Showing posts with label panic attack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label panic attack. Show all posts

Friday, July 5, 2024

stop being trapped by your past

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 5, 2024

The walls you hide behind to protect you from more pain also protect you from more joys. It is time to remove the walls and stop being trapped by your past.
Have you ever wondered why you push people away, especially those you love? I know I did. After all the times I survived, my family saw right through me and got me to talk about what was going on in my head. Being able to talk kept the walls of #PTSD from closing me in. It was not until my first husband tried to kill me that I hid the pain well enough that they didn't suspect more than I was willing to share.

They assumed I would open up if I needed to, but the pain of betrayal from someone I loved was far more than what he caused. It involved everyone around me. I no longer trusted anyone who loved me. They did nothing wrong to me, but the walls were built to protect me even from them. Years later, I realized I was the only one harming myself. 

I didn't trust anyone. While I was making friends and dating after what my first husband did, I never felt close to anyone. That is until I met my second husband. I saw such deep pain in his eyes, and I knew he must have seen it in mine. 

He's a Vietnam veteran. The more I got to know him, he trusted me enough to share what being in Vietnam did to him. He was so young in that dark time of his life. His WWII veteran father kept telling him to get over it. After all, that's what his generation was told. I was the first to tell him it wasn't something he could just get over. He had to get through it. He needed to break down the walls built to protect him from more pain getting inside of him.

I gave great advice but failed to take my own. It took a long time for me to open up about the times I faced death. I felt as if his times were much more severe than mine were. I made it into a contest I believed I'd never win. How could my times be more significant than his? He was in Vietnam facing the fact he could have been killed every day. My times were over, and it was done, and I was safely back home within hours.

I couldn't tell him that I had flashbacks, nightmares, mood swings, panic attacks, and felt as if I could never take down my walls enough to really let him in. About fourteen years after our marriage, we moved thousands of miles from my ex-husband. I was still being haunted, although it never made sense to me. I was able to love my husband and our daughter. I wasn't able to feel their love. It was not until my cousin sent me his obituary notice from the newspaper back home that the nightmares, along with everything else, stopped haunting me. I was free. Free to finally take down the walls and believe other people could love me. It was a fantastic feeling. It also left me confused.

Many years later, we moved again, and COVID hit. I explained to my daughter how all the stress and fear would last much longer than the pandemic. I told her what my ex-husband did to me. While she knew what happened, I never told her about the lingering pain I had. She looked at me and said that I never told her I had PTSD. I was shocked!

I was an expert, but I didn't see it. I saw two therapists to help me heal from experiences I had, and they didn't see it. I contacted a couple of psychologists I knew over the years. Both of them said I had a rare case of PTSD because of all the times throughout my life I faced death. The first two times happened on the same night when I was just five years old. Long story short, a doctor told my mother I not only could have died but that I should have died twice the night before. He said it was a miracle I was still alive. I was admitted for five days to heal. My skull was fractured, and I had a concussion.

Knowing what I know now, it is never about what caused PTSD in any of us. It is what we do about our lives as survivors. 

Open up to people you trust in your life. You don't have to tell them everything, but you must let them know the basics. Trust me, because they are as confused as you are. They have no way of knowing what's behind the changes in you. They can only make assumptions. Those assumptions cause conflict between you. Don't blame them because you will have the same reaction if you look at what they are seeing in you. 

The more you talk about it and share what you're going through, the more the walls will come down. If you can't speak to your family, try a friend. If you can't talk to a friend, find a group trying to heal. If you can't find a group you feel comfortable in, find a therapist. If you don't feel comfortable with that therapist, find another one. 

You will see the world and yourself more clearly. Seeing the world without walls in the way is fantastic when you can let joy back in.

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Not doing what was needed cost company $450,000

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 16, 2022

The headline on WLKY News "Kentucky man sues employer for throwing him birthday party, and now they owe him $450K" was a bad choice. Given the fact that an employee told his supervisor he needed her to skip honoring his birthday, she decided to do it anyway. Why? Why would someone want to do something for someone that was clearly going to hurt them? Was she so oblivious to the fact that even telling her he had a problem with it was not enough to get her to change her mind?

The employee found out about the party and was so stressed out about it that he went to his car instead of going to the lunchroom. He ended up being fired!
 
A Kentucky man took his employer to court after they threw him a birthday party he didn't want, and the jurors sided with him.

Now, his employer owes him $450,000.

The verdict was handed down this week in Kenton County Circuit Court in Northern Kentucky. The plaintiff, an employee of Gravity Diagnostics, sued his employer after he was fired following a birthday party they threw for him in August.
The employee asked the office manager days before his birthday in August to not arrange a birthday celebration as they did for other employees.

Then on Aug. 7, the employee's birthday, the office arranged for a lunchtime birthday party in the lunchroom, according to the lawsuit. The employee said that he found out about the party as he was headed to his lunch break, which triggered a panic attack.
read more here


This goes to show that not doing what was needed was not intended to be a good thing to the recipient. How many times have you told someone what you needed help with, but they ignored what you needed and did only what they wanted to do "for you" that you didn't want or need in the first place?

It happens all the time. It means they are doing it to make themselves feel good about themselves and not making your life any easier.

When you have a mental illness, you know what your triggers are and you do all you can to avoid them. You know what they will cause you to go through. This employee was caused to suffer for this "gift" given to him he didn't want. He must have had to explain it to his coworkers, causing even more emotional pain, and then had to face more with his supervisor, topped off with higher-ups who then fired him.

All the avoidable distress caused should be a lesson to everyone out there, especially in the workplace. How many of us have been in a forced situation like that? You tell family you don't want parties but they do it anyone because they think you deserve to have some fun. You tell them you don't want to go to a party or movie or in large crowds, and then they get angry because you won't go with them. 

You need to be left out of it without being punished for it. It is a no-win situation for you. Most of us cringe when it comes to the approaching event someone is talking about because we know it will cause us pain to go and more pain if we don't because the people who are supposed to know us don't understand us.

If you are going through something like this and need to let people know how much harm they are doing by doing what they want instead of what you need, show them this article so they will understand how much pain they can inflict instead of making you feel the way they want you to feel.

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Doctor asked ER patient "are you dead"

This is not a regular hospital. The patient was having a mental health crisis and panic attack. Now, stop and think how some lawmakers think that veterans deserve to be treated like this under "Choice"

‘Are you dead sir?’ doctor asks patient in video that led to her removal from Los Gatos hospital
Mercury News
By JUDY PETERSON
PUBLISHED: June 15, 2018
“He collapsed on the grass outside the weight room,” Eitelgeorge said. “When we went outside he tried to get up but fell back down.” That’s when Eitelgeorge called 911 and “they (paramedics) took him away.”
A video of a doctor speaking harshly to an emergency room patient and asking if he’s dead has led to her removal from the work schedule at El Camino Hospital Los Gatos, a hospital spokeswoman said.
"Keegstra then pulls Bardwell’s arm and again tells him to sit up. Bardwell says he can’t get up and can’t inhale either. “He can’t inhale. Wow! He must be dead. Are you dead sir,” Keegstra asks. At one point Keegstra uttered an expletive."

The video shows the doctor, Beth Keegstra, mocking 20-year-old Samuel Bardwell, a newly-enrolled student at West Valley College in Saratoga who was brought to the hospital’s emergency room after becoming ill during a basketball practice.

Keegstra tells Bardwell, “I’m sorry sir, you were the least sick of all the people who are here who are dying. There, so you picked your head up. Now don’t try to tell me you can’t move. C’mon, sit up.”
read more here