Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Written By: Untreatable

PTSD is basically the nightmare that refuses to go away. A single event or a series event is always in the back of your brain waiting to attack. A trigger as small as a smell can send off a mini movie which is capable of tearing your soul apart. Flashbacks with so much power that they send you right back to the moment that the event took place. PTSD is a monster that can appear and take over at any time it please.

Flashbacks are the worst part of PTSD and a lot of people turn to illegal substances to keep these mini movies at bay. The soldiers of the Vietnam war did not come back to this side of the ocean because they enjoyed the high but they were trying to keep Vietnam in Vietnam.

You could be having an absolutely great day then you run into a trigger which suddenly sends you right back to one of the worst moments of your life and there is nothing that you can do to alter the movie that is running through your brain. I am thirty four years old, five foot nine and a shade under two hundred pounds but once a specific flashback hits I am quickly reduced to that of a very small child who is completely powerless over the situation. No warnings or indicators just the same nightmare that refuses to go away.

It is not all based off of physical events as a number of people with PTSD were never hurt at least not physically. An event from my life would be the simple event of going to sleep. I go through my bedtime routine and turn out my light then on days when I am not so fortunate my fathers voice rips through my brain "You are absolutely useless and I should do you a favor and kill you in your sleep" which snaps me wide awake. Needless to say I take a lot of medication at night that basically stops my brain from thinking and to keep the flashbacks at bay.

PTSD is treatable and the key to recovery like most mental illnesses is to catch it as early as possible. Therapy for PTSD is to help the person work through the event or events that the disorder stems from and to recognize and reduce the triggers to hopefully take some of the power back. The number of people with PTSD has exploded just like it always does after every military conflict and unfortunately the suicide rate is going to climb as well for a number of soldiers are going to realize the war has followed them home. Take care.

**This article was contributed by fellow blogger, Untreatable of Untreatable's Blog - Borderline Personality Self Harm Depression.

Please give his blog a visit as it contains a lot of useful information and insight.

Guest Blogger - Untreatable

Hello everyone.

I have asked Untreatable, author of "Untreatable's Blog - Borderline Personality Self Harm Depression" to guest post here on Dirty Little Secret.

He has a wealth of information about mental health and all that it entails. I asked him to do this in the hopes that someone will read what he has to say, and will use that information to help themselves.

The biggest hurdle in getting help is being informed and learning all you can.

Untreatable is a wonderful person and I know you'll find the information he posts to be interesting and useful.

Thank you Untreatable, for accepting my invitation!

Summer quickly approaches... and reminds me of swimming

**Just to anyone who might find this a little disturbing to read, it contains a little more graphic information than some may care to read.. so please, just read with caution or stop reading where I have placed an asterik. Thanks.

I'm looking forward to summer.. and then I'm not. It has been kind of going back and forth.

See.. I work at a school and I have two school aged children. And while I love my job, love my children, and love being able to be available to them (since I work there)... summer is a bit different.

As any mom or dad could probably relate... summer is a time that goes WAY too fast for kids and seems to drag on and on for parents. If past summers prove anything, it is that by day 3 of summer break, my children will be belly aching and complaining that they are *BORED* and that there isn't *anything* to **DO**.

When I was growing up, I don't remember much of the summer months - especially when I was younger. I remember it being hotter than hell outside and I also remember my mom yelling, "In or out!" almost constantly (can't say that I blame her).

Just up the street from where I spent most of my childhood, there was a "pool club". To this day, I don't know the correct term for it... but it was a neighborhood thing that you had to pay an annual dues to and had to live in this certain area. Other than that, I don't know what the hell to call it.

Anyway... I remember spending MORE than a few days at that pool. It was almost exactly 1/4 mile up the road and I was in charge of my younger siblings. I was responsible for making sure they had sunscreen, towels, pop money and most importantly, I was responsible for getting everyone home - on time.

I was the eldest of three, with my brother 3 years younger and my sister 3 years younger than him. My sister really wasn't a problem.... but now my brother. Ugh.

See, we had to walk that 1/4 mile to the pool and back (daily) and since the pool didn't open until 12:30, it wasn't exactly the coolest time of day to make a trek and especially when you were carrying a load of crap with you.

Most times, my sister would pull herself reluctantly from the pool when I told her it was time to go.. but now my brother on the other hand.. he'd take great joy in seeing me 'lose' it. I would start to yell, then I would start to screech and walk up and down the length of the pool pleading, begging him to come out.

I knew what was waiting if I didn't get all of us home in time. I would get blamed and in turn - beat. That's just the way it was. I guess I was supposed to be able to force my younger siblings into doing whatever I said because.. well... just because.

My brother didn't care - it wasn't his skin on the line.

There was one day in particular that it was really bad. We wound up being almost a 1/2 hour late coming home and I was close to hysteria by the time our house was maybe a 1/2 block away.

