I mentioned this briefly in my About page, but one of the reasons why it’s taken me so long to get back into writing is because I have PTSD. But don’t panic; it’s not contagious. And while it can be fatal, it certainly doesn’t have to be. 

But the funny thing with PTSD is that it seems to be a little more taboo than other mental health struggles. Or at least, that’s been my experience with it. I hear people joke about their depression, anxiety, or OCD issues all the time. Yet whenever I do the same with PTSD I’m greeted by silence. No joke, it feels like someone died. Then before you know it, the subject changes faster than you can say “your feelings are valid.”

Which, side note–whose bright idea was it to make that the default phrase for any mental health struggle? Like is that the first thing that pops up if you Google nice things to say to trauma survivors? For me that’s the equivalent of walking up to someone with diabetes and being like, “Yup; your insulin levels are valid.”

I could write a whole other blog post on that, but back on topic.

It’s been almost two years since I first started experiencing PTSD symptoms, and about sixteen months since I was officially diagnosed. I’m not quite to the point where I can say I’m grateful for it. But, I would be lying if I didn’t admit I have learned a lot from it. I’ve learned more about myself and the reality of what I’ve been through. I’ve gained more respect for people struggling with similar mental and emotional challenges. Most of all, I think I’ve learned that PTSD, like all other challenges in life, doesn’t have to define who we are. Even if it does in fact suck. (Pardon my language)

So with that being said, here are three ways that PTSD absolutely destroyed my life, and two ways it kinda fixed it. 

3 Ways That PTSD Ruined My Life

1) It Forced Me to Relive My Trauma on Repeat

I know I said it before but I’m saying it again: PTSD sucks. It’s basically a disorder where you’re stuck reliving the worst parts of your life over and over again. What makes it even more terrifying is that, more often than not, those traumatic moments were life-threatening. And even though it could be weeks, months, or years since that trauma happened, all it takes is a sight, sound, or smell remotely tied to the incident and you’re right back there again. All of a sudden it feels like no time has passed, and you can’t help but think this is what the rest of your life will look like. 

And I don’t know if this is how others with PTSD feel, but for me that constant replay makes me feel guilty. I mean, you think I would be grateful, right? Living through things that could’ve killed someone else? I should be happy to be alive. But when it feels like I’ll be in survival mode for the rest of my life, I don’t feel grateful. Sometimes I’ve wondered if I would’ve fought so hard to live back then if I knew what I’d be dealing with now. That’s one of the many ugly sides of PTSD; sure, you survived. But in a way, you still feel like you’re dying.

2) I Became a Social Heretic Overnight

I really hate the word “trigger” because it makes me think of overemotional wimps, but the truth is everyone with PTSD has them. For instance if you were held at gunpoint, then watching a crime show could trigger your symptoms. Or if you were in an abusive relationship, you might feel triggered if someone in your life starts mirroring behaviors your abuser had. That’s a sad pill I’ve had to swallow: PTSD comes with triggers. And since I have PTSD, that means I have triggers, too.

One of my biggest ones is I can’t have my face covered; it seriously freaks me out. Just because of what I’ve been through that visual of shutting your mouth and hiding your face triggers all the symptoms. Which, given the last two years, has been extremely inconvenient to say the least.  

For two years, on top of the regular PTSD struggles, I had to put up with all kinds of hate for walking around without a mask. People told me I was selfish, that I was the reason people were dying. Heck, I had a random lady in a grocery store tell me to kill myself so that I couldn’t give anybody covid.

Because…you know, science. 

Thankfully I can board airplanes again, but there’s still so much I missed out on. I missed my brother’s wedding, my grandma’s funeral, I was harassed out of the workplace. And all for having a stress disorder that I didn’t ask for. It’s crazy to see the cruelty people will justify if the truly think of you as less than human

3) PTSD Comes with a Stigma

Just like with any mental health disorder, people tend to treat me different once they find out I have PTSD. On one hand, friends and family members will suddenly distance themselves out of fear they’ll say something wrong. And on the flipside, I have people who squint their eyes and ask if I “really” have PTSD. While I think I can see where both sides are coming from, either way it ends up being a lose-lose situation for me.

I won’t say too much about the skeptics, since I’ll probably write another post about it later. But I will say this: in recent months I can see where that side is coming from. For whatever reason, there’s been this trend of people claiming to have PTSD when they really don’t.

