I Am So Tired & Really Going Through A Serious Trauma At The Moment & My Therapist Bumped Me Back Up

I'm really fucking tired of watching my husband suffer so much because I'm so sick. I feel like people don't talk enough about the trauma spouses go through, watching the person they love most in the world continue to deteriorate constantly.

Had a doctor appointment today where I found out officially (I suspected this would happen for a while so it's not exactly new information) that I'm going to most likely need a proctocolectomy and an ileostomy. Which basically means they're going to chop out my colon, sew by butthole shut, and give me a stoma on my abdomen where I shit into a little bag. Cheers.

Obviously I'm having feelings about it but that's not what this particular post is about.

He has PTSD from watching me almost die from a bowel obstruction and having two emergency surgeries, a bowel resection, end up tube fed, and then on TPN. Obviously I survived all of that, but he's still really, really impacted by it. Then I got a brain tumor and had brain surgery, which was a whole ordeal. He struggles so much every time I'm in the hospital.

So for me to be having serious GI surgery, arguably the most extreme surgery I've ever had besides my brain surgery, is so triggering for him. And what can he do, just grin and bear it? It's fucking awful, and I know that I'd rather be the sick one instead of the one feeling powerless and alone in the face of all biology can do to wreck a human.

so here we are again. fuck it, sincerely.

disabled people: i’m not able to work anymore

insurance: can you do a bunch of work to prove your disability to us so we can confirm you can’t work

So I'm reblogging this from a fandom person I follow but it's on brand for the shit I post so, hello! I have OSDD and CPTSD (both of those disorders have a HUGE amount of symptom overlap and are caused by severe, prolonged trauma). I have different types of flashbacks, triggered by different things, so I'll try to organize my answer below but please be aware that my answers might be triggering especially for anyone who has experienced childhood sexual abuse and/or child trafficking. These terms are just what I use to discuss them with my therapist, so idk if they are official terms or not.

• Tactile flashbacks, also called tactile hallucinations

In these, I am entirely aware of where and when I am, but I feel sensations that were occurring during my trauma. It's usually triggered by experiencing pain from old injuries. For specifically (TW!!!!), I occasionally get nerve pain in my vulva from an injury where I was penetrated with an object and it damaged my cervix severely. Sometimes that nerve pain triggers a tactile flashbacks, where I can feel hands and the object touching me exactly the way it felt when it was really happening. It is so realistic that the first few times it happened, part of me was shocked that I wasn't bleeding or hadn't sat on a knife or some weird shit. It makes it feel like I don't even have pants on. It's fucking disorienting and PAINFUL and scary.

I've spent years training myself to show it as little as possible if it happens in public, because it's not the kind of thing that's easily explainable. But the added stress of hiding it triggers me even more- because hiding was an important job I did to cover up for my abusers, so hiding pain is both instinctual and triggering now- that it kind of just makes it worse. So if I'm around someone, they might see me grimace or shift on my chair a bit, I've also heard that I get pretty pale, but I almost always lie and make up an excuse like cramps, which people tend to believe.

But in reality it's horrific and once I'm in privacy, I am pretty useless for the rest of the day unless I have a close friend or my husband around to help me stay grounded and get back on track.

•Emotional flashbacks

This happens a lot when I'm triggered by an everyday normal occurrence that in normal life, is totally fine, but in my past was something I used to know whether or not I was in danger. Probably the most annoying one is the sound of dishes clanging as someone puts them away. If that happened in my childhood, it meant I hadn't put away the dishes in time, and would be punished (but not grounded because my parents were fucking monsters- punishment for me was things like being locked in very small spaces, being forced to braid my hair in high pigtails and hairspray it and go to school looking stupid, not getting food for a few days, having things thrown at me, sometimes the dishes themselves being physically broken on me).

So imagine what a child's emotions might be, knowing they're about to undergo a severe punishment- fear, regret, remorse, defence, desperation- and then transplant all of those emotions into my 32 year old body. It makes me have some wacky ass responses to my husband putting away the clean dishes. I've spent YEARS working on it but we've been together since I was 19, and just last year I got to the point where I could let him put dishes away without me actually yelling at him, or apologizing, or crying. Thank god for therapy.

Emotional flashbacks can really have drastic, immediate control over my behavior, which makes them pretty dangerous when it's not a situation as innocuous as putting away dishes. It's very hard for me to control what I say and do during these episodes, and it's one of the reasons I was diagnosed with OSDD, because my therapist thinks that when I have emotional flashbacks, I dissociate and another part of my personality kind of takes over. And it really is a dramatic personality shift. Still a part of me, but a much younger version. I used to have total amnesia of these episodes and only knew they were happening because my husband would explain them to me. Now I manage to stay conscious (sometimes called co-conscious by people in the OSDD/DID communities) but still have partial amnesia. It makes it very difficult for me to understand what someone is saying to me long enough to formulate a response that makes sense. It's horrible and really challenging to hide or control.

