The Power of PTSD
In our current climate, you will hear a lot of people mentioning the term PTSD. But what is it and how does it occur? I can tell you from my experience that once you get one PTSD inducing incident, it’s easier to incur another and another and another. That was what happened to me.
A simple definition is “An anxiety disorder that develops in reaction to physical injury or severe mental or emotional distress” – NCI Dictionary
Also “Post-traumatic stress disorder can happen to a person after experiencing a traumatic event that has caused them to feel fearful, shocked, or helpless. It can have long-term effects, including flashbacks, difficulty sleeping, and anxiety… Instead of feeling better as time goes on, the individual may become more anxious and fearful. PTSD can disrupt a person’s life for years, but treatment can help them recover”. - Medical News Today
My first PTSD inducing event in my life was when I was running a cosmetic studio. While my boss was hospitalized, I a naïve 16 year old, was assaulted by her husband while on the job. After I managed to get him off me, I called my mother to come to get me. I confided in her of the event and she promptly told my Dad, whom I did not want to share with. My parents forced me to go back to work the next day assuring me that the boss’s husband said he would never do it again! Looking back, I can see that I handled the event with a lot of maturity but when I was made to go back to work, I began to doubt my ability to make wise decisions. I began having flashbacks of the event daily and took on the responsibility as if I had caused it to happen. I began ‘running from my life’ to avoid the feelings of shame, but only understood this fact through exploration in therapy years later.
In the same year, I went out on what I thought was a date with a new guy in school. When he picked up two other boys from our school, I began to feel very leery of what was to unfold. This was supposed to be a normal date between the two of us. Instead of asking to be taken home, I remained silent as the boy drove out on a dirt road and parked the car. Looking back at that moment, I realized that was the moment that I disassociated from my body and did what was expected of me, which was to get in the back seat and allow all three of them to assault me sexually. I never told anyone for 15+ years. I lived in a veil of shame for that entire time and only through writing my memoir and researching that the boy had committed statutory rape on a 13 year-old a few years later, did I begin to step out of the shame.
My initial traumatic events occurred before PTSD was a diagnosis therefore, I had no treatment. My life spiraled for over two decades as a result. I sought therapy and began talking about these events and I began to step out of re-living them on a sometimes daily basis. I also immersed myself in daily self-care and creating a life for myself that was based on helping others. These choices allowed me to free myself of the rumination of these events, but I found I still needed ongoing therapy because of the two-decade long spiral (these events were just the first of many traumas for me)
