Jason

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     I have two stories of PTSD which convey very different signs and symptoms. Not so coincidentally they’re directly related to each other.

     The first is about someone I loved. For anonymity, let’s call him Steve. Steve was 31 when he died of ALS. Before the diagnosis he was one of the most active people you could meet; he was into baseball, camping, hiking, and practically anything else outdoors and physical. He also served in the American army. During his service there he experienced too many types of traumas. He was exposed to uncontrolled and unexpected gunshots and explosions which he frequently remembered, but the thing he flashed back to every night was the group-rape he was a victim of. When his ALS progressed and he couldn’t move his body, he’d wake up and relive the experience. It would be the middle of the night and I’d wake up to him being confused, in physical pain, and emotionally terrified; with the disease peaking, he was also unable to do anything about it. There were nights I’d wake up to, “Who am I?” / “Where am I?” / “Who are you?” / and after I could convince him I’m not there to hurt him and get him to believe my answers, he’d ask, “I’m scared; why am I here?” His signs/symptoms of PTSD were being easily startled, reliving the experience, avoiding his own emotions by focusing on everyone else’s lives, nightmares, thoughts of impending harm, issues with eating, and problems sleeping.

     Steve’s death was nearly two years ago and I miss him nearly every day. It’s March 30, 2022 and I was diagnosed with PTSD today from events that happened years prior. I was a victim of many sexual assaults, what felt like instability as a child, I’ve mistakenly thought my father died when I was 16 which I’m not going to get into here, and I witnessed the death of the only partner I’ve ever sincerely said “I love you” to. Because of my relationship with Steve it never occurred to me what I was experiencing was PTSD; my symptoms seemed so insignificant they couldn’t be classified as anything harmful. My symptoms are recalling and visualizing the traumas I was exposed to, having trouble staying asleep, having trouble expressing my feelings and being vulnerable with people I care about, expecting good things to end, difficulty remembering my childhood and the events themselves, frequent peaks of irritability and quickly angered, intermittent issues with eating, violent thoughts (intrusive thoughts that I’d never follow through with), and I dissociate when I’m physically intimate so it’s like my body is there but my mind refuses to feel the sensations.

     As an EMT, I’ve also been exposed to a lot of violent sights, but I sincerely do not think those events are hard for me to process (I’ve learned to compartmentalize early on).

     What I’ve recently learned is how easy it is to view individual symptoms as stand alone and isolated issues when they’re interconnected and treatable.

     I’ve also learned the spectrum of the disorder is so much wider than I gave it credit for.

     I look forward to working on the problem we’ve finally identified and ask that you write about your experiences for Everything MH if you/someone you know has PTSD so we can share the commonalities, nuances, and frequency of the disorder with the world.