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Goodwills
CaseStudyA-JohnPTSD.docxCase Study (A)
John
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I grew up as a particularly happy child, describing myself as coming from the perfect family. In reality, I spent a majority of my time ignoring the issues in my parents’ relationship. My parents went through a rough break-up when I was 11, made worse by my dad’s sudden death in a car accident. This was the beginning of a downward spiral that spanned throughout my teenage years. Between bullying at school and things not being good at home, I was sinking further into depression with each day that passed. I went from being an academic-achiever to someone who would skip school to self-harm. I was completely isolated and stopped attending school all together before the end of Year 7.
I started at a new school in Year 8, improved my grades and for the first time since my parents’ break-up, I felt like I had a safe space. In fact, school became that very safe place for me throughout my teenage years. Being at school gave me enough to focus on that I could temporarily forget my own troubles. The issue was that when I wasn’t at school, I was overcome by a persistent darkness that would regularly manifest as self-harm. Soon, the depression became a part of my personality. I’d accepted that the days of bright, cheery Caiti were long-gone. In fact, if you had asked me to describe myself in three words, I likely would have said short, academic and depressed.
Ever since I was in primary school, I had dreamed of attending the University of Melbourne. It was a light at the end of a long, negative tunnel. Finding out I’d been accepted into Melbourne University at the end of year 12 should have been the happiest day of my life, so why was it so underwhelming?
That was one of the hardest things for me to accept. For so long I’d imagined that leaving home and being at the university of my dreams would bring my life together like a perfect fairy-tale, but things didn’t magically get better like I’d expected. In fact, the depression continued to worsen, and I was struck with horrific nightmares every night. I was losing motivation. I knew I didn’t want to continue to feel this way, but nothing I’d tried had worked.
For me, the therapies that worked best ended up being a combination of hypnotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy. The hypnotherapy allowed me to reframe the associations I had with traumatic memories, whilst the cognitive behavioural therapy allowed me to re-train my way of thinking. I’ve always described myself as being an open and honest person, who is willing to tell my life story to anyone who cares to listen. Despite this, my sessions with Dr Jan made me realise that I hadn’t actually opened up about my true feelings with a psychologist before. In fact, I would completely disassociate myself from my past when discussing it with anyone. Overcoming this was one of the most important parts of my recovery. When I finally did break down in front of Dr Jan, telling her about the perpetual guilt I felt over dad’s passing, things took a turn for the better. She was helping me to manage my feelings and for the first time I was seeing an end to the negativity.
As time went on, I realised that one of the major obstacles to my recovery was the pressure I put on myself to fix every issue at once. I was ending up overwhelmed and losing progress as a result.
As a school teacher, I know that I would never expect a student to learn everything at once and it was time I started to focus on fewer things at a time. I began picking a new difficulty to focus on improving each fortnight with Dr Jan. These difficulties started with managing my guilt over Dad’s passing right through to dealing with issues about my home-life. As I slowed down my sessions, I began work on issues that weren’t as major to me as others, but that still prevented me from living the life I’d always wanted.
A huge turning point was managing my extreme fear of being dishonest. For years, I hadn’t been able to keep surprises, as I felt as though I was being dishonest in doing that. Dr Jan gave me strategies that resulted in me surprising my boyfriend with a weekend away for his birthday – something I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do.
I am at a point now in my life that I didn’t ever think was possible for me. Recovery wasn’t a straight-forward path like I thought. There were times when things were on track and times when I went completely backwards. That’s the part that people don’t always tell you – you will have moments in your recovery where things aren’t progressing like you expect. In the years that my recovery took, there were countless times that I lost motivation, gave up, decided happiness was too far out of reach – and yet, the hands-down best thing I did was to re-assess and keep trying.
It’s been long and it’s been hard, but for where I am now, persevering has been so incredibly worth it. In fact, if you asked me to describe myself in three words now, I would tell you that I am still short, still academic, but I’m now also optimistic. I’ve seen how resilient I can be, and I’m finally happy with who I am.
