Breaking the Silence: Why It’s Important to Talk About Relational PTSD

Hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown and I am your host. This show is all about living our best life and our best version of the life we desire. Without guilt and regret and doubt, self-doubt plaguing us for the rest of our lives. I start off every show by saying I am not a licensed counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, but I am a healthcare professional who has seen the effects of self-doubt, guilt, and regret both physically and emotionally with all of the interactions I have, and I'm also a student of life.

I'm here to just observe. And learn and put that out to the world and hopefully help build other people up. As I had my own issues, I had to work through and build myself up. So welcome to today's show, and I am often asked lately, what is your show gonna be about? And often I know, and, and more often than not, I don't, I get a feeling about what I would like to talk about and.

Today, especially with, you know, outside I'm influenced as a podcaster about events around me and I was just thinking about how I'm personally affected, how my home is affected, how my community, my state, my country, and the world is affected by a lot of events. And so today I'm actually gonna talk about PTSD and complex ptsd.

So, For a long time I didn't even know there was a difference. In fact, PTs d is not even, um, something that people talked about 40, 50 years ago. A phenomenal book, uh, called The Body Keeps the Score by Van Kolk. I have a description down there is it's an awesome book of a medical physician who kind of describes his entire trajectory through the medical.

Program from being, you know, student now to being the director of some program and how they started to figure out there is a thing as ptsd, especially working with a lot of veterans, Vietnam veterans and people, how do they interact and how do they react to events in their life and what, how do they cope and what does that have to do with self-love and building your best life?

And a lot of it is we cannot build our best life if we don't cope. And there are different ways of coping. I'm not gonna put a finger on what is better, what is worse on a lot of things. But there are some ways of coping that we know is not great. For example, people will drink a lot of alcohol. So that they don't feel something, so they're not in their place.

People will watch endless, TV binge watch to the extreme, not for a day off, but just binge and binge and binge because then they are living in someone else's life. They're completely in that character and not even in their own, because it's too painful to be there. We know about drugs, but everything can be a drug.

Not just an actual drug, such as the alcohol, there can be repetitive relationships, relationship, you know, like, wow, that person is never single. And it's like they, they break up on a Monday night, they have someone else by Tuesday morning because they're using other people as a drug. We can even use productive in quotes, things to um, numb ourselves out the workaholic.

The one who's so career driven and, and wants to build, build, build so far as their job and their performance because then they don't have to slow down and actually spend time with themself and think they're just thinking about projects. And this tends to happen to a lot of us. And it took a lot of, I'm sharing my own story.

It took a lot of one-on-one sessions with my own people, to find out that I also had my own version, my own story of complex P T S D or see P T S D. And so what's the difference, first of all? So P T S D tends to still be called. It's kind of that thing we call everything. You know, you come back from war, you have ptsd, you had, a violent relationship, domestic violence for 20 years.

You have ptsd, but technically PTSD is more for one event. For me, I was driving to see a patient one time and went off this side road, and I know I lost control off this dirt road, and I didn't know to turn the wheel left or turn the wheel right. In fact, I don't remember. I just was gripping that wheel so tight with my foot on the brake and my eyes closed.

That I don't know which way I was going left or right, but the bottom line is I ended up hitting an embankment at just the right angle for physics to work and flip my car over. And to this day, which is now eight years later, there's a particular bridge in my town. In my city actually, and I have to make that same kinda left turn and I will get the sweaty palms, which is really bothersome when you're driving and you cannot hold onto that steering wheel the same way.

But I still feel it. It was one event. I have not flipped many cars. I have flipped one time, but that's all it took. Complex PTSD tends to be more from something that. Comes from several, several, several repeated events, having to be deployed several times or being in an abusive relationship. And that abusive relationship can be verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, physically abusive.

All of these where you feel like you're in a cage, it can be absolutely all of them, but it's repeated. It's repeated, it's repeated. And so for me, mine tended to be from repeated situations and there are certain symptoms. For example, a lot of people can be calm for one hypervigilant. You know that person who's always scanning their environment, and yes, we need to keep our head on a swivel and pay attention to the world, but when you're always looking for the next thing, for the next person to come out to get you, whether it's physically.

Or just emotionally, you're just ready. Like, I know they're gonna say something to hurt me. I know they're gonna try to steal, my money. I know they're gonna do that. You're just waiting. You're just waiting for this to happen. It's because you're hypervigilant. The other one, number two, is that you believe that everything's a dangerous place.

The world, everyone's bad. You know, people are bad. Nothing is good. The world is horrible. Nothing in the world has anything good to offer. You can never get to a positive with someone in the deep throes of this. It's always bad. And number three, you know, difficulty sleeping or concentrating or, I don't even spin it around oversleeping.

You know, if you can't focus, it's because you have just so much on your, your mind and your soul. Trying to navigate. You can't concentrate because you're trying to survive. And then there are the other ones, you know, reliving your trauma with flashbacks, nightmares, just getting visceral reactions such as nausea or dizziness or just diarrhea, discussing a story or events of your life because you are back in that.