My dad was home early.

It didn't matter that it wasn't me keeping us from getting there on time... and it certainly didn't matter that I was near hysterics by the time we walked through the front door.

What did matter... is that I was in charge and once again... I failed.

*

My 'punishment' was getting whacked across the backs of my thighs with the wire end of a fly swatter. He held on to the floppy plastic part and beat the hide off the back of my legs with the metal part. I made the mistake of sticking my hands back there because it hurt SO freaking bad... and he didn't care. He kept going, smacking thighs, fingers and arms.

Have you ever been in so much pain that you literally, couldn't breathe? That is exactly how I felt. I remember the exact spot I was standing, I remember that I was screaming bloody murder, which seemed to fuel him on.

I wound up with black fingernails and bloody welts across the backs of both legs. I had gone upstairs, peeled off my swimsuit and got into underwear, shorts, and a teeshirt. Later that night, I had soak in a tub of water to get my shorts off, because they were stuck to me because of my oozing welts.

I still have a very hard time NOT hating him for that!

We didn't go to the pool again for over a week, needless to say.

After all, how could I explain bloody welts and black nails - he was a hard working guy with well mannered kids after all... who would believe us....?

Where I've been

Thanks to all for their concern and thoughts. I do miss everyone!! I hope I'm back soon and that my doctors can actually, I don't know... do something or give me some idea when I'll feel anything like normal again.

Peace---

My biggest fear

I think my single biggest fear, is screwing up the lives of my children.

I worry almost constantly about this, because I know the mistakes I've made already and they scare me.

I'm a big time yeller. They are both to the age where the hormones are starting to kick up and the "I'm not listening" bug has infected them both. I'm having a very hard time sometimes, not yelling in order to be heard or to get them to just listen to me.

I've been told by several people that "yelling does no good" - but they fail to offer me any other alternative. Honestly, there are times within the past year or so, that I feel I'm a horrible parent. My son has ADHD and my daughter is a drama queen. When I say that, I don't say it with a hurtful tone at all.. it's just a fact.

Regardless - the cycle I've noticed myself in is: I tell my kids to do something and they ignore me. I ask again, they ignore me again. I wind up yelling, they wind up back talking, I wind up yelling even MORE, and then they finally do what I've asked them to do in the first place.

I'm really feeling like a nag who can't talk in a normal tone of voice.

One day the kids were fighting amongst themselves ALL day. I'd finally hit my breaking point, so instead of my usual screaming at them to STOP IT - I gave them each a sheet of notebook paper and a pencil. I sat them both down at the dining room table and told them they had to write one nice thing about everyone in our family and then write one thing they wished that person would change about themselves. They had to do this for each other, myself and my husband and lastly, themselves.

What my daughter wrote, struck me:

Mom - Mom fixes me food. I wish she'd quit yelling.

I thought... wow. The one nice thing about me is I fix food? I wasn't sure what to think about that..... anyway, here's what she wrote about her brother:

Brother - He makes me laugh, but I wish he'd stop yelling at mom.


Now, the last thing on this earth that I want to do, is produce a childhood that leaves my children broken individuals. I realize a lot of their behavior comes with the age, etc.... but I just wish sometimes that I knew how to cope better. I didn't have a very good model and I sure as hell don't want to go down that road. My mom also, yelled a lot. My dad beat, my mom yelled. I don't want to be like either of them.

I've tried making reward charts for doing what you're asked the first time, completing chores, etc... I've tried paying for helping out around the house.... I've tried the, "wait till your father gets home" bit.. which by the way, I particularly hate because I remember that causing me major unrest when I was a kid.

Seeing certain patterns surface from my own upbringing, makes me scared of what I'm capable of. Let me clarify - I sometimes get so upset that my children aren't listening to me that I can actually feel the anger swell inside of me. My scalp will tingle and I'm betting that if I had a blood pressure cuff on my arm at that moment, my BP would be through the roof. That scares the hell out of me. It's normally then, that I have to distance myself and go to my bedroom and take five. It still doesn't change the fact, that I feel so much anger.... that's what I want to get a hold on....

I don't ever remember being told that I was loved as a child, by either of them - and I know it hasn't happened since I've been an adult, either.

At least my children will grow up knowing that their father and I loved them dearly.

My failure at confrontation

I've noticed that as I become older, I'm a little better at confrontation than I used to be.

That is to say, that I will now confront someone when I have no other choice.

I wasn't allowed to have an opinion.. or if I did.. I should keep that to myself because nobody cared.

You did as you were told - period. There was no conversation and if you attempted anything resembling one, you paid dearly. I learned a LONG time ago, to keep my yap shut.

So as I grew up I went along with whatever anyone said because I didn't want to make waves. I was constantly on the look out for anything that would rock the boat. It was better to just be invisible and fade into the background than it was to speak up and take the chance of someone knocking the hell out of you because they didn't agree.

