June 2015 – Coming Back Home

Pushing People Away, Part 3

Published on June 12, 2015July 29, 2022 by Dr. Dee Rajska, C. Psych3 Comments

I’ve posted before about why we tend to push people away when we need them the most, here. More recently, I also wrote about how childhood trauma can get in the way of building healthy relationships as an adult, here.

This time, I’d like to try and explain to your loved ones why you might seem to be pushing them away.

Imagine the sound of a fire alarm, screaming so loud your ears are ringing and your whole body is vibrating from the sound. Now imagine that it’s stuck inside your head, so you can’t shut it off, and you can’t get away from it. You’re stuck with it, and it’s driving you bananas.

But your spouse can’t hear it. So, your spouse wants to ask about your day, what you want for dinner, did you pick up the dry cleaning. The kids want to play.

When PTSD acts up, it fills your head with so much stuff that it might as well be a screaming fire alarm in your head. When that happens, all of your energy goes into just trying to shut your head off. You don’t want to smile, make conversation, or even just put up with people being around. It all just feels like more noise, and you can’t bear it. You just want everyone to go away.

To your loved ones, you might come across as cold, distant, callous, and indifferent. They might wonder what they did, and why you seem so angry. Often loved ones react by trying to help or ask questions, because they don’t understand that they didn’t do anything wrong, and you just need to zone out to try to quiet your head.

So, how do you cope?

You remind yourself that it’s not your fault: you’re not trying to be mean, you’re just overwhelmed because of all the noise inside your head.

You share this post with them, to help them understand that it’s also not their fault, and pushing them away is not a reaction to anything that they did.

And – you work hard at trying to practice relaxation, as best as you can, every day. That’s your key to learning to slowly turn down the fire alarm in your head. It’ll take time and hard work – but you’ll get there.

I’d love to have you share your thoughts, comments, and questions. If you do post a comment, please don’t give specific details of your trauma – these may be triggering to another reader. If you’d like to offer criticism, I’ll take it – I know I’m not perfect, and I’m always willing to learn. If you do offer criticism though, I’d really appreciate it if you could do so constructively (ie., no name-calling, please). Thanks…

You can find me on Twitter and on Facebook.

~ Dr. Dee Rajska, C. Psych.

*Fine print: Please feel free to share the link to this blog wherever you think it might be helpful! Reading this blog is a good start, but it’s no substitute for professional help. It takes a different kind of courage to admit to yourself that you’re struggling. PTSD is not a sign of failure – it’s a sign that you’ve been through a lot, and have tried to stay strong for too long. If you need help – you’re in some pretty great company. Reach out, and give yourself a chance to feel better.

**Really fine print: The content of Coming Back Home is copyrighted; please feel free to share the link, but do not copy and paste content. Unless otherwise noted, all original photography on Coming Back Home is copyrighted. The photo gracing today’s post was taken by M & C Charbonneau, and I’d like to thank them for generously allowing me to use their work. Please do not copy content, including photographs, from Coming Back Home without permission.

Suicide is Not Selfish, and It Is Not a Choice

Published on June 12, 2015August 1, 2022 by Dr. Dee Rajska, C. PsychLeave a comment

HEADS UP, folks. If you’re struggling with the death of someone you care about, this post will be hard to read. But if you’re up to it, bear with me, because this is important.

When you lose a loved one to suicide, you go through a whole range of really intense emotions. There’s disbelief, because often, they seemed to have it all together and you never knew how much they were suffering. There’s sadness, and guilt, and lots of wondering if there was some way you should have known, something you should have done, or said, or… Prevented this tragedy somehow.

And, often, there is anger, even rage. We think: how could they do that to their family???

It feels like such a selfish choice.

It feels that way, but it’s actually neither selfish, nor a choice.

Imagine you go to your favourite restaurant. You’re hungry, you’re not on any kind of diet, and you don’t have food allergies. You have money just burning a hole in your pocket. When you order your meal, you have a choice: there’s a whole menu full of options, and you can have any of them.

Being selfish also requires a choice: imagine a baby crying because its diaper needs to be changed. If the baby had the choice of learning, right now, how to walk and go use the toilet, then choosing to use the diaper instead, and inconveniencing a caregiver who then needs to change that diaper, would be selfish. But a baby doesn’t have a choice. It’s not selfish; it’s a baby. It doesn’t have any other options.

Suicide is not a choice.

It’s sort of like this: Depression, despair, hopelessness, and isolation form an ocean around you. The waters get rough. You do your best to keep your head above the water, but it feels like you’ve got two broken arms and two broken legs as you helplesslessly, painfully try to swim.

And sometimes, despite your best efforts to keep swimming, you just… drown.

That’s what suicide is.

Use this information – to help to quiet your anger at the person whom you’ve lost, and also, to quiet the second-guessing at what more you could have done.

You can find me on Twitter and on Facebook.

~ Dr. Dee Rajska, C. Psych.

Why Do I Push People Away, Part 2

Published on June 2, 2015July 12, 2022 by Dr. Dee Rajska, C. PsychLeave a comment

A while back, I wrote about how childhood experiences can impact our ability to cope with stressful events later in life.

Today, I’d like to tell you more about how childhood trauma can impact our relationships in adulthood.

In a healthy childhood, caregivers are reasonable and predictable. Kids get time-out or lose privileges for misbehaving. When they behave well, they get praised or rewarded. Over time, they learn that their actions impact their environment, and that relationships are relatively stable: mom and dad will always love you, but they’ll take away the Xbox if you don’t stop being mean to your little brother.

Kids in abusive homes learn a very different lesson: for them, whether people are nice or mean often has nothing to do with how they behaved: it might be cruel and random, or be based on things the child can’t control: “If Dad gets drunk, he’ll probably beat me”.

Having grown up in this kind of environment, building healthy adult relationships can be challenging. You might see others as either ally or enemy, and even a small misstep might make someone feel like an “enemy”. It can be especially hard to take criticism, which can feel like a betrayal.

People who have these traits tend to be lonely – they long to be close to someone, but they usually break off relationships at the slightest sign of trouble.

If this sounds familiar, a first step is to understand that this pattern is based on an unrealistic expectation: “A real friend would never do anything to make me feel uncomfortable”. That just can’t be true: a real friend is a human who will sometimes goof up by accident. Also, a real friend is someone who might sometimes make you feel uncomfortable because they care: for example, he or she might tell you that you’ve got something in your teeth or your fly is undone, because they care enough to let you know so you can fix it before you make a fool of yourself.

So, you can start the healing process by understanding where this tendency comes from, and by reminding yourself to understand that a real friend is one who is not perfect, and will sometimes disappoint us.

You can find me on Twitter and on Facebook.

~ Dr. Dee Rajska, C. Psych.