Sometimes we forget the mental hazards

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Justsomeguy

New member
Joined
Jul 23, 2020
Messages
7
Reason
DX FIBRO
Diagnosis
11/2019
Country
CA
The last few days I have been on a mental lock down and I do not mean put away in a care center. My struggle has been my mental tolerance to the abuse that I have received over the years of my life. It is slightly challenging to explain this deviously crippling tyrant, in saying that I will do my best.

In all of our lives we make certain choices that affect the people we seemingly become, the constant uncertainty of left, right, up or through.
I am confident in saying that sometimes our brain may have a difference in opinion depending on the severity or traumatic size of the presented obstacles. With that being said I hope that I may raise curiosity in which direction I am leading this short and most like boring thought process followed by an extremely vivid painting of one experience I have had. I will be explaining my moment in an emotional detail so it may be upsetting to read.

Since I have gone through this chronic pain for the majority of my life with no knowledge of cause and no solution present, my mind has seemed to divert most of its use to mentally locking doors. It became so efficient at creating these locked doors that I began to experience moments in life disappear, childhood memories did not ever seem to happen, all those moments of trauma just disappeared. Pretty awesome to wipe all the suffering from your life right? For years I never really gave mind to the lapse in my now nonexistent memories, and over time I came across the reason for this sudden disappearance of my life...... safety. My brain had decided that it was in an overloaded shock and it needed to preserve its own existence, so with out my consent it just started shutting down and hiding all this trauma I have experienced. Now the down side, I now have a reasonable solution to my years of chronic pain and it seems my brain has made another undiscussed decision that is affecting me in an absolutely horrific way. My memories are coming back. At first it was the odd little blip, little things like a joke I remember someone saying, the name of a store I went to, even my favour colour when I was 13....it was orange. But as time went on the memories became nightmares that I experience when I was awake. I will share one of those traumatic memories that came rushing back into my world. I share this one as it was one of my most undesirable memories.

I was 16 and out on my own, working and attempting school, completely unsuccessful at managing both I made the apparently clear choice to a 16 year old male. So I became a full time employee for a concrete company, paid bills, rent, so forth and so on. I was extremely lucky in the house I rented as it was from the nicest most genuine elderly couple I have ever known and they had such high hopes for the likes of me and to this day I do not know why. An added bonus to this house I lived in was this elderly couple literally lived right next door, they always made a point to say hi and ask about my day and over time they even invited me for supper on regular intervals. I am sure you could tell I became very fond of these people and with the trauma I had already been through, these individuals where my beacon to improve my standing. Now for the part that caused me to have a mental breakdown when this memory came back.

It was roughly a week after my birthday and I was mowing the lawn, my amazing neighbor was outside tending to his antiquity collection of tractors and other farm equipment, we exchanged friendly neighbourly waves and continued our work. I made one pass around the backside of the house not even 5 minutes of being out of sight, and when I came around the house all I could see was my neighbor trapped under one of his tractors. In panic I rushed over to help him....there was nothing I could do, I wasn’t strong enough to lift the tractor, I screamed and screamed for help but it was like everyone had gone somewhere that day, not even his wife was home. I screamed and cried and I remember saying “ I am so sorry” over and over again. I had to sit beside him and helplessly watch him slowly crush and suffocate. I lost track of time and I just sat there staring at him, and when someone final came around to see me and this lifeless soul, it was his family. I remember that day as if it was yesterday, I don’t recall when that memory was blinked out of existence but I sure do remember when it came back into my life.

So now that I have shown my brains ability to make this chronic pain worse by adding this constantly intrusive flood of emotionally crippling events, I feel as though it is misfiring as well. I have had to go over what I have wrote countless times and in doing so I have found an abundance of words randomly mixed into sentences. This has been my challenge the last few days, hold fast to the pain, create predictable outcomes from absolute random events, and find a way to semi-function.

I apologize if what I shared is inappropriate or offends, but I have no other release at this time from my own self-destruction and it is oddly relieving to write my thoughts and moments of strife and to have such a vast number of individuals that may share similar experiences and share the same weighted uphill struggle with both physical and mental ailments.


