shutdown

a ptsd story

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Last week I was at a beautiful estate in the Victoria bush for a work retreat. It had been a bit of a down week for me anyway (that’s clue 1) but I woke up on the second day planning to go for a run in the grounds with two colleagues as part of habits to prevent a decline in my mental health. After a chat and jog, we sat on a huge rugged hillside and looked out over the rural country. From our left, a kangaroo bounce past, her tiny joey’s head sticking out of her pouch. “We actually live in heaven” I said, aloud. In that moment I was determined to have a positive day.

The first session of the morning was around intentional storytelling and seven facilitators were tasked with “hitting us in the heart” about why we do this work. The brief was essentially to show us us why this matters. I immediately questioned if I had the emotional battery for a session like this (clue 2), not only because of how I felt that day but because I have something I like to call “why fatigue”. Often, in purpose work, we need to recapture or reignite our “why” because we can slip into auto-pilot or business as usual. The problem is, my why exhausts me, haunts me in some ways. This isn’t a humble brag – (“oh my god my why is just sooo strong”) – I don’t like living this way because I am unable to shut of thinking about the suffering and the violence of inequality. My experiences of that violence, the people I loves experiences of it and how to help, how to talk about it, how to understand it more, how to make people care, how to create change. It occupies, like, 70% of my mental capacity most of the time. That’s not healthy. My why isn’t seperate from me, or something I want to achieve individually, it’s a gnawing, heart-wrenching constant grief at our collective pain and the systems that cause it, and it’s also combined with the relatively constant challenge of dealing with, responding to and healing from men who harass, stalk or intimidate me because of the work I do. PTSD is a spectre which has haunted my brain and nervous system for two years. My why is grief, pain and an awareness that sometimes I wish I didn’t have because it rolls me (clue 3).

Sometimes, when I’m asked to reconnect to my why, I feel rejection bubble up. My why is buried so deeply inside me it feels like they’e asking me to reach inside my chest cavity pull out my heart and show it to them. I don’t always want to. Sometimes I’m scared of the pain. I have spent thousands of pounds on therapy trying to both honour but compartmentalise my feelings towards this violence, the inequality and pain, simply so I can continue to show up and do this work. If I didn’t, I would be a ball of righteous anger and exhausting hope combined. People rarely are comfortable witnessing the first and they don’t always understand the second. Under patriarchy, one is unlikeable and the other is unrealistic.

This particular morning on the retreat, I was relatively up for the activities. I wasn’t going to have to speak, so I felt content at observing and listening, which I’d already decided was my intention for the whole retreat. The first activity was lovely. We held letters written by facilitators to participants families this year, that detailed how they’d showed up in our workshops and how proud their parents should be. We reflected on the responsibility of being validating adults in a young persons’ life; one who affirms them for choices and behaviours that, in this society, they are often policed for because of their gender. There were tears. It was powerful and positive.

After a couple of hours of shares that hit me right in the chest, because they were often to do with struggle, I was emotionally tired. As one of the last speakers was sharing about the murder of Lilie James – a murder that occurred at a school we ran workshops at – I realised I was streaming tears. Like, too much. I was looking down furiously fiddling with a spinner ring. I noticed thoughts about the threats I’d received surface. Then, darker ones about my own murder and what it would mean to the group around me. I left the room and ran my hands under cold water. A friend came out and gave me ice to squeeze.

For a while, I stretched outside on the verandah of the estate overlooking the bush with a co-worker and was doing okay. I forced a couple of jokes and comments but felt frustrated at having to fill silence or respond to what people said back to me. This was a new feeling. When I returned to the room I began to become withdrawn. I remember squeezing my nails into the palm of my hands because I was numb, then my eyes became heavy and I was dangerously close to nodding off so I climbed into bed at lunch time. I think was trying to turn myself off and on again. When lunch was over I woke to my alarm but quickly noticed I was shivering intermittently and had become really cold. I couldn’t eat the veggie cannelloni Jimmy had wrapped in tinfoil for me and placed in his room. As day progressed, I sat still and silently through strategy presentations, eventually offering one or two comments but realising I was completely unaware of how I was delivering them. I became aware that people who knew me could tell I was not okay when they kept asking. I’d hoped if I could hide a trauma response then it wasn’t happening but eventually, after five hours of sinking deeper into it a couple of friends encouraged me to speak to the boss and call my partner.

