"What My Bones Know": Living with C-PTSD
A review of Stephanie Foo's fantastic book about living with C-PTSD and my experience with the condition
Happy Monday everyone! I recently took the weekend off. I was feeling kind of shitty, and to be honest I really couldn’t think of anything to write about.
Certainly that conflicts with the philosophy of this newsletter. Which I’ve defined to be:
“Quantity = Quality; Put it out even if it sucks!”
But I’ve also decided that mental health comes first and If I need a day I’ll be a nice boss and take a day! That's part of the reason why I've put most of the articles behind a paywall. It’s also why the payment tiers don’t specifically say at what frequency I’ll be putting out content. Shit happens.
So for those of you who have been keeping up with my incoherent ramblings, first of all, ‘thank you’. I’ve been having an amazing time writing these articles, and monetary support just means that I can put more time and effort into them.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been reading the book What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. Its an amazing book detailing the trials and tribulations of the author and her relationship with complex trauma. I picked up the book last friday, and have been reading it religiously since it arrived at my door. Its a fantastic book, and something I’m surprised isn’t more popular.
The mental health circuit is a difficult, and confusing road to go down. I have had no doubt that it was the right thing to do, but it takes a long time to even know what you are dealing with personally. I have had lots of different potential problems brought up. Every time I would research them furiously to see how much they matched me.
OCD, Autism, bipolar, panic disorder, I’ve considered and dealt with many extremely challenging topics. But to me the more important thing was just finding out what was right. I certainly displayed some symptoms of the diagnoses listed above, but they never quite matched what I was going through.
The research I did was not a waste. I learned valuable coping mechanisms, and skills through my research but it always seemed off. That was until my therapist told me to look into Stephanie’s book.
I found a lot of comfort from the way that Stephanie perfectly describes the concept of C-PTSD or (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The comfort I felt was the realization that I too have been dealing with C-PTSD. All of the symptoms matched. Which is a scary, but also reassuring thing to find.
So what is C-PTSD? Well, PTSD is what happens when you experience a traumatic event. Your brain rewires itself to be triggered by things associated with that event. Even if they are not connected to the event itself.
Stephanie explains it great. If you are in a traumatic car crash that took place near a Krispe Kreme, even though the donut shop had nothing to do with your accident the shops proximity to the accident could become a potential trigger for the future. Complex PTSD is what happens when you experience traumatic events over and over again to the point where effectively your whole life is a trigger.
Your brain is effectively re-wired to almost always be in fight or flight mode. You are often dissociated from reality, and hyper aware of everything. It makes maintaining relationships, jobs, and friends exceptionally difficult due to how always on edge you are.
This kind of condition is associated with childhood neglect, and abuse. Boy did I have my fair share of both of those. But what happens is that over time as you were subjected to trauma as a child you attempt to take control over the situation. As adults suffering from this condition you often feel A: Like you aren’t feeling anything at all, B: Like its somehow all your fault; Like you haven’t been working hard enough, and C: Extremely jaded and mad at a world that you work so hard to be a part of but also feel totally unable to join.
Its a sad thing for me to look back through old photos of myself. Because as I go through the photos I can see when the smile, which was once so genuine, became fake. When I transformed into less than a person in order to survive the horrific circumstances I was subjected to on a daily basis.
When I think of my childhood I always remember an episode of Avatar the Last Airbender. Aang, the protagonist, needs something from a deity that steals peoples faces when they express emotion. It does everything it can in order to disturb and shock the person it talks to, and Aang remains stone-faced through the whole thing. Even as a young child this episode felt like something I had trained for, I felt like I could be the avatar because my life so perfectly reflected that singular moment in the show. It wasn’t something I wanted to be, it was who I was.
It feels like other people have the key to being happy and in the moment, and you just haven’t become successful enough; You aren’t funny enough; You just didn’t say exactly the right set of things to get people to finally like you.
My personal experience matches that for sure but goes beyond that. I often felt like recovery was hopeless. Every time I found something that worked for me it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart. I left parties thinking no one liked me, when people did like me I felt like I had lied to them.
Its a feeling Stephanie calls “The Dread”. The Dread is simply becoming so good at emotional control that you no longer know how to identify what you are feeling. I can say for certain that I often don’t know what I’m feeling or why for weeks. Suffering from emotional flashbacks that cause issues to cascade when they could have been resolved with a simple text.
The hardest thing about this whole process is self forgiveness. Because we believe all the problems with our lives are tied to us, and we worked so desperately hard to maintain control the one thing we can’t do is forgive ourselves; give ourselves a break.
As Stephanie put it, you have to re-learn how to be a person. Research has shown the intense repeated trauma actually changes the wiring of your brain. It becomes more than just emotional responses, but your actual physiology is has been re-wired to misfire.
The parts of your brain responsible for calm reasoning are underdeveloped, and the parts of your brain responsible for life and death scenarios are over developed. Your brain constantly secrets stress hormones without the relief when the experience is over. Not only did I not have the tools to connect with people, my brain had developed in the complete wrong way. So now I have to take steps to change it as an adult, which takes significantly longer.
Recovery from this process is different for everyone, and lord knows I’m still at the very early stages of my recovery but I bring this up because if you think that C-PTSD might be something you are suffering from. I highly recommend picking up Stephanie’s book. It certainly has been a light in my tunnel.
Thanks for reading my more serious article! I’ll get back to talking about gaming and other stuff when I feel ready. I’ve been playing through Earth Defense Force 5 with some friends, and I’ve just started my journey through the Resident Evil 4 remake. I’ll get to talking about that soon. Thanks to everyone who continues to support me through this extremely challenging part of my life.