•Visual/dissociated flashbacks

These have only ever been triggered by sex, and they're very similar to the way flashbacks are portrayed in the media, like in movies. Either all or most of my visual field changes from the current situation to a traumatic sexual abuse memory. I completely dissociate, have no idea where I am or what's happening, but the difference from this and movies is that even within the memory, I don't understand what's happening. I don't go into it with my knowledge of what's happening and 15 years of therapy, I'm right back in the exact mindset I was when it was happening, just with the added idea that something is very wrong. Sometimes it feels like I'm asleep in a nightmare, sometimes it feels like I'm literally living it. They don't last more than maybe 30 seconds or so, and my husband tells me that he knows it's happening because my eyes get really wide, I go totally limp, and don't respond except in a way that's similar to how people might talk in their sleep. Once I come out of it, it's straight to having a panic attack, which as you can imagine is kind of awkward when you're in the middle of trying to fuck your partner. My husband is amazing about it all, but when we first got together it scared the shit out of both of us.

•Some other notes: I often try to ground myself so that I don't dissociate during or after a flashback, but for years the only way I knew to ground myself involved pain. I eventually tried to switch to methods that would hurt but not injure me (pinching the skin between my fingers, punching my thighs). But now I do grounding in a way that doesn't hurt myself- or at least I try to. I talk to myself, out loud, to remind myself where I am, what year it is, what's happening, etc. I do breathing exercises, sing loudly, try to hold a conversation. All of those things can help me stay in the present moment. Unfortunately they don't always work, but hey ya can't win 'em all.

@z-mizcellaneous-z I know that's a LOT but lemme know if you have questions or want any more details/info! I'm happy to share!

Call for People who Have First Hand Experience with PTSD

(Part of The Research Game, question by @z-mizcellaneous-z)

We are wondering if anyone who has first-hand experience can share with us what PTSD flashbacks look or feel like to you, as well as what it might look like from the outside perspective (such as witnessed by friends/strangers).

(please only share if you're comfortable. You can also send me an anonymous ask instead!)

Everyone else, reblog this around until we can find someone who has the answer!

(Otherwise, there's a Youtube channel I know of that aims to spread awareness of PTSD and may help you here: https://youtu.be/vdLfrJSzMY8, though it's important to note she has Complex PTSD, which is slightly different and is characterized by prolonged trauma rather than a single event)

Jess Sharp

on Tuesday I'm seeing my GI doctor to find out if I'm getting an ileostomy and I am absolutely freaking out about it. deep breaths

abused kids daydreaming: but what if there was a situation where I got hurt... and someone cared and comforted me? what then??

abused kids: oh no I'm selfish and stupid for imagining this! How could I think my pain would matter enough for someone to comfort me, I need to get over myself and start living in the real life! Comfort doesn't exist and if I'm not tough I'm not going to make it!

i understand that this is the "disabled people know our own limitations" website, but ime, if you are the kind of disabled where everyone around you knows about it and has known you as a weak, incompetent, subhuman creature your entire life: it is important to learn how to make the distinction between "i can't" and "i'm not allowed to."

"i can't hold fragile things without breaking them" vs "my housemates won't let me do dishes anymore."

"i can't manage my own finances" vs "my family won't let me make my own financial decisions"

"i can't ever learn how to drive" vs "the state has decided that people with my disability cannot be allowed to drive."

also "what would need to happen for it to be possible for me to be able to do dishes?" or "what would i need if i were to ever move out?" or "what kinds of supports would i need if i did try volunteering?"

even if the answer to these you come away with is "i actually cannot do the thing, no matter what supports or accommodations i'm given" that's fine! they're still useful questions to ask!

I've been thinking over the shitshow that was my adolescence and wondering how I can be different as an adult and what I can do to protect the children in my life. Thinking about how fucking much I always hated people saying "just ask for help" when help didn't fucking exist. Asking for help meant taking a leap off a cliff, blind, and hoping someone would catch me. And nobody fucking did.

And I realized. Just now. Just today. That if instead of being told "just ask for help," I had been told "get as much evidence as you can and then get out and then ask for help" maybe things would have been different. If I had just been told how to protect myself, maybe.

People talk so often about wanting to go back to the "good old days" of childhood and I can't help but feel some kind of way about it. When I think about my childhood, in an overall general sense, all I feel is fear and dread and relief that it's over.

It's like reminiscing about the good old days is so unrelatable that my brain just turns off. I hate navigating those conversations.

in recognition of World Down Syndrome Day on March 21