And when you have those sort of symptoms. One of the main things that you have is a negative self view. It causes this, this complex ptsd repeated. Repeated situation tends to get people to view themselves negatively and helpless, guilty and ashamed, and separated. Separated from other people. And now being, I know there are some of us, we like to be, you know, we're, we're loners.

There are others of us, we called hermits. But for the most part, the majority of what makes people, people is a sense of community. It's a sense of belonging. Even if we belong to the Outcast Group and school, we belong to the Outkast group. You know, it's, it's, it's very hard to be the loner. It's hard to be the loner at work.

It's hard to be the loner in the family or the outcast in the family, the black sheep of the family. When this continuously happens, this feeling of helplessness does not generate in us abilities to even view life. Well go after our dreams. Feel we are worth the dreams we are dreaming of. And then it gets to a point we don't even dream about dreams.

We don't have visions of our future. We're like, I just, I'm here. I'll make it to the next day. And we're so different because you know what? That person over there looks happy. And quite frankly, that person over there might be looking at you going like, well, that person looks happy. They don't know what that, I don't feel so well that I don't believe in myself.

Here I have, you know, accomplished X, Y, and Z and I'm supposed to be this poster child of success, but I still don't feel good about myself. And that's the entire premise of this podcast, because I was that person, even though I had full, full on letter after letter 16 of them, y'all, 16 letters after my name.

And I didn't believe I was knowledgeable in anything. I was blessed with a beautiful home, but I didn't feel I was worth it. I'm like, yeah, I don't know how come I got that. I was blessed with a child that I was so grateful to have. Lost early on and got back. You know, there was a, there was medical issues with his entire pregnancy and birth and I, I still felt like I was just, I was not the mom that he deserved.

I'll never be the mom he deserves. I'm sorry you were born. To me, those were the kind of thoughts I had and then it kept on. I'm just giving those as some examples and what starts to change things. When you have that as a negative self view, because when you have that, then you also have, the other thing that makes us people is this relationship issues, difficulties, trusting, interacting, we develop unhealthy relationships one right after the other, mimicking the ones that were bad in the first place.

Kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy. So how can we in those sort of moments get out of that? Well, everyone and I will say, everyone, I have read so many books. And I'll have some in the, in the description, everyone has a different view, but one thing that is in common with all these people that do have psychology degrees and psychiatrist degrees and have researched, you know, shame and vulnerability from Brene Brown to the, the person I talked about earlier with the book to Diana Morningstar, talking about fear, obligation, and guilt fog, especially with narcissism, all of that.

Is that you have to get to a place where you can just allow yourself to feel, feel sad, feel the depression, feel everything, and it's not gonna feel great. It may be one of those laying on the bathroom floor moments, like from Eat, pray, love. I feel a lot of people identify that because they were also on the floor crying.

I may have been that person also. That's why I identified with that book. But there's just this point where you just have to feel it and acknowledge this, that that kind of pain is not something you deserve because you were a bad person Maybe. Maybe it is partially because of your choices, but our choices are partially ours and partially other people's choices.

You know, I'm, I was born to the parents. I was born to, had no choice in that. I was born into a family that we moved, we were a military family, back and forth, back to the us, back to Germany, back to the us, back to Germany, back to the us. I had no choice. I had to go. I had no choice in anything. When my parents' own marriage dissolved just as my son had no choice with his parents dissolving their marriage. However, however, there is a point when we have to acknowledge that we do have some power, because if we stay in this helpless state of mind, we stay in a negative view. People that are helpless, they have no control, no power, and no worth nothing.

But when we change, Something between our ears, our mind. And if we change something in our, in our chest, our heart, small changes, you know what? I am worth it. And one of those is to just acknowledge that this feels awful. Not run from it, but walk through it. And sometimes it's a long walk, especially when you're already on your hands and knees.

Or sometimes you're even further down and you're just crawling on the ground. But feel that, and also after that, look at someone else's choices. For example, I have been in some relationships that have been emotionally abusive. You know, I maybe chose to stay there, but they chose to continue their actions cuz it wasn't their thought that hurt me.

It was their actions. They chose it. And every single one of 'em I had verbalized over and over and over, and I'm gonna keep going on that one over and over. This is painful. And it didn't stop. It didn't make me leave right away. But they chose to not stop. Now, if that person has a long history themselves of, issues, that's, but that was their choice to deal with and they chose not to.

And I can't take responsibility for what happened to them, nor do I take responsibility for their inability or unwillingness to deal with their problems. And that's just the way that is because I can't, as much as we, even as parents, we wanna do stuff for our kids, we are not responsible for their lives.

At best, we can impact and influence at best. They have just as much free freedom and willpower as we have for ourselves. Clearly not when they're five and 10, but the whole point is as you move on, you, you have this. They're individuals. And so in order to develop your own power, you have to acknowledge that you aren't responsible for someone else's unhappiness.

