PTSD Workbook Fun

I've spent the last couple of months making my way through two workbooks on rape and PTSD. There are a lot of suggested journaling activities, but I don't exactly feel comfortable responding in writing in a book that would be accessible to other people. So, I'm going to attempt some of them here in relative anonymity. It should go without saying, but blanket trigger warning for any stranger who happens along this sporadically updated blog. Here goes...


Who raped you? 
Two adult men whom I do not know.

How old were you when the rape happened? 
I was 13.

Where did the rape happen?
On a garage floor about three blocks from my mother's house. Near the library.

Were other people around? 
Not that I am aware of.

Did anyone else witness the rape?
Just the two men.

If you knew your rapist(s), how were you acquainted with him/them? 
I do not know who they are; presumably they are/were neighbors.

When you look back in hindsight, do you see any warning signs of a controlling or abusive personality in the rapist?
No, since I didn't know them.

Create a map of your rape by connecting the way he used his body in relation to yours
My Body

• Mouth - 3, 2, 
• Hands - 2, 
• Fingers
• Thighs - 1, 2, 3, 4
• Anus
• Neck - 2, 3, 4, 7
• Vagina - 1, 2, 3, 6, 7
• Breasts - 1, 2, 3

His Body

1. Mouth
2. Hands
3. Fingers
4. Thighs
5. Anus
6. Penis
7. Objects

What emotions are you feeling as you are doing this work?
Numb

What is your body doing right now because of this work?
Shaking hands, metallic taste in mouth, urge to fiddle with my knife or run my fingers over my scars.

What sounds do you remember hearing during the rape?
My heart pounding in my ears, a few cars driving by, the smacking sound.

What did he/they say during or after the rape?
"If you scream, we will kill you."

"Let's have some fun" in regards to a baseball bat that they used to rape me after they had finished themselves.

After it was all over one said, "If you breathe a word of this to anyone we will find you and do this again. We know where you live and that your friend lives in the house behind yours. Tell anyone and we'll do it to her too."

What do you remember doing after the rape? How did you act? What did you feel at first?
I sprinted the rest of the way home, ran up to my room, locked every door behind me, then showered for what I remember as a very long time. The water was cold when I eventually got out. I sat in the corner of the bathroom on the floor for a while. But, I made sure it looked like I was asleep when my mother got home from the bar so she wouldn't suspect anything was wrong. The next day I left for the bus at my normal time, waited behind the detached garage until I saw my mother's car leave, then went back in the house. After the excruciating pain of sitting down died down, I didn't feel anything for a long time.

When do I most often think about my rape? Try to recall whether there are times of day or night, or times of year, when your thoughts and feelings come to you. 
I always think about it around the anniversary of when it happened. Certain things can trigger thoughts about it (see the next question). Every time I have sex, it is always at the front of my mind. Any time I'm in a restaurant, I try to sit with my back to the wall and facing the doors so that I can see if they are there. Walking through parking lots and neighborhoods always makes me think of it too. Every single night, it is what I think about until I fall asleep, and it is what I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night.

What times, days, sounds, songs, smells, or other sensations trigger your memories?
Any sort of sexual sensation, baseball bats, cold concrete, the phrase "good girl".

What parts of life have I missed out on because of this avoidance?
I've never truly enjoyed any sexual encounter I've had, wanted, initiated, or otherwise. I spent a long time wearing layers of clothes to conceal numerous cuts and scars.

What are some of the ways I suppress my memories and feelings?
Self-injury, pot, bourbon, reading, crocheting, and video games.

How has my life been impacted by having to keep my story inside?
It's quarter past one in the morning during winter break, and I'm responding to a writing prompt from a PTSD workbook instead of enjoying my time off. That should be enough for now.

Why do I feel exponentially more anxious when I do the "right thing" and reach out to people I trust about my currently concerning state of mind? Literally, every therapist I've seen, book I've read, and website I've explored has said the same damn thing. And yet, I feel more anxious. Anxious that the wrong person will find out, anxious that I'll be judged again, anxious that I'll be pressured into doing something I will regret or am hesitant about, anxious that I'll be told what I'm doing to keep myself alive is harming me. Don't I already have enough to be anxious about as it is? 

There are week's like this one when I think it would be easier if I just decided I was done. Which is about where I am right now. Why bother when the last twelve years have been spent experiencing the same event over and over, and the next twelve years don't sound much more promising?

