“You don’t see a person as much as you see the state of mind, body and emotion the person is operating from.”
“You don’t observe me in a situation I find stressful, rather you observe my central nervous system in survival mode.” “
To be fair, I don’t know myself when adrenaline floods my system in the most innocuous of circumstances, a birthday party for example… you may ask why… so I’ll tell you…
I’m drowning in adrenaline and cortisol, and I’m pretending I’m not… twisting, turning, writhing inside… I make it to the bathroom, run cold water over my wrists, I’ve heard that helps… rub cold water into my temples, I’ve heard that helps… tell myself I’m confident, that helps… wearing masks on top of masks I pretend I’m fine in the hope others will feel the comfort I cannot.
Eventually I make it back to my safe space, I actually feel fine, (when I’ve learnt not to ruminate on the latest public humiliation…) then it’s time to put on my uniform, embody the confidence of the uniform, I’m able to put my own (shattered) self to one side, if only for a little while.
If I save your life, I can smile at you, albeit briefly… you see me as something/ someone wonderful… For a moment, my adrenaline… my intermittent state of hyperarousal served its purpose, but you don’t have to come home to me, you don’t have to be me when I’m subduing my central nervous system, alone in my bathroom or some other space where I get to breathe without the fear of suffocating… alone… making sense of the senseless, subdued or elated it all depends on the day or the way, then the next day and the next… there’s no answer to me… people have tried and tired… worn out by the road I’ve got to keep travelling, keep moving because stopping is where and when I crash.
Back in time, that experience that I worked so hard to hide, tease and please into submission, it won’t die so I die… Everytime I self medicate or go back to my pre-tsd life, I die because I lie, “i’m okay, if I can only change this, that or them, I’ll be fine”… then when I’m about to, or have lost everything and the rationalisations can and no longer works… I’m faced with the truth, I haven’t been in myself for months…
I’ve been submerged and subsumed by the fear… my central nervous system has been running me, not I it… that’s what I mean by dying – ceasing to exist as a person. Ceasing to be the me… like a phoenix I arise from the ashes of my burnt out central nervous system and start again… I’ll fight harder this time, I promise myself, I’ll do better, I swear to my loved ones… I want to believe it, I must believe it… what other choice do I have… think positive motherf%&%er!!!!
The rage with and within myself feels good… I feel alive, I’m back to fight another day by fighting myself… it’s on me I tell myself… I’m energised, until… I crash and burn… ashes. PTSD, a Phoenix like Syndrome… I stop, I look around, the faces of the people I love are tired, our furniture, our clothes and lives are worn… by an imposter, terrified of being me…
I continue, fighting, hoping and dying… help arrives, it’s not me who needs the treatment, it’s my central nervous system. I suffer from PTSD, it’s a dis-ease of the nervous system. I get help, I recover… Those around me get to love the person they loved, not the dis-ease of my nervous system.
Concluding that we don’t live in the world, we live in our bodies, change the chemical composition of the body with massive amounts of stress hormones and their world changes…
People with PTSD often feel alienated because they literally are. What you’re about to review is a million dollar treatment which brings First responders, good people, service men and women back to themselves, it costs XX to help give the people who have your back, their life back.