10 Tips For Understanding Someone With PTSD

A close friend shared this one with me: 10 Tips For Understanding Someone With PTSD 

 

As someone that has PTSD (many times over, from many life events), I have struggled greatly in my relationships with others.  This is one of the best lists that I have seen, to date and I felt that it was worthy of sharing.  Whether you are suffering from PTSD or you have a loved one affected, please take the time to read it.

WWTDLD?

I've thought a bit about yesterday's post--I realize that was a pouring out of nastiness, on my end.  I think maybe I just reached that bit where I was pushed over the edge.  One thing that will surely push me out of a relationship--with anyone, be it friend, family or partner--is having my life put on display.  I hate fighting in public. I have a low tolerance for knowing that if someone has an issue with me that they will share it with everyone they know and then attempt to still call me their friend.  And I struggle when knowing that I can't trust someone.  I guess perhaps the friendship that I wrote about yesterday was similar to walking through a field filled with landmines--it was only a matter of time until it blew up in my face.  How does that saying go? "The one that gossips to you, will gossip about you?"  Anyhoo, you get the point.

Clearly, I pulled the post.  Despite what she has done, I still didn't feel right leaving it posted for the world to see.  It was the equivalent of the "angry letter" that you write but never send.  I feel better today for having removed it from my shoulders and heart, yet I still love her enough not to post it.  Sick, huh?  Yeah, this is why I tend to eat a lot of sand.  I still somehow manage to care about and love those that kick me when I am down, that kick sand in my face and basically walk all over me.  Not good traits, not good for survival, but it is who I am and who I have always been.  For those that wonder why we stay in abusive relationships--I sometimes think it is because we love too much, because we forgive our enemies, and because we have a natural tendency to see the wounded and wish to help--blind we are, indeed.

FTP

Another dog shot by off-duty Houston PD senior officer, this time, in front of the two children that he belonged to.  I still thank the lord that I didn't have to add that to my list of 2010 trauma...

 

This was a concern for me, both the day of the police and when my father came to my house harassing me.  Part of what my father wrote in the 302 report was that I had dangerous and aggressive animals (to protect my meth lab).  When my father came on 4/10/10, I tried to show him my home (since he never visited me otherwise) and I tried to show him that it was clean, comfortable and clearly NOT a meth lab--I showed him the meal that I was fixing in the crockpot (since he stated that I had lost weight due to a combination of starving myself and my meth addiction)--in the end, I did have to make my father leave my house.  He was probably inside twenty minutes--the rest of the day's events all took place outside.  The reason? My Rottweiler.

 

Those that have met Harrnh find this very difficult to believe, but she actually did growl at my father and all of the fur on her back bristled up.  I had to get him out of my house because I was terrified that she was going to bite him, in an attempt to protect me.  It's funny, I was initially terrified that she wouldn't protect me against PFA boy since she didn't have an aggressive bone in her body.  I had no clue.  As my father was in my house, screaming at me--demanding that I tell him "what I was on"--and check myself into a rehab before he physically escorted me there--Harrnh (my normal snuggle bunny, nothing more to fear than her sitting on your foot in an effort to get as close as possible)--recognizing the fact that he was threatening to physically harm me--stood between us and threatened to protect me as she saw fit.

 

This was part of the information turned over to the police on 4/22/10.  That I had an aggressive Rottweiler.  All I can say is, thank god that she was in the house when they came.  I can't imagine that she would have allowed them to do those things to me.  I cried for quite some time just knowing that she was in the house, watching from the window--seeing me being hurt by two men and taken away and how upset she must have been by the incident.  Truly, the blessing is that she was watching from behind a window.

 

Hells, they were so rough on me--a 5'2, 115 pound female because my father told them that I was suicidal, homicidal, had recently done bodily harm to others and had written a statement that I was going to kill my entire family (I would STILL love to see THAT piece of "evidence").  I think there is little doubt that Harrnh would no longer be alive had the events unfolded even a bit differently.

 

Sadly, had events unfolded as such, there would have been nothing I could do.  I know she would have protected me and there are no laws to protect innocent dogs when their owners are unlawfully taken.  Our system just seems rotten no matter how I look at it.

