Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
TW
I have to be one of the most friggin' unlucky people on the planet. I'm getting stalked by my family of origin's friend. Believe or not, he is an ex-FB I agent. Yep. He just pulled up behind me in his car when I went for a walk right now. I have a real professionally trained spy stalker triggering my PTSD hypervigilance. WTF!?
I promised my kidney doctor last week I'd try to walk on my cane for 4 blocks 10 times in the month before my next appointment. Because of nerves dying in my feet and legs neuropathy pain makes doing it really painful. Next, because I have kidney disease I can't take pills for the pain, not even--surprise!--aspirin. Even aspirin is out due to my kidneys.
Outlawed, too are all of my PTSD medications I used to take. I took Ativan for panic attacks. I took Seroquel to stop extreme screaming startle responses like happened for real when a loved one tried to hug me when I was visiting their home.
Those were taken away in 2011. Without the help of PTSD medications I could no longer live with anyone. So for the first time since I was 24 I started living alone in 2011 at age 53 I started to live alone again. No roommate, spouse, or partner, like I stil live now.
Without my PTSD medication Seroquel, my startle responses toward hugs came back so I quit dating, too, after my fiancee broke up with me over it. My therapist worked with me for six months about what to do about going around my family of origin, where my abuse started. Without medication, I couldn't take their continued behavior even though I was 53 and they were 80. When I went to my parents' home for Christmas and my old dad gave me a feeble punch to the face, it wasn't that he had much of a punch. It was that it set off triggers that went on for days for me since I wasn't on my PTSD medication Seroquel to help me take the abuse mentally.
So on my therapist's advice after six months of talking about it, I cut ties with my family to have boundaries for the abuse instead of Seroquel. Since my kidneys took me off PTSD meds, I came here and joined DS PTSD as my placebo substitute every day for when I used to take my PTSD pills in the morning and at night.
Therefore, I'm about to start the holiday season again from Thanksgiving to New Year's alone. I've been invited to spend holidays with friends, but I've found movement, traveling, is the best thing to keep me from falling into lonely depression during the holidays. So for Thanksgiving I made reservations to visit Washington, DC and for Christmas I bought a plane ticket for Mexico.
I've done, then, what my PTSD therapist asked me to do so I could follow the kidney doctor's orders and live without PTSD medication for my kidneys' sake and keep my 40% kidney function from falling to 25% and dialysis or transplant.
1. I broke ties with my abusive family like my therapist asked
2. I came here to have DS support as a placebo effect to replace my PTSD pills morning and night
3. I lived alone for my PTSD startle responses instead of with a partner, spouse, or room mate who inadvertently startled me
4. I even got a job at a community college instead of a four year college thinking I'd have a less stressful job I could handle better if I didn't have my PTSD medications Ativan and Seroquel for work
5. Now as of today I've walked 4 of the 10 times I promised my kidney doctor before next month's appointment
Some of those things, like living alone, having no family, not dating and downsizing my career, challenged me because ever since I've had PTSD I've had suicidal ideations. Being alone and risking depression without anti-depressants, then, scared me. I was hospitalized for suicidal ideations back in 2000 when I faced living alone depressed after my divorce then, and I had all the PTSD and depressions medications available to me now.
Being alone with depression after PTSD and depression medications were withdrawn in 2011 for kidney disease scared me a lot. I've managed not to be hospitalized without PTSD or depression medications since 2011 somehow when my fiancee left me over my PTSD without medication, though. I've dealt without pills with my panic, depression, and suicidal ideations. I don't know how, but my psychiatrist and I think it's because I made myself believe in the placebo effect of replacing my PTSD and depression pills coming here to DS PTSD morning and night at pill time. He put me back on one medication last year that's kidney-safe because it's processed through the liver, Prazosin for nightmares, but he says the rest is me and my placebo effect for replacing pills with DS PTSD.
If I've done everything I've been asked my my therapist, psychiatrist, and kidney doctor, then, why does Fate play such tricks on me as having this ex-FBI stalker hunt me down today on one of my walks I promised my doctor? Why? WTF!?
