PTSD is an invisible monster. It disguises reality. When I was sucked into what I learned to call the trauma vortex, I often couldn’t distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t. I thought I was going crazy.
PTSD told me this over and over again: You’re not safe. You never will be. Being dead would be better than living one more day like this. The message from my illness was clear: Give up.
Fortunately, thanks to my prior, hard-fought—and victorious—recovery from an eating disorder, I knew that feelings of hopelessness and helplessness are just a part of mental illness. At one point or another, most of us who struggle believe that we are too far gone to ever get better.
While I have written about my eating disorder recovery in several books, my battle against PTSD and its accompanying and unrelenting depression are lesser known. I haven’t spoken much about this experience yet, because for so long, I didn’t even know that I suffered from trauma, much less PTSD.
To continue reading, please click here for the original post on the Anxiety and Depression Association of America website.
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