Living with PTSD - Part TWO

Hearing
© Melina Magdalena (2006)

This week I went to an audiologist for a hearing assessment. My reasons for arranging this assessment include a strong family history of hearing loss, the government subsidy that enabled me to have the assessment without incurring a cost, and my auditory experiences which range from the bizarre to the annoying.

Like many people who live with PTSD, my extreme sensitivity to noises is trigger-happy and exhausting. This is something I live with every day and every night, for which I have developed a range of coping strategies which render it almost invisible to anyone else.

Gone are the days when I literally threw myself to the ground and rolled out of danger when fighter jets roared in formation over the skies of Adelaide as part of a thrilling entertainment spectacle. The spectacle of me having left my body so that I could watch myself shaking with terror on the ground below was enough to convince me that I had to do something to disguise my reactions in future.

I have trained my body not to physically jump in instinctive response to loud and startling noises. Whilst driving, I am able now, to remain outwardly calm, and hold my hands steady on the steering wheel, even when my heart is pounding and my belly churning in response to the gunning and screeching of motorcycle engines and tyres behind, in front or beside me.

I work in the city, which means that I am exposed to a great deal of industrial and traffic noise. Walking along streets and waiting for public transport can induce harrowing auditory experiences. So I have learned to attend to a different range of sounds, and to block out those that most distress me.

Of course, this has meant I have to maintain other aspects of hypervigilance, in order to keep myself out of danger. Interestingly, I have developed an exaggerated startle reflex to visual stimuli. When I am dealing with emotional stress, or at times when I am concentrating intently on a single task, I frequently jump and scream when someone comes into my line of vision and startles me. These people are usually around six feet tall, and when their presence registers unexpectedly on my consciousness, I panic.

Unfortunately, along with several of my work colleagues, my sixteen year old son falls in this category. Last weekend I was extremely stressed and preoccupied. Over the course of one day, I jumped and screamed in fright about fifteen times at his sudden appearance, though I knew all along he was with us in the house. His feelings were understandably hurt and he was rightly offended that I was so afraid. My distress had nothing to do with him. This reminds me of the experiences of Shosha and her children, as described in Aviva Sheba’s “Soft of Hearing”*, broadcast on Radio National in 2002.

There are some noises that I just cannot bear to be around. Wind in the trees raises my anxiety levels by several notches. I will get out of bed and search my house for the origin of any high-pitched electronic beeping or hum of audiovisual equipment that has been left on inadvertently after everyone else has gone to bed. I’ve learned to work at my computer, as long as there is not too much competing noise around me. If I hear loud noises and fighting in our street, I run around the house and turn off every noisy appliance, so I can hear exactly what might be going on out there. I cannot do anything else until it goes away.

The sounds of sibling rivalry were constant triggers until my children began to explore the world of hip hop. How I hated that music when they first began to listen to it! I had to scream at them to turn it off, or I had to leave the room and leave the house. It was not just the level of profanity and discord, nor just the obscene and degrading lyrics, especially where they pertain to male attitudes to women. It was the various layers of noise that were woven together and somehow came to represent many of the kinds of sounds I find it hard to live with. I still object to the sexism, hatred and violence expressed by much of the hip hop that I have heard over the years, but I have trained myself to be able to listen to the sounds and separate the strands into their layers, thus confining them to limits that are tolerable for me. My children get along better than they used to, but I am now also able to tune out their senseless bickering.

I live in an area of a housing boom. On days when my work at home competes with the cacophony of trucks, jackhammers and other building equipment, I know it is going to be more useful to stop what I am trying to write or paint and turn my attention instead, to something repetitive or mundane. The wear and tear on my emotions, from having to keep my reactions at bay whilst attempting to sustain my creative output is deleterious to my energy levels. Amidst such ongoing cacophony, forcing myself to relax and take a nap to recover my strength would be futile.

