Tag: mental health

CPTSD: You Have Seen It Before

Selling wet wipes on a website is okay. I suppose.

But I’m not talking about Amazon or Walmart. Nah.

Selling wet wipes and claiming truly weird shit about them is another matter. It’s not merely stupid; false claims about a product is unethical, and almost everyehere, a crime. At the very least, it’s fraud. At the most, it’s outright theft.

So, Alex Jones, who can’t even drink his own protein shakes on camera and not be obviously ready to vomit, was selling wipes for one specific body part.

Just one.

You remember? “Perineal Wipes”. Oh, no, this is not a joke. For anyone not familiar with the perineal area, it’s what some refer to as your “t’aint”. That’s the old shorthand for it. A slang term used like so: “T’aint pussy and t’aint ass.” It’s the fleshy area between someone’s sex organs and their Anus.

That’s what Alex Jones was selling. And comedian John Oliver tore him a new ass for it. Oliver’s takedown of Jones was epic, hysterical and still one of the best episodes of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight”.

Forget “60 Minutes”, when John Oliver goes after you, it’s worse than an ambush by a reporter and camera crew.

Alex Jones also got sued for denying that the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre ever happened. This false claim cost him.

To this day, I fear that however young those students were at the time, they will live with the memories forever — and the damage the survivors carry with those memories. That’s why today, Sandy Hook Promise is still a valid non-profit organization.

But let’s all face it: what Alex Jones did just made everything worse. Especially for parents and the surviving families of the teachers.

It seems a forever ago, doesn’t it?

But it wasn’t. In December it will be only eleven years. It happened in Newtown Connecticut on 14 December of 2012. I wrote about how that year couldn’t end fast enough for me. My daughter had died in July.

In all of the mass shootings since then, I recall one that stands out the most to me: on 14 February 2018, the shooting in Parkland, Florida took place at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.

It was also the day my son died.

There are things we always remember, right down to where we were when such horrible events happened and the news came to us.

Do you believe that the surviving family members, and the surviving victims, will ever be the same?

Well, they will not be. Ever.

But it wasn’t the first time something happened that caused anyone who lived to be afflicted with post-trauma syndrome. PTSD.

On 20 April of 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold rucked up with guns, ammo and bombs and went to school dressed in black trench coats. Columbine is the name we first associated with mass shootings in schools. But even that wasn’t the first.

When the day was over, the body count stood at 15. Among them, both shooters. A further 21 were injured, including physical and permanent conditions.

Very little was ever mentioned of the aftermath.

In the following documentary, if you choose to watch it, be sure to watch the eyes of those being interviewed. A warning: it is very disturbing material and it will trigger almost anyone.

Their accounts are haunting. And I cannot ever get this one, iconic photograph out of my head. It’s a still taken from a security cam.

Columbine shooters in the cafeteria, 20 April, 1999.

Do you remember New Year’s Eve of 1999? I do. I was watching the Dick Clark celebration. The countdown to the year 2000, a new mileniam. Remember how panicked everyone was, how the media had aired constant reports of what might happen at midnight to clocks, computers and how there was the fear that everything would break or shut down? I do, but wasn’t worried. More curious than anything. But for some people that wretched year couldn’t end fast enough. The walking wounded had to live with different things to think about.

More mass shootings than any country in history. That’s a part of America’s legacy. Nothing can change or stop it from continuing.

There are any number of things that can happen that people are changed by, and trauma can follow car accidents, confrontations, bullying, mugging, rape, sexual assault, child abuse…and war. The worst part is, once so wounded psychologically, a staggering number of people are more easily further traumatized by an even bigger variety of incidents.

In the case of complex post traumatic stress disorder, here are some things I’ve encountered.

Dissociative personality disorder; that is, changing accents, vocabulary and even vocal tonation, and while I don’t completely identify as another person with another name, what I do show causes consternation in friends. I also have short-term memory loss. Missing time. Things I don’t realize until later.

Severe dissociation; causing what’s known as “the thousand-yard stare”, a state of detachment from your surroundings while reliving past events or even meandering and disconnected thoughts. You also won’t hear people talking to you, or if you do, their words won’t register. I’ve crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, paid the toll and made it home, then realized I didn’t remember getting there.

Eating disorders; binge eating or loss of appetite and weight, deliberately eating unhealthy foods and purging. These can also be part of OCD, which seems to occur with or without CPTSD.

