Living with PTSD: A Personal Battle

Welcome to today's episode where I delve into the often misunderstood world of PTSD from my own personal experience. Rather than focusing on clinical symptoms and treatments, I share the raw, unfiltered reality of living with PTSD.

PTSD is an isolator, driving a wedge between you and your loved ones. It brings anger, depression, and a constant feeling of dread. I discuss the struggles of medication, therapy, and the importance of not letting PTSD force you into isolation.

Join me as I explore the battle against this relentless adversary and emphasize the necessity of seeking support, understanding, and never giving up. This episode is a call to arms for anyone dealing with PTSD to connect with others and continue fighting.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello guys and welcome to my podcast. So today I want to talk about PTSD and
I'm not going to talk about it in the terms that a lot of other people discuss it.
The symptoms or the way that therapists discuss it.
I want to discuss it like a guy that has it because I deal with it myself.

(00:23):
PTSD is an isolator. It isolates you from other people. It makes you alone.
It makes you feel like, to me, that it drives me away from the people that I love.
It makes me angry.
It makes me, like when somebody's eating an apple behind me, it drives me crazy.

(00:46):
It makes me get up in the middle of the night and anybody but he's sleeping around me.
They shouldn't really be sleeping around me. It's makes me feel like I,
I have horrible things inside me that I don't want to share. It's.
It really is like you're carrying some inside gnawing monster all the time.

(01:12):
There's always something in the corner of my eye. I turn around and it's not
there. There's these feelings of dread.
There's depression that comes with it.
So PTSD is a very bad thing.
I can't say it any other way. And I've lived with it for a very, very long time.

(01:36):
But there's something that you have to understand.
You can't let things like this defeat you, and you can't let things like this
force you to live your life alone. loan.
You have to try to be around other people.
You have to seek out people that understand who you are and why you're like you are.

(02:00):
And there are a few people that will accept you for who you are and why you're like you are.
It's difficult. I understand that.
The doctors can give you antidepressant pills and there's therapy.
You can talk to therapists and those kind of things, But the big issue is that

(02:20):
the antidepressant pills, they will mellow you out and calm you down and deal with your depression.
But they kind of change the way you feel about things, too.
And sometimes they, I don't know, they take the edge off of who you are.
And they're sleeping pills that help you sleep at night. but then you wake up

(02:45):
in the morning and you're groggy and they make it harder to live your life.
So there's all these gives and takes with the medication too, you know?
So PTSD is really difficult and it makes things even more difficult.
The medication is difficult.

(03:05):
I know there's times that,
I just have a hard time even sealing in the anger. I'm so angry sometimes about nothing.
I mean, I can blow up at the drop of a hat. A lot of times I'm just arguing
with myself over these silliest things.
And I don't know how to explain it. I mean,

(03:26):
but the most important thing about it, and I never see it talked about on anything
that I read or anything discussed is that PTSD is an isolator.
It isolates you from people.
It isolates you from everybody around you.
It separates you from the people you love.

(03:48):
And I never see that discussed.
I see the 17 symptoms and I see, you know, the treatment options.
But the truth of the matter is, is that it isolates you. It puts you in this
rubber box and drives you far away from everybody around you.

(04:11):
And that's the biggest, most horrible thing about it.
So, I mean, you've got to find somebody that understands you.
And I understand you because I deal with it. And there are other people that understand you.
Now, I've gone to some of these therapy sessions with other people.

(04:33):
And talk to them. And I'm not saying they don't have PTSD. I'm not saying they do have PTSD.
I've just heard them talk and talk.
To me, it's very hard to understand the way they're discussing their issues
and really the deep down feelings that I have about what happened in my life.

(05:00):
It's just, I don't even want to, I can't even open that can of worms.
And it's been years, so I don't understand that. And I just can't even begin
to see how that could happen.
So maybe, maybe, but I'm 54 years old now.

(05:21):
And yeah, so there's just a lot, there's a lot to it and it's hard,
you know, there's just so much bottled up to, it's, it's almost impossible to
explain those things out in the open to other people.
I wouldn't even understand how to do that.

(05:42):
So those meetings are very hard for me. Just, you know, I guess you can hear that.
But so if you understand what I'm saying, then you need to reach out to people
around you and don't let yourself become isolated from them.
I mean, honestly. And I know that it can bring thoughts of doing harm to yourself or harm to others.

(06:08):
You need to make sure that you call the crisis line.
I've called the crisis line several times and talked to people because that helps.
You know, those people are there and they can discuss things and talk to you.
Sorry, I had to drink some water. That helps. Don't let yourself fall into that trap.

(06:29):
I mean, this thing is a real living, breathing monster inside you.
And it's a battle that never ends.
I like to express these illnesses, PTSD, MS, TBI, like they're a constant fight
against something real because they are.

(06:51):
You are constantly fighting against a real adversary that won't ever give up,
but you have to keep going.
You've got to keep fighting against it, and you can't ever stop.
So in those terms, this is a very real war that you're in and you were put in

(07:17):
it, not of your own accord,
but now you're there and you can't ever stop fighting. You can't ever give up.
There is no quarter will be drawn.
You can't stop. There are, there are things to help you.
You can use a crisis line. There's the Veterans Administration.

(07:39):
There's doctors to help you. There are all kinds of things that can help you.
I'm going to set up another email site that's not like my email.
There's like millions of things on there. I would never catch your email.
And I'll put that up here. You can email me.
We need to start working on this together and move forward so we can all work

(08:00):
together to accomplish our goal, which is to survive this war.
Because it's going to go on and on and on.
It's a long, long legacy and a long battle of fighting.
Anyhow, I'm going to sign out now and take it easy.