#MenToo | Joking Through Nightmares, Flashbacks, Abandonment and PTSD

Note: This blog is just me sharing my experience dealing with a Mental Health Condition. It contains minor information about PTSD which I found over the Internet while dealing with the problem. I'm no expert at Mental Health or providing any kind of advice about it. But if you or someone you know need any kind of help then you can Click here. Or call the Suicide Helpline Number 1800-599-0019.

To read more about Men's Mental Health, Click here.

What is PTSD?

For those who are unaware, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD is a Psychiatric Disorder that occurs in a person after he/she witnesses a Traumatic Event. It used to be known as "Shell Shock" and "Combat Fatigue" during World War Era, but it got termed as PTSD after it was confirmed that it happens not just to war veterans but everyone.

When I say traumatic event, it could be anything depending on the person's experience. It could be events like war, natural disaster, physical/mental/sexual/emotional assault, accidents, or even something as minor as a yelling boss, a toxic work environment or an abusive relationship. It can happen at any age to any gender.

Apart from being directly exposed to a traumatic situation, it can also occur when the individual is indirectly exposed to the traumatic situation. For example, Police Officers suffer PTSD after being exposed to gruesome details about a murder, rape, or child abuse almost every day. It can occur to a family member after learning about a violent death of another family member.

The symptoms a human exhibit while suffering from PTSD are classified into four types:

• Intrusive: This includes repeated involuntary memories, nightmares, and flashbacks of the traumatic event. These can be so intense that the person might feel they're re-living the same incident repeatedly or seeing it in front of their eyes. This might lead to a nervous breakdown.

• Avoidance: A person suffering from PTSD tries to avoid being triggered and start avoiding people, going to certain places, or even watching/listening to a specific kind of content. This eventually leaves the person with an extremely low social energy. You can read about that here.

• Alteration in Cognition/Mood: People end up having lot of negative thoughts and perspective about things. Mixed emotions like anger, fear, horror, guilt and even regret. People end up feeling detached from relationships and activities. They feel no positive emotions or satisfaction about life. Or sometimes they just feel like a living, breathing vessel with no feelings or emotions at all.

• Alteration in Reactivity: Being easily irate, having a violent outburst or being aggressive with everything comes under this symptom. People suffering with PTSD become overly watchful of their surroundings. They're easily startled and become light sleepers because they're unable to concentrate on their sleep.

These will not occur in the order mentioned above and can be random.

Personal Account:

I suffered PTSD after walking out on a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship. Initially, I never thought that something like this could happen. I was completely illiterate about something like this existing. I thought it was a made-up thing after watching it in movies/series like Rambo Series and Peaky Blinders. I realized about its existence in the real world after it happened with me.

I recognized that I had already started suffering from PTSD while I was still dealing with the trauma. The intrusive part of the symptoms in my case had already started while I was still in the middle of the situation. I would wake up in the middle of the night to nightmares and would find it difficult to sleep again. I would just sit in darkness feeling clueless about what to do.

Towards the end of it, I would find myself always being alert about people and places. I would overthink even before responding to someone’s Hello. During this time, I was still not aware of the fact that I was troubled. I just thought it was because I might be working late, though I’ve always been a Night-Shifter and never had problems with it. Things got intense when I came out of the traumatic situation and started meeting people.

I remember hosting an event and someone said they were sad because they were single. I asked the person “Is that the only reason for your sadness?” and it made me remember something similar from the past. I had the worst flashback episode of all time. It was so bad that I started to feel dizzy and felt like a deaf person. I couldn’t listen to anything or anyone. I felt like throwing-up.

I managed to announced the performer’s name and by the time I rushed into the bathroom, my vision had gone blur. I just sat there for a while. It was December and extremely cold. So I was wearing a hoodie. I started sweating so heavily that I had to remove it . I sat on the floor till things got back to normal. I washed my face and made sure to look normal before going back to the stage. That was the very first time I succeeded in making everyone believe that I was doing great.

