I reached out to others and spoke to them, the bigger my support got not the opposite. I hope reading this will help others work towards finding their inner peace and know that it does take courage to live with PTSD.
