My inner child and adult have something to discuss and share.
In early 2023, I was diagnosed and treated for Complex PTSD after I found myself in a deep depression and struggled to find purpose to continue living. I did not know much about it then, but now that I am feeling more recovered, I can see how things have changed, how that time felt different, and how I feel now – so I can share them with you as a Living Book.
I experience trauma in early 2022 and strangely began to have flashback to my early childhood and to events that were quite disconnected to my present life. I grew up in a small family. When I was a child, we were quite poor and my parents both struggled with alcohol dependency. I witnessed domestic abuse too, which forced my mum to leave my dad when I was five. I was always there observing my parents struggles and had to quickly become an adult myself. In therapy I learnt more about what that means for our psyche, self-esteem and how see ourselves in the world when we grow up. Slowly, I have learnt how to accept my past and also maintain good contact with my mum at a distance, and provide support and love to her too.
Then, in 2022, the military conflict teared the relationship I had with my mother. Just as I did as a child, when I tried to reach to my parents for comfort and support, I felt abandoned and lost. I am from Russia and I left home to study in the UK when I was 17. I grew up near Moscow, but also in Ukraine – where my grandparents lived, and where I spent my best years growing up. Because of this, my definition of home relates to many countries and the world. Two years ago, I first experienced guilt of survival, witnessing the trauma of horrible atrocities daily, and an inability to voice how I felt to the closest person to me (my mother). This denied me an opportunity to grieve – there was a lot to process there and still is.
For most of 2022 and early 2023 I have found myself in a ground-hog day and an autopilot, survival like mode. I kept going to work, trying to do the things I did before but it felt impossible. I also struggled with sharing how I really felt and slowly detached myself from others, which made me feel extremely lonely. I noted I was starting to break, until I eventually collapsed and could not get out of the bed. I reached out for help and have been in psychotherapy and then also had CBT, which offered me tools to recover and later even grow. At that time, first I froze and could not read or watch anything, let alone try to speak about how I felt. But then started slowly, with reading books by Edith Eger and Viktor Frankl. I was getting to know other people’s accounts from difficult times in history and about rebuilding of ourselves as humans. I also started to write a lot myself. I read and wrote poetry and short prose (and now have become a published writer). I connected with others who felt the same and also have kept auto-ethnographic diary of my days in depression, so I could see for myself whether I was getting better – until I eventually did. As a Living Book I would like to share with you what it felt like, what helped and what did not help me. I will share how I tried to resolve the pain brought up by current events, and pain that seemed to sit there from the time I was a little girl. I will talk about healing through arts, cold water swimming, and highlight the importance of self-care, kindness to ourselves and to others in times of crisis.
Keywords: Complex PTSD; Depression; Traumatic event; Childhood trauma; Survivor guilt;
Note: Title unavailable for the March 21st event.