Fighting the Stigma of Mental Illness: Your Language Means More Than You Think It Does

A Clue.

Personally, I don't deal with a lot of stigma around my mental illness. I will explain things the best I can to the sincere, but I just do not have the patience for the willfully ignorant-- and it is intentional dumbness since information about not only mental illness, but the myths and stigma around it is everywhere. However, I have had it long enough, and have known others with it long enough to not only know it exists, but to understand how the smallest seeds, such as everyday misuse of language, grow into the darkest, thorniest, and scariest forests. People suffer.

What It Is Like To Live With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

The following is a compilation of notes and posts I made while in various states of mind. Therefore references to time shouldn't be read as if this was written in a single day.

Occasionally, I read what other people have to say about living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I love them all, I do- every one of those strangers. I don't know that I can describe it myself because I don't know if people can imagine being both betrayed and so aggressively protected by their own brain.

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PTSD is a demon that hurts me or snuggles me depending on too many factors to list. While we are snuggling, I have the opportunity to explain some lovely features, because it gets kicked around so much, and it deserves it, the demon, but sometimes it's not all that bad. You see, in an emergency situation, having someone with PTSD in your corner is almost always a good thing. Our brains idle so high when there is nothing going on, that when circumstances rise to the level we are already on, it actually calms us down. I suppose I could say it like this: I'm good in an emergency because I am always ready for it and when that rush of adrenaline and other chemicals throws someone else into shock, I'm still good because that state of being and me-- we're old pals.

Of course, the bad part in all of this is idling high all the time taxes my system (heart, lungs, digestive, immune, etc.), but we're not going down that road today. Today we're snuggling, after a 6 day full-on assault. For 6 days, me and my demon have kicked the living shit out of each other. Now, we are exhausted. We are wayyyy too tired to fight anymore. So, we give in to each other. We snuggle, and the demon throws a veil over me, and suddenly, the circumstances hurting me take on such a surreal feeling (dissociation). So while I am good taking care of my son, and I know he is real, and I'm not a danger to myself or anyone else, I feel a slight high, and the hardest conversation I have ever had, with my mom yesterday, doesn't feel real. My demon and I exchange acknowledgment when I say don't mind me for a while. I'm in an episode.