That might be their coping strategy. You may have given them 10 ultimatums. You may have given them 20 ultimatums gone against the definition of ultimatum. It's just saying this is, but that was them. And what their future is, is not, is not within your control. All that you can control is yourself. And knowing that that's the one person that you always had control over, that you at any point on that spectrum can change your mind and actually just put both feet into like, I'm gonna change me, I'm gonna work on me.

I'm gonna feel empowered, and I may take a long time. I'm going to get my finances back in order. I'm gonna get my shape, my body shape back in order. I'm gonna get healthy again. I'm gonna go back to church. I'm gonna go get that degree I really want. I'm gonna go pursue those hobbies that I've wanted to because it's about me.

Something changes in you. Something changes. And all it starts with is, is awareness and responsibility for yourself. Victims don't thrive. They don't. They stay in the cycle, and it doesn't mean you have to have shame with your own choices, but acknowledge them and move on. With your own power and out of that victimhood, you change from a complex PTSD still there.

You may still have a trigger or a memory that pops up when someone says something or a situation similar happens to me, not as often as it used to, but I'm aware of it and I'm able to differentiate. I'm different. I'm able to differentiate when someone says something that they are not the other person that tried to hurt me, or if their behavior is just like before I can recognize it now.

I don't have to sit there and take it. Every single one of us was created for something special. None of us were created to be, we call that in German, a washcloth, a wet washcloth that someone throws on the wall and it kind of just boom, hits it and slides down. Then they pick it up and throw it somewhere else.

That is not your role, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, to be for someone else. It just isn't.

And one of the biggest things that took me some time, And from some of the authors and, and the people that they interviewed is just to recognize that you, you do have this, you know, P T S D or complex ptsd is not just something from, from kids who grew up with alcoholic parents. It's not just something for, for veterans.

You can have that from emotional, constant emotional and psychological abuse that is just as real as this microphone I'm talking into. It is. And there's so much of that going on that we don't have, that you don't go to the hospital because you were, verbally abused. No one gets arrested for psychologically.

Messing with your mind from morning till midnight for two, three years in, in a row. There's, there's no proof, but you don't have to have it to, to recognize what you've gone through and honor, honor your experience, honor every single choice and, and time and an experience that you've gained, because it might just be what that next person.

Needs when they are feeling helpless and they are feeling like a victim and they are guilty and ashamed and they're really worried about having a label. Everyone's worried about having a label. I don't have ptsd. D it's not that bad. Not that bad. Is also something that, Can peop keep people feeling that they're not able to get help?

Well, it's not that bad. Well, what's bad if it's, if it's bad and you feel helpless and lonely and, believe the world's a dangerous place, you're not able to engage in positive, you know, work relationships, casual relationships with friends, or even romantic relationships. It's that bad. No one else can define your pain for you.

So I'm really big about. Living your minutes for the greater good and for your own good. And one of those ways is just to acknowledge your past. I love talking about the future. I love daydreaming and having visions and strategies. I love all that. Looking at the, the life wheel as some talk about it. My career, what's it gonna be in five years?

What's my house gonna look like? What am I working on with my finances? What kind of physique? But I'll only know where I'm going and that will only matter more if I stop every once in a while and examine where I've been. And, and there's, there's no fear of shame in doing that cuz we've all been somewhere.

And that bin somewhere is usually what connects us to one another. Right. I, I may not have had your experience exactly, but I've had something similar. I've had self-doubt. I felt guilty.

I've felt worthless. I felt that I didn't need to be alive. I felt frustrated. I felt. Completely ashamed,

and I had to own all those feelings just as well as I had to own choices I made in those feelings. But at the same time, what kind of choices can you make that are positive when you're coming from that angle?

Every single one of us is made for a reason and we don't need to be preoccupied with who did it. Who done it? Who said it? Revenge. The best way to get revenge on the abuser is to have an awesome life, cuz you know they're checking up on you. You know? You know they're looking through their friends. Well, how are they doing?

I know it. You know, they are out there checking to see if you're, you're, you're even on Instagram or Facebook. Are you private? Are you public? Are you friends with someone that they may be, you know, people are looking, but you don't have to worry about that because when you are living a life on fire, they will know about it

and you don't have to even worry or think. Well, I'd really like them to know. Oh, they know, they know.

But more importantly, the one who knows how awesome your life can be and is, is you. So if PTSD complex, PTSDs, anything you've ever worked with or felt like you may have, I absolutely recommend professional help. And I also recommend certain books that I'm gonna put down in the box below. Some of them are easy reads, some of them not quite so easy, but just perspective.

We, you know, this, this podcast shows my perspective, but my perspective was shaped by so many other people. And so I encourage everyone out there to just continue to learn and continue to know that you are not alone. You have a great group out there and you have a lot of people wanting the best for you.

All right, that's it for this show. Thank you so much. I know that all of our time is valuable and you gave me your time today. I appreciate so, so very much. I'd also appreciate if you leave a review. Those can be words or just some stars that help boost the show up as well. And I, you guys next Tuesday, and until then, Let's Keep Building One Another Up!