Trauma is a confusing experience. It can reside in your body and mind, directing behaviour and grabbing your attention in inexplicable ways. The result is a feeling of constant instability, and sufferers can be at a total loss for why they are acting or feeling as they do.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Riley said, reflecting on her experience with PTSD, “but there was a time when I was so confused about what was going on with me, I almost felt I was being controlled by some other force. Like an alien was inside me and I was just the host. I’d suddenly be overtaken with anxiety and dread, and not know why.
“Understanding now, how PTSD works, I can see that I was being triggered. When something occurred that my subconscious recognised as relating to the trauma, it would interpret that as an imminent threat and trigger fight or flight symptoms in my body.”
Riley had been in hospital a few years back, for a routine diagnostic procedure that went seriously wrong. “I remember being frightened, having the distinct sense that I was fighting for my life. Alarms were sounding from the monitors I was attached to, and the room was suddenly full of doctors and nurses. They were shouting at each other too. I remember thinking, ‘That can’t be good’. They were urging me not to shut my eyes, to stay awake.
“My blood pressure was dropping fast, and I could feel it. I remember also being really surprised to realise that if I wanted to just let go I could, and that if I wanted to survive, I’d have to fight. That was really scary, knowing I was fighting for my life; understanding in that moment how high the stakes were.
“It all happened very fast and to this day I still don’t know what went wrong. No doctor or nurse explained it other than, ‘Your blood pressure dropped’. The message was, I survived intact, no long-term physical damage had occurred and therefore I was fine. I don’t know whether it was for legal reasons, but the episode was very much downplayed. The fact is though, I didn’t come out unscathed”.
Unfortunately, as Riley had chronic health issues she often was in hospitals and doctor’s surgeries. The flight or fight symptoms those environments now triggered, were so frequent they seemed to just become part of who she was. “I was just an anxious person from what I could tell, and I struggled to understand where that anxiety was coming from. Was I just anxious about the chronic illness, I wondered? On the face of it that made sense, but still I felt there was something more to it.”
One day, while watching some videos online about meditation, Riley came across one with a therapist who worked exclusively with PTSD sufferers. The therapist related the story of a patient who had had the great misfortune to have woken up during an operation, able to feel and hear everything that was going on in the operating theatre, but unable to communicate and alert the doctors to the fact.
Listening to this story Riley was reminded of her own traumatic hospital experience which, while not identical, was similar enough to set off a full-blown panic attack. “Hearing that story was a massive trigger. My heart began racing and everything about me was on high alert. It didn’t take long afterwards to put the pieces together and understand my own hospital experience had left me with PTSD.
“It sounds funny, but I’m so glad I had such an extreme reaction to that video. That was the beginning of my getting control back over my life. Recognising my anxiety was a fight or flight response, to an experience I never got the opportunity to process, was liberating”.
Riley began working with a therapist to process the trauma, and reframe it in terms that would empower her. Yes, it was a terrifying event that was out of her control, but when it came time to fight for herself and to survive, she had. “That’s pretty awesome,” Riley said. “I sometimes wonder how things would have been if the hospital staff had acknowledged the gravity of what happened, and then congratulated me for pulling through.”
This knowledge also empowered Riley to handle the triggers, that inevitably still crop up in medical environments, “I just remind myself this is how the brain works to protect us, being alert to associations that signal danger. I take a deep breath and remind myself I’m safe. The danger has passed, and I survived it.”
Jo Murphy
Jo Murphy is a qualified writer, editor and practising visual artist, who exhibits in solo and group exhibitions.
She is a once-upon-a-time economist, who continues to enthusiastically engage with economics and politics, and finds these matters inseparable from how the average person lives their daily life.
Jo is, in fact, endlessly curious about other people's lives, specifically the nitty gritty of the challenges life has thrown at them. How someone found their way out of the dark, and then how they used that experience to go on and flourish, is Jo’s creative grist; stories of emotional growth just never get tired for her.
Jo is a mother to two, almost grown up, children and one youngish Whippet. If she had an instagram account it would most likely be devoted to the Whippet or her fabulous succulent garden.
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