Symptoms of bipolar disorder and personality disorders; although some evidence points toward these as conditioning, most are, in my opinion, habitual survival and coping behavior that cannot be easily spotted or treated.

Stockholm syndrome; behaving as if loyal or affectionate toward abusers and power figures as a means to avoid more violent abuse.

Nightmares and sleep disorders; these include “old hag attacks”, bed-wetting, insomnia, night terrors, and vile, unforgettable nightmares which, with age, may grow worse and more intense. These often see you trapped, in a maze, labyrinth or inescapable position, being chased, injured and even dying.

Substance abuse and other addiction; self-medicating with alcohol or drugs or both, compulsive addictions such as gambling, even when short of cash, smoking, using porn, shopping and buying things you have no real use for (buying means power).

Sexual disfunction and deviate behavior; by this I mean overdoing it with masturbation, public displays of sex or flashing, voyeuristic behavior that intrudes on another’s privacy, having attractions to or engaging in intercourse with animals, contact with children, committing rape, or using coercion when a partner isn’t receptive to sex, harm to one’s own sexual organs including cutting, burning and other methods of causing pain.

Over-or-under socializing; to mean dominating relationships or withdrawal from them. Not knowing how you’ll look and being either too frightened of being hurt or too arrogant and turning others away.

Lack of emotional control; many traumatized people are subject to angry outbursts which seem irrational and dangerous. Taken further, it may be taken out on others. From the time I was young and still in the midst of abuse I often became vengeful and yet didn’t dare hurt others. I had no true desire to cause harm. I always hurt myself by breaking toys and later things like watches and some of my favorite record albums. I regret it now, wishing I had kept everything, and still believe old vinyl LPs have better sound than digital recordings. And they were irreplaceable. I can never get one thing back. Today that anger is gone for the most part but if triggered, I withdraw from people or situations and focus on something else. That’s one small victory, but I’ll take it.

Death-seeking; whereas PTSD causes many to engage in daredevil acts, with CPTSD it’s intensified. Reckless behavior is more often likely to end in death. It is extreme, but hardly rare.

Unreasonable expectations or dreams; most damaged people can be let down by playing powerball and not winning. It takes time to recover reason and to allow oneself to dream, a counselor is best to open up to about your frustration and unrealistic dreams. Starting slow and having patience with yourself and others is difficult and everyone is different. If the person isn’t receptive to treatment, this symptom becomes a chain of frustration and disappointments that can have dangerous results.

For years I’ve often hated myself. This is misplaced and a terrible thing to do to yourself. When things happen that aren’t your fault, you have no right bearing the guilt for it.

There’s so much more. I knew a man whose neighbor was a holocaust survivor. The man regularly had to replace his mailbox; he often got flyers with swastikas on them and he would lose it and take a bat to the mailbox. That’s CPTSD. That’s never being able to live with the memories of what he and so many others, a lot of whom didn’t make it out, had endured.

My life can’t go on. The damage is too extensive and our healthcare system cannot and will not help. It’s okay; I’ve waited for that day for longer than I can say. What you need is to never forget, this is nothing new. It is a condition we’ve seen before. With the help of a doctor and a therapist you can make progress. I know that you can. You will never know a day when a trigger can’t get you, but there can be good days, dreams can still come true, and one more thing:

Never forget that just by surviving this long, you are a rockstar.

Keep the faith!

An American Asshole

I may be a decent person. I’m not sure. I think I’m just an asshole.

I may be a decent writer. I’m not sure of that, either. I don’t get very widely read, so I doubt it. More likely is the possibility that a few posts are interesting to a few readers, and that’s fine. Mostly, though, people don’t care about what assholes say.

I’ve had to revert to the original title of this site, Memoirs of an American Asshole because the American Observer seemed a bit pretentious to me. And no matter what one other person (just one) says, I am an asshole. I can’t change that by obeying one person’s protests.

But there’s a lot to this claim that I’m an asshole, mostly, I believe, things which are not my fault, but which made me what I am. I cannot lie about what I am. And I have no idea who I am.

Memory lapses, notable ones, indicate more than simple PTSD by itself. And that condition is every bit the hell I’ve been trying to describe, but there’s a worse kind.