When I changed my life in 2011 having to go off PTSD and depression medications, that new job community college job was half way across country so I could have a new start away from family and their house in Missouri. It was tough; I drove the moving van myself and it was too much. When I got here to my job in the West Virginia mountains I got out of the moving van's cab at my boss's house when I stopped to say hi and passed out cold. Her husband had to take me to to emergency room. Great new start, huh? WTF!?
I pushed on with my new start anyway, but when I went to work I met this ex-FBI agent at my community college teaching criminal justice classes. WTF!? My dad was expelled from church by then because as pastor he abused the church, not just family, and my dad stole money from his own church and got caught. Before that, though, he'd had another church. Unbeknownst to me, this ex-FBI agent had been a member of my dad's church board back then. WTF!?
Boy, am I lucky. I move across country from Missouri to West VIrginia to get distance and have the boundaries my PTSD therapist said to create from my abusive family, and happen to get a job in a town where they have a literal ex-FBI agent to spy on me. What are the needle in a haystack odds of that. Seriously, what are the mathematical odds. Does lady luck hate me? WTF!?
I avoided him, of course, but this ex-FBI agent hounded me for my first years on my new job on behalf of my family with harassing phone calls on my work phone and harassing visits in my workplace. I reported him to Human Resources and contacted a lawyer, and they threatened him with both with being fired from work and being sued and told him to stop stalking me. He did, and though he retired in town two years ago. Until today, I thought I had won because I hadn't had any stalking for two years.
Until today. WTF! It's painful enough for me to walk on my cane with the kidney nerve damage. I was concentrating pushing through the pain to walk to keep my promise with my doctor, so I didn't see the ex-FBI agent stalker coming up behind me in his car.
I mentioned here that I have an extreme screaming PTSD startle response and that I live alone because I can't have even a lover come up behind me to give me a hug without losing my mind for a time. Without any PTSD medication it requires a lot of effort to get my mind back when my startle response loses it for me.
Imagine, then, how started I was just now on my walk when I'm pushing through pain on my cane and this ex-FBI agent abuse family stalker drives up behind me and hollers out his window at me. I was mental scrambled eggs all over the sidewalk.
It made me a mess right before I have to get through the Thanksgiving holiday alone. It is hard for me because with a partner, spouse, or roommate I wasn't alone for 29 years between age 24 and age 53.
So WTF, universe or fate or destiny or whatever you are out there. No stalking for my family abusers by ex-FBI agents, ok please? Can somebody up there in heaven or wherever give me a break, please? I show up here at DS PTSD, I try to post gripes only once a week or so and to post support for others as much as I ask for support for me, I try to be a good patient.
So WTF, universe or fate? I mean it. WTF? Can I at least follow through without interference from some ex-FBI agent with these holiday plans I made myself create on my therapist's suggestion? WTF? I'm doing everything I'm being asked to do for my PTSD recovery, so WTF?
I'm even looking for another job--for several reasons like making more money, working less so I won't need an ADA accommodation at work, and to get away from this stalker. I'm up to job application number 43 today, so I'm doing everything to be responsible for my fate and not be a victim. So WTF, Fate, about this ex-FBI stalker showing up again on my painful walk just now?
Before I forget and make it all about me and my ex-FBI stalker, Happy Thanksgiving, then, I love y'all, and to y'all who have people to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with, Happy Thanksgiving from the bottom of my heart. Please, though, if you'd be so kind send some support to me today to get myself back together and stop being triggered by this ex-FBI agent stalker today.
I've tried really, really, really hard to write calmly here, but behind this post I'm anything but calm. With the holidays coming living alone, I'm screamingly triggered on top of lonely and vulnerable right now because this ex-FBI stalker just showed up. I've got to pull myself together, and I need your support to do that without PTSD or depression pills. Thank you.
-
Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
-
All that said? PUMA POWER to you! :-) And get the hell outta Dodge --- sounds like a good plan. WTF is it with wackadoodle families anyway? My dad's family started trying to ping me recently, and I'm like, "Oh hell no, you all are on your own, I got no money and nothing to say, and did I mention 'and the horse you rode in'...." *sigh* T'is the season to be WTFing... Much puma purrs and power to you, amigo
His car was coming from the bar downtown where the lawyers and cops hang out near the courthouse. Since he's ex-law enforcement, he may have been hanging out there and saw me through the window and went into action.
