Last week, I had a really hard week. I was dysregulated, struggling to sleep, and had several severe trauma responses in just a few days. Reflecting after a week like this can be really challenging; I don’t want to relive or remember how difficult last week was. I don’t want to be reminded of the things that triggered my PTSD, how out of control I felt, or the nightmares that kept me up at night. And honestly, reflecting on a week like this is difficult because I am trying to piece together fragments of memory from a time that just happened. But like many aspects of PTSD healing, just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not helping. In reflecting on my week, I discovered three things that helped my PTSD last week:
And three things that made it harder:
1. Daily PTSD Check-Ins
A couple weeks ago, I created a free resource for The Vault that included a daily PTSD check-in sheet. I wanted a week’s worth of data for another resource I was working on, so I spent 5 minutes every day this week filling out the PTSD mind map and checking in with my symptoms. What started out as research for a resource turned out to be one of the most grounding parts of my week. As simple as it is to circle symptoms on a page, this check-in really got me thinking. It challenged me to examine what I was feeling, and to get specific about my symptoms. It gave me specific language to use about my experience, and it brought to the surface emotions I wasn’t consciously aware of. Instead of generalizing, like I had been, I was able to identify that I wasn’t just feeling detached, or just feeling panicked. I was also frustrated, confused, agitated, exhausted, disconnected, sad, avoiding, and numb. It was deeply gratifying to be able to put a name to what was happening inside me, and validating to, in some small way, understand my reaction. Because something triggered my PTSD, I was feeling angry and impulsive and desperate. These are symptoms of my PTSD.
What I started as an experiment to gather some data turned into a daily practice - I’ve since finished my other project, and still find myself choosing to fill out a PTSD check-in every day. It feels better to put my symptoms on paper than to keep them tangled up in my brain. And when I get to therapy, or to the end of the week, and I want to reflect on how things have gone, it gives me information to find patterns and to track my symptoms. Even if it only makes my experience 1% better, that 1% goes a lot farther when I’m in the middle of a severe PTSD episode.
2. Getting Specific About What Support I Needed
Right now, my partner and I are long-distance, which means that I wake up alone in the middle of the night after having a nightmare. I have an incredibly supportive and understanding partner, and when we visit and share a bed, he brings me immense comfort and relief when I wake up in the night filled with terror and confusion. With my sleep getting worse and worse last week, and my body getting more and more exhausted, I started to grow frustrated that he wasn’t here all the time. If only he was, then I could get some sleep. If only he was, then my long, sleepless nights wouldn’t be so bad. But as hard as it is that he isn’t, if he was here to support me through the night, I would never learn the skills I need to manage my overnight PTSD symptoms without him.
Instead of blaming him for our long-distance relationship, a large and inaccurate generalization for what was wrong, I narrowed down the problem. At this time in my PTSD recovery, I don’t sleep through the night. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I am confused and disoriented, often feeling in danger and extreme terror. I feel unsafe. When my partner and I are together, his loving presence reminds me that even though it may not feel like it, I am safe, and he and I are partners in this healing process.
What helped my PTSD this week was getting specific about what support I needed from my partner. I asked him to write me a quick message before he goes to bed that I can read when I wake up in the night. It doesn’t stop me from having nightmares. It doesn’t change my trauma response when I wake up in my own bed, disoriented about where I am. But it does change my experience as I try to regulate and stabilize my body overnight. His messages remind me that I’m safe, that he loves me, and that we’re in this together, even though we’re physically apart. Much like my daily check-ins, doing the work to get specific about my experience and my needs, and communicating openly with my partner about them, had a significant impact on my week.
It’s taken a lot of practice for me to hone in on the specifics instead of only looking at the big picture. This week, I was able to reflect on my own, but often I work through this kind of scenario with my therapist, who is trained to support me. She also happens to be the third thing that helped my PTSD this week.
3. Therapy
After I received my PTSD diagnosis, my then-therapist referred me to a therapist who specializes in PTSD and trauma recovery. Again, narrowing down and getting specific about the kind of support I need to recover has made all the difference in my weekly therapy sessions. She often asks me how I am, or how my week has been, at the start of each session, and this week, I was, “Happy it’s therapy day.” With so much training and experience with PTSD, she understands and validates my experience in a crucial way. I don’t know other PTSD survivors working towards recovery. Being fully seen and accepted by someone who genuinely understands my PTSD removes some of the intense isolation that can come with this kind of diagnosis. She makes me feel seen.
This week, we talked in depth about a trigger that set off several days of trauma responses. She gave me some perspective on why the event triggered me so severely, and we talked through why my brain connected the trigger with my trauma.
