PTSD

It's been about 23 years since being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since then I have learned a lot about it. I'm no expert on how it effects everybody, but I know how it effects me very well, and I am an expert on managing my own case.

Various components of the disorder, or syndrome, that I have lately needed to take into account: panic attacks, delayed stress problems, depression due to grief, and chronic functional problems.

Panic attacks are managed by education. You learn what they are, and then you can go through them with less fear. The less afraid you are when a panic attack starts the less severe it will be.

Delayed stress problems include but aren't limited to flashbacks. I deal with them by not burying my memories. People who advise "put the past behind you" give crappy advice. You have to explore the past and face it to free yourself from it. I can avoid some situations that trigger flashbacks, but need to keep such avoidance to a minimum, recognizing the collateral costs.

Depression due to grief is not talked about much but it's a major issue for people like me who experienced long term repeated trauma. There is an awareness of loss that can't be ignored. It's mostly a sense of lost feeling. For so many years I didn't dare feel what was around me, because I was over-sensitized. It left much of my life flat, colorless, and tasteless to me. This takes grief management.

The chronic functional problems are something else. Long-term repeated trauma causes neurological and chemical changes that are not completely understood (Wikipedia has a summary here), but cause definite behavioral changes that have to be taken into account.

Typical are disturbances in fear reactions. The public stereotype of a PTSD sufferer is of someone who is too fearful. But the disorder often goes the other way. Many times I have not had a fear reaction that I should have, and put myself or others in danger. This is why I haven't driven a car since 1987.

Another problem I have that I suspect is a chronic functional disorder, is harder to describe. It's a kind of brittleness. I need to ease into things. I can't be blind-sided. To see how it works I have to give examples.

Last year a friend of Anitra and I showed up at the Real Change office on a Saturday when I was working the desk, just minutes before closing time, and invited us to join her as her guest that night at a special community meal in her building. I had planned to go home after closing and cook a dinner. The plan was detailed. I knew what I was going to cook. But Anitra wanted to go to the community meal and I agreed.

I know from experience that if I had one or two days to prepare myself for the community meal I could have gone through with it. Or, I could have gone through with it if the meal event was less stressful than it turned out. But what happened was, we got to her building and found ourselves waiting in line for entrance into the dining area, and Anitra left me to go look for our friend. It was crowded, the other people in line were loud incessant talkers, and I had a severe panic attack on the spot. When Anitra came back I begged off, ran home and collapsed in bed in tears, hating myself for being a freak.

I simply shouldn't have agreed to the sudden change of plans. I knew better, but I thought I could get away with it just this once, and went along to avoid being a pain.

Yesterday there was another incident here at my building, the Union. Over a month ago I had signed up for a nutritional class. According to the sign-up sheet it was scheduled yesterday, a Wednesday, at 2 PM. It happens that's also the day of the week we have a community dinner at the Union, at 5 PM, but in the past when we've had nutritional classes there was food at the end of the class, so I didn't think I would mind missing the dinner. That was just what I planned to do; I would use the meal-time to do my usual afternoon errands, including my stop at the office to feed the cat.

A couple of weeks ago the plan was solidified when a sign reminding us all of the class was posted, and it specifically promised pizza. The staff added that it would not be just any pizza, it would be pizza we ourselves made during the class. Now there wasn't any doubt that I would get something to eat at the class, and wouldn't mind missing the dinner.

This is the Union, though. It's run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center. So yesterday morning I went to the front desk to make sure everything was going as planned.

I was told that the times hadn't changed. The class would be at 2 PM. the dinner would be at 5 PM. Then I noticed a sign for the dinner saying that pizza would be served. I said, "That's odd. Why would you have pizza for dinner, knowing that the people who attended the class would have already had pizza?"

The answer was, "Oh, the people who go to the class will make the pizza that's served at the dinner. There won't be pizza at the class itself, you'll get it at 5 PM."

Well, screw me and my stupid plans.

In the weeks leading up to the class I had come to look forward to it. I didn't so much care about what I might learn about nutrition, I was looking forward to the shared communal experience. Now I found out that the complete experience, including the shared eating, would drag out over 3 and a half hours, and I had other things I had planned to do during that time.

Here's where the PTSD kicks in: I had prepared for the whole thing, the making of the pizza and the eating of it. In my brittleness, I couldn't deal with dividing the experience in half. I couldn't go to the class and enjoy making the pizza, knowing that I was being screwed out of partaking in it, if I wouldn't be at the dinner. I couldn't go to the dinner and enjoy the pizza, knowing that I was screwed out of the joy of helping make it, if I hadn't been to the class. I couldn't do both the class and the dinner and enjoy them, knowing the whole time that I was abandoning my usual afternoon routine, and knowing that I had been misled for two weeks about the class.

So I decided to bag both of them. Right after making that decision, Adam, our Editorial Manager, asked if I could come in to see some public disclosure documents he got hold of. I promised to arrive by 4 PM.

As I was leaving the Union around 3 to do errands on the way to that 4 PM meeting, I expected to see the class either in progress or wrapping up. It wasn't. I found out that the class hadn't happened yet. It was going to happen at 4 PM.

