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mental health
More mental health
[3 minute read ]
I have PTSD. I didn't have many of the symptoms I think i have until a psychiatrist told me I have PTSD in 2016. Everyone suffers PTSD in different ways and childhood trauma is much different to trauma experienced as an adult. Think how you might describe every wave in every ocean and you get some understanding that each of us, sane, insane, troubled, smoothly happy, angry or at peace is experiencing life in vastly different ways and at different speeds and volumes too.
Just like believing you have the force 'that can' creates the force 'that can', being told you have a reason to feel a bit less than you feel you should be feeling means that we can easily create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Much of my inability to operate at a level that I feel I should be able to operate at is down to poor sleep patterns and a poor diet. I am old enough and ugly enough to know what makes me tick. Saying I get fatigued in the afternoons is a denial that I am a morning person who is unfit and probably skipped lunch. Of course, there are many people who have real diseases that fatigue them; that is a given but I am not one of them unless I want to say my nervous energy drains me.
the truth of the matter is that I own whatever trauma I experienced. I was handed a poisonous plate and I was compelled to eat from it. That was a series of meals (events) that changed the way I thought and still think. Yet I know this and now everything I do and think is entirely my own doing. I should like to blame evil monsters and psychopaths but at least one of them is dead and another might be by now.
Getting treatment for PTSD is difficult. I argue that because I have had it for so long it is now a psychiatric malady because the dendrites in my head (we all have them) that connect the axions in my brain and allow thoughts to form are so hard-wired that psychology-led treatment has to first destroy those dendrites in order for me to form new ones; in effect I need to be completely rewired. That, i argue means taking medication that shuts down the highest thinking for a time so the dendrites shrivel and die, then or doing that process psychological work can be done of the mundane day to day stuff such as any misanthropy. Usually, conversations with mental health staff gets no further than that. They won't believe me when i tell them that believing something that is not true is no different to seeing something that isn't there. It is all down to perceiving intangible things. The psychiatrists I have seen disagree with me on every point.
So, I am nuts, crazy, and misaligned. That makes me the same as everyone else; the difference is, I don't fantasise about living a life that I planned long ago. That isn't meant to pillory the public. It really is choosing the red pill over the blue pill in the matrix.
Here's how I suspect it works:
'Hmmm. I think I am different to everyone else. I wonder why.' Bingo! the pills are presented. Self examination can only lead to a dual personality state. It can only lead to measured behaviour which isolates an individual from a group if the members of the group act spontaneously. Because they never considered themselves to be different they never had to choose which 'pill' to eat. Watching oneself and comparing oneself to others is the certain course to mental unease, or if you can master it, complete peace and satisfaction.
After years of self-analysis I have concluded that it is my high IQ that separates me from the average person, and not my PTSD. When someone sees in colour and everyone else sees in black and white it is difficult to use the colour of the sky as an example to explain a mystery. Years ago, a friend of mine said, 'I wish I was not so aware'. I knew exactly what he meant and I recognise that he considered his high IQ more as a bane than a boon, just as I sometimes do; but only when I am in the company of others. One lesson I must learn is to keep my mouth shut; hide my light under a bushel, if you will.
Right now, I am deepy troubled that the external examiner plainy failed to perceive the derivation and complexity of a creative writing EMA I recently submitted. That worries me intensely. If they override a tutor's marks I am doomed towards a low degree. Not acheiving my potential because someone else lacks a high IQ will crush me; quite simply because i was held back by a low intelligence psychopath brother who tormented me into self-doubt through public abatement.
When I say I am control of my PTSD, I was fantasising for a bit; any bully can trigger it and any low intelligence authority can destroy me.