Extreme Measures
Sometimes people ask me why I can’t just “get over it,” and I can understand if people voice, or think and do not voice, this opinion when it comes to child abuse sufferers into their adulthood. I don’t hold with excuses for bad behavior. But that’s not quite the same thing.
I was watching William Shatner’s new show, Raw Nerve, the other day, and he had (Judge) Judy Sheindlin on. She was adamant that while abuse may be a reason for the committing of a criminal act, it’s not an excuse. When you hurt someone, you submit yourself for judgment, and abuse is not an excuse if you choose to hurt someone. I believe this just as strongly as she does. No matter what has happened to you, if you pass it on, you are responsible.
That said, complex PTSD is not something that I can just forget about or “get over.” And I don’t want to sound like someone with a chip on my shoulder when I explain that PTSD is like fallout. It’s the consequences of what happened to me. It’s a disability, just as sure as an amputation done to save someone’s life from gangrene, or the sickness from chemotherapy administered to save someone’s life from cancer. PTSD is what’s left from the extreme measures taken by my body to save myself from the abuse I suffered as a very small child.
When I was about three, or four, my father forced me to fondle him, among other things, but my brain and my body were too young to defend me from such a horror. So instinctively, extreme measures kicked in. The red alerts were sounded, the walls were shut down, and my brain insulated me from what was happening. My brain failed to register what was happening in my long-term memory as an entire memory, as the only defense mechanism I had available. Although my instinctual fight-or-flight response kicked in, I was physically unable to fight or flee, so my body shut down, failing to react to what was happening because it had no frame of reference for it. My mind and my body went, well, possum. And then it happened again, and again. The result was heightened fight-or-flight response—as if I can’t turn my internal alarms to off—combined with an absolute inability to flee.
Complex PTSD. The fallout is a heightened sense of threat combined with an inability to actually flee from stress. Most people with PTSD look like they are stone cold sober in the middle of a trauma. That isn’t actually the case. They are fighting combat on the inside. They just can’t move. So they stay in the trench. And later, the shrapnel that they have taken ricochets.
Just like fallout. From extreme measures.
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If anyone wants to know why I don’t just get over it, I say "yeah, I’d like to know as well". Its not as if I ain’t tryin’!Yeah, fallout is a good word. Or, echo. Or… shadow. I full agree with the responsibility thing. I don’t use what happened to me to excuse anything really. Except perhaps… those times when my reactions aren’t so great. When a panic attack hits in a public space. I lost a friend once, because of such a thing… but then, who needs friends like that anyway? Ones that freak out because I’m freaking out in public?Anyway…Thanks for sharing about the stuff with your dad. I don’t think I’ve read that on your blog before and I’m not sure if its because I haven’t read all the way back or not? I’ve never been able to understand what goes so wrong in parents’ hard-wiring that they abuse their own children. It beggars belief.I know too, what you mean about your reactions playing possum. Yeah… I’ve had that one before too.I want you to know I find your explanations of what happens during a PTSD episode to be really helpful, because I haven’t been able to come close to this yet…
Hi, Michelle … I’ve recently discovered your blog … Thanks for being out there and writing with such clarity about matters that are all but impossible to describe. I too experienced severe shock and abuse from very early in life; I’m 49 now and yes … complex PTSD is like nuclear fallout in that it just … doesn’t … go … away. I feel like I’m fighting for my life right now … am waiting for a hospital admission … I wonder how much repair is possible when the damage was done right from birth, if not before … I have always empathized with soldiers who have survived combat … How the hell do you survive and stay sane when you were a "soldier in combat" as an infant?!Bless you
Jaliya
Hi Jaliya, thanks for visiting, and I hope you do get some help, because there are ways to survive. I don’t know if you can ever repair the damage like you can patch up a house, such that it ever looks like "nothing happened," but you CAN find a way to live and grow past these things and become a healthy human being. You might not feel like the strongest tree in the forest but trust me, you will give more shade than you ever thought possible. Please, please hang in there!