Perpetual Circles

As usual, it's been quite a while since I have updated this blog. And, as usual, I come back to it because things have swung back to the bad side. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to pinpoint where exactly all the anxiety, sadness, and such is stemming from. Work isn't any more stressful than it usually is around this time of year and nothing really notable has occurred to trigger this. I think sometimes these nightmares just get so intense that they cease to merely impact my nights and begin to bleed into my days.

What's probably worse is that Andrew is really busy and stressed about balancing all of his classes as a student, his course as a professor, and his tutoring job and campus job (duh, that's a lot). I don't want to be another thing on his plate that he will inevitably stress over. That would be just too much. So, I haven't told him how I've been feeling and what's been happening because of it. Which I then feel guilty about every time it happens. I'm sure, with time, things will swing back around to the good side like they normally do. Unfortunately, it just doesn't feel like that at all right now. It's all I can do to convince myself to crawl out from under the covers in the morning...let alone go to work and teach all of my students while pretending nothing at all is wrong. Fortunately, fifth graders are super energetic kids, and they tend to quickly get my mind on things other than my problems and worries. Anyway, Andrew's family is coming this weekend and grades for progress reports are due tomorrow. I should probably get going on something more productive than a blog that no one actually reads. 

Sleep.

I would venture to say that at least 4/7 nights a week I get fewer than 3 hours of sleep. I would also venture to say that I, on average, score roughly 30 hours of sleep per week. How do I function? I truly have no idea, as this is just how it's always (well, at least for the last 11 years) been. This lack of sleep is due boils down to two factors: 

1. The nightmares. Actually, I think they can be classified as night terrors. A few excerpts from the Wikipedia page for night terrors for reference: 

·      A night terror, sleep terror or pavor nocturnus is a parasomnia or sleep disorder, causing feelings of terror or dread, and typically occurs during the first hours of stage 3-4 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.

·      Sleep terrors begin between ages 3 and 12 years and then usually dissipate during adolescence. In adults, they most commonly occur between the ages of 20 to 30.

·      Though the frequency and severity vary between individuals, the episodes can occur in intervals of days or weeks, but can also occur over consecutive nights or multiple times in one night.

·      The universal feature of night terrors is inconsolability. During night terror bouts, patients are usually described as "bolting upright" with their eyes wide open and a look of fear and panic on their face. They will often scream. Furthermore, they will usually sweat, exhibit rapid respiration, and have a rapid heart rate (autonomic signs).

·      In some cases, individuals are likely to have even more elaborate motor activity, such as a thrashing of limbs—which may include punching, swinging, or fleeing motions. There is a sense that the individual is trying to protect himself and/or escape from a possible threat which threatens bodily injury.

·      The DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for sleep terror disorder requires:

o   Recurrent periods where the individual abruptly wakes from sleeping with a scream

o   The individual experiences intense fear and symptoms of autonomic arousal such as increased heart rate, heavy breathing, and increased perspiration

o   The individual cannot be soothed or comforted during the episode

o   The individual is unable to remember details of the dream or details of the episode

o   The occurrence of the sleep terror episode causes clinically significant distress or impairment in the individual's functioning

I experience all but one of the details listed above. The only 'symptom' I 'lack' is "the individual is unable to remember details of the dream or details of the episode". I remember everything, every time. I can always feel his knee on my throat and his hand on my wrists, even after I wake up. This is also unfortunate for Andrew, as he is the recipient of any "thrashing of limbs...punching, swinging, or fleeing motions" that result from these experiences. Also, sudden and random screaming, which I can imagine are a bit unsettling to wake up to so abruptly. Though, he reports the screaming is fairly infrequent. More often than not, these 'terrors' happen more than once over the course of one night. Once one occurs, it becomes infinitely more difficult to calm down enough to even begin convincing myself that it's okay to try and fall back asleep again. I do, however, count the time that I am experiencing these as time I am "sleeping".

2. I simply can't convince myself to fall asleep. I know what's more than likely going to happen when I do fall asleep, so I begin to panic before I've even fallen asleep. I think this goes along with the typical symptoms of PTSD, all of which I experience on a weekly (if not daily) basis: 

·      Exposure to a stressful event or situation (either short or long lasting) of exceptionally threatening or catastrophic nature, which is likely to cause pervasive distress in almost anyone.

·      Persistent remembering or "reliving" the stressor by intrusive flash backs, vivid memories, recurring dreams, or by experiencing distress when exposed to circumstances resembling or associated with the stressor.

·      Actual or preferred avoidance of circumstances resembling or associated with the stressor (not present before exposure to the stressor).

