Life Lessons From PTSD, & Post-Traumatic Growth.

How did I end up with PTSD ??

For several years, I fought a battle brought on by an invisible enemy. And my captor was my own body.?

I thought I was stronger than the enemy; what’s a virus to a young healthy person anyway ? But then this invisible enemy raids almost every corner of your body, exploits your weaknesses, and leaves you for dead.?

Then the real war starts. You have 3 adverse drug reactions that nearly kill you. You are awake enough to hear the doctor say ‘I don’t know what to do’. You are awake enough to realise that the current hospital doesn’t have the facilities to deal with the situation, and the ambulances are so backed up? that they pump you full of valium and put you in a taxi, alone, to transfer to a higher grade facility. (The London cabbie is the real hero of that story). You are awake enough to understand that the cardiac critical care unit is not where you want to end up.

There are the countless doctors who dismiss you entirely. Then there are the highly empathetic doctors who spend an hour talking to you, but still miss the acute cardiac condition that could kill you, and send you home with no medication or treatment plan.?

You spend nearly a year at risk of sudden cardiac death. Every flight of stairs is accompanied by a fear these might be your last steps. Your oxygen sats are low enough to cause brain damage and place you in ICU, but because the condition is chronic (and because the hospitals are overwhelmed), you’re told to sit it out at home. And that’s what you do, because you can’t walk or talk.?

Then, almost imperceptibly slowly, your body starts healing. You enter into a world of firsts.

The the first time you walk for more than ten minutes. The first time you go to a gym again. The first time you take a flight (and don’t end up being met by an ambulance at Heathrow).

Each of these firsts is both joyous and terrifying in equal measure. You are constantly on high alert for warning signs that things are going south; any pain, any shortness of breath. You are also hyper aware that sudden cardiac death is just that: sudden, so in all likelihood you wouldn’t get any warning signs anyway.?

Then it really hits you; there’s another battle still to come.?

For the last few years, your body has been the least safe place on earth. Even as it becomes a physiologically better home, your mind will dedicate every ounce of its energy to keeping you safe. You exist in a constant state of hypervigilance. There is no off button; there is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, because your very body is the battleground. Sleep is a respite, but it’s peppered with nightmares, or randomly waking up like you’ve been electrocuted but with no memory of the preceding thoughts or dreams.?

One part of you has diligently taken on its role of sentinel and is constantly on guard. You are never fully present, because you must not relinquish watch. You are in what psychologists determine to be a state of dissociation. You feel both everything everywhere, all at once, and nothing at all.?

When you’re in it, you can’t imagine how you can ever get out. It’s such a deep-rooted, self-protective mechanism, that it's inextricable from your core self.?

And then, just as with my physiological recovery, my psychological recovery started shifting slowly, almost imperceptibly. Both recoveries were certainly not linear, rather rolling the dice in a game of snakes and ladders you’d rather not be playing. But day by day, you feel a little less, and you feel a little more.?

What is PTSD ??

Full permission to skip this section and head to the recovery part below!

In my experience, PTSD feels like you are constantly in the wrong gear for the situation you find yourself in. Sometimes you’re all revved up for something totally normal and non-threatening. At other times, you’re stuck in neutral when you need more gas.?

My experience of PTSD was all consuming, yet also eerily quiet. There were no outbursts: I was in a total freeze state. Yet, you could have met me and have had absolutely no idea what my lived reality was. There are still chunks of time from the last few years I feel I barely remember.

For most people, their experience of PTSD is limited to the ‘Hollywood’ depiction of soldiers returning home only to be triggered when a car backfires or a door slams. There’s violence, flashbacks, sweating, an outburst followed my someone crawling up in a ball.?

This is a truthful depiction of PTSD, but it’s only one in a myriad ways of how it can manifest.?

PTSD is more prevalent than you might think. It can occur not only in a life-threatening event, but in any event perceived by the subject to be life-threatening. The nuance is slight but significant. Your car veers into the central reservation but whilst the car is written off, the motorway is empty and you walk away unscathed. In actuality, you didn’t nearly lose your life, but in your subjective experience of it, you did.?

