[Teacake]

Secondary wounding is when people shame you for getting hurt or having symptoms

I went to hospital, half drunk and suicidal. I thought I was going to be helped. I said I had ptsd. I said please let me sleep alone the first night. I'm jumpy. I don't want to scare a roommate. I said please don't sneak up on me. I have a startle reflex.

They put me in the suicide watch room. They spent a lot of time saying they were Christians and I must respect their sensibilities sleeping modestly as they watched me. I was reassured somehow that these modest Christian folks would respect me as well. They would not sneak up me. I had brought modest change of clothes. I always dress modestly. I changed in the bathroom and slept reassured that I would be on my way to respectful treatment in the morning.

I hadn't specified please don't sneak up on me EVEN IN THE DARK WHEN I AM SOUND ASLEEP.

Of course that's what happened. I recall hearing a woman gasp and stumble into a metal cart, spilling glass things. I politely asked if she was all right, using a high pitched gentle voice. I knew she was frightened. I asked herrshe could find the light. I felt around the bed and said let me call a nurse. I thought she was a patient. I didn't want her to walk on the glass things in bare feet. I asked if she knew where the call thing was. She didn't turn on the light. She just said, "you DO have a startle reflex!" And left.

I realised then I'd awakened myself by yelling loud and had been crouched on my bed in fight stance. As soon as I asked if she was ok, ad sat down and begun looking for the call thing or a light switch. I hadnt done anything but jump from sleep into a defensive stance when startled inthe dark.

The whole next day they asked about military experience. I have none. "are you sure?". I was sure. They never asked how I got that startle reflex. They asked if I had been in Iraq. No. Not out of country since childhood. No, no military. No, never a policewoman or firefighter. No, really, no military. No emergency work. No military. Yes, I can account for every year since highschool. After a day of this, a rather expensive day, I was less polite. I told the fourth person to ask togo run my social security number through the VA and stopped asking me about military service. I never served. I am a pacifist. "how do you know the VA has a database?".

"Look, we think you belong in the VA hospital". Then send me ****ing there. I had no idea what the VA hospital was. I never served in any branch of the military and if they wouldn't believe me they could learn by wasting their time trying to put me in the damned VA hospital.

"you frightened a nurse". She had apparently frightened me first. I'd tried to avoid this by respectfully saying please do not sneak up behind me.

They were shaming me for reacting in my sleep to someone creeping into my room in the dark. I'd asked them not to do that. I hadn't done anything but shout and jump into a defensive fight stance on my bed and talk a frightened person down, usinga gentle voice. I'd been genuinely concerned a frightened psychiatric patient had got disoriented and wandered into the wrong room

I didn't need to be scolded. I didn't need to be treated like a dangerous person. They were behaving hysterically. I've never served in any military, but I knew that most of the people who do don't actually do violence. Certainly, women didn't do combat.

We were back to police, emergency medical, blah blah blah. I said no.

Look, I told you I have ptsd. O haven't been able to treat it. Can we get beyond my lack of military experience and get on to the treat the suicidal distraught patient bit?

No we could not. Because I'd obviously been combat trained. Paramilitary? I'm pathologically polite bit she looked so wide eyed... had a yellow belt in no contact sport karate. Archaic form. Some self defense. I didn't progress belts because I didn't like to spar. So shyly I asked if i might see the tape of me being so scary. I was aware of waking up on my feet. I'd dropped to my butt as soon as I was awake. I know I was being very gentle with the frightened girl in the room. I showed her a lot more concern than she showed me. She couldnt even turn on the light when I asked her to. Maybe she thought the Christian men manning the cctv ought not see my face and hands?

"are you a danger to us?"

No. I'm not dangerous. Can we get to the part about me telling what happened to me and getting some empathy and maybe some medicine? Because what happened to me sure enough left me jittery when I wasn't in a stupor of depression and I'd very much like to get some help. Since ive come to the hospital and all.

And you have my real social security number. I can sign releases and you can see I've been in the affluent suburbs being treated for anxiety and depression, and not running in the woods with a militia or whatever the **** you think ive been up to.

