By Juliet Bonnay

April 02, 2009
Today I finally had to admit that having PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) has bankrupted my life. Going through the physical act of filing for bankruptcy forced me to face this fact. I feel numb with shock. I’m the sort of person who will work till I drop to pay back money I owe. But nothing has come from all the job applications or articles I’ve written for publishing.

During a long walk the other day, dark shadows of realisation began to slip through my defences. I am not only losing the battle to fully regain my health, but to restore my finances to the credit side of the ledger. I even toyed with the idea of jumping off a cliff to end it all. But there was a message from the bank on my answer phone when I arrived home. I had written a letter explaining my situation and that I was committed to becoming debt free – even though my present payments on three credit cards didn’t even cover the interest.

As if through a long tunnel, a kind voice told me to give up the fight, forget about the money, and focus on getting my health back. “It’s not a question of money for me,” I shot back with some exasperation, “but my integrity.” Without your health, this kind voice continued, you are on a road to nowhere.

Finally I admitted that she was right. Exhaustion has set in after an intense ten-year battle to regain my health since a breakdown at the end of 1999 forced me to resign from a stressful teaching position. A doctor diagnosed depression at the time. He was unable to recognize the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a sentence dreaded by large numbers of war veterans. Little did he understand that the home in which I grew up was like a war zone, and was now negatively impacting my health and ability to hold down a job.

In my family I was the one who kept all the secrets about what went on behind closed doors.  But keeping secrets created profound shame within me. The way I learned to hide it was to develop a mask of ‘normalcy’. Today I officially decided to stop pretending to be ‘normal’. Not only is it exhausting trying to live a lie, it serves no one – least of all others suffering with PTSD. In this time of economic collapse, where ‘transparency’ has become a byword in governments, corporations and financial dealings, I can see that healing can only occur if I make my life transparent.

I learned today that sodium defies normal physical expectations by going transparent under pressure. I relate it to the pressure of my financial situation. It pushes me to overcome fear and angst to write about the implications of PTSD – not only for myself and others, but as a message for society as a whole about what we are doing to our children.

Today the New Zealand Herald reported that coroner Garry Evans (conducting an inquest into the deaths of babies Chris and Cru Kahui) “pondered making a recommendation to the Government that health professionals become legally obliged to report any evidence of child abuse.” Victims of abuse need help, and he highlighted the fact that general practitioners reported only one percent of child abuse cases, when they, along with nurses and midwives, should be “field workers” for child protection.

From my experience with PTSD, I now know that our social problems will never be resolved while we maintain our present vigilance to keep the secrets of child abuse locked away from the judgmental eyes of others. I find it utterly appalling that, with all the information and knowledge we have available at our fingertips, governments cannot connect the dots between drug and alcohol abuse, depression, failure at school, increasing violence in our communities, the mushrooming health problems of obesity and diabetes along with heart disease and, increasing rates of child abuse.

Are we blind or stupid or what? Have too many others also remained silent about family secrets that are too painful to reveal? Here in New Zealand, have we unwittingly succumbed to the unspoken rule that skeletons must remain firmly locked in family closets where they ‘belong’? But what will be the eventual cost for the individual, community, society, and our country as a whole if we continue to do nothing about child abuse within our homes?

I have filed for bankruptcy, fully aware that childhood trauma has bankrupted my entire life on every level. I have been in denial about that, thinking I could somehow salvage something from the wreck. But as Pat Conroy wrote in Prince of Tides, “There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float.”

And floating upon the calm water today as I walked along the beach at Oneroa, uneasy about how events will unfold in my life, was a large motor yacht. Immediately it transports me back thirty years to my time living aboard a yacht at the Southport Yacht Club Marina. In the berth behind me was Christopher Skase’s AS$6 million motor yacht, Cosmos.

Skase was in his late thirties at the time, and building one of his Mirage Resorts on the Gold Coast in Australia. At odd times during the night I heard the bow thruster easing the yacht in and out of the berth. I couldn’t help but wonder at the extravagance of it all just for one man and his family. Shown over it one day by a caretaker, I was in awe of the vastness of the main saloon with its dozen or more chandeliers. But what really captured my attention was a plaque describing what ‘Cosmos’ symbolized: finding order and harmony out of chaos. It was a journey I had unconsciously begun.