Something about this experience becomes stuck. You may wake up with nightmares where you relive it, or you may end up with no memory of the event whatsoever. You haven’t been able to process what has happened to you, and so you are unable to truly move on. The trauma can show up in your body too; chronic pain, gastric issues, apparently idiopathic conditions are all now well documented as correlating to past traumas.?

The traumatic incident affects our brain, particularly the areas responsible for processing fear, emotion, and memory. As a result, individuals are more susceptible to fear, anxiety, and memory distortions. You can have long stints of being seemingly ‘fine’ only to be triggered again seemingly out of nowhere.?

Our response to trauma is rooted in the fight or flight response. A normative response is characterised by a cycle: trigger, response, returning to baseline. There are varying versions of ‘normal’ responses:?

With PTSD, you live out this same cycle, but you do so over, and over again.?Potentially ad infinitum.

Where am I today ??

The short answer is: forever in awe of the neuroplasticity of our brains! I feel 98% recovered, and in fact ‘normal’ in most situations (whatever normal means!). I still have triggers and when these occur, I can come out in full hives; in essence this is me being allergic to the stress of the situation I am in.?

Any medical setting is deeply triggering. I will avoid any kind of interaction with the medical system that I can. If I need to attend an appointment, it will be on my mind constantly before. I experience acute anxiety at the time too; high blood pressure, sweating, stress rashes.?My teenage obsession with Grey’s Anatomy is also firmly in the past; I can’t watch or read anything about health or hospitals without landing in an anxious spiral; no matter if the condition presenting is from a niche bacteria in a country I’ve never been to - my sentinel can STILL jump into action as if that threat could be facing me...?

But on the flip side, I have had the chance to experience the potential power of post traumatic growth first hand.

On Post-Traumatic Growth?

If you ask me about these experiences, I will honestly say I am truly grateful for them. Like so many, trauma has shaped my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined. From moving continents, to starting a business, to who I spend my time with, and how I spend my time, it has shaped all those decisions and so many more.?

We all know life can be short, but we haven’t all truly felt that. But I would bet that we have all had glimpses of this. The death of a loved one, or a moment at the intersection of joy and awe: slowing down in front of a sunset, speeding up as we traverse a mountain on a perfect bluebird day.?

These moments provide a shift in perspective, and are often accompanied by inspiration or profound realisation. But how few of us are able to actually retain that perspective over time ? We can’t bottle up that perspective and guarantee it will stay with us, but we can harness the questions that these moments bring up for us. And we can ask them of ourselves every so often, and use the answers we are less happy with as a catalyst for change.?Here are a few of those questions:

If you’re interested in exploring these more, reach out to me and I will send you my full list.?

What Helped Me?

My experience was deeply rooted in privilege. Health insurance, resources, loved ones, the ability to work part time, physically safe spaces to reside in. And for that, again, I am grateful. With that acknowledgement, here are some of the things that were integral to my recovery:

• Therapy: both talking, and not talking! After several hundred hours of therapy, there are still events we have not talked about: this is a hot debate in the therapeutic spaces, but it can cause re-trauma to relive events in detail.
• Community: speaking to people with PTSD?helped normalise the experience massively.
• Psychedelics: one for a post in and of itself but I am a huge advocate ! ?
• Time: one of the greatest healers, if we can just be patient along the way.
• Reading: books that helped me understand what was going on, feel less alone, and actually feel inspired to make the most of the situation:? The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk?and What Happened to you by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry. I’d also recommend diving into works by Peter Levine, Gabor Mate and Janina Fisher.?
• Sports! Once I was physically able. In particular surfing, and padel - no doubt topics that will grace LinkedIN soon...

It's been one hell of a journey, and I certainly wouldn't be who I am today without it. So here's an invitation to not leave it until you're faced with a major life event to look at your life, and see what is within your power to change.

And if you know anyone who is struggling, I can’t offer clinical support but I can offer an empathetic ear.?After all, to quote Ram Dass, 'We're all just walking each other home'.