Rewired, with the Heavy Load we Carry...

Photo by Ladislav Stercell on Unsplash

I often times wrestle with two diagnoses - PTSD and cPTSD. PTSD has not been around too awful long - labeled as a medical condition through the work of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk who did extensive work with Vietnam vets, in the 1970’s.

cPTSD, however, is more recent in terms of its recognition in the DSM.

Complex PTSD is as perhaps the name reveals - trauma that is complex, prolonged exposure, to different types of trauma(s).

Today, I was exploring a bit about it, so I asked chatgpt.

It wasn’t really new information what it gave me, but through the side-by-side comparison, it made me rethink how cPTSD is more extensive.

The bot said this:

“PTSD is often a wound. C-PTSD is more like a rewiring. It affects not just how a person reacts to the world, but how they see themselves in it.”

PTSD or any trauma is a wound that impacts your brain, body, nervous system.

But with PTSD the sense of self—while damaged—remains in tact.

Whereas with cPTSD, the sense of self is reshaped, damaged, or at least we don’t recognize ourselves anymore - such is the disruption to our world, brain damage, and nervous system effects.

In framing it as a “rewiring” I find helpful.

It’s daunting - to be absolutely honest - to face that I have had so much trauma(s) of various types that I have been rewired.

But it’s also very validating.

And it only makes sense.

When I look back at how many different things have happened to me within the span of less than 6 years, it still dumbfounds me.

It’s been that long and my mind still has a hard time processing it.

I read on a social media site the other day that “it feels like I have lived several different lives since 2019.

Oh my, did I feel that.

I have moved across the country twice to change jobs. (within two years)

I had the second suicide in my immediate family.

I lost my dearest, beloved mother.

I miscarried twice within six months.

COVID happened.

My relationship with someone with NPD ended in cataclysmic betrayal - of epic proportions. And I had to take a deep dive into narcissistic abuse and the damage that it causes on the survivor.

I know many of the readers know this about me already -

So, why do I keep stating it?

It’s not because I am trying to communicate to new readers.

Rather, it is because the disbelief, the shock, the surreal nature of it, the disorientation and disillusionment, the depersonalization of it all -

I put words to it to claim that it happened to me, within me.

Because it still often does not feel real.

It feels out of body—like it happened in a dream, to someone else.

Such are the effects of trauma when our brain goes into shutdown mode to try to protect us from trauma.

Because, remember, trauma is often defined as “too much, too fast,” and “anything that overwhelms the nervous system.”

My brain and nervous system were definitely overwhelmed.

And to try to help myself fathom that that happened to me, so I write it down. Often. To try and get one step closer to accepting these stories as part of my life and my own journey.

It’s so bizarre.

When I was a child, I was always haunted by the idea that I was not my own person from the beginning- but shaped from my family’s dysfunction and my father’s alcoholism, to become a hero - also from my mother’s trauma and mental illness - all the wounds of my family.

I used to think if I could only get away and live independently that I could evolve into my own person.

But, my wounds went with me. they were imprinted on me, settled within me, from many generations back.

And then, though already in adulthood, I had to learn to grapple with new wounds - that packed a whollop.

I wrestle with this a lot in my head -

I’m proud to be a cycle breaker, one that works to end intergenerational trauma. And though I don’t have children, to change my own DNA marks in an epigenetic way -

I am proud of my resilience.

I am proud that I am still here, not another suicide statistic.

I am proud that I have learned how to carry it all - with lots of healing and therapies and medication and sobriety and reading and embodiment and diet and microbiome and exercise and hot yoga, and all the things -

However -

I also mourn the person I may have been if I didn’t have to heal so much.

I wonder what that person would have been like.

I wonder how much lighter her load in life would have been.

If she wouldn’t have felt so shamed - so broken - so wounded - so deeply, deeply fearful about life, so anxious -

I wonder if she would have had children.

I wonder if she wouldn’t have developed alcohol abuse disorder -

I wonder if she wouldn’t have spent so many years and moments feeling so complicated, so messy, her internal landscape so dark at points -

I am proud of who I am, of where I am.

I am not in the ground or ashes. I am not a suicide statistic.

I am sober. My nervous system is much more regulated.

I am happy to be alone and single and spend a lot of time alone. I prefer my own company and finally understand what it means to be “with myself.”

But, I also mourn -

I grieve -

I grieve for my family members and I grieve for myself. I finally give myself that luxury.

Because while they may be the ones that are dead -

I am the only one still here - imprisoned, living in this body and mind, with this spirit - so heavily, heavily influenced by trauma, my suicides, by generational mental illness -

I’ve learned to carry it.

I’ve learned to accept that I am rewired.

It doesn’t mean that it’s a light load.

I wonder what it would have been like to have never had to carry it.