From Autopilot to Healing, Part 4.

It’s been a couple of months since my last post. A combination of COVID, thesis writing and some very exciting news, which I’ll announce next week, are to blame.

It feels weird writing about my mental breakdown some six years later. It’s as if it happened to another person, and I was merely a fly on the wall. But I continue to carry the mental scars—now without shame.

 Six years ago, after my inability to return to work—or even leave the house—my workplace demanded a sick note. I visited a GP who diagnosed me with Acute Stress Disorder and sent me home to return the following week. This went on for almost three months before he finally referred me to a psychologist.

My childhood horrors were exposed, and the therapist diagnosed me with CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

I began psychoeducation and medication. But my fortnightly trips to therapy still produced extreme symptoms of anxiety, and I couldn’t attend alone, dragging my husband with me. But soon, I had no choice but to attend unaccompanied when he was offered a contract in Paris.

Returning to a single cloistered life gave some relief. The dogs and cat didn’t complain about my silence, my lack of motivation or my inability to genuinely smile. Travelling to town to collect groceries or for therapy involved a ‘social story’, something I’d developed regularly at work for students. All went well on these excursions as long as nothing unplanned occurred. Otherwise, I’d become a ball of tears, dropping everything and escaping to the sanctuary of home.

My trip to Paris to visit my husband, a couple of months later, was fraught. I was armed with my regular medication and diazepam, the latter providing relief during the journey. It’s amazing how isolated you can make yourself in a country where you don’t speak the language. This was a relief, along with spending time with my husband. Saying goodbye reminded me how much I’d miss him once home, and the parting was difficult. But what kept me going was the knowledge; he only had another month to complete his contract, and he’d be home.

But that was until COVID-19.

Paris was particularly badly hit—experiencing the first European death. Unwittingly, I was on one of the last flights back to Australia.

My husband became an isolate in the small one-room studio flat he rented in Clichy. He begged his employers to allow him to complete his contract remotely—from Australia—but they denied him. Instead, he was permitted to go to England and work from his son’s home in Kent. At least he was with family. But it meant our reunion was uncertain. We video-called daily, as we had done whenever he was away, but it was different. The longing for him to be home was greater when there was no fixed date to work toward.

COVID brought with it many positive qualities for a hermit.

Suddenly, everything became available virtually. Tertiary educational institutes had no ‘in-house’ students, so a multitude of free courses became available online, which I took full advantage of. Therapy attendance became virtual, which offered a surprising solace, and life behind a mask–on the rare times I had to visit town—made interacting easier.

Once my husband’s contract concluded, we started the rollercoaster ride of purchasing flight tickets for him to return home. We lost hundreds of pounds in fees, even though the flights were cancelled by the airlines. But the loss of money was soon superseded by elation at locating a seat on another flight, only to have hopes dashed with yet another cancellation.

Between the highs and lows of his anticipated return, therapy continued.

The effects of my childhood, combined with my continued masking of shame and guilt through adulthood, explained why I’d had a breakdown. The revelations of the continuing effect of trauma decades later informed both me and my therapist of the steps needed for my recovery. More on that in the next post.

In the meantime, here is a—very dark—video of a performance poem I wrote about my childhood experience growing up with domestic violence.