by Tamara Kulish from https://tamarakulish.com/

PTSD flare

I actually wrote this Thursday eve, but scheduled the post for Saturday morning:

I had a PTSD flare last night, and today I’m going to share some lessons I realized I have incorporated into my core.

My abuser who I’ve been no contact with for the past few years let my brother know she felt lonely and was sad she didn’t have a relationship with me. He was trying to be kind to her, so he told me that he had told her maybe she could repair her relationship with me.

When he told me yesterday evening, I didn’t have a surge of hope that we could build a bridge, I felt an inward shudder. I put the thought out of my mind and went to sleep after we had talked. My sleep ended up being interrupted with bad dreams about her, and I woke up in a full panic attack.

A few years ago I had been diagnosed with PTSD and I’ve done a lot of inner work to help myself feel safe, grounded and at peace. It took a few hours to talk gently to myself, telling myself I was safe, to come out of the panic attack and to feel ready to face my day.

I ended up texting him and letting him know that I didn’t want false hope to be given to my abuser, that as long as I was seeing her still treating the people around her badly, that I held out no hope that things would go differently for me.

Here are the lessons I realized I had internalized:

  • Our peace of mind and our mental health are our prime considerations
  • Trust our gut, listen to our bodies – if our body shudders or worse, has a panic attack, don’t try to talk ourselves into a situation we have no business being in
  • Just because someone is lonely and weepy isn’t a good enough reason to try to get back together with them or to restore a relationship if their behavior hasn’t changed
  • It’s healthy to set boundaries, and it isn’t being disloyal to the other person. We owe loyalty to our own metal health, and they need us to have no boundaries so they can keep doing what comes naturally to them
  • We each have the power to do our inner work to help ourselves feel better

Our abusers might want to still have a “relationship” with us, but they actually want us to be how we were before: not knowing how to set healthy boundaries which allowed them to be abusive towards us.

Our job is to understand that as long as they haven’t changed, if we try to go back to them because of yearning for a relationship with them, we will face the same scorn, accusations, manipulations, anger, rage, criticisms, and hatefulness. They may be able to be nice to us for a short while, but soon enough the mask will fall and they will revert back. If they haven’t done any inner work and changed, we have no business trying to go back even if it is a close family member.

Our mental health is important! Yours is. Mine is. I support your journey towards reclaiming yours and cherishing it.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for liking, sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
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23 thoughts on “PTSD flare”

  1. Thank you for giving me something to come back to as a reminder when I feel that pull as I often times do so my compassion doesn’t get taken advantage of. It’s extremely crucial. And it takes daily work to never forget those boundaries.

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    1. We’re all a work in progress. No matter how far we have come, there will be things that pop up in our lives that can challenge us to put into practice what we have learned. We develop our toolbox, then w get to use it to practice. This keeps us humble, so we don’t start to think we’re better than anyone else, we’re all boats on the same ocean!

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      1. That’s so powerful! I absolutely could not agree more! It’s for that reason that I’m glad that these challenges happen sometimes. That way it can keep me as humble as possible. I really appreciate your encouragement so much!

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  2. Pingback: My mother’s passing and a deep lesson she learned – Tamara Kulish

  3. Well said Tamara. We only give of what we are, and if we are in a stressed state we can only give of that stress. It isn’t fair on us or them. Heal the healer, then we can be fair on all. Take your time and have a great weekend kind lady 🤗❤️🙏

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  5. That was certainly not easy for you, but you have come a long way, Tamara, and that enabled you to make a good choice! Nothing is as important as your peace, your joy (quoting Thich Nath Hanh here). I hope you feel better very soon. All my best wishes for you!

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  6. So sorry to learn about your recent panic attack. When we think we’ve fully healed after an abusive relationship, we discover that there’s still work to be done. You did the right thing. As you point out, as long as our abuser has not changed, the abuse will be renewed. After several attempts at reconciliation with my abusive mother, I finally had to take a stand and keep my distance. It was a painful decision to make.

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  7. You made the right decision and your PTSD flare surely told you this, Tamara. In the course of my practice I can think of only one abuser who gave a full apology, no excuses and no request for a relationship resumption.

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  9. First off, I’m so sorry you peace was disturbed, Tamara. But kudos to you for having the tools to work through the hard emotions and set boundaries–it’s a hard-earned skill, and it sounds like you have it mastered.

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