Hypoarousal is a when the nervous system down regulates its activity in response to overwhelming stress or trauma. In this case, talking about Lilie’s murder triggered it and my brain and body thought I was unsafe. It’s the freeze or flop response happening when it doesn’t need to. Your heart rate and your breathing slows while your body focuses on the functions of keeping you alive. Your amygdala – which regulates emotions – is overactive because it thinks “we are at threat” and its animal response to that is to keep your heart going, keep you breathing, but make it undetectable and shut down anything else that could get you noticed and in more danger. Essentially, I was the human version of the metaphorical deer on the floor whose body went into stand by to try to save its life, but I was trying to continue engaging in normal life. The reasoning, thinking, decision making part of my brain had been overwhelmed by the amygdala, which made it challenging to come to any decisions about anything. I remember this being less disabling when the trigger first occurred, but as I sunk further into hypoarousal I simply couldn’t do it: someone asked me if I wanted a glass of water and I didn’t know the answer. There was a complete absence of opinion or feeling attached to that simple question. “No opinion or feeling” is antithetical to how people would describe me.

Jordy drove 2 hours through the bush at night to come and get me. I stared most of the way home and spoke meanderingly about what had happened. When we got there I passed out on the sofa. I slept for thirteen hours.

I didn’t eat much for two days. Dinner was only eaten because it was made for me, but otherwise I didn’t have any appetite and therefore forgot. I didn’t shower for two days because I didn’t have the energy. On the third day – after a second night of 13 hours of sleep – my thinking brain had come back online and my sense of humour started to returned. I made myself food and ate it. I showered. I spoke to a friend on the phone and felt relatively normal. I made silly jokes and became worried about the simple practicalities Jord and I needed to sort before I flew to the UK the following week. I was a bit anxious again. “Ah” I thought, “I’m back”.

A week later I spoke to my therapist who walked me back through the experience and confirmed what had happened. I had analysed it mostly right. What I hadn’t done is collected my the clues (as above) that would indicate I probably should have communicated this to my boss, taken breaks through that session and engaged with it how I wanted to, not how I thought I should.

1. clue 1: you are feeling down this week anyway
2. clue 2: you struggle with “why” work
3. clue 3: you have PTSD

What was fascinating to reflect on during the therapy session was how often I had thought “this isn’t real. I’m making this up.” during the episode. Despite almost falling asleep at work, weeping throughout the day, digging my nails into my palms to feel something, not being able to engage with people I love, experiencing complete absence of thought or emotion, not eating for days, not washing for days – my brain still told me I had made it up. In the words of my own sister on Taskmaster “it’s incredible what the mind can do”. I don’t have an answer for why. Especially because it feels the opposite of how my mind operates more generally; anxiety has me constantly convincing myself that future events are real when they haven’t even materialised yet. How does it make sense that the same brain is now convincing me that what I’m experiencing right now isn’t real? Maybe it’s partly conditioning – as a woman, the idea that I am being overly dramatic is drilled into me and surfaces when I’m struggling. Maybe it’s also true that when you’re in that part of your brain, and disassociated, you can’t connect to the experience which makes that a logical conclusion at the time, or maybe it was wishful thinking because I didn’t want it to be real. My working hypothesis is that it is probably a venn-diagram of all of three and more unknown reasons.

The silver-lining to the experience was how gently I was held and how softly I was cared for by the people who care about me. I felt guilty about time off work, and leaving the team but my boss hugged me and sent me home. I felt useless lying in bed at home feeling unable to do… anything, but Jordy stroked my head, made me meals, wrapped me in heated blankets, cuddled me to sleep, made me shower, made me laugh. My friend told me there was only worry and compassion for me when I expressed embarrassment at how I’d appeared at work. My parents listened intently when I recounted the experience and so it no longer felt like a dream, or something I’d made up but more something worthy of concern and care.

And now, looking back on it, I think about all the people who have had to navigate PTSD and CPTSD alone. Without the knowledge of what is happening, without a safe and caring loved one to wrap around them during its flare ups. Without a flexible job or a job at all. Without a safe home, a bed, cup of tea, heated blanket, TV show to ease them out of it. How do they get through this hell? How the fuck do they manage? Why doesn’t this system prioritise mental health support? And just like that, the why is back and I’m right back to work.

G x