Living with PTSD - Part ONE

Living with PTSD - Part ONE

Another Side of Normal

© Melina Magdalena (2006)

The amazing thing about people who live with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is how well we appear to function in everyday society. Notwithstanding those of us who are so unfortunate as to have been misdiagnosed and so merely exist, drugged to the eyeballs to keep us quiet, most of us remain anonymous, faceless members of the community*. We have learned that it’s safer to remain silent about those aspects of our lives that no one seems to be able to do anything about. The traumas that induced our conditions have already happened, after all, and that damage cannot be undone, only lived with. Living with PTSD is a continuous journey towards health.

At the same time as writing this, I am conscious of the empowering belief that I am the expert on my own situation. I know myself better than anyone else possibly could. This is an attitude which I have been encouraged to develop, in order to give me some semblance of control over my life. It is a useful paradigm to from which to live and work, but today I choose to focus my attention elsewhere.

Having studied Beverley Searle’s analysis of the kind of people upon whom Freud based his theories and diagnoses**, I wonder whether a similar analysis could be made of the supposedly wide range of ‘normality’ in terms of the kinds of physical symptoms that survivors of sexual trauma are told are nothing out of the ordinary . As Searle describes, a large proportion of Freud’s sample of young neurotic women had been sexually abused and traumatized by their fathers, uncles, brothers or family friends. The effect of this on Freud’s scientific output was not to spark outrage and put an end to the damage wreaked by these men on the girls and women they assaulted and violated, rather it was twisted upon the survivors themselves, who were labelled and diagnosed by Freud as being sick, deviant and deficient. These survivors struggled with the selfsame mental, spiritual, emotional and physical symptoms of having been abused, that survivors struggle with today. Today, the scale of normality in terms of mental and physical health which has been imposed upon us through the work of Freud and others, who failed to address the cause of the damage and only assessed the results, means that we do not really know what normal is or could be, for us.

Nor do we have any idea what normal is, for a person who has not suffered trauma. In a way, this is a perfect reflection of the way in which conventional Western medicine functions. It is largely reactive, addressing symptoms as they arise, rather than seeking to prevent their occurrence or heal their underlying cause. The ability of human beings to survive despite all kinds of diseases and disabilities is amazing. It is not just survivors of trauma who exhibit this capacity. In itself, the ability to live and function, to produce, contribute and create within one’s circumstances is proof of the strength and determination of survivors to rise above conditions of ill-health, disability or chronic illness.

Some people might argue that it is precisely the fact that human beings survive and thrive within such a diverse range of possibilities that makes us truly human.


*Bambridge, K. (2005), “Reclaiming a Life”, pp. 128-131 and Searle, B (2005) “The Legacy of Freud” (pp.21-28)
**Searle, B. (2005), “My Experiences of having Dissociative Identity Disorder in South Australia” (pp.178-182), ibid.