Personally, I think it’s insulting to trauma survivors everywhere to use this debilitating stress disorder as a way to get pity points or special treatment. Not only is it offensive, it also makes it that much harder for people who actually have PTSD to get the care they need.

For those of you who are afraid of saying the wrong thing around someone with PTSD I’ll let you in on a secret. More often than not, saying nothing can be worse than saying the wrong thing. When you have PTSD, you’re well aware that most people (thankfully) will never experience what you’ve been through. That already sets up a social disconnect, and you worry people don’t understand you. At least, not like they did before. When those closest to us start to distance themselves, it doesn’t feel like they’re doing it out of love. It feels like they think we’re freaks, and that maybe they would be better off without us. 

If you’re wondering, then, how to support a loved one with PTSD, I would suggest to maybe start by just talking to them. And don’t treat them like a cancer patient, or a bomb that might go off at any second. But ask them how they’re doing, what their day’s been like. If they’re open to it, you could even ask them about their experiences with PTSD. Everybody’s going to react different to that topic, and some might not be ready to talk about it. But if they are, that’s the perfect time to ask what topics are hard for them, signs that they might be sinking into a rage fit or a panic attack, and how to help them out of it. Again, everyone is at different stages in the healing process. But for me that’s what I’ve found helps the most.

2 Ways That PTSD Kinda Fixed My Life

Truth be told, before I wrote this post I never thought I would put the words “PTSD” and “fixed my life” in the same sentence. I mean, how can PTSD fix anything? All it does is force you to relieve the worst things that ever happened to you. Besides, having PTSD is horrible. As someone who has lived with it for nearly two years now, I am not a fan. But at the same time, it has been a pretty humbling experience that helped me to see the world in a different way. 

1) It Gave Me Empathy for Mental Health Struggles

Like many Polynesians, I never thought about mental health until it affected me. Growing up with that “suck it up” kind of mindset, I always thought that showing emotion–especially negative emotion–was a bad thing. Even worse, I remember hearing how things like depression and anxiety were “palagi problems,” and not something a real Samoan would ever deal with.

Well, having lived through two years of mental and psychological hell, I can say that’s not the case. PTSD is not racist, sexist, or anything like that. It doesn’t discriminate from one group of people to another. For that matter, neither do things like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, you name it. Anyone that has a mind could become mentally ill in the same way that anyone with a body can get physically ill. 

In that same way, people struggling with mental health deserve all the help and support we give to those struggling with physical health. Even if our wounds aren’t visible we still need support, motivation, and the occasional bucket of ice cream when we’re feeling down. If I never had PTSD, I don’t think I would understand that the way I do now. 

2) It's Helping Me Come to Grips with what Happened to Me

This might surprise some of you, but up until I was diagnosed with PTSD, I didn’t even realize I had been traumatized. I mean, yeah, I knew I had been through a lot. But I always figured my struggles were no different from anyone else’s, and tried not to be a baby about them.

It wasn’t until I started experiencing symptoms and getting treatment that I realized what had happened to me. Much of my young adult life was shaped by abuse, hunger, sickness, and neglect. And I never complained about any of it because I thought I deserved it. If I could just work harder, be better, then things would be different. But of course they never were.

I’m still not a fan of the disorder, but I think part of the reason why I needed to have PTSD was because I needed to understand what happened to me. Were it not for my PTSD, I would go on thinking I deserved everything I went through for five long years. I would keep thinking I was the pathetic whelp who kept messing everything up, when that’s wasn’t the case.

 

A Few Final Thoughts

The longer I work through it, the more convinced I am that PTSD is the mind and body’s way of telling you that something is wrong–even if you don’t want to admit it. We get PTSD because something traumatic happened to us, something our mind just can’t make sense of. 

And the hardest part is that, most of the time, those things will never make sense. How do you make sense of something so awful? Something that really didn’t need to happen? If you’ve got an insane amount of foresight and optimism, you might be able to do that. But me personally, I can’t. I could never make sense of something that can’t make sense. All I can do is see the trauma for what it was and move on. 

And I think that’s what I want to end with for today; when dealing with PTSD, the end goal should always be to move on. If you have PTSD, that might seem impossible. Sometimes you feel like you’ll be stuck in a nightmare forever. Sometimes, you don’t even want to move on because calling it quits would be so much easier. Believe me, I get that–I’ve been there. Real talk, I still get moments where I am there.

But no matter how awful it was, no matter how broken you still may feel, your trauma does not define you. You were meant for more than to live through hell and give into despair. After everything you’ve been through, your story deserves a better ending than that. 

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