If I had known that the class was going to be at 4 PM I could have done my afternoon routine early and got back in time for both the class and the dinner.

I was livid. Twice in one day, I found out in two different ways that I had been misled. I pointed this out to our building manager. I told him I signed up for this event a month ago and the Union and the class provider had a month to get me the right information, and the best they can do is tell me one hour before it's going to happen?

I was more livid by his reaction. "You can still go to the class," he said.

"No, I can't. I keep my promises. I have an appointment at 4."

"Oh well."

That was it. "Oh well." No apology for jerking me around feeding me BS for a month. No apology for taking my time for granted, and assuming that I have no life but the life that is patronizingly doled out to me by him and DESC through their events.

And I'm sure neither the building manager nor DESC will ever acknowledge that they are clueless about the special needs of their residents with PTSD.

The following closing rant is therefore directed to DESC:

Hello. Get this straight. I don't have borderline personality disorder. I make friends well. I'm not psychotic. I have excellent reality judgment. I'm not even especially neurotic.

I have PTSD. Look it up. It means I've been abused too much. You don't accommodate it by "drawing me out" into the community. I'm past that stage. I can find community myself, assholes. That's not my problem. Stop confusing me with the other mental patients who live here. It's your job to know the differences.

You accommodate the disorder by just not heaping more abuse on me. Don't feed me bullshit, apologize to me if and when you do, and keep the noise down in the next room, and I'll be just fine.

Christmas, 1954

At the end of 1954 I was severely depressed. If I were 5 years old and that depressed now I'd probably be put on Wellbutrin, instead of being 58, and on Wellbutrin. In those days you didn't treat kids' depressions by giving them pills, you treated them by telling them it's their own fault they're depressed. You were depressed because deep down inside you hated Jesus, or because you were too lazy to be cheerful ("Don't you know smiling uses fewer muscles and takes more work than frowning?"), or because you were trying to put something over on people. "You don't want to play with the other kids and have fun, because you're selfish." This was just about the time that the term "maladjusted" came into vogue. I wasn't maladjusted yet, but that was only because I hadn't yet been diagnosed.

For my own part I blamed the depression on the move and missing the House in Shirley. I especially missed the old retired farmer who owned the house and took care of me periodically.

That's my best explanation for the fact that as Christmas neared I wanted a farm. That, and Roy Rogers had a farm. And I believed at the time that both my Grandfathers had farms. It turned out not quite true about Grandfather Browning, but he did raise fruit and vegetables, chickens, and rabbits.

I couldn't have a real farm. But the Christmas Wish-Book, i.e. the Sears catalog, had pictures of plastic farm sets with plastic sheep and cows and horses and farm house and fences to play with.

My parents were freaked out by my single-minded insistence that a farm was all I wanted. They took me to a store Santa in Worcester in the hopes he could squeeze out other clues. The Santa, who scared the daylights out of me, said, "If you're going to have a farm aren't you going to need a wagon to haul your supplies around?" I nodded yes in the hopes he would be satisfied and let me go. He did, thankfully.

My Father later complained about all the trouble he took setting up the farm under the tree for me to find Christmas morning, only to have me lose interest in the set within an hour.

My two favorite presents were the red Radio Flyer Wagon, which replaced the red Dixie Junior Wagon I'd had that got left behind in Hawaii, and an easel one of my aunts gave me. The easel had a scroll of butcher paper that was about two feet wide and I don't know how long. Fifty feet? A hundred feet? All I know is it took me months to use it up.

Every day I'd set the easel up in front of the TV. As commercials came on I would write down the words that flashed on the screen. I learned to spell a great many new words that way, and was able to add them to my vocabulary. Colgate and Palmolive were two of my favorite new words. I also drew pictures in crayon on the easel, sometimes inspired by the pictures on TV, sometimes not.


For several months the red wagon followed behind me from room to room and went outside with me wherever I went. I haven't been able to find a picture of it. The one I had featured a zig-zag design on the side, instead of the framing ornaments of the one pictured above. It hauled toys, always including the precious muddy tennis ball, and it hauled George, the invisible ghost. George liked to go for rides.

My Father was done with photography but my Mother insisted that it was time I be photographed, so right after Christmas a professional photographer was hired to do it. The guy they hired did house calls. He set up a portable curtain in our living room. He got on my bad side by asking me right off what I wanted to be when I grew up. I despised adults who started off with that question. The underlying premise was, you're not worth anything now, how are you going to rectify that? I shocked my parents by announcing for the first time that I wanted to be a fireman.

My Mother said, "WHAT?! Just the day before Christmas all you wanted in the world was to be a farmer. Before that you wanted to be a cowboy. Where did fireman come from?" "I want to help people." "God help us all," she said.

I then found out that the whole reason the photographer asked was so he could guess which props he should pull out of the case he dragged in. He heard "cowboy" so he pulled out the cowboy props, a toy horse, toy pistols, and cowboy chaps. The scar from the first birthday head injury was prominent at this age, but you can't see it because the photographer was explicitly instructed to airbrush it out. He forced me to say cheese against my will. What's wrong with people these days, that everybody has to be smiling in pictures. Where did that addiction to a graphic lie come from? My great-grandparents never had to smile for their pictures. Why don't I get to be myself?