The emerging blogger series is aimed at community building through giving mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It’s also a way to introduce you as a reader to some newer members of our community.
This post is by Sharleen from Tea At Mine.
Walking on a spring evening in Golden Acre Park – Leeds
Overcoming PTSD
I have to do this. Releasing my thoughts onto the world like an eagle spreading its wings above a small stone, but at this moment in time my story has a beginning and no end. I am still in the process of understanding my story, my past and present. It haunts me day after day like a crazy killer on the loose repeatedly stabbing me in the back, in the chest, in my head and in my eyes.
I get up and get on. However for the past 2 years it has eaten me up and there is nothing left in me, I feel empty and numb, sometimes I like it numb, I can numb certain people out of my life, I am a pro at this. You see me and I give you the illusion of ‘I’m listening’.
Just as I gather myself it chases after me again. The killer is let loose.
Just imagine that for a second.
Now imagine this, I am ready to release this image, this symbol of pain and it’s acquaintances – they are;
Low self esteem
Low confidence
Extreme fear
Immense feelings of betrayal
Lifelong loneliness
and tears that never dry.
The stress is real and I am living it, the circumstances which made me a strong independent women are now breaking me, pounding in my face as a reminder of the bad experiences, what I have achieved despite the difficulties is not enough to erase those memories.
So I ask myself why now? Why now?
At least it’s now and not later, maybe?
Releasing all of this in writing is painful yet it is needed for me to overcome and understand my life and what it has made me.
Overcoming PTSD started at the age of 27, I said to a crowded room that I am a carer, economically and socially underprivileged and abused by those I cared for, experienced homelessness and witnessed terrifying violence and people in my life leaving the world too soon.
It has taken me 17 years to say this aloud, to accept and acknowledge this is what I am, I know this sounds insignificantly small to some people but it meant that I no longer pretended to be someone else. Of course I was encouraged to speak out by a supportive group of people around me at the time, fallen in to a group so supportive by chance and destiny, I felt their openness about their own struggles pushed me to do the same.
That small act of acknowledging the fact that I am a carer, that this is what I have done for the majority of my life unleashed the power within me, the power which enabled me to overcome. I then started to talk about all the other things that made me.
Still the trauma attempts to attach it self to me sometimes, in different ways and places and sometimes in peoples faces and actions. Maybe these snippets of trauma are there to show me that I am not superhuman and yes we have complex minds which our very beings will never understand.
Life’s complex situations and experiences has taught me that your past will catch up with you. I would now give advice to my younger self, I would say to my self – take your time, relax, play and be silly, do not carry the burden of the world on your shoulders if you don’t want too and most importantly you don’t have to.
I just wish someone was there to tell me this, but nobody really did. I imagined they were and comforted myself in the ‘adult’s’ presence. I know now as an adult that I would not do what they did.
So now as I sit as a 28 year old thinking, why did they not help me? I realised the comfort I found as a child was imaginary and I no longer have a child’s imagination, therefore I am struggling to comfort myself. The counsellor said imagine your younger self hugging you. This helped me, but strangely I turned on my younger self and questioned her. Maybe this was the snippet of trauma seeping in again – low self esteem or confidence, or the inability to love my self.
I have always used faith and religiosity to attempt healing but this is not enough now. I have used strangers, friends and cliché techniques such as self care tasks to help my self. I have run that hot bath and I have watched that famous soap opera, eaten so much chocolate its made me sick and used nearly every new face mask on the scene.
What has really helped is a connection with people, relating to those who have suffered and overcome, having a listening ear, a sympathetic face and a hug. A walk with no anxieties about getting home on time and daily, weekly or even monthly tasks that push me ever so slightly into changing. I don’t need people to tell me what to do, I need people to hold my hand and tell me I am true, I am right and I will be better someday.
9th January 2017.
You can find Sharleen at Tea At Mine.
Thanks so much Sharleen for participating in the emerging blogger series!
You can find a listing of all of the posts in the series here.
Are you the next emerging blogger?
Do you blog primarily about mental health? Are you looking to connect with more of the mental health blogging community?
Once or twice a week I’ll publish Emerging Blogger mental health-related guest post(s) by bloggers who are early on in blogging evolution, with priority given to those whose blog has less than 100 WordPress followers. The focus is on community-building rather than just a one-off guest post, and I’m looking for personal rather than commercial blogs.
If you’re interested, email me at mentalhealthathome (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know the topic you’d like to write about and your blog name/URL.
