So, it’s been a while since I posted. I have been off having some great adventures, so I appologize but not really.
In honor of mental health day, I thought that I might post about my own struggles with PTSD and the misconceptions that I often hear from other people.
The first one is that PTSD need not be centered on one event. There is also complex PTSD, which is based on an extended period of time in which the individual (in this case myself) Feels unsafe. This is one of the most common misconceptions that I find on PTSD, particularly in the organizations (who will remain nameless) built on supporting injured workers. Complex PTSD is much harder to treat as well, as most therapies for PTSD focus on processing traumatic events. Without a specific event to focus on, these treatments don’t work.
Another misconception I hear often centers on anxiety, and people who suffer from anxiety. Anxiety and feeling anxious are not the same things at all. Everyone feels anxious in certain situations. Not so for the person with anxiety, who feels anxious all of the time. Certainly events may conspire to bring the anxiety level up or down, but it never goes away fully. I can be sitting at home all alone and still feel anxious. It is literally feeling threatened at all times, like having someone with a knife standing behind me everywhere I go. I never get to feel safe.
The next misconception is one that I have faced often of late. It has to do with managing my anxiety and what that entails. Through therapy, I have learned to manage my anxiety so that I do not get the highs and lows that I had during the early stages. My anxiety does not escalate out of my control as often as it did, and I am no longer prone to panic attacks. This does not mean, however, that the anxiety has gone away. It only means that I am in control of it, but that control takes conscious awareness and effort. It’s rather like carrying heavy luggage. Just because a person can manage the weight doesn’t mean that the bags aren’t still heavy. During my recent foray back into the working world, I found that half my energy was focused solely on maintaining control. That did not leave a whole lot of energy for doing the actual work I had to do.