Sometimes called by the clinical name complex post traumatic stress disorder, there is a whole different list of symptoms of the illness. The usual victims are children. The causes are “imprisonment”; or being in a situation of danger which is prevalent and from which there is no escape; being subjected to slavery; sexual abuse for an extended period of time; being in a solitary confinement situation; being denied healthcare; proper parenting and guidance, constructive growth reinforcement and encouragement, replaced by strict reinforcement of fear conditioning to prevent certain behaviors outside of the home base environment.

There’s more to it. I’ve been, along with my siblings, compared by a professional on the Donahue Show (1992) to a concentration camp survivor. I never felt that was a fair comparison since real survivors of the Holocaust went through a literal hell on earth. Who was I to claim what they had endured?

By 1992, I was, for all intents and purposes, already gravitating to the liberal view of politics and social and societal ideology and dynamics, respectively. I held interest in studying war and the horrors it never failed to create, so Europe in World War Two was an area of study I found as fascinating as I did disgusting.

In the winters the prisoners in forced labor camps froze solid. Before that, toes fell off. Fingers turned black, wooden in sensation, then disarticulated the same way toes did.

Lice, human fleas, worms and disease were constant. Lashes with whips and beatings with every object possible; there was rape, child abuse both sexual and other kinds, and the slaughter was staggering. Anyone who survived was going to be forever scarred. Who had any right but they in claiming they had experienced a literal hell while still alive?

But as I approach another birthday, I realize that there have been scores of people from every civilization in human history who have experienced hell.

I seek not to compare myself nor my pain with any other, but I know in my heart that victims are victims, no matter where they come from, no matter what’s been done to them. The end results are always the same: broken people who have known evil and savagery. Fucked-up people.

And so, I’ve grown old despite the odds. The price for this is too high. Never-ending pain, loneliness, longing, and mental illness that drugs can moderate but never cure. A gently shifting personality that seems to cause memory problems and even accent and writing-style changes. Mood changes that must be mysterious to others, but never to me. Sleeping and eating disorders, compulsive behavior, long periods of depression and consequent inaction. Memories I can’t get out of my head.

I remember better times. I really do. But the horrible things always come creeping back, and I can’t stop them.

Friends have told me, “Don’t think about it!” but they haven’t been through what I have. Or what you have. We can’t say a prayer or wave a magic wand and stop anything. And we were made this way for a reason, and we evolved this way for a reason.

Only God knows the whole picture, but in the years when I believed in God but thought he had turned his head away, I had to keep from wondering how much of a reason he really had. For anything.

God was so far away then. And I was so very alone.

I looked for him. I begged for help and I cried. But the pain went on, the torture went on.

I became mean, bitter. It took years, decades. I became an asshole. I did things nobody will ever know about. Things so shameful they’ve never made it to a post on this site, and they never will. Things I must take with me to the grave until the time comes to account for myself to God.

I fear that day.

I fear very little here on this earth. What can be done to me that has not already been done? Not much.

My family does not understand, but they do try, and I love them all the more for it.

My lady friend knows more about me than anyone else has ever known. She is the one who hates this blog title. But I can’t believe that she knows everything I’ve told her and thinks I’m any better than what I say.

I need to talk to my doctor about my diagnosis. Because things just get worse, and I would normally say at this point, it’s not fair, but of course it isn’t, and everyone who shares my experiences knows that. But God gave us the ability, if we’re willing to use it, to sustain grievous damage, learn from the pain, and adapt, learn and search for more clues that, in the end, might help another in our position. I believe that is why we’re here, able to communicate, reach out, and grab that hand reaching down to pull us up.

Because one day, we’ll be the ones reaching down to pull someone else up. We may never know it if that happens. Sometimes people in trouble don’t have anyone to talk to. Sometimes they come across a blog while looking for something to grab onto. It could be yours. Could be mine.

They may never leave a comment, but perhaps in your words, they’ve gained the strength to get through one more night of loneliness, one more day of pain. Maybe, just maybe, God speaks through you once in a while. Didn’t you ever write something, come back later and not remember writing it, yet you find the words to be moving? Who knows what that’s about?

Sometimes, God might whisper in your ear so that you can help someone. Maybe he even whispers to an asshole like me. I’d like to believe that. Such a thing would make my hell a bit less unbearable. Would make the pain and the memories mean something.

Share what you know. Tell people what you have endured, only to live to tell the tale. You might save a life. That’s why we’re here. Not to kill, make war, or work every day like a robot. I believe that. I believe it in my heart.