A lot of days, I'd keep thinking “Why me? Why did it ever happened with me?” and get frustrated about it. I never cared about a person’s Religion, Caste, Clothing Style or Sexual Preferences before being their friend. I never asked anyone to change anything about them or their family or the locality where they lived. I don’t remember giving an assault mark to another human, but I ended up having one. “Was I so difficult to be accepted? Did I look so ugly that I had to change my entire appearance and existence to be loved?” were the things that constantly came to my mind.

Slowly, I found myself moving into a self-loathing mode thinking “How could I let a person do that to me?” or “I could’ve done things differently to avoid the whole situation.” Or “I should’ve stopped at a certain point.”. I was angry and frustrated all the time. I did have people who acted fuel to the fire. I remember receiving a text from a woman saying “If you give anything to a woman, she multiplies it and gives it back to you. So, it happened with you because you might be the one who started it first.”

History has it, at least initially, a guy walking out on an abusive girl, doesn't go down well with a lot of people, especially women. I would regularly receive hateful and slut shaming messages from random people calling me a Fuckboy saying, “I’ve slept with more than 50 women.” I’m still looking for those 50 women to find out when did it happen. Some people threatened to visit my home to cause harm to me and my family. I found myself being alert a lot of times even in my sleep. I would wake up to the littlest of noise I heard.

Things reached another level when I was up for about 48 hours and after I finally slept, I didn’t have a memory of what I’ve done an entire day. I had to call people to find out. That was when I thought I needed to take this seriously. Initially, I thought I’ll be able to deal with it in my own way. I started working out a lot because I love it.

Secondly, all I needed to do was to talk to people. I had people on Facebook sharing “Talk to me. I’d love to hear your story rather than attend your funeral.” Posts. These people also included my then best friend. I texted him without a second thought and surprisingly got no response. Instead, he would become one of the triggering factors. Eventually I realized that I have been abandoned by my best friend, which was another trauma while already dealing with a trauma.

I tried talking to some people. Some of the responses were “If you were able to get sex in return for all the abuse then it was worth it.” Or “This happens with everyone. It’s not a big deal that it happened with you.” That was when I started having a bad feeling about social media. I felt contaminated being there and decided to leave social media completely. That was how I started the Avoidance part of my symptoms.

For months, I didn’t speak with anyone but my family. I still go out of my way to keep my life private. I was completely off all kind of social media. I was not attending any Open Mic Events. I avoided phone calls unless it was for work. I still don't like talking over the phone. I avoided going to certain areas, wearing a lot of clothes and fragrances. I hate having a beard or wearing watches to this day.

People won’t believe it, but I found it difficult to re start Instagram when I needed it for my Stand-Up Work. I thought I’d leave after a while but stayed once I thought I was comfortable enough sharing just Comedy related content. After a while, I created a new Facebook account only to keep in touch with family and some school friends. I don't add everyone. Somewhere during this time, I decided to take professional help.

Honestly, as of now, there’s no specific treatment for PTSD. There's no moment when a person who have suffered PTSD can say that they are not suffering with it anymore or they've been 100% cured. The person dealing with it, his behavior and people around can help put it in remission but, it would always be there in one of the corners of the brain. It doesn’t leave.

One of the things that can help you to keep it at bay is CBT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This helps work on the symptoms, restore mental balance, and teaches skills to deal with the trauma. The basic idea is to change the thought process that has been disturbed. It's a 12week program that begins with talking to a professional and slowly involves writing in detail about the things that happened. It helps get out of that self-loathing phase. You get a better understanding of the fact that everything that happened was beyond your control. It helps you learn from the experience you had.

Apart from CBT, there’s PET (Prolonged Exposure Therapy) which is the most difficult but greatly affective. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), SIT (Stress Inoculation Training) and Medication helps too. You can click on the names to read further about them. I won’t be disclosing the details about treatment that I had gone through but if you’re someone who is looking for help then these are the activities.