Whispers

I hate these days when the brain incessantly whispers negative nonsense on a loop, with hopes of dragging you down into the muck.  I have done better over the past years with kicking out the whispers, but sometimes they are so relentless that it takes every ounce of my energy to get out of bed and face the day.  It has taken me many years to beat being raised a pessimist and to find the positives in seemingly hopeless situations.  Like most of us, I can offer a slew of positives to those around me when they are down, but for myself? I am sometimes left sorting out scraps.

 

My fortieth birthday was last Tuesday.  I don't know if it contributes or not--maybe a little.  I guess I did have some hope that since it was a milestone, that perhaps I would at least hear from my grandmother.  Nothing.  But I guess I shouldn't be surprised--thirteen years ago, my Grandfather died days before my birthday.  So in those years following, the family's excuse was that my birthday was a reminder of his death.  The years before that?  Well, who knows?  Truth is, even as a child, I felt the outsider and treated differently.  Now that I am actually alienated from the family, why should I expect things to be different?  Ah, how the heart holds out hope and longs for events that the brain knows will never occur.

Today's Silence

Today's silence seems surreal in light of the festivity and celebration contained within yesterday's air.   Yesterday's hopes and dreams find themselves replaced by taunt faces, whispering hushes and a sense of shaken reality turned to brittle ash.  It is difficult to walk the streets without being coated in the shrouded mist of confusion and sorrow.  It is impossible to hear the news and not weep.

 

Suicide always leaves the survivors with guilt, remorse, sorrow, unanswered questions.  But this?  To come home and find your two youngest children dead, your husband dead and to know that it was all by his hand?  When family is your most precious asset?  How do you move forward?  How do you survive the grief?  Can any of us even begin to place ourselves within her shoes?  Within the shoes of the surviving daughter?

 

I feel the heaviness within my own heart and still cannot fathom even an ounce of her pain...

Civil Liberties?

"A man was pulled over and searched by police on the 4th of July at a DUI checkpoint in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Although the man repeatedly exercised his constitutional rights to not be searched and followed the law, the officers bullied him and forced him out of the vehicle despite committing no crime.  The motorist’s car was then searched by a K-9 unit who was given a false alert signal by the police officer in order to search the vehicle for drugs."  ~from The Libertarian Republic.~ 

 

Constitutional Rights Violation Video At DUI Checkpoint

 

"He said that it is okay to take away Constitutional rights and civil liberties for reasons of safety." 

 

This was the same reason that my father gave for lying repeatedly in my 302 report.  Apparently, when you are doing nothing illegal, nothing wrong, PERIOD--even if you know your rights and alert the officials that what they are doing is unconstitutional--none of that matters. 

 

"You see it isn’t, nor should it be, required that you wait until a person has hurt themselves or others to evoke sufficient concern for people to step in and try to avert the potential for bad things happening..."   This was my father's response when I questioned how he found it permissible to lie and make false statements against me in a legal document.

 

When I told the police that I knew my rights and that they couldn't touch me; they whipped me around, they handcuffed me, they took my personal possessions and locked them in their trunk and I was thrown in the backseat of their car.  They refused to identify themselves.  They refused to tell me what I did wrong.  Welcome to civil liberties, indeed.

 

I still wonder, to this day, what would have happened had I refused to get out of my vehicle.  I thought that I knew my rights.  Well, I did know my rights.  I was correct.  They shouldn't have been allowed to take me from my property.  None of those events should have ever transpired.  Yet they did.  What are the rights of a civilian when the law officials decide they are right?   Rights?  We really don't have any. 

 

Welcome to reality.

Hitting the DELETE Button

That's odd.  I do not recall, at any point in my life, signing a waiver stating that I would freely deal with all B.S. to come my way--be it from friend, co-worker, partner, family member, or any other human entity.  What is more peculiar is those individuals that INSIST that I must deal with it.  Why?  Why stay with miserable people that tear down my self-worth, that I dread spending time with because of the negativity cloud that they attempt to throw over my head, why waste precious minutes of my life with individuals that try to drag me down into the muck with them?  You can try to convince me otherwise, but I will just keep walking; thank you, very much.

 

Nope.  I don't remember ever signing anything stating that it was pertinent for me to keep these individuals in my life.   Maybe I missed the memo. Sorry.