Speaker 1: 00:03
YNA is a podcast that focuses on mental health and other aspects relating to what goes on inside a person's head. We are by no means professionals in this field and only aim to make these conversations about mental health easier for the listener. Nothing we say or talk about is professional advice unless explicitly mentioned. If you seek professional advice or experience symptoms of an actual mental health disorder, please contact a professional or visit your closest center for behavioral health. You are not alone.
Speaker 2: 00:58
It kind of gives them a trigger, or a few of them, or even more, that kind of lead them to being angry, upset, or just overall affecting their mental health or how they think.
Speaker: 01:10
Yeah, I have PTSD. It's exactly how you kind of described it. However, with someone with PTSD, I would explain it as a memory that replays over and over again and scars you. And you can feel everything from that memory, from what you see, what you remember, the emotions that you felt in that exact moment, and the visuals are what really affect people the most. It's because with PTSD, what it felt like to me was I had an extremely traumatic experience growing up when I was twelve. When my brother did pass, I I went to the funeral, and Muslim funerals are kind of different than a lot of different types of funerals. Like in uh like what way? Like it's it's kind of interesting because a bunch of men need to carry the box of the person the casket into a hole-ish area, and then lots of prayers are said and everyone's crying, and there's just a lot of things that go into it that are kind of different from regular funeral. From like a traditional American for from a traditional funeral, and I can remember everything from that not everything from that exact moment, but pretty much everything that's scarred me harder than usual. And I can just be sitting here and having like the best day of my life, and boom, that memory replays in my head, and boom, it completely affects my emotions to a point where I am completely sad. Like I go from zero to 100 like quickly.
Speaker 2: 02:57
So is it something that's always random, or are there specific things that you try to avoid, or just things that trigger it for you?
Speaker: 03:06
Well, yeah, it's a lot of the triggers. So I don't know if have you ever heard of Traumatized by Meek Male?
Speaker 2: 03:12
Yeah.
Speaker: 03:13
In the first 20 to 30 seconds of Traumatized by Meek Male, he has a part where a woman is crying and he says, and she saw her brother's casket, or she fell to the ground because uh fell to the ground crying because of whatever. But it was because of like her seeing the casket, and you hear this woman wailing in the song, it's in the background, you would have to like kind of pay attention to it. Yeah, but she's like wailing, and that triggers me right away because it sounds exactly like my mom when she was wailing.
Speaker 2: 03:52
So basically, it's like similar things that you hear or you see that kind of you instantly have this relatable feeling, and it just kind of triggers.
Speaker: 04:04
And boom, you're like in that moment, you're in that episode. You're you're like your episode begins right there. I could be sitting at a dinner table with friends, and the next thing you if one thing just triggers me, like you'll see my mood completely switch, like from that happy joy to the because it's a memory flashing back in your head, you know, it's a flashback. And the and then the flashback usually with PTSD is that it's so traumatic that when you do flashback, that that traumatic episode just like plays through your head. So it's like I've played my brother's funeral through my head like I don't want to say like a million times, but from the age of 12 to now, I've played it like I would say over a thousand, a hundred percent. And that's why veterans and people who are rape victims go through PTSD so they go through it a lot because it's just this memory that they can just remember and flash back to so easily, and in a sense, it's just uncontrollable, it truly is uncontrollable. I've I've tried to take over the emotions at one point and try to like force myself to not think about it, but the memory just replays.
Speaker 2: 05:21
So, so that being said, obviously, you whenever you try to force yourself to kind of dismiss it and and that doesn't work, what has worked for you, or what have you tried before uh to kind of get you out of this mental mind state, or are if there are any ways to kind of better yourself with PTSD, it's really difficult because you're pulling yourself out of a memory to putting yourself into the moment without allowing the negative emotions from the memory to affect your present moment and your present state.
Speaker: 06:00
Things that I have done and that I've read upon is being able to, this is gonna sound like kind of crazy, like usual, the count to 10. The just sit there, count to 10, and count through it, and slowly you can pull yourself out. There's been other times where meditating has done a lot where if you could just sit in a quiet place and allow your thoughts to s just come together and be in like a peaceful zen state, you really can change the way you think. And it's truly the power of the subconscious.
Speaker 2: 06:38
So, so really, it's just kind of these precise mental exercises that you go through. It as simple as they may be, like as you said, counting all the way out to 10 kind of gets your mind off of it. And one one question I do want to ask you is has like anybody outside of yourself kind of helped you think less of or kind of get you away from those moments instead of like these mental exercises. Has anybody ever done anything to help you? What can people do to help you in these situations?