It is not the easy route to uncover and talk through long blocked-out memories and trauma. It is hard and painful and has come with a lot of tears and mental and physical strain; and it has also come with progress I never believed I was capable of. One of our first sessions together, my trauma therapist told me that PTSD remission is possible, and I wept tears of joy and relief. I thought I would never stop experiencing these life-stopping and detrimental trauma responses, or be able to engage in dreams and goals that have triggered my PTSD. I’m not there yet - I’m still deep in the difficult early trauma work. But I trust her. I believe her when she says that we will get to PTSD remission, together. She gives me hope for a future after a past full of trauma - and that makes all the painful recovery work worth it.
"[My therapist] gives me hope for a future after a past full of trauma."
1. Being Out of My Routine
One of my biggest management tools for my PTSD is routines. I have daily routines and weekly routines, from the minute I wake up until the minute I fall asleep. By no means does this level of meticulous routine-keeping mean that my days and weeks are seamless, or that it eliminates my PTSD symptoms. Sometimes I cry through my routines. Sometimes I have to adjust my intentions to match what my body is mentally and physically capable of participating in. Having daily and weekly routines isn’t about rules and rigidity, they’re a flexible tool that helps me take some control of my situation. Most importantly, having such detailed routines gives me a level of predictability that my poor traumatized brain can thrive on. I’ve said before (here) how much I struggle with surprises, and need a lot of time and space to process changes to what I’d been expecting. I won’t be able to predict what calls I get at work, what unexpected incident triggers a trauma reaction, or what difficult conversation my family decides to bring up bright and early Saturday morning. But I can expect to have some quiet time to myself over a cup of coffee every morning, and read my book in the bath before bed, and pack my lunches for the week on Sunday afternoons. I put a lot of time and effort into cultivating routines that help me manage my PTSD.
This week, my routines got thrown out the window, and it was one of the hardest things on my PTSD. Tuesday night was Halloween, which put me trick-or-treating through my evening routine. That might have been okay if I hadn’t also committed to dog sitting all weekend, and a late-evening small group on Sunday night that was really important to my sister. The deeper I got into the weekend, the more frayed my nervous system got. By mid-day Sunday, I was completely dysregulated and out of control, and Monday morning I had a meltdown at work because my nervous system was so overwhelmed, even after putting extra strategies into my morning routine that day. I told my partner on Monday that I was having trouble functioning as a person; answering an email felt impossible, listening to a co-worker talk was unbearable, and every task I needed to do was met with the resistance of walking through chest-high mud. Without intending to, I had taken all the predictability out of my week. Even though it might sound idealistic (or even a normal part of daily life for someone whose nervous system is consistently regulated) to roll with the punches and adjust to what the week brings, my nervous system and PTSD brain are just not in a place where that’s an option right now. I learned that the hard way this week, but it’s really helpful to know that the routines I’ve put in place are actively supporting me in managing my daily symptoms.
What I Would Do Differently Next Time:
It’s easy for me to look at this weekend and decide indiscriminately that I’m never going to dog sit again, and that’s exactly what past me would have done. But dog sitting was something that felt important to me. Especially around the holidays, the opportunity to make some extra money wasn’t something I wanted to miss; I just didn’t realize that missing an entire weekend of routines would impact me so much.
Right now in my PTSD recovery, it was too much for me to be away from my apartment for the entire weekend. That will change, but until it does, I can look for ways to adjust my plans to give me some time at home over the weekend. That might look like doing a day trip instead of an overnight, or staying over for one night instead of two on a weekend trip. Knowing my limits helps me find ways to engage in meaningful plans without overdoing it, which helps me build stamina as I heal.
Another thing I could have done to make this weekend a lot easier on myself is plan ahead to incorporate some of my weekly routines into my weekend alongside the dog sitting. I dog sat nearby to my home, and could leave the dog for several hours before needing to come back and care for him. Next time, I would plan several pockets of time in advance to come home and engage in some of my weekly routines. Saturday mornings I clean my apartment, Sunday mornings I grocery shop, and Sunday afternoons, I meal prep. Those are all things that could have been planned into my dog sitting weekend that would have helped provide me with some of the stability I usually get from my routines.
2. Getting Triggered - And Trying to Manage it Without Support
My trauma got triggered in a significant way this past week from a situation in current events that mirrored my own trauma in several ways. My body went right to work protecting me, and after the shock wore off, I settled right back into the hallmark trauma responses that got me through my initial trauma, like denial and avoidance. As similar as that event was to my original trauma, and considering the place I’m in with my PTSD recovery, that situation was always going to trigger me. But what really made this specific episode, and my PTSD as a whole, worse last week was that I tried to navigate my trauma response without reaching out to my support system.