It is in terms of quality of life, that such sensitivity to noise impacts on how well I am able to function as part of ‘normal’ society. Everyone who has learned to adapt to debilitating or limiting physical conditions, whether short-term, recurring, permanent or chronic, knows the cost of such adaptation can be measured by how much energy one has at one’s disposal, for other things.

Mental and emotional fatigue shows up in my life as a chronic physical symptom of PTSD. It is not my imagination or habit that causes my eyelids to droop around eight-thirty at night, and makes me yawn incessantly from then on. I am simply at the end of my tether. The level of auditory distress with which I have had to cope during the day directly determines my level of exhaustion when it comes to dealing with the noises of the night. Sleep is another matter altogether.

My hearing assessment showed that my hearing in both ears lies comfortably within the normal range. No surprises there. When my home is quiet, I can turn my television down to ‘3’ and still understand every word of dialogue. When I lie awake at night, I can hear the pulse in my wrists. The sound of the sheets as they rustle, when I turn over, trying to get comfortable and cosy enough to fall asleep, overwhelms every other sound around me.

Several years ago, I used to wake at night, believing I had heard gun shots next door. The second time I rang the police about this, the kind woman on the other end of the phone reminded me of the road works that were happening at night as tunnels were being blasted through the foothills of Adelaide, twenty kilometers away. I began to pay attention to the gunshots that I heard. Sure enough, they always occurred on the nights when there was blasting going on up there. I stopped bothering the police with my calls of auditory distress.

It’s funny how well I’ve taught myself to tune out false alarms. The trouble is, that in doing so, I also tend to fade out the noises of social discourse that do not represent potential danger or distress. In order to function socially, I have to consciously switch on my hearing and attend to the sounds that people are making around me. Overstimulation is the most frequent result. In attending to conversation, my hearing goes hyperactive. I overhear so many fascinating and intriguing tidbits, that it’s not easy to tune into the one particular strand of conversation in which I have been invited to be involved. This can be quite fun for a while, but it too, leads to exhaustion.

When I need to concentrate, I’ve learned that multitasking is sometimes the only way to do it. I often have two or three things going on in my head at once. If I am anxious while driving, I will sing a song, as well as counting, or reciting a different set of lyrics in my head. This drives my children up the wall. I’ll also add up the numbers on the numberplates of the cars around me, and make up silly acronyms with the letters.

I can carry on conversation fairly well at the same time as counting and singing in my head, though my retention levels are not high. This is probably what has led me to worry about my memory. It has led to contiguous gaps in my sense of time. During conversation, I appear to be attending and even to be a good listener. It’s later that I obsess about what I did or didn’t hear, and whether I was really there at all.

Creating noise is one of the most effective coping strategies I have developed. When the babble of my extravagant emotion becomes too hard for me to bear, I will take to hammering, throwing things around, and rummaging fruitlessly in my pots and pans cupboard just to drown out my own destructive thoughts. These are the times when I tend to break crockery, because I bang the plates down on the counter with gleeful rage, and throw them into the sink to be washed. This doesn’t make me a crazy psycho bitch. It relieves the pressure without hurting anyone else. I also enjoy slamming doors.

The best thing of all, I have found, is to put on the kind of music that I like to listen to, and to turn it up loud loud loud! I love to sing my heart out when I’m feeling bad, because it makes me feel so much better. I don’t care whether the neighbours can hear me through our paper thin walls. I couldn’t care less about the lameness of the lyrics. All that matters when I’m singing is the glory of the sound itself, and the fact that I am choosing to make it, to the exclusion of all other sound around me.

Living with PTSD is challenging. It’s good to reflect on aspects of what this actually entails. I quite like to admit that I have an extravagant emotional life. I can laugh about my exaggerated startle reflex. These are largely private matters, invisible to the naked eye, so to speak. When asked about my levels of health, I am happy to report that I am relentlessly well. I rarely mention the fatigue that now feels normal to me. This doesn’t mean I am not challenged by living with PTSD, but it reflects my strength and pride in the fact that I step up to that challenge and function very well in spite of it.

*Aviva Sheb’a (2002) “Soft of Hearing”.

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.