“ sometimes just saying you are hurt
Is enough to bring ease “

Sincerely
Stillholding
 
I apologize for the other name on my post, I have another support group that I am apart of
But I assure all that take the time to read this post, these are my words from my story.
 
HI justsomegu

Believe it or not, I can relate to what you are saying.
I have had some seriously traumatic events in my life. Although I understand how the brain can create those locked rooms and put everything in them, for some reason mine never did. I remember everything and always have, except for one specific incident that I remembered many years later, and am not entirely sure is true, to be honest. But everything else I remembered over all the years is plenty!

And the experience you describe is horrific. I believe sincerely that these traumatic things if they were severe enough have contributed greatly to the condition we find ourselves in now. They have caused repeated high stress on our minds and bodies and have contributed to the development of our current physical manifestations. This is true for many, many people. some develop heart disease. some mental illness, some fibro or other disorders. Some more than one thing at a time. I have struggled with depression and anxiety all my life. Yes, when I was a child as well.

The bad thing is we cannot scrub these traumas from our lives. And as terrible as it is to remember them, that process is actually probably a good thing. It's like having an infection deep under your skin that is leaking poison out into your bloodstream. If you can bring it to the surface and drain it, you will be more healthy. Having them repressed is like the deep infection. Bringing them to light is no fun but in the long run it may help you.

Or it may not. Who knows. We have to wait and see. For me, I am haunted on a daily basis by the things that I have seen and done and have been done to me. I cannot ever escape these memories and images, and a movie of them starts running on loop the moment I wake up every morning. I have to use a lot of techniques to distract myself from that every day.

I wish I could tell you how to make them go away, but I can't. There have been times I wish there were such a thing as a brain scrub. Don't know if any of this is at all helpful to you. Just know there's someone who understands what you are saying.
 
It always hurts to see others sharing similar experiences like that as I understand the impact it had on me, I can not claim to understand how you where affected but I do feel empathy for you. I can how ever relate to the personal movie reel that seems to be on a constant loop and over the last year bonus features have been added and it is not an enjoyable experience.

I understand the toxic nature that is created by burying events in life, unfortunately a lot of my events disappearing was not a personal choice I made.

As for these memories being removed or scrubbed, as odd as it sounds I don’t want them erased from my mind again. It is an odd thinking process to most but all of our tragedies have brought complete strangers together for one common purpose.....support.
It is unfortunate that pain and suffering is what united us but I am grateful for the opportunity to remove the loneliness for myself and hopefully for someone else.

I appreciate anything anyone wishes to share, regardless if the advice is useable or not, just the ability to share stories and knowing the person that reads what you say has an understanding of your suffering is worth more than an answer to the challenges.
 
Justsomeguy...oh boy. Reading your words packed a real whollop. It went right through my chest and all the way down my body. Oomph.
I am so sorry.
I suffered a near death experience 4 years ago on a ventilator, in a coma.
When a person is induced into a medical coma they are given a serious and horrifying cocktail of things like fentanyl and propofol. One is an amnesic, the other a paralytic. While in the comatose state one can become aware of what is happening but unable to scream or question or move. You see people in visors and masks and they are doing painful terrifying things to you. You may not know who or where you are. When it is over you may not be able to walk, talk, eat, read, drive, even breath normally.
Then, when you return home, the real horror show begins...and memories start to surface. Sometimes over weeks. Months. Years. Some patients experience a form of PTSD called Post-ICU Syndrome. Brain damage, memory loss, physical pain/nerve damage.
That happened to me in 2016. It is also part of the reason I was led to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
I am so very sorry to dump this out there this way, just like that. Your words reach me on a visceral level very a much a part of who I am and how I heal. I am trembling writing this. I don't want to elaborate more on it at this time, I will soon because if anyone can find solace or answers in my story than it will be worth telling it.
You can get through this. You can speak of these experiences and be truly heard and understood. You are SAFE!!!
 
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