I wrote this paragraph for a group called Patients Like Me, writing it for other people dealing with PTSD.
The worst thing about PTSD for me is to be where I am now: Technically called hypoarousal, it also means depressed and numb. The numbness is my brain and nervous system’s mechanism for saving me from overload. I can barely get through the day. There are other things I need to do, like find someone to prescribe medication — my regular person is on emergency medical leave. I have to find out why my application for Medicare B seems to have gone into the void. Trying to jump through the hoops of the bureaucracy is too difficult. This is why so many Veterans are in homeless shelters. I’m not a Veteran — not of a foreign war — though I could say I’m a veteran of a domestic war: I was traumatized in infancy.
Nancy Napier explains that this is in reaction to having felt good about myself recently. “When we’ve been hurt as children, it’s not unusual to have parts of us that guard against hope. … Disowned parts of us fight back with messages that say we don’t deserve good things, that good only turns into bad in the end, and who do we think we are anyway?” Getting through the Day, pp19-4