Processing mental trauma is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life. Be kind to people who have been through hell and back and experienced life altering events that their brains are simply not equipped to handle. Everyone processes trauma differently. Lower your gd expectations of them so they can heal. That’s how you can help. You wouldn’t ask someone in a wheel chair to get up on a ladder and build a house. Same goes for mental trauma. Just because you can’t see what goes on in my head 24 hours a day does not mean I’m fine and capable of doing all the things I did prior to the trauma. Every day I struggle with panic attacks. Every day a mere thought or replay of the traumatic event can trigger a panic attack. And they feel like death. Every one of them feels like death. The battle going on inside my mind is real and it is exhausting and as confusing to me as it is to anyone else who is close to me. I have an over active fight or flight thing going on constantly right now. It’s why I forgive those of you who choose not to understand. Its why I have to shut down any negative and thoughtless responses directed at me right now. It’s why I have a new understanding towards others who have also experienced trauma. If only you could bandage it up and take a pill and all is better. Not how it works. Talking about it does. Time does. Encouragement and support does. Therapy does. And it’s why I have thanked those of you who have gone out of your way to send me messages and called me…just to see how I’m doing. Just to let me know you care. It does help. It does quiet the voices telling me I am weak and not strong enough to get through this. I have never had so many things thrown in my lap to deal with WHILE dealing with this trauma so ya…makes it a little hard to get back to good and just slows down the process.
I’m not ashamed to admit I need help. We all do in different moments in our lives and some of those moments are going to kick your ass. Out of everything I’ve ever had to deal with…this has been the worst. This knocked me down so hard. But this also opened my eyes to things I never considered before. I choose to focus on the newly found empathy I feel. I make a choice daily to not fight this but to cradle this…understand it…take more time to think before I react. This can only benefit me in the future. I’m learning some amazing life skills and a better way to be through all I have experienced. I am determined to take these wrongs and loss I feel and turn them into something I have gained from. I have the choice of how this will go even though at moments it feels beyond my control. I have new tools in my tool box and I am using them.
You Had To Be There… 