on trauma and instagram captions.

buckle up, folks. this read won't be a light one.

my idea for this post came from me trying to get some old photos of myself from instagram for a tweet and i fell down a rabbit trail of rereading some of my old captions. most of the things i read were just happy nostalgia and memories of a decent life, but i became frustrated when i looked back to the time of my trauma.

(i've said this before a few times, but please don't ask what the trauma was. it's not good to ask an individual that when they have PTSD, as it risks them dealing with flashbacks, nightmares, and other unsafe symptoms.)

i grew up in my share of turmoil, particularly during my very early childhood and my teenage years. those years alone did not bring me the illness of PTSD that i have today, but the trauma i experienced as a young adult linked all of those experiences together and some structures in my brain drastically changed in how they function. here's a few of them in bullet point form (i love bullet points quite a lot):

• i used to be an optimist about my future. i had dealt with depression for several years before my trauma but i usually could pretend my way through it.
• now, i often deal with crippling depression and anxiety over even the next day. it's incredibly rare for me to hope or believe things will get better. mental illness is not a joke, my friends. and it's definitely not a spiritual battle or a challenging life season. it's just being sick. i now have a plethora of doctors who help me and i sure wish i'd looked for medical help or even been told about that help much earlier.
  

• i definitely used to deal with sensory struggles: certain tastes or smells were too much for me.
• now i'm in sensory overload from sounds, smells, sights, tastes, anything and everything, usually at least once a day. my brain and body's fight/flight/freeze/fawn response is wayyyyyy burnt out. i'm constantly scanning my environment trying to be prepared for uncomfortable/bad things to happen. (in very simplified terms, this burnout is usually caused in an individual with PTSD because they were not at all prepared for their traumatic experience and it caught them so off guard their survival mechanisms now feel a need to be prepared for anything that could happen to them.)

• i used to deal with social anxiety a bit, especially when trying to make friends in college.
• now i have little to no capacity to even attempt making or growing friendships. that space in my brain is consumed by keeping me alive.

• i used to love trying new hobbies, making art, reading, writing, all that stuff.
• now i struggle to find the energy or time to do things that bring me enjoyment.

• i used to be capable of working, despite struggling with depression and work burnout in seasons.
• currently, i'm without work and have been since march. i had to choose to step down from my work because my health was not only declining, but getting incredibly scary incredibly fast.

when i look at myself in the mirror, i feel a million miles away from the person i was in college, the person i was in high school, even the person i was when i got married a year ago. mental illness has taken so much from me, and it's a fight every single day to not let it take more. trauma has taken so much from me, and it's a fight every day to not pass it on to those around me. (those are honestly the two biggest motivators in why i still fight at all.)

when i look back at how i wrote about the snapshots of my life in caption form, i'm most struck by the optimism i had and the trust i had in the words those around me had prophesied. i believed in a God that rewarded hard work with a blessed harvest. the problem is that no one warned me about things that can devastate the harvest fields. storms, tornadoes, early frost. mental illness & trauma are not anticipated by the church nearly enough. 

i felt like i worked harder than anyone in my circle to trust God and make it through those things. i planted good seeds according to those in the church around me. yet there were unanticipated circumstances and i ended up a shell of myself, barely functioning.

so i find myself bitter some days. many days i'm bitter at the ones who caused my traumatic experiences. some days i'm bitter at those around me who didn't recognize the abuse and trauma as such and point me to the right help. i'm often bitter that the Church at large doesn't understand the severity of mental illness, and that it needs far more than prayer and prophesy to treat. i'm quite bitter at the denominations that believe that prayer and prophesy are all that those dealing with mental illnesses need. I cleaned my instagram partly due to this bitterness. I needed the fresh start.

despite all that, i'm in a good space with God these days. i understand them quite differently than i once did. they bring me the hope that i do have on occasion. i understand that the Divine didn't give me this trauma as a "trial" or to be my "testimony." i believe that they are always for me and led me to the medical help & the familial support i have, and have been preparing for me a community support that i will hopefully grow into.

(side note: i make it a point to use different names/titles/pronouns for God than i did growing up, simply because it gives me a new way to look at God. is it sometimes heresy? i don't believe so, but i know i can be wrong at times. and i also know and believe that God's quite obsessed with me and she's told me she loves to hear the names i give her. and if my best intentions are not good, i trust her to show me the better way.)

i also understand the scriptures quite differently than i used to, but that's for another time. i suppose i shall finish off this post with some sort of point. if you're interested, here's some advice from a sick person:

• learn about what trauma and abuse looks like, particularly in whatever community you're involved in. if that's a church, learn about how churches hide away abuse and how they minimize people's stories of trauma, neglecting the importance of medical help. (i strongly recommend Wade Mullen's work.) if it's an organized sport, learn about the ways abuse happens from coach to student or even within staff and faculty. anyway, you know how to google.

• search for the people in your community that would most be considered outcasts *by you and your circle.* in church, that's usually anyone that holds the title of "sinner" in your book. maybe in a politics group, people of the other party are the enemy. i know from personal experience that christians are trained to believe they are always the persecuted ones, but i challenge you to find who you oppress or cause harm to, even if unintentionally.

• normalize therapy! go to a session yourself! encourage friends to go to therapy! talk about it with people! it's always great to help detect sickness early on, and to encourage wellness in seasons of health.
  

hugs and love to all of you out there on the great wide web. may this season bring about good things even amidst its turmoil. 

-m.