Apart from all these, you need to take personal responsibility to work on yourself. One of the things that I did on a personal level was to continue to do what I loved. Apart from that, I avoided all kinds of triggers even if meant walk off on people who were close but bad for my mental health. I continued working out intensely which I love. Apart from that, I’m a Corporate Professional by choice so I continued doing my work. I started blogging. After taking a break, I got back to my comedy. And I found God; I found love; I reconnected with my family and got more closer to them than before. These things have, in a way, helped me stay alive and sane.

Aftermath:

I’ve been declared to be in remission. I feel way better now than I used to. I don't get nightmares, flashbacks or have nervous breakdown anymore. I don't exhibit any more severe symptoms, though some of them LURK somewhere in the corner, always tapping and letting me know it’s there. I’m more patient and thick-skinned than I used to be. I've become good at compartmentalization. However, I do realize that a part of me has kind of changed or gone forever.

For the longest time, my way of expression was wronged, shunned, abused, and tortured. Now I find it difficult to express anything at all. Sometimes I feel I’m not even capable of expressing anything. I come out to be most non-reactive one in a group. I find it difficult to appreciate or accept compliments which wasn't the case previously.

There was a time when I tried to be vulnerable and a friend to certain people. Thanks to them, the concept of friendship for me is more like people liking certain version of you till it lasts. They like to be a part or a companion to that version while it’s there. Once that version is gone and you start growing, they start leaving. Rarely people stay even after seeing you change for good. I used to have around 3000 friends on Facebook. Now, apart from my family, I just have about five genuine people.

I've become more of a fatalist. I believe that most relationship (non-marital romance and friendship, to be more specific) is bound to end one day. So I don't make any effort to make new friends or socialize unnecessarily. I avoid a lot of people. I like to keep to myself. This, I think is kind of, one of the withdrawal symptoms that avoidance leave you with. One of the issues I face because of that is I feel extremely uncomfortable in crowded places.

Another irony here is that a part of my work is to perform in front of audience, but again, that's a different scenario. People who come as spectators, in some way, are barricaded and won't be able to get closer. They will be there for a while and leave. The barricade is not just for the audience. There's a barricade I've created around me and as of this moment, apart from my family, my (soon to be) wife, no one else has even come closer to it, forget crossing or breaking it. Not because they don't make any effort. It's because I don't like to let anyone in.

I feel a lot better now. But initially, there were days I felt empty. Being around loved once and doing what I love to do made me feel bottomless. There were times I felt my life became like a smoker’s tongue. It got a lot of good food but doesn’t feel anything. Family & Praying helped me. I’ve become more like a Born-again Muslim. I pray and thank God as much I can because it’s only because of God that I was able to walk out on an abusive person. Else, I would have not been alive to post this blog.

Closing Message:

I won’t give any unrealistic suggestion. You might hear a lot of people sharing posts on social media which says “If you don’t have anyone to talk to then I’m there for you.” The sad reality, as I mentioned in one of my videos, is that no one is there for you. At least no friend. Especially in case of men. People just lie. They share posts for likes and it creates a good impression on another bunch of people who don't care about them. Especially if you're a common person who hasn’t worked in Pirates of the Caribbean, you'll be shocked at the way your closest friends react to your trauma. The ones who deal with it, are in it alone, all by themselves.

So, if you genuinely love, care, support or believe in someone and if they tell you that they’re suffering, it’s not a wrong thing to tell them that you cannot listen to them. Understand the fact that you’re not a professional, if you try talking to them, you might end up triggering them and make things worse. So if nothing then at the very least help them find the professional help they need. I'll make it way more easier for you. Just share this link with them.

In the end, if you’re someone dealing with PTSD or any kind of mental issues then firstly, thank you for reading this far. Secondly, you’re an amazing person. Lastly, get all the help you need and create the best life you’ve ever dreamt of. Once you're in remission and able to control your symptoms, you'll realize what an amazing gift life is.