When I experienced my initial trauma, I was young. My friends were young. I didn’t have a partner at the time, and my friends didn’t have the maturity or life experience to relate to what was happening to me; my family was experiencing the trauma alongside me. My support system then looks remarkably different from the support system I have now, with a loving and well-educated partner, who understands and works with others who have PTSD and other mental health challenges, a trained trauma therapist, and my family out of daily crisis mode. And yet, when I got triggered on a Thursday night, it took me a full week to mention it to anyone, when I got to therapy the following Thursday afternoon.
Sharing about my PTSD episode with my partner or my family wouldn’t have stopped me from getting triggered. It wouldn’t have stopped my body from doing what it does best and protecting me through trauma responses like denial and avoidance. But, as I realized in and after that therapy session, talking about it to people I trust means that I can share the weight of the trauma response with someone.
In my daily PTSD check-ins last week, I kept marking that I was confused. Confused about why I was triggered so severely, confused about the ways my body was responding to the trauma, confused about how to support myself through the trauma with strategies and coping mechanisms. Talking to my therapist helped me understand my trigger and my response, and at this point in my recovery, naming and understanding the experiences in my body is an invaluable tool. It helps me process what is happening to me, and then it helps me reflect on my experience and use that information to support my reactions moving forward. It does not change my trauma response, like dissociating or shutting down or intense weeping, but understanding what is happening in my body changes the way I experience it.
What I Would Do Differently Next Time:
Next time, it will be important for me to communicate that I’m having a trauma response to my support system, especially my partner. It was hard for me to talk about what I was experiencing (more about that here), but I forgot that it’s okay for me to share that I’ve been triggered without talking about what triggered me. Again, sharing with my support system wouldn’t have stopped me from getting triggered. But since my partner has such an active role in my PTSD recovery, sharing that I was having a trauma response with him would have really helped. When the logical and rational part of my brain is shut down from a flashback, he remembers the strategies that help to calm me down. He gently reminds me of things that have helped before, and after, he follows up with me about things that preventatively help my mental health. Next time, I want to remember that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing - I can ask for help without being able to give all the information about what’s happening in my body.
3. (WAY) Too Much Refined Sugar
I didn’t realize just how clean my eating ordinarily is until I had a full weekend of food outside of my normal diet. While I typically eat fruit and/or veggies with every meal, heavily monitor my protein intake, and aim for complex carbs that sustain me throughout the day and healthy fats, I spent the weekend eating ice cream, cookies, chips, pretzels, and Halloween candy. Instead of eating filling meals, all I ate was snack food that never satisfied my hunger. This meant that I just kept eating and eating, and digging myself into a nutritional hole. But the biggest detriment to my PTSD stands out among all the other empty calories I consumed: refined sugar.
I was fortunate to be raised in a home that was very intentional about nutritional education and balanced eating. As a lifelong vegetarian, nutritional intelligence has been crucial in fueling my body in a safe and healthy way. We were not a family who ate dessert after dinner every night, and grew up learning how to balance sugar intake by making choices like eating a sugary treat with water or a sugary drink with a savory snack.
But this weekend, in addition to eating ice cream, Halloween candy and cookies, I was drinking apple cider, iced tea, and coffee with whipped cream and chocolate caramel syrup. My body was in a constant loop of sugar high and sugar crash, empty belly leading to consuming more empty calories that didn’t fuel me or fill me. The more processed sugar I ate, the worse my anxiety got. When I came home on Sunday and made a homemade pizza piled high with fresh cut veggies, my entire nervous system took a deep breath.
I really didn’t understand how much my diet impacts the way I feel until I way overdid it this weekend. For me to make choices with my food that affect my body in a way that spins my nervous system into anxiety and a roller coaster of highs and lows only adds to the PTSD symptoms in my body. A PTSD episode is hard enough without the added stress of a malnutritioned body.
What I Would Do Differently Next Time:
Much like with dog sitting, I’m not reflecting on this past weekend and swearing off sugar for good. I have a major sweet tooth, and I do eat dessert every night now. It’s a part of my evening routine that brings me a lot of joy.
In a regular day, I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and water or unsweetened sparkling water for the rest of the day. The only time I typically eat refined sugar is during my evening dessert, and I’m loading my body up on fruits, veggies, complex carbs and protein during the day. These fuel-heavy foods stabilize my body when I choose to introduce it to sugar, and that is the biggest mistake I made in my nutrition this weekend. Not only was there no moderation, but there was nothing to balance out all the sugar in my bloodstream.
Knowing how much I love sweets, I know that next time, I won’t choose not to have any dessert. But I can choose to eat foods that support my wellbeing and stability in addition to having dessert. Reflecting on what helped and what hurt my PTSD isn’t a tool I use to decide what things I’ll never do again, but how to better support myself the next time a situation like this comes up.
Reflect on your week: what was something that made your PTSD better? What was something that made it worse? Download the free companion page for this post in The Vault, and share your thoughts in the comments below!
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