·      Inability to recall, either partially or completely, some important aspects of the period of exposure to the stressor.

·      Persistent symptoms of increased psychological sensitivity (not present before exposure to the stressor) shown by any two of the following:

o   Difficulty in falling or staying asleep

o   Irritability

o   Outbursts of anger

o   Difficulty in concentrating

o   Hyper-vigilance

o   Exaggerated startle response.  

At this point I'm just too overwhelmed to figure out where to start fixing everything. The various avenues I've gone down in an attempt to fix things have all failed. Numerous people have suggested another round of therapy might do the trick (third time's the charm? really?), but I have my doubts and my truckloads of inhibitions. Additionally, things like yoga, general exercise, meditation, hot tea, music, a book, writing, video games, a shower/bath, etc. have also not helped. I'm always open to more suggestions...not that anyone regularly reads this thing. Yeah, considering that last bit, I should probably just go lay in bed and try to sleep. I guess I'll end with two of my favorite (since they're relevant) quotes from the ever-apt House of Leaves: 

“This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish [the book] and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how. You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place

...

You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.

Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.

And then the nightmares will begin.”

"I still get nightmares. In fact I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares. For a while there I tried every pill imaginable. Anything to curb the fear. Excedrin PMs, Melatonin, L-tryptophan, Valium, Vicodin, quite a few member of the barbatal family. A pretty extensive list, frequently mixed, often matched, with shots of bourbon, a few lung rasping bong hits, sometimes even the vaporous confidence-trip of cocaine. None of it helped. I think it's pretty safe to assume there's no lab sophisticated enough yet to synthesize the kind of chemicals I need. A Nobel Prize to the one who invents that puppy. I'm so tired. Sleep's been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. Sadly though, I'm not looking forward to the prospect. I say "sadly" because there was a time when I actually enjoyed sleeping. In fact I slept all the time."

-Johnny Truant, House of Leaves

I both love and hate living in a new city.

A new city allows one to reset to anonymous; there's no chance of running into someone I know. For me, this is both a wonderful thing and a scary thing. While there is essentially a zero percent chance of running into one of them, there is also no one here (except Andrew) when I find myself slipping back. And while I know I can always talk to Andrew, there's a limit to how much I feel I should burden him with. For awhile after we moved up here things got better. I was sleeping more and having fewer panic attacks. For whatever reason, that has started to reverse. I can't figure out why, and I think that's what bothers me the most. I'm not sleeping, and when I do sleep it's horrendous. 

I thought everything would be better when I moved away from them. It scares me that I feel like this again. If moving 300+ miles away from everyone and everything I've known isn't enough to change things, I can't imagine what will. And if things aren't going to, can't, change I don't know how much longer I can handle it. It's a little like how Green wrote in Will Greyson, Will Greyson: "When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is still there. The floor is always there. Until it's not." I look for that goddamned floor every morning. 

Unfortunately, most of the times, it feels as though the floor isn't there. And if it is, it is certainly spinning wildly out of control. Which is appropriate, since "out of control" is the overall feeling of my life right now. Sometimes it doesn't even feel real. But I know, if you can bleed, you can see it and feel it, then you know you're alive. It's irrefutable, undeniable proof. Sometimes I just need a little reminder. Mostly it makes me stop remembering. 

The Pelican Poems [M.Z.D.]

We hold our dreams
   in lost dreams
and tear our hearts out
   over chance.

     "She carried the songs
       of  centuries"

and in her passing
my madness
passed.

          -For the waitress at Cafe
           Wilanowska. Warsaw. July 7, 1988




One forgets
that one is one.

I must try
to

remember this.

          - [illegible] Warsaw.
           July 9, 1988



With forgetful ease 
the forgotton tease
of shapeless days
pass by
   and I feel them hesitate
sometimes
   and whisper their concordance
of slight gestures in glass.

They are mine
   and drift still with the irregularity
of wine and doors
   in constructed mythologies
   of evening reflections
long since gone by?

          -For Johanna in Rome.
           August 14, 1988



Heavy, heavy blues
are absinthe for me
tonight.

   "It's the notes
and the black and white photographs
with tattered edges
that go together so well
--Don't you think so?--
with brass."

     "You're lost."
     "I know."
     "Again."
     "Again."

          -For Spiros and Tatiana                                              Greece. August 23, 1988



The ruminations are mine,
   let
      the world
         be yours.

          -For no one.
           Olympia. August 31, 1988