I’m so frustrated. People have this perception that having a trauma disorder is about remembering painful things that happened and being upset about them. I’m always being told that I’m an adult and I shouldn’t let the past affect me. But it’s unfair and people who say that don’t realize how privileged they are not to have severe trauma. It’s not about remembering the past. It’s about how my brain developed when I was a child and my brain was plastic. For example, my executive skills are incredibly undeveloped as a result of childhood trauma. Acknowledging this isn’t some sort of cop-out. I’m not just ignoring my own responsibility to work on myself. Just the opposite: I’m recognizing that for the rest of my life, I will have to work harder than most people to do things that seem easy to them and are huge challenges to me. Telling me that I’m over 30 so I should no longer be affected by the structure of my brain is like telling someone with Shaken Baby Syndrome, “Well you’re not being shaken NOW so why are you still blind? You would probably be able to see if you forgave your parents for shaking you.”
Anyway, this is hurting me now because whenever I try to read books for adults trying to improve executive function, I get totally overwhelmed. They lay out all my symptoms where I can see them, and I feel like those symptoms are the reason most people can’t love me. I was hoping that neuropsych testing would help but there’s a huge waiting list, and I finally got to the top of the list and had an appointment but I had to cancel it because I’ve already missed so much work due to bronchitis that my boss said I couldn’t take more time off. It feels like a vicious cycle because having poor executive function massively affects me at work but I can’t get treatment for it because I have to work. On the one hand, that’s how adulting works. On the other hand, most adults don’t NEED neuropsych testing and are able to perform reasonably at work because they don’t have trauma disorders. This is an example of where adulting is harder for me than for most people. The expectations are the same for me as they are for everybody else, but I face more barriers. One therapist said it was like a race where everyone had to run the exact same distance, but some people had great running shoes and others of us were barefoot. The expectations are the same but that doesn’t mean we all have to put in equal effort.
Lately I’ve been constantly running into the problem of time moving absurdly quickly. I wake up in the morning and give myself two hours to shower. I look at the clock and stress over how I’m going to shower in just two hours, even though I know that should be more than enough time. I sit and worry that I’ll be late and it feels like mere seconds later, almost the entire two hours have gone by and I’m going to be late to work. Giving myself more time doesn’t solve the problem. Today for example I had six hours to do whatever I wanted. I have already spent several of those hours staring at the clock and worrying that I’ll be late to the next thing I have to do. I thought this was a dissociative issue because it’s not normal to sit and stare for literally hours and then feel like that amount of time went by in an instant. Time flies when you’re having fun but it shouldn’t go by that fast when you’re looking at the clock and willing it not to go by. My psychiatrist told me that it was an executive function problem and recommended a book, but as I mentioned I can’t read the damn book because I feel so much self-hatred looking at it. Roommates hate me because I leave coffee grounds in the coffee maker and forget them and they grow mold. People at work think I’m incompetent because I walk into a room and there are a million things to do and I freeze and stare off instead of being able to mentally make a list of things that have to be done, prioritize what needs to be done in what order, and regulate my emotions and fear of failure so that I can actually do the things instead of just panicking over what will happen if I don’t do them. These things are so easy for others and they roll their eyes at me because they don’t understand why I can’t just be like them. I WANT to be like them so badly. An example that comes up a lot is when someone says, “Go over there and get XYZ thing out of the supply closet.” I go to the supply closet and I know that the thing is probably very obvious and easy to find, but I’m so afraid of not being able to find it that I don’t see it. I scan the shelves, desperately trying to be like everybody else before an unreasonable amount of time goes by and I have to go confess to my neurotypical co-worker that I couldn’t find the thing. They groan and walk to the closet and it’s maybe behind something else but it would have been easy for anyone but me to find. I don’t understand why when I’m looking for something, I can look right at it and not see it. And the thing is, these admittedly ARE incredibly valid reasons not to like me. I can’t blame my past roommate for being mad about molded coffee grounds. It’s just that the more I panic and beat myself up, the LESS able I am to function. I’m not being careless; I’m actually too far in the opposite extreme and when people think they’re helping by being mad, they’re making me more anxious and more incompetent. And all of this makes me feel like a sorry excuse for a human being. Knowing that my lack of executive skills and other limitations make me unlovable and other people are justified in not being able to love me really sucks.
I wish Dr. X could have been around during my normal life and not just when I was in the hospital. I feel like he would have been able to explain the staring off for hours and losing time and other challenges I run into. I’m going to therapy weekly but it’s not going very well. I have the same problem there of time moving really fast and I feel like I can’t start talking about things because they’ll take too long and the session will be over. It doesn’t help that I go to therapy on Mondays at 9am and have to go to work straight after, and I’m in a mad rush to get ready and worried about being late to work. Because when I’m not at work, I am ALWAYS worried about being late to my next shift. Like it’s Sunday afternoon right now and I’m terrified of being late tomorrow. So therapy in the mornings is not going well. Therapy later in the day would probably also be an issue because I would have to consistently be able to leave work early enough to get there. But my extreme fear of running into trouble at work is preventing me from doing the things (therapy, neuropsych testing, etc) that would make me more effective at my job.
Anyway. It’s a whole thing and there’s a lot to it and I wish people could understand that, instead of thinking that having a trauma disorder is about dwelling on things in the past that were painful. I mean that happens, but there are ways to manage it and it’s an incredibly small component of what trauma actually is. Trauma changes the way the neurons in your brain wire themselves. Just choosing to let go of the past does zilch to give you executive function. I’m not being lazy or complacent by having a disability.