Speaker: 07:15
I think you need to remember the joy of life and the beauty of life, and you can't, as much as you want to look at the negatives of life, you can't. Because these negatives, these emotions have truly such an effect on you that one negative thought can ruin a day. And I've seen I've done it, I've done it to myself. I have thought of a thought and boom, like my day is ruined. But if you allow yourself to let that negative emotion affect you and tell yourself like this is gonna ruin my day now, then of course it's gonna ruin your day. If I sit here and I say, My god, I miss my brother and I wish he was back, no, that's not gonna fix anything. What I should be saying to myself is he's in a good place, you have great memories with him, and now it's your turn to live life. And you you still need to go live your life. It's affirmations, I would have to say, that really that that people can tell you, like, hey, everything will be okay. That's one affirmation that I tell myself that come that can easily pull me out. So if there's a word out there for you that you can hold on to that can always pull you out, like mine is everything will be okay, or in Farsi it says Hamichi Humisha, which is everything will be okay. But like it it's a rough translation. Yeah, it's a rough, it's a it's a rough translation because it pretty much means like everything will be fine, but be better than fine. You know, it's weird. Now I want to I want to actually touch on the topic of the statistics I found that it said that almost 60% of people who are raped experience acute stress disorder, which is one of the underlying disorders of PTSD.
Speaker 2: 09:09
Like, you know how PTSD has like so it's like a subcategory.
Speaker: 09:12
Yeah, it's like a subcategory. And another crazy statistic that I found was that nearly one in five women are raped. So one in five women that are raped, one of those go through PTSD. So if you take a broad category of all of the women that were raped, 80% of those will have PTSD from that moment. But imagine, because sex is it's sex, you know what I mean? Like you have experiences with people, but imagine being in a great experience with someone good and enjoying sex for what it is, and you flash back to the memory of you going through that traumatized traumatizing role. Yeah, you you're just gonna um like you're just gonna throw yourself into such a moment, into such a good moment, it's such a bad moment so quickly, just because of how PTSD is on the mind.
Speaker 2: 10:10
And this is just one case of PTSD. So like this, the the numbers that you gave me, that that's just on the cases involving rape. Like, just think about all the other things that could cause PTSD, like similar to your situation, just these very serious kind of things that happened in the past and how it can trigger negative response, mental kind of response, and really affects your day or your life and things like that.
Speaker: 10:37
The scariest thing is to be a veteran and to hear explosion sounds or anything to do with those kind of sounds, you just flash back. Like it's a complete and utter like trigger. Like it flashes you back so quickly. It's scary. It's scary how quickly you can flash back. Like it's it's a it's such a moment. It's such a it just feels like you're there again going through it. Like it's like a torture on like you torture mentally yours, like you mentally torture yourself. That's messed up. That's hard on people that and you never again, you never know what someone's going through, which is the scariest thing. You never know what someone's trigger is. You could be sitting at a dinner table and someone's trigger could be them touching the fork to a plate or something that's just boom, they're back into it, and boom, their emotions are affected, and boom, they're having a bad day.
Speaker 2: 11:29
For you, have you ever had any experiences with talking about your PTSD to a therapist?
Speaker: 11:36
Uh I have. I've done EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization reprocessing, and it's a pretty much a way that therapists can help treat PTSD, and it actually has such a high rate of treatment, and it's like eight stages, and it's true, it's pretty much just eye movement, and the therapist taking you back to that flashback and finding out deeper things and allowing yourself to find the silver lining in the memory, yeah.
Speaker 2: 12:12
So so basically to see it for what it was and to just be one at one was in and take control of it and not allow it to take control of you anymore.
Speaker: 12:24
So after I did uh an episode or I did two phases of EMDR, I felt I I feel 10 times better, but I also discovered things about myself that I never knew. One of the things was that I was actually alone for a lot of my life. I like I have family, I have parents, but they pretty much left me alone with my thoughts.
Speaker 2: 12:45
Okay.
Speaker: 12:46
And that's that's a whole different story because you can have family that loves you, you can have friends that love you, but it's your thoughts you have to go through by yourself every day. You know, like you're not in my head. Like, I wish I had a little Cheyenne in my head that was like, yes, you know, don't worry, life is good, everything's good. Like, no, it's like you and you and your thoughts every single second of the day. And if you don't control those thoughts, if you can't find a way, then you can truly ruin not only your own mental state, but other people's mental states. And the last thing you want to do as someone who has something like this to ruin someone else's moment or emotions because your friends are important to you, and the last thing you want to do is affect their mental state. Exactly.
Speaker 2: 13:37
So being somebody who went through a situation in their life that gave them PTSD, would you suggest this type of therapy to them?
Speaker: 13:48
Yes, I definitely recommend EMDR or any type of listen with PTSD, you need to find out what will help you. Because EMDR may have helped me, but I know a bunch of people out there who do different things, meditating or going out with friends, or singing, or enjoying what they do, exercising, running. You need to take yourself out of this. I'm just gonna allow PTSD to trigger me whenever it wants, to take control whenever it wants. No, don't allow it to do that. Because if you allow it to do that, you're losing the battles in your head that you need to win. Because in the end, it's a war with yourself, and you gotta win the battles. And you can win the battles, coming from someone who has dealt with this, who has won, who is on the other side and is fighting day in and day out. I know you've got this, and I just want to say, please, please, please remember this. You are not alone. I'm here to help you. How does that sound, Shannon?
Speaker 2: 15:13
That sounds great. Thank you so much for opening about this sensitive kind of issue for you and many others. Uh, and I think you really shed a strong light. Thank you, thank you. Well, can't wait to catch you guys in the next episode.