PTSD and healing

I’ve had moments recently where it is or felt a little bit too much. As a family, we are in one of those patches where it feels like the world has piled on.

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Something I am finding is that in these hard patches, when you truly exert yourself or scare yourself, you can forget for a moment how overwhelmed you are.

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This is how I have felt with my recent scrambles around goat trails and explorations of rock cliffs. This is how I have felt grinning ear to ear as I ran down the Seacliff Bridge with my arms spread (I felt like such a crazy woman but had all the endorphins of 2km run under me and was going full pelt downhill - I couldn’t help myself!)

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I need to hold and treasure these moments. I am so grateful for them. I am also so grateful for the people who have reached out to me and offered me their friendship and support through this latest rough patch. I was just saying to someone recently how different this more acute period of PTSD is to the first time this happened.

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In March, I remember feeling so, so alone, and like no one really understood me. That has completely changed and I think it is one of the biggest things that helping me to bounce back more quickly.

I have spoken before about how opening up online has also facilitated greater openness with my real-life support network.

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This time around, that meant I had an open conversation with my psychiatrist and told them that I had come off all of my medicines, in keeping with a longer term view that I have had about medicine for mental health. I am not educated enough on it but I don’t like what I see in some areas with over reliance. The fact is, I don’t know enough about it and so I have held a preconceived view that it is bad and jumped off as soon as I could.

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This was obviously premature, hence the relapse. So I’m now working to better educate myself on the role of medicine in PTSD, along with more holistic therapies.

I have also been able to have more frank conversations with my family and friends, including people I have never spoken to about my mental health.

Even with those who I have spoken before, like my amazing husband, it has meant asking him to read up and learn about PTSD too. Because I feel it will help him better understand me and I feel that it will improve the way in which we communicate with one another - which ultimately supports my healing.

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This past week has been far from Rosie. I don’t want this to be the highlights reel again. But I can’t dwell on the negative’s here. I don’t want this to be that space. This is my safe space - and I want it to stay somewhere that I can come back to and look at and remember all the progress I have made and how truly grateful I am for my life, family, friends and health.