Personal Narrative-Traumatic Stress Disorder

On September 2nd 2016 my best friend, Ashley Minor, who is a single mom of two, was working her twelve house shift at the hospital. At the end of her shift her life stopped for a short time when she received a phone call that her 8 year old son Teagan, was hit by a car, and had multiple injuries.

Focus! The burden of destructive emotions constantly tarnishes my brain. It is essential that I isolate myself from the pessimistic chain of thoughts. I need to distort myself from the daily trauma and everlasting misery that I encounter. The turmoil has left me forever fatigued and has numbed my mind. My heart is grazed and broken with regret, my soul is haunted by fear and guilt along with my body diseased and rotten. The experience has been morbid and excruciating, I can’t tolerate this anymore.

Throughout our lives, every person encounters hardships that put a strain on other aspects of our lives. The biggest hardship that I have faced was taking care of my wife after she suffered a severe head injury while at work. The injury was the result of a salad fridge door falling and striking the back of her head, causing her to receive a severe concussion that lead to post-concussion syndrome. As a result, she became completely dependent on me. Some of the major hardships that we faced during these times are finances, helping her cope with her injury while she recovered, and maintaining my 4.0 GPA.

That was the phrase that had been assaulting my ears for the last half an hour. Although it wasn’t odd that someone was telling me that specific phrase, this time it was different. My grandmother, whom I thought had understood my problems, had just proven to me that she actually didn’t. At the age of 12, I was heartbroken.

A couple of years ago, one night, I was about to propose to my girlfriend before an nfl game tbh, when my roommate Joseph barged into the room out of nowhere, tripped and fell over, breaking a glass table with his face. Totally ruined the mood. Now, I didn't know Joseph THAT well, don't even remember where he was from, but let' just say I put my plans on hold to help him through his injuries.Joseph had gotten a big glass shard in his eye, making him completely blind in that eye. He was walking around with one of those cotton pads on his eye for a couple of months. Then suddenly, he disappeared, along with my girlfriend .Apparently they'd bonded during the time after his injuries, and eloped together , left me behind without as much as a note.

“How can I be good again? I just lost my wife and son in a car accident. There's nothing in life that can cheer me up. I have become an alcoholic who is now jobless.” I said. My Therapist, Dr. Newman, told me “Trust me, Mr. Smith. Only time can heal your wounds if you allow it to. Well, that's the end of the session, and I want to recall the accident that occurred so we can talk about it tomorrow.”

An interesting event occurred early Saturday morning near the town square in Pittman County. A tractor tire exploded and blew a man onto the top of a Standard Oil sign. The man’s name will be kept anonymous to protect his identity, and we are happy to report that the man is alive, although he attained some injuries, and it is possible that he will have permanent damage to his hearing.

We also got a brother along with a mother and father. He was born with alcohol syndrome because his mother drank when she was pregnant with him. We all had our own bag of problems. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for everything that happened to me. When I was a year old, one of my foster families didn't strap me into my car seat, and they got into a wreck. The car accident started my PTSD, but after that, everything bad that happened made my PTSD worse. My sister had mental health issues, to the point where the doctors said her mindset would remain at 15 until she's 35.

Soldiers who return home may not only have physical setbacks, but are mentally traumatized from what they have witnessed while serving our country. Veterans are more prone to be diagnosed with PTSD due to the combat they experience or witness on the field. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans has been prevalent for decades and there is still no known treatment option that has been found entirely effective. Many Vietnam veterans who never sought treatment due to the nonexistent “support for the troops” have been covering up their symptoms for approximately forty years. Countless soldiers return home without jobs and some feel like their whole world

“Chantelle! Come over and see this,” my mom whispered as she glided past me towards her client’s chair. I unfolded my nine-year-old self from under the empty hair dryer and gingerly walked over. While peering skeptically at the child’s scalp before me, I began to note tiny bugs crawling by the roots and my eyes followed my mother’s comb tip as she pointed out several nits. This was definitely one of the worst cases of lice she had shown me, and I had seen quite a few by then! As the daughter of a hairstylist, my exposure to skin and hair started at an early age. Growing up in a salon allowed me to observe first hand how significant an impact looking healthy on the outside had on a client’s everyday confidence and self-esteem; a lesson that was later reinforced during my acne ridden teenage years at an all-girls high school. At the salon, I always enjoyed being called over by the estheticians and hairdressers to view interesting cases that ranged from alopecia and cystic acne, to severe foot fungus and poliosis. Since my mother and her employees always recommended physician follow-ups when they spotted something suspicious, I was always left wondering what happened on the medical end of the spectrum. In high school and college, I began to fulfill this curiosity by reading about the science behind skin, hair and nail disorders.

When I was a child, I moved around quite a bit. It became hard to get attached to places because we were never assured that the sacred spots would be ours for much longer. As I got older, however, I have realized that special places do not have to be dictated by a length of time, and allowing myself to fall in love with a place gave me the roots I had been searching for. While I have not lived in Indiana for several years now, there is something about this certain cluster of trees in Indiana that remain special to me. When I was a child, I saw them as the gateway into Narnia, and during the winter snows I would bundle up in my cheap fur coat my mother bought at a consignment shop and run outside searching for Mr. Tumnus and calling myself Lucy. My imagination gave me the ability to bring the characters I loved so dearly to life. This experience has shown me that providing children with the ability to use their imagination not only provides entertainment, but also allows children to have a safe outlet to cope with traumatic situations, make

Finding a theoretical orientation that fits an individual’s identity is a difficult task; hence in order to conclude on a theory, I analyzed concepts and values that are significant in my life. Contemplating on the “pros and cons” of the theories presented during my first year of graduate school, I discovered that I have a passion for social justice, which results in the adamant denunciation of oppression in the United States. Oppression by the dominant group in this country has targeted and marginalized people who do not “fit” the majority and privileged the White majority. As a Latina in this country, I have personally experienced systemic injustice because I am a female, and immigrant, and was raised in poverty. Accordingly, after exploring several theories during my first year of graduate school, I concluded that Narrative Therapy best “fits” my identity and beliefs.

Introduction: I have chosen this subject in order to maybe understand it better, in a way that hopefully it becomes easier for me to deal with it, this condition to which I have become very familiar with, not because I study it but because I am one who suffers from such disorder; this is what I call the side of the coin that no one see. Although I don’t think is such a bad thing, some have given this disorder a serious bad image to which as usual the media have distortion its image to a point where we have become and sometimes feel as if we were in a glass box. By first hand I have experienced how for example a potential job interview changes its trajectory once is discovered that I might suffer from such disorder.

My first encounter with a patient has been rather difficult: it was my mother. When our family used to live in the Philippines, there was an armed robbery in our house. While the intruders left our family alive, their damage was felt. My mother began suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Seeing her suffer pained me. Despite my numerous attempts to calm her, however, she remained distressed. If I had ever understood helplessness, it was problem then. It was the pain of the inability to help someone you love.

The time came for her to be delivered. She gave birth to her first born son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. These were the words that I had spoken during a church Christmas play while I was just about to see the light at the end of my elementary school career. As I looked out into the faces of my family, I realized that I was making someone proud. I too was proud to have such a caring family whom I thought would be my strength throughout my life. Life has been so good to me thus far with wonderful parents, an older sister to whom I worshiped, and an older brother to keep me in tune with the magnificent