“I had nightmares often. I tried my best to cope, but would frequent episodes of depression and anxiety, as I had as a child.”
-Anonymous
Ever since I was young I had issues with self-control. I experienced quite a few traumatic events in my childhood, and would not vocalize often. When I was 16 I met a guy that I had started dating for many years. He seemingly “saved” me from myself, and made that abundantly clear whenever I had doubts of the relationship, insecurities about who he would talk to or how he actually felt about me. He would tell me how crazy I was, he would point out all the wrong I did, constantly accuse me, criticize every part of my being, tell me negative thoughts and feelings to have about the people and things in my life and work. He was abusive on all spectrums, from mental to physical. When I was finally able to release myself from his tight grasp, I was terrified. I thought he would come after me, I feared he was telling people things to think about me, coercing them to dislike me like he did. I thought he would definitely come find me in some way.
I had nightmares often. I tried my best to cope, but would frequent episodes of depression and anxiety, as I had as a child. People around me would tell me things like “you’re overthinking, don’t worry about it, it’s in the past” “your fine” “I don’t know why your depressed you have a house” “you should be happy look what all you have” “it wasn’t that bad” I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I felt upset at the fact that I couldn’t just be happy like everyone was saying. I didn’t understand why no one could offer advice that helped, why they just told me I should be happy because of… No one was intentionally trying to hurt me. The issue was, I was being vocal about my feelings, and everyone told me how I SHOULD be feeling, or why I should be happy, and I slowly came to the belief that I am just crazy for how I feel or think.
I stopped telling people how I felt or thought, because I was scared that I was just “overthinking”. Then onset the dissociation. I became overwhelmed frequently, my thoughts would jumble together. I could never think straight. My performance started slipping, I started getting talked to about things I was doing at work, what the expectations people had for me were. I started feeling like I would never meet expectations. I was just failing at everything. It came to the point of extreme anxiety over everything I would do, I would feel like I wasn’t able to do anything right and would stress myself out over every little thing at work. I wasn’t able to concentrate on the right tasks, I wasn’t able to keep my tasks timely anymore, and this caused more anxiety over the thought that I could not do things how I was supposed to, I felt more of a sense of danger, my perfect attendance and metrics started slipping.
I didn’t know what was going on with myself and I was frustrated, anxious, overwhelmed, and I felt guilty and shameful. I felt guilt every time I walked in late, and scared that I would come in late. What I didn’t know is that all of these were signs of Complex PTSD. What I didn’t know is that the battles I was facing inside my head were actually normal for me because I had developed C-PTSD. And because I didn’t know the signs and symptoms, I couldn’t ask for help. I felt as if help wasn’t an option, I felt asking for help meant people would look at me as being incapable, weak, or people would think I was making excuses. I felt asking for help would mean people thinking I’m crazy, thinking I just don’t want to do this or that. Now I’m trying to learn how to be more vocal about my issues, and understand that some people might not understand how something like that can really affect your mind. It’s been developing since my early years in life.
It’s important to know the signs and symptoms of PTSD or C-PTSD, and be able to identify them in another person because there are certain approaches that can cause more harm than good. If I was normal, Those everyday words wouldn’t have affected me, situations wouldn’t have taken the toll they did. There are many days I wish I could just be normal and the thought of not being able to achieve it is horrifying. It is a very real and debilitating condition at times. I have mixed realities and senses, my focus can drift, I go into a state of hypervigilance or dissociation when I feel I won’t be able to perform like others. It’s literally something that has been mentally breaking me down day by day, and I have been terrified even thinking about telling another person.
Here’s me facing my fears, I hope that some may have a broader understanding now, or look into symptoms to see the signs to be more knowledgeable about it and hopefully be able to help someone figure it out sooner than I did.