Flashbacks and trauma. RE: 2017 “I’m a shitty person right now”

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2017: Sometimes I use blogging as a source to blast what is going on at the core, because it’s therapy for me. Sometimes I keep them private and sometimes I share.  Not sure what this blurb is going to end up as.

I try not to say negative things about my life because nobody has time to hear that, or when I do I try to make a joke of it.  I do fail though. This is going to be an epic fail I’m sure.
I have made so many mistakes, and I just keep on doing them. I got into abusive relationships and blame myself for what has happened to me.

 There’s still some ongoing business with the trip to Alaska,  and I was reminded tonight how messed up I have become. So bad that I can’t stand to be around my own damn self.  Am I on a pity pot? Maybe, probably. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am just completely lost in my life right now.  I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve let everyone down in my life because I’m an idiot, and can’t seem to get it right. Do I even DESERVE forgiveness?  I mean really.

I’m going to have to do some serious soul searching and find out what is wrong with me.

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****This post was from 2017. (Above the separation graphic of arrows). I repost it because it’s important for me to realize that I am not perfect, and I can at any time fall flat on my face if I am not careful. I vaguely remember this…only because it mentions “the trip to Alaska”.

I won’t get into that very much yet because it’s just a giant cluster fuck. Long story short I was a victim witness in a military court martial against a human (I say “human”, but really this person is a monster and a predator), that tried to kill another person, and had abused me as well. (I did not file a police report because I was afraid, instead I reached out to the military for help, and they declined because I was not married to the person.)

There’s a lot more to the story, but he was convicted, dishonorably discharged, and is now a registered federal sex offender for life. The trial is not my story to tell, I was not the petitioner, and my purpose was to support the petitioner in this trial (which I would do again in a heartbeat, I do not regret standing up for another woman, and in this case, women). But it was traumatic. It’s traumatic now to think about.

Trauma is weird. One minute you are feeling like “ok, I can deal with this”, and the next you are crying, snot running down your face, shaking, mind spinning, hyperventilating, and basically losing all functions of the body. I don’t know what’s best to deal with trauma…to look at it in the face and fight it, or to tuck it away far into the recesses of my mind until there comes a day where I can face it. This particular situation, my involvement in the trial, and the abuse I went through from this human, is in that category. The grey area.

I’ve learned to understand some of the things that have happened to me, and when I start experiencing symptoms of ptsd, I reach for my tools and coping skills. (The healthy ones). But I have yet to “situate” this instance and put it in its place. I’ve worked on it, a lot, and will continue to do so.

Today, and yesterday are days that I simply cannot deal…my mind is anxious, I’m picking at my fingernails, fidgety, racing thoughts, shaking. I hate to say that I’m used to it, when my brain cycles through this, but honestly I am…I feel it coming on. So I gear up to handle it in whatever way I can. Right now I’m writing about it. This is how I feel right now. It’s like being on a merry go round that’s going too fast, and everything is whizzing by, and you can’t get off.

I’ve been told to just “not think about it”. And sometimes that works, to not think about it. But the truth about trauma is that it changes your brain chemistry. It hides deep within the subconscious and remembers, even if I don’t.

Even if I “just don’t think about it”. There’s a trigger that my eye sees, or my ears hear, and it sets off a series of events in the brain that become physical body symptoms. Sometimes I don’t know what the triggers are, sometimes it’s a certain time of year that something happened. A trauma anniversary, for lack of a better way to describe it. That time comes around, and the brain and body remember, even if consciously I DON’T remember.

There are treatments that are there for ptsd, abuse, etc. EMDR is one. I have had three sessions with my therapist, and every time my body goes into reactivity, with negative responses. The most recent time I became light headed, started having tunnel vision, started shaking, and my heart rate went up. (click underlined words for description)

My therapist stopped the session immediately. I was extremely disappointed, I was hoping I could get started and continue. But she will not try it again for a while. She stated that it should not, and can not cause medical emergency type responses, in my case anyway. EMDR has a high percentage of success in helping people with ptsd. But it’s not 100%. I don’t want to discourage anyone to try it, because it has been proven to help.

So for today it’s a Xanax, some gaba (amino acid) and literally checking out.

Gaba helps me. Here’s a publication from the NIH talking about ptsd and gaba. All I know is that I am 10 times worse without my gaba supplement. If that’s possible, and the answer to that question is yes. I have more morbid thoughts, and have, in the past become suicidal. I do my best to prevent those times from happening.

✌️Shassy

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