It doesn't let him off the hook, it just creates a possible context in which he's not getting up in the morning with a day-long plan to stalk me. It was his chance to take a disrespectful shot instead.
That says something about that bar and its occupants to me, too. In the six years I've lived here I've been in that bar and tried to make friends, but they don't accept outsiders. I'm a big old white guy who speaks Southern, so I gave it a shot. To no avail, there's a Boss Hawg mentality (1970s Dukes of Hazzard tv show) mentality there as to who unofficially runs this town and this county and who doesn't.
I went through official channels repeatedly at my school and through my lawyer to get this guy away from me. But my boss went through the motions of the letter of the law and violated the spirit of the law, just as she did when I invoked the ADA law to ask her to stop assigning me overloads beyond my contract at work. She retaliated by creating extra hoops for me to jump through in extra meetings with extra bosses to make me explain my disability again and again. That covered her rear legally while also harassing me legally with more meetings.
I finally called her on it with my psychiatrist, which she didn't expect because she didn't anticipate I'd go public that I had one. And I called in my union rep. Then she asked me to work an overload next semester anyway, feigning ignorance passive aggressively about how what went for this semester went for semesters in the future going forward, too. As if my PTSD were temporary, which she's known better about for six years.
This disrespect just fits that larger pattern of who is in power and who is not in my Appalachian town. It's beautiful here, and one local family has really taken me in to teach me the history and introduce me to lovely people in the back woods. They took me to a West Virginia University this fall and I got to participate in their tribe and feel their sports passions. That's wonderful. But the power brokers, small time though they may be, like to bust my chops like that ex-FBI guy did yesterday, like my boss at work about my ADA accommodation. They see someone coming out of the closet about PTSD as a weakness to be played with, not something to respect. They're wrong and I've had no problem saying so. I even brought in a guest speaker who spoke at my college auditorium about it his trauma and recovery.
But I'm getting tired of saying so again and again to folks to turn a deaf ear and like to play games like this ex-FBI good ole boy around town did yesterday. I'm not the only one. The only African American instructor we had at my college had him as her boss before he retired, and after as many years as I've worked there she got fed up and quit in mid year.
I have tenure at work, so my job's not in jeopardy. It's just something that motivates me to apply to see if I can move and have tenure at a job in a larger urban area where local yokels might not have such power to harass just for grins. I'm calming down from being triggered and seeing it in proportion enough to say I'm not under threat, I'm just sick of being stigmatized and played with this way. I'll be all right, I just deserve some respect. I've given folks here every chance to be respectful, so if I don't get it here maybe I can go to a more respectful place, then.
PTSD stigma sucks.
And there it stands... or lies... years later. I'm just this psycho weirdo, but he's perfectly normal. (If that's normal, thank God I'm weird.)
Big hugs, Mujmi. I know the "who runs this town" vibe. especially when it's cops "in on the power". Big hugs, and praying you find a safer job/home soon!
I could feel your pain & frustration in all your writing, yet you still never give up & are a good person. Thank you for being a bright light in this world. Sorry if that sounds corny I just really think it’s true.
I hope you never have to see that guy again. I hope that you find a job that you can feel comfortable. I also hope that your hyper vigilance starts to go down so you can feel a little safer. You deserve all that & more, so I’m keeping the hope alive over here for ya.
Here with you, hopefully we can all make it through these crazy holidays together here.
Sending support & gentle hugs <3
lilmiss, so sorry you know what stalking feels like from experience, too. It's a special kind of creepy feeling. Thanks for joining me in hoping for another job where I can be free of it. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, my friend.
The remote possibility that this application might lead to something is what I hung my hopes on to calm myself down and changed the subject in my head to positive things, things other than this stalker clown and how this town lets him skate even after I reported him 3 times. Something might pan out and then
I will have channeled this fear he triggered into work on applications that brought positive change, right?