Technically I suppose she's PTSD. I could call her that, but I don't feel comfortable with slapping another label on my forehead. It gives other's the opportunity to cast doubt on the authenticity of my affliction. It also gives others to drop me in the mentally unwell basket...
In short Stigma. :)
Where did I find Ethel?
My father died in 2010. Up until that point I was one of those over caring souls that did what they could to please everyone in some ways, whilst consistently letting them and myself down in others..
Totally imbalanced, unable to keep an income that supported me properly, though opportunity, after opportunity arrived. So like many others of my generation I gave and gave emotionally and physically, and didn't beleive I was worthy to recieve the same. I'd been on anti depressants for over 8 years. I was of the beleif that there was depression and mentally odd people in my family...you know it's genetic, hereditary...so I'll just have to cop it sweet. In my mind at that point I had clinical depression.
After I got back from the funeral, I had a phone dispute with my Mother. To this day I can't actually remember exactly what she said, but something significant shifted and I cried for the next four days. I was supposed to be grieving for my Dad, so you could argue that this was normal. What wasn't normal was I wasn't crying in grief. I was absolutely, shit brained angry... and put simply the lid blew off the volcano right there. I cried for 4 days, because that was the end of my disgustingly, unhealty relationship with my Mother.
Did she die to me that day? Some people use this expression. No she didn't. I died to me that day. My allowing her and my family to define who I was, and why I was died. The four days of tears, were shit, hot anger that rose up from my feet and once released gave me no choice but to keep growing.
At that point, I looked at my life and I hated what I saw. Every single relationship I had was imbalanced and unhealthy, whether we were talking about people, posessions, habits...everything. If I wanted a better life, if I wanted to get happy I had to take those steps myself.
Is that where Ethel turned up? Nope. She was still buried under the debris at that point. You'll have to be patient.
That first year, I had started visiting a Spiritualist church. The Angels called me there, possibly because they knew, I'd left God behind at St. Brendan's church in Victoria years ago. I didn't feel he was 'real' and I made a conscious decision at 16 to turn my back on the Catholic church.
Took me awhile to realize that if I beleived in Angels I would then have to acknowledge "God". I wasn't very happy about having to do that. I didn't actually like the way my Catholic God behaved. I liked the loving part, but the judgemental, cranky part didn't do much for me, or the bit where he doesn't help out abused children, starving humans and animals, cruelty...you know that argument.
I'd starting using FB to keep track of my son who was wandering all over the world. I found an Irish Spiritualist Forum and through the understanding that group gave me I found my own version of 'God'. You wont find it in the bible. My God's an it, a balance of male/female universal concsiousness with spiritual law and karma all rolled into one. I can understand my God and work with it...
In August of that year, I had a healing done by a particularly talented crystal healer who sold me a peice of rhodochrosite and a peice of jade. Because of the energy shifted during that healing and my ambition to get happy, and her mentorship... somehow in amongst it I flushed the anti d's down the toilet and set forth on a new healing journey to self. She was still there buried under a Mount Kosciosko of swampy, mouldy, ancient emotion from my childhood, but I was going to find her no matter what.
A week later, there was an election on that weekend and it was the first election I'd missed through years of helping out on polling booths and following election trails via the ALP. Ironically, I missed the night we got a hung parliament and our first female PM. I was very busily having a full on, spiritual awakening. If the ambulance went passed that night, they would have collected me and put me in a padded room. Some would say I was having withdrawal symptoms from stopping my meds. Some would say I'd finally flipped my lid. What I say happened is when I threw the anti depressants, my energy that had been damped and dumbed down for so long, spiked out and tried to get itself to normal... they say this can take around 3 months. That first week was the beginning of the trippiest 3 months I ever had. That weekend, I had visions, I had voices, I discovered that I could channel spirit through drawing. It was the most frightening though exhilirating night I've ever had. I possibly would've fitted the definition of insanity that night.... but that's cool. No one caught me.
The reason I'm giving you all this history is because that was the beginning of my farewell to clinical depression. I haven't had black hole depression since the crystal healer did her work on me. I know that it went, because I experienced the horrible despair emotions during the healing in three seperate waves. It's never been back. The work began the week after.
I sat in front of my Mount Kosciosko and tried to work out how on earth I was going to change my life with so many obstacles in front of me. I picked up a teaspoon and started shifting that emotion, peice by peice.
It's 5 years later almost. I don't recognise the poor soul I was back then. Today, I only allow positive people in my life. People with boundaries and respect for others. I run an Art group on FB with some other dynamic women and together we've created an amazing, safe space for like minded artists to congregate and encourage and teach each other. I left the unhealthy relationship I was in and though at one point I was about 2 inches from being homeless, I'm now in my own unit. I have my daughter living with me now, and have reclaimed that relationship. On most counts I'm pretty pleased with myself.
I recently left a dead end job at a dealership due to work place bullying. I felt that it was really symbolic of the last residue of all those unhealthy relationships, so I didn't mind saying goodbye to that part of my life.
I then looked at all the new beginnings in front of me and decided to go back to being a full time student. I signed up to a couple of courses, one on Counselling. Though I have no great ambition to be a Counsellor I felt I could use the knowledge gained from that to increase my communication skills. The first night was fantastic. But some really odd things occurred within me.
I was over the moon to be sitting in a room full of amazing, beautiful women who I had so much in common with and were as excited as I was to be there. However, during the night I realized there was something odd. When I spoke and I'm not shy and have plenty to say about most things, my voice grew hoarse and low and though I shifted my posture, watched my breathing etc... I couldn't seem to control it or stop it from doing that.
When I got home, my brain was just over stimulated I guess would be the tag. Every discussion went around and around in my mind and though none of it was negative, I didn't seem to have a lot of control over it...
As weeks have gone by, I tried to get my head around that and the fact that I'm still balking at the new starts and tried to put it down to anxiety. I tried to be realistic and though I understood that the depression was simply half of that Mount Kosciosko, I didn't beleive I knew how to find or use the tools to deal with what was currently happening within me. I stopped checking emails, the mail box, my phone.. I was shutting down and it wasn't making sense to me.
I'd made a mental health plan with the doc when I went to see him about the anxiety I was experiencing due to the paperwork involved with dealing with my last employer...Worksafe, Fairwork Australia, Office of Fair Trading etc. So we found me a psychologist and I made appointments with the intent of getting tools to help me move through it and move forward. It seemed such a sensible plan.
I didn't gel with the first two psychologists, which was unusual for me. I'd seen counsellors and psyches before and got the right one the first time around every time. The third psychologist... asked all the right questions and we started getting somewhere.
On the second appointment, I'd come to the realization that I hadn't said goodbye to depression totally. That in some form Mr. D was always going to be there, just not as visible as he used to be. That was fine. What shocked me was that John gave me a new label to mull on. PTSD. Because of the behaviour I displayed when I spoke to him of my childhood trauma, he deducted that his belief was PTSD and Disassociation were in play.
To say that stopped me in my tracks was an understatement. Here I was having worked so hard to put the past behind me and deal with it responsibly and methodically and finally felt free to start on new endeavours in all areas of my life... and he was telling me I'd been dragging this other, nameless, faceless gremlin behind me all along. I took the time to think about it.
He was exactly right. I looked into Disassociation. I looked into PTSD. That's where I am right now.
My relationship with labels is argumentative to say the least... so until I get my head and life around this we're not calling her PTSD. We're calling her Ethel. If she rides with me, there's not much I can do about it until I get to know her better. In the meantime...
Her name is Ethel.
Thankyou for reading my blog. More of Ethel to come soon.
