The Stages of Dealing with a PTSD Nobody Tells You About
If you have watched enough movies, you may have seen a lot of characters struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. Some might be quite extreme like sleep-walking or going mute, others might not be as visible as you’d think.
PTSD short for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental condition triggered by a traumatic event where the person in question experiences anxiety, disturbing thoughts or nightmares about the event.
Okay, it might be a little gibberish especially to my hard guys and girls out there. But I need you to really think about a time when you or someone close experienced something traumatizing. How was your/their behaviour after the event?
You might want to shrug it off as you being fine but the question is are you truly?
So over the week, I got into a little car accident. My uber bashed into the side of a jeep and it caused the car some serious damage. I’ll be explaining the stages of a PTSD by giving the details of how this affected me.
1. Initial Shock
I didn’t know how to react and well my first instinct was to look for my slippers immediately after it happened. Now looking back at that day, I realize that I was in some serious shock. I mean the engine was smoking and fuel was leaking but my thought process was directed to an insignificant pair of slippers.
I did not even think for a second about an exploding car or getting out so that no one else runs into us. Yeah na ment.
This stage is usually the one we see a lot on TV. Where people are hypervigilant, scary, aggressive or whimper all day.
It’s really misleading because people think that this is the only representation of what a PTSD looks like. No one emphasizes on the other stages and behavioural changes that come with the other stages including recovery.
2. Denial
So this is where my Nigerian people pick up the pieces and dust off. I mean strong black man how can you be tagged as weak? This is where you keep experiencing the symptoms of a PTSD but you push it aside and forge on.
Not everyone actually goes through this stage and it is completely normal if you don’t. I did try for a while to suppress these thoughts and flashes I was getting but yeah, it doesn’t really work. What it does is it makes you aggressive, distraught, unproductive and just off.
In my case, I get jumpy at car horns and super anxious when a car I’m in gets too close to another car.
I’d like you to know that suppressing what you feel isn’t going to help. Rather it’ll just make living your day a lot more difficult. So what then do you do?
3. Recovery
Dealing with PTSD really entails opening up to a professional about it.
My experience might be a little trivial compared to others because there are many severe traumatic experiences like rape, suicide, abuse, war, but to mention a few.
Surviving this might be harder than you think.
If these intrusive thoughts keep coming and there’s nothing that helps, you should consult a professional mental health expert.
And it’s easy to just say oh ‘Speak to a therapist’ but one session is like a quarter of my salary.
Like ahn ahn. Let’s be frank, this therapist thing can only work if you have money.
Thankfully, there are NGOs that are now focused on advocating for mental health awareness in Nigeria. One of which is MentallyAwareNG.
Since I am not a licensed health professional, I cannot tell you steps to take towards recovery because I really don’t know the answers tbh.
However, if you’d like to talk to someone on how you can deal with PTSD, you can always send a dm to the MentallyAwareNG Twitter or Instagram handles. There will be someone available to help.
You can also read about more stories on Mental Health here.
I hope this has been truly helpful. Do have a great week ahead.
Oh and thanks for asking, I am fine now.