At the time, Skase was paying himself and his fellow executives millions in management fees. A few years later, after attempting to further inflate his empire bubble, it burst in a very dramatic way, bringing down the State Bank of Victoria and causing huge grief and loss to many people. Of course he filed for bankruptcy, stating that all he had left was $170.00 in cash and a few clothes and books. He fled to Spain, where he lived out the remaining ten years of his life in Majorca, safe from extradition orders to face his creditors in Australia.

Remembering this, I can’t help but comfort myself somewhat that I am in my current financial position not because of fraud, or building an empire on a matchstick-like foundation fuelled by greed or ego, or even trying to live the ‘good life’ beyond my means. I am where I am because of a fear of asking for help and long years of trying to heal myself on my own, knowing full well that instead of help being there, there has been judgment.

Such an attitude re-traumatises someone with PTSD. Likewise, so does the fearful and negative attitude towards mental illness and applying for a benefit. To a large proportion of the population, it seems, beneficiaries are modern-day lepers. And when politicians – like former National Party leader, Don Brash – give speeches about the $5 billion a year bill for welfare (costing each member of the workforce $50.00 per week) and that “over the last 30 years, an entrenched welfare culture has been allowed to emerge in this country, all too often accompanied by crime and family violence,” it is understandable that people become resentful.

Luckily I had my credit cards to fall back on as my ‘savings’ to gain some semblance of self-respect and to give myself extended periods of living with the illusion that I could make it on my own, and even spare myself the humiliation and trauma of applying for a benefit. Reality has now hit and I accept the fact that it is unlikely that I will fully recover my health. Undiagnosed, the PTSD is now chronic. Each time I am re-traumatised, the symptoms get worse and my stress threshold is lowered yet another notch.

But…there is a ray of hope. I was in Oneroa today to collect a library book I’d ordered: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by Jonathan Shay, M.D. Ph.D. If there was any ‘good’ that came out of the Vietnam War, perhaps it was the fact that because so many soldiers suffered from PTSD, extensive research was carried out to understand its symptoms and how best to treat it. This enabled doctors in the United States to recognise that many civilians also had PTSD – but caused by domestic violence and childhood trauma and abuse within the home.

Dr. Shay wrote that returning to ‘normal’ for people with PTSD is not possible, and that he doesn’t know whether recovery is possible. So saying, what he has seen is that recovery is possible in many areas of life so that a fulfilling existence can still be attained. He notes that while serious limitations are still experienced – like an inability to tolerate public places – every one of the most fully recovered veterans he knows, even though being financially quite poor, have lives that “flourish with activity they find satisfying, usually helping other people.”

What is especially relevant to me is the point Dr. Shay makes that “these veterans can become profoundly valuable human beings, even if their external accomplishments in the world are often very limited.” It is a sobering thought that helping others can give one’s life meaning. An act of kindness and understanding can save a life. Sharing a story can connect people and bring hope. Finding a way through limitation can develop internal wealth that can be shared with others to enrich their lives.

So today, by removing the mask I created as a child to be the ‘strong one’ for my emotionally needy parents, I can become transparent. That means I can expose the ongoing struggle I have had with PTSD to raise awareness of the enormous life-damaging abuse committed against children in the war zones of our homes that most don’t want to know about. In this way, I believe, I can be a ‘profoundly valuable human being.’ Not only does this give my life meaning, but also the will to go on.

Footnote:
It often turns out in my life that as soon as I finally face the truth of how bad a situation is, and learn from it, rapid change occurs. Simultaneously I was offered a part-time job and a painting commission (visit my online gallery). I then went on to develop this web site – not only to put together the puzzle pieces of PTSD so that we can all become more aware of the life-long impact of child abuse and trauma on a person’s life, but to share  the inspiration to heal, how we can heal, and the wisdom I have learned on this journey.

You might also like to read:

General information about PTSD with a list of references
My Story: You Don’t Have to Go to War to Get PTSD

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