After about three days, very expensive days, they dropped the military/militia crap and pretty much ignored me. No one snuck up on me. I talked to an old man who was filled with grief about the death of a sibling when he was a boy. I listened with empathy. Its so easy to do. But we rarely have timioe for it. Time is money.

In some group thing a Hawaiian man said his troubles began when he came to the mainland. I said I believed him. Our culture is not a good culture for dealing with distressed people. I've known many foreign people who fell into depression, saying America is good for making money and not getting locked up for telling a political joke, but not so good for friendships. The man leaned forward to listen. I touched him. I thought we might get a real conversation going about how Hawaiians and others deal with traumatic life. I got the "shut up" glare from the facilitator, and the man was told in a rather patronising tone that he had a chemical imbalance not caused by the mainland. I said that's not known. His diet may be different here. The quality of his relationships was icertainly different here. I told him to try to get back home. I hope he did.

I incurred seven thousand dollars in debt. I learned one useful thing. We are healthier with six social contacts we see at least weekly than we are with no social contacts. I counted mine. I had jerry the Starbucks guy, and the three liquor store owners. I wasn't close to my neighbors but I spoke pleasantly to them.

Just before I left I saw the doctor. He told me I was schizotypal. I told him I had ptsd. He told me I didn't. I asked how he knew. He said I was schizotypal. I said I didn't care what he called it if treatment worked. He looked startled. "if I treat schizotypy, will the startle reflex, the inability to sleep without nightmares, the flashbacks and the rather o tendency to take a defensive position and yell real loud abate somewhat?". His face told me it would not. Perhaps I should have stayed to make him at least try to do hos ****ing job. He had a good reputation. But I was furious and I walked out.

I went home. It was ten am. I had a quadruple bourbon and let a friend take me to lunch. It would be impossible to describe the despair I felt.

That friend agrees, when I tell the stories of how I got ptsd it sounds unreal. I've been treating myself. I may be OK. My friend spent another several thousand dollars on weekly psychiatry. I was on SSRIs and valium and every sleep medicine any salesman sold the doctor on. I still couldn't sleep without alcohol. Alcohol doesn't let you sleep but dreamless unconsciousness is better than waking with a pounding heart wondering if I'd shouted in my sleep and awakened the neighbors.

I quit psychiatry. I treated myself with GABA. The nightmares ended in about two weeks. I still dream, but my dreamer can get its point across without scaring the living hell out of me. Naturally, once I could sleep peacefully without alcohol I found it easy to drinkpp normally. I'd tried AA and Women for Sobriety and now and then I see someone from a program looking horrified that I'm having a whiskey or margaritas before dinner. Is explain to anyone with ears to hear, but I've found most people haven't.

Im lonely so I've written a veritable epistle. I wrote it with my thumbs.

I've hurt everyone who's ever loved me. I've lost years to alcohol and idleness and untreated ptsd. I think they'd all rather I died drunk some night and they could mourn my death, as someone who chose to live hard, as some kind of rebel.

That's not what happened to me. I didn't go to war. I didn't get raped. I wasn't doing dangerous things, taking my chances, or making bad choices. I was first responder to a dying girl at a very good little college. I was a very good little girl. It was entirely random.

That's the hard thing. It was random. It just happened. Trauma didn't target me for My goodness or badness. It was entirely neutral and random.

But, humans are superstitious as pigeon

Body therapies work for ptsd. The best thing about body therapies is you don't have to depend on pigeon brained people to believe that you got hurt while not living hard, or doing danger, or offending God, or whatever someone's pigeon brain can conceive of as the reason you got hurt and remain hurt.

Secondary trauma is worse than primary trauma.

If you really think about that, the problem is not that some of us get hurt or shocked and go numb and get stuck in numbness. Its a problem with all of us. It's our culture. It's how we live and what we believe. It's how we treat one another. It's our conventional wisdom.

May we all be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

May we be harmless to one another.

I think we have to tell our stories for the same reason birds have to sound an alarm. Its not about us. Its about each other. Q

I hope something in this birdsong may have somehow helped someone.

[TMWBE]

i am sorry you had this bad experience when you went to get help.

i wish the world was a more realistic place, instead of all of this belief...

that seems only to divide us.

peace to you Teacake*