Somewhere along the line, I put *silence + obedience = love*.

I still have a hard time really voicing anything that may cause a rift. A lot of times, I internalize things and I feel the resentment building inside of me. It's with friends, other family and some coworkers.

It's something I am actively working on...

The Inaction of Others

Anyone who has been in the same shoes I was in as a kid, has to at some point in their lives, wonder why so many people knew what they were being subjected to - but chose to do nothing.

The fact that not only did family members know, they often times witnessed a lot of what happened to myself and my younger siblings.

Other people would comment on how well "behaved" we were. Little did they know, we were in genuine fear for our lives. I don't know for sure if my dad would've gotten to that point, but when a person is raging on a small child, who the hell knows what could happen. We see this a LOT today. A three year old dies at the hands of his step dad - a little baby died because he was shaken to death.

I sincerely believe that if someone would have tried to help us kids, my dad would have THEN gotten the help he so desperately needed. I really have to believe that my father was repeating the same discipline principles on us, that were used on him as a kid. I also believe his own demons from the military haunted him and probably still do. As far as I know, he's never received help for either of these things.

There was an instance where my best friend from high school witnessed my father beating the living hell out of me and it was then that I started to wonder if what happened in my house, didn't happen everywhere. I came to this conclusion after the total fear and shock on her face after the fact.

There was no food or beverage allowed in our rooms - and as a mother myself - I can totally understand why. Kids' rooms get messy enough without the added 'gross' of having dead food left in a room or dirty dishes for that matter.

Anyway.. my best friend came over one day after school and she had stopped and gotten herself a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's. I let her in and we went to my room.

She got out her food and ate it all, then proceeded to go into the hall bathroom and throw her bag with the trash inside, away in the trashcan.

It was shortly after that, I heard thumping up the stairs and my heart stopped. I knew what was coming and my friend sat there, oblivious to what was about to transpire.

My door was kicked off its hinges and my dad is sceaming that he "smells french fries!" and "goddamnit, there had better not be ANY food in this goddamned room!" He was weilding a razor strap and was storming around my room, dumping over my stereo, pulled my mattress off my box springs and then got in my face. My friend stood up like a bolt when the door came flying in, and stood with her back pressed against the wall with a 'what the hell!' look on her face followed by a look of flat fear.

I told him through tears that the food wasn't mine, that it was *****'* and that she'd finished and had thrown the trash into the trashcan in the bathroom. He wheeled around to her and then started yelling at her, asking her what she had eaten. She was so terrified.. she was rattling off the contents of her lunch, her voice shaking, very close to tears.

I wasn't crying for any other reason than I was so humiliated.. seeing my friend over my dad's shoulder as he sprayed spittle onto my face... his nose pressed against mine. His eyes bloodshot and his veins popping out....

He then threw me onto my box springs and proceeded to whip me with that razor strap. I actually fought him on this occasion, not so much that I cared (sad as that is to say) that he was beating me, but that he was doing it in front of one of my friends. My best friend, in fact. I kept trying to flip over onto my back, so I could get up and run, but he was too strong and it didn't take long for me to realize that I was only making it worse.. so I just laid there and let him beat me.

After it was over, I was bawling like a loon, my friend was crying and he just left the room. He went back downstairs to finish watching television.

....

My friend wanted me to pack my things and leave.. that this "isn't right!" But how could I leave? My brother and sister were there and what would happen to them? She wound up going home and she told her parents. While they were appalled... they did nothing.

It seems we've come to a point in our society where any child discipline is reported and to that effect, we have children running households instead of parents. I don't believe that children shouldn't be disciplined.. but beat? No.

It's just too bad that true abuse isn't acted upon and the regular upbringing of children by responsible parents, is.

I really let my son have it at the grocery store one time because he started whining about wanting some candy and wouldn't stop. I got in his face and said in a forced whisper, "If you don't knock it off, you will be sorry" and just gave him that "look". Some lady gave me the evil eye of disgust because I reprimanded my then 7 year old and wasn't going to give in to him. To bad that lady wasn't around when we were getting our bones broken.. she'da had a freakin' HEYDAY.

What I did that day was wrong, I don't deny that. I knew the rules and while my friend didn't live there, I did and so did my parents. Their house, their rules. I would have even taken a regular spanking or grounding. But not that. That went down wrong and unfortunately, there were many more times like this where the punishment went above and beyond anything that any child should have to endure.

Hey.. I was a kid and kids fuck up. As a parent, I make mistakes and yes, my kids can be butts as well.... but a little perspective is needed sometimes and if that takes a person stepping in to say, "Hey.. what the hell do you think you're doing?!", then so be it.

Trouble is, that line seems to have gotten blurred.