PTSD, Sleep, and Socially Awkward

 Sometimes, we can follow the sleep hygiene, we can do the exercise, we can take the meds...

We can literally do everything right, follow the therapist's and the med manager's and the physician's orders... and if PTSD has not been acknowledged as a part of the equation and isn't being adequately treated in the way our body needs, then we are masking...masking... masking...

Until the final straw... or a loud noise... or simply the last coping skill runs out... and then how long until another good night sleep? How long until any sleep?

Meanwhile, we know we need sleep. We know we are approaching being unreasonable. We know that we are not being our best.

The question is, do we turn that inwards or outwards?

I guess it depends on how far out we go without sleep, and how well ingrained we are regarding our place in society. Majority of people assigned female at birth? They have generally been well socialized to "behave well", to not make a fuss, don't draw attention.... and turn all the frustration inward until depression manifests.

For the majority of people in intentionally targeted communities? Survival depends on not allowing emotional responses, so the basement gets stuffed with emotions, the muscles for masking/code switching are well developed, and nobody knows what is hidden just below the surface. Depression and learned helplessness at being able to change anything? Or rage, just waiting for one spark too many?

I'm not even touching the final demographic, they make the news for the worst coping strategies but get the most compassion and largest benefit of the doubt... Or they turn all of that inward, decide the world would be better without them because those first 4 paragraphs, combined with our society utterly failing to meet basic needs like safe shelter, clean water, healthy food, and most importantly healthy connections with other people who fully and unconditionally accept us as we are, and support us on our healing journey.

"We didn't start the fire...."

Did you know insurance companies in the US are essentially practicing medicine without a license?

Yup, every time they deny a procedure, medication, or treatment that would benefit a doctor's patient, after the doctor has written up the orders, filled out the prior authorization form, and had to make another patient wait while meeting the insurance's requirement for a "peer-to-peer call" with an insurance employee who gets a kickback for denying coverage, at least 2 patients suffer: the patient who was praying the doctor would get the approval, and the patient  left waiting in the little cubicle, dressed in a paper gown, while the doctor scrambles to get through the peer-to-peer call that was finally bestowed by the insurance company.... Because doctors are only paid for 7 minutes per patient, but are supposed to be available for a 24 hour period for when insurance decides it is convenient to call.

This is not health care in the US. It's barely funded health care in much of the world. All of this is the result of trauma--both intergenerational/epigenetic and the mundane variety of the trauma of trying to survive a profoundly sick society-- and the untreated, unmitigated trauma causes illness and leads to another generation of traumatized people so the cycle can continue. Did you see the news recently?

We had 24 months where human beings could have stayed home, healed, learned, repaired... repaired themselves, repaired their relationships, repaired the earth. The ozone layer showed signs of healing, and entire waterways began to rejuvenate themselves. All the earth needed was time to heal.

Which only required the various governments around the globes to use the taxes they collect from citizens and residents alike to actually take care of the people. We wouldn't be needing to be concerned about covid any longer, if governments had utilized their executive functions to ensure supply chains became contactless, suspend/wave rents, suspend/ wave bills, and make sure basic needs were met: Safe shelter for all human beings (we have more empty houses than we have unhomed people in almost every country), healthy food (we throw away enough to feed the globe), clean drinking water, and health care during a pandemic.

Instead, we have global corporations making record profits while complaining that nobody wants to work, pushing for business as usual that is destroying people, destroying the planet, and raising the global temperature that last couple of degrees.... no media coverage of the record low unemployment rates, and not the false low unemployment numbers we have seen in the past as people applying for unemployment have been removed from the rosters to make the numbers look better.

No, we simply don't have people applying for unemployment insurance.

I wonder why?

Where on earth, in a pandemic, did all the people go that people are not applying for jobs and also are not applying for unemployment insurance?

How active has your local crematorium been? How many new headstones in your local cemetery? Have you checked on all of your extended family members? What about the single elder, living by themselves in the house with the dilapidated yard?

Because our collective governments didn't take care of the citizens, much less the residents.

The insomnia everyone is dealing with?

It's a PTSD response to knowing the death toll was much higher than the media let on. We literally had crematoriums running 24/7 around the country, up until a few months ago. 

Some... still are.

Yes, China locked the entire country down for a few hundred new cases, and no they aren't necessarily ensuring food delivery or waiving rent.

And yes, a president in another country chose to believe some faulty intelligence that made his ego feel better than the truth (where have we seen that happen before🙈🙉🙊) so he invaded his neighbor and is targeting citizens.

Yet neither of those truths erases the fact that not a single country's government around the globe chose to take care of all the people within their borders when a pandemic hit. Nor does it change the fact that we know global climate change is real, and is driving severe weather events.

Are you still with me reader?

Because here is where the stuff gets real.

This insomnia that is affecting 1 out of 3 people (conservative estimate, some areas are closer to 4 out of 5 people) is survivors guilt for some, PTSD from too many losses for others, and the last...freaking...straw for the 3.5% of the population who already had PTSD before the pandemic hit... before Australia caught fire... before an entire city burnt to the ground... or a prefecture was wiped away by a tsunami. It is the natural consequence of humanity not living in balance with nature.

So, do we turn this energy inwards?

We can. We won't survive that option, doesn't make it any less viable as an option. We need to start getting real about that.

We could turn it outwards, out of control. That's been what society intentionally conditions people to do. Remember, "the squeaky wheel gets the oil"? There's a lot of people who won't survive that option, either. See the Boston marathon, the NY Subway, Columbine, Port Arthur, Christchurch, Cumbria, Plymouth....

What if there were a third option?

Would you take it?

Would you be willing to do the work of self accountability? Learning emotional regulation? Would you be willing to work together with other people in your immediate community, if it meant you might have a chance at a good night's sleep?

As socially awkward as I am, lack of sleep makes it worse. As uncomfortable as acknowledging PTSD is, as difficult as it is to uncover those demons and address them.... I am realizing that the only way forward is through. I am not an island, and neither is anyone else. "Society" that we live in, is not a society at all. According to Margaret Mead, world known anthropologist, "the first sign of civilization was a healed femur".

Why?

Because finding the ancient remains of an individual who had died, after breaking their femur and it had time to heal, indicated that the society the individual lived in had chosen to take care of a person who was unable to hunt or contribute. The health, the civility, of the group elevated them to a society as soon as they were willing to share resources to keep someone alive.

So how much of our "communal PTSD" is due to survivors guilt over the pandemic, and how much of it is because we know we could have done better at sharing resources and taking care of one another in our respective societies... and we chose not to?

Guilt is not the answer here. It will contribute to the PTSD, it will contribute to the insomnia.

The learned helplessness of believing only government can take care of society, that government has to change won't help us either.

Right now, the only way we get out of this is through. Together.

So my socially illiterate, chronically ill self, is reaching out to anyone interested to ask: 

Will you take my hand? Will you help me?

Because I can't do this alone. I have tried, and I can't.

It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to build mutual aid....

What does it take to support a globe on a healing journey?

“Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts,” Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; For, indeed, that's all who ever have.”

I have started my journey. I have room beside me, for you.