Cause and Effects of PTSD
After a traumatic experience it is normal to feel frightened, sad, anxious, and even disconnected. Usually, as time passes, these feelings fade and you start to feel normal again and begin to enjoy life once more. But in some cases the trauma you experience is overwhelming and you find yourself “stuck” and continuing to relive the painful memories.
Most people associate PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) with battle-scarred soldiers and military combat is the most common in men. But any overwhelming traumatic life experience can trigger PTSD, especially in a situation that is unpredictability and uncontrollable. PTSD involves anyone who has witness or experienced a catastrophe event at one point in their lives. It affects not just the person involved but everyone around them. But remember not everyone who has been effected by a traumatic event develop PTSD.
But for me that wasn't the case at all. PTSD is a very personal and long life issue. I've grown up thinking that not remembering my childhood was a normal thing; that no one really remembers most of their childhood. Plus to be honest I didn't want to remember it. My childhood wasn't all laughs and giggles. My childhood was a time of nightmares, such a time that would probably even give most adults nightmares. My memories are very far into a black hole that it takes the skills of a very experienced psychotherapist to pull them out. As I said I grow up thinking my memories or lack of was normal but as I became an adult I found that wasn't true at all.
All I finally got the nerve to leave me first husband and started my life over with someone I thought I would spend the reminder of my life with who in the end turned out to be my best friend rather than my husband. Clay, my second husband and best friend, realized I had changed and not for the good after a couple years into our eleven year marriage. We decided that we would start couples therapy, thinking the issues were in our marriage-we were very wrong. “Our” therapist became my therapist after a few months and Clay slide out of the therapy expect on a few occasions that I felt he should know how my progress was going.
After a months into my therapy, Maria my therapist, gave me a book to read. This book was my first step into the black hole of my memories. With the book were instruction of 'do not read more than a chapter at a time, allow the words to sink in' and I laughed to myself. It's only a book I told myself, will again I was wrong. That first night I read and read and read, completing the first 4 chapter before going to bed. That night I experienced the worse “nightmares” I had ever had in my life. The next morning I called Maria crying, and she explained the “nightmares” were simply not that at all, they were called flashbacks. She explained that I should not under any circumstances read anymore of the book and I need to keep a dairy of all the flashbacks and memories that I may start to remember. Three days later sitting in her office I did nothing but cry.
Memories of my mother, father, siblings and everyone who was in my life as a child started “flooding” back. The first memories I could recall was of my mother hitting me so hard I flew (yes feet off the ground) across the kitchen and slammed my head against the washer. My step-father, retired from the marines, and my mother were over-the-road truck driver and were only home every other weekend. We stayed with my other brother, who was addicted to drugs and would take his anger out on me, because he needed a place to live and they didn't want to pay someone to “take care” of me. This weekend I happen to have taken all the beating I could and run away from home. My parents happen to come home and instead of telling the truth he told them I simply run away and he didn't know why. My mother searched for two days and finally find me hiding out at my best friend brother's house. My mother took me out of the house by my hair and that is where the beatings started.
Over a years time, the memories kept coming strong and stronger. Memories of my brother beating me, my sister stoned in the corner watching my boyfriend beat me because I told him to stop beating her. The memories of being sexually abused by my sister boyfriend, everything flooding my memory. These memories lead to feelings of depression, self worthlessness, even some suicidal thoughts. But anger was the biggest emotion of all, I wanted to find all these people and hurt them like they hurt me. My anger even got directed at people that shouldn't have, like my best friends, my husband, co-workers and even my therapist. These emotions became so intense that my therapist had to prescribe medication to help control all the emotions flooding me.
After two years had gone by of weekly session with Maria, I believed that I had finally started to heal until some event in my life would trigger a new memory. And again I was in her office, sitting on the couch crying my eyes out in either anger or fear or simply because I couldn't understand why the people who loved me want put me through such hell. Why if they cared for me so much, they allowed every horrible beating to happen.
I asked myself that question the day I sit in Maria's office for an emergency visit because the night before I had images flashing through my head of when I was 8 years old. We still lived in Mississippi, it was a normal morning waiting for the bus to come. The neighborhood kids were making fun of me because my cloths were ripped, dirty, and even smelled a little. There was this dog that always came to visit me in the morning. But that morning the one older boy pushed me and the dog jumped at him. I hold the dog back as the boy grab a broken PVP pipe and throw it at the dog. The pipe stabbed me in the right hip as my sister ran home to get my mom the boy kicked me and told me I shouldn't have gotten in the way. As my mom approach me laying on the ground, she became to yell at me to get up. My father got me into the car and I remember my mom crying as she did everything she took me to the ER to be treated for “me hurting myself again”. Or at least that was the story I was forced to tell the doctors each time.
After they rushed me to surgery, removed the pipe, and stitched me up; I was released to go home but ordered to bed rest. My mom walked my through the front door, kicked the crutches out for under me and began screaming at me about how she had to miss work and I was going to pay for it. Next thing I know I was laying on the floor and my hip was killing me. I was then ordered to get up and was given a list of thing I needed to do to work off the cost my hospital bill. How dare I cost her more money!
However, as I grew into a teenager the beatings became less but the emotional abuse was still there. I was always told I couldn't do anything right and I would end up a high school drop out and pregnant. She made sure that everyday I knew how much I ruined her life and that I was a mistake. See my father abused her and due to one beating she was told she would never have kids again. Well, the joke was on her because there I was and neither of them were happy. My father would beat her everyday trying to make her miscarry and finally at eight months she went into labor but I was born happy and healthy. Again to their surprise.
Consequently, I did prove her wrong but it did take time. I did graduate high school and I did have a child of my own, which I made a promise I would never treat her the way my parents treated me. Now her father turned out to be an abusive person and I stayed in the marriage for a year until he opened my eyes by pushing our two year down the front porch steps. And of course, there was the second husband who turned out to be a cheating man. But the funny part of this story is we were always better best friends than lovers. To bad that took me eleven years to figure out.
Finally, I find myself here today, living in Pennsylvania in my third marriage. However, my current husband is the best thing that has ever happened to me and my daughter. He loves me unconditional, even with all my emotions. And still to this day I live with the PTSD and all it's “wonderful” effects. The night sweats, night terrors, flashbacks, day visions and all the emotions.
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