Well, the outlines are made, the plot drafted, and the research has been obtained for a driving force of my new book (see me Saturday on Facebook Live 12/19/2020 to find out the title). I would like to share with you some of the themes of PTSD and Cluster B personality disorders that I will use to tell the next chapter of Althea in the second book of the Healer Series.
Let me start with PTSD. I will be approaching this subject with research in medical journals and documents as well as my own personal experience with PTSD. Let me start with the personal. I was told by a few therapists that I have PTSD from occurrences in my life and the personalities I have encountered. I just thought that some of the things I was feeling were just stress, and in a way it was. But it was a very specific kind of stress. I didn't mean I was broken necessarily; it meant that I was REWIRED. PTSD is a normal response to abnormal events. When something bad happens, your brain rewires itself to become sensitized to the trauma in order for you to survive.
It turns out that my night sweats, my nightmares, the negative thoughts of myself accompanied with hopelessness, and the always being on guard (to name a few) were all just my PTSD manifesting itself in my body. I found in my study that there are four stages of PTSD - and I will get to those in a moment - and that I was following them, that I have been following them. I still don't have it mastered, and the pandemic isn't helping.
I was diagnosed with hyper anxiety from my Primary Care years ago. It is completely debilitating and almost impossible to describe in a way that does the feeling justice. My stomach turns to quivering ice welling with waves like the ocean with acid up to my mouth. All of my skin pricks painfully like it was made of television static and knives. I even feel my scalp start to heave as if my hair would leap off of my head. Even the mere mention of my trigger gets me sick to my stomach, and I have to focus really hard to calm myself. In some instances, I can't even do that. I have to take medication to help make myself from running into a wall until I bleed.
As I said before, there are four stages to PTSD response (typically). The first stage is the Impact of Emergency stage. This is when your body and brain go into the "Fight, Flight, or Hide" stage just to get you over the initial shock of the trauma. In my instance, I didn't really have this. I didn't have one specific, jarring instance. It was systemic, for the most part. This made it so hard for me to understand, to accept, that this was trauma and was something that would manifest as PTSD.
The second stage is the Denial stage. Not everyone has this stage. However, I did. I told myself constantly that I wasn't being abused, that I was being too sensitive. I convinced myself to suffer through it and accept it because it was my job as who I was in relation to the issue. During this phase, people often attempt to "numb out" their feelings to try and hide from them or deny that they exist. When my brother died, I drank a whole bottle of Vodka to try and numb out the pain. It was not a good idea, and I was a terror that night with poisoning, but it happened.
The third stage is the Short-Term Recovery Stage. At this point, individuals who experience trauma go to search for short-term solutions to try and get their lives back to normalcy. At this point, most people will turn to help or continue to turn to help from others or they will become disillusioned and cynical. However, in this stage, since it's more masking than dealing, the nightmares, the hallucinations, and the panic attacks become worse. It's treating the symptoms, not the cause. It's not a fault, really. You cannot go into the major battle without addressing the oozing wounds that are dragging you down.
The final stage is the Long-Term Recovery Stage. I don't think I've even reached this yet. I had a therapist I was seeing, but then Covid hit, and our sessions had to stop, and she left. I thought I could do the rest of the work now on my own, and of course, I had been failing for so long that this thought was ridiculous. In this stage, people will be attacking the cause rather than the symptoms. A more permanent, lasting plan to deal with the manifestations from stressful triggers are mastered here. I look forward to that.
In my writings, especially in "The Healer in the Mist," I have made it my goal to highlight human nature and real humanity set in a fantasy setting. Sure, we don't have the ability in the real world to do Magic or bend reality, but I wanted to show that humanity is humanity, and if these feelings, these facts, could be experienced even in fantasy, they are natural - certainly nothing to be ashamed of. That is the biggest hurdle of people who are struggling with these emotions - they feel or are convinced that they should be ashamed or guilty or that they were weak to be stricken with natural responses to traumatic events and systemic abuse. I wanted to prove that this can happen anywhere there is human nature, even in a fantasy world.
If you read my last book, you will see that Althea has already had some experience with PTSD. However, in the next book, we will see after the relatively happy ending and what comes after. Even though the end was what it was, and she accomplished so much, there is always the effects of having gone through so much. If you didn't read it, be sure to take a look. I promise that the second book will be worth the wait and will be so full of experience, but you'll need to read its beginning first.