The worst part about having PTSD: What happens before me, eternally stays within me. Everything around me becomes my biggest fear. Everything I see and hear… I become afraid.
From being yelled at to being laughed at, I get deeply traumatized without letting others know. What nobody knows is that I’m being forced to avert myself from humiliation and discipline, day and night. Why? Because they both remind me of the trauma I went through when I was young. Being humiliated and punished are two of my biggest fears; laughter and angered screams are what I’m trying to escape from, so my fear and sadness wouldn’t be percieved by the public.
If one little mistake occurs… I will cry a thousand raindrops. I will end up traumatized and… Worst, I may put myself into the end if it’s not under control.
That is why I have what it’s called Panphobia. I’m afraid of nearly everything.
There are laughter everywhere that reminds me of the bullies who tormented me and humiliated me. There are screams everywhere that reminded me of the punishment I received when I was a child growing up.
With panphobia, I forced myself to make sure I don’t embarrass myself from anything and I don’t do anything troubling that could give me consequences. Everything has to be exactly the way I wanted. I want to make sure I am away from groups of friends. I want to make sure I don’t do anything stupid, like stealing and skipping classes.
Sounds easy, right? Well, it’s not.
Although I see myself as an honest person who never steals or do illegal drugs, I can be secretly impetuous with my own actions. Still, I manage to save myself from it all.
The hardest part of my own PTSD life is averting from the unwanted. To me, it’s fucking impossible to stay away from people who have friends and romantic partners. There are so much shit within them that I can’t even stop, even though I really want to. Since I can’t stop them, then I had no choice but to put myself in isolation. It’s the socializing and laughter inside those people that are making me afraid. Now you know why I don’t have any friends in real life?
With every one of my fears interfering with my life, I need to find a way to escape it all. I need to be in a place where there is nothing that reminds me of anything that traumatized me in the past.
It gets even more difficult when I have to face criticism somewhere in the future. I definitely cannot face that, no matter how much of a “good” thing they can be. What if the criticism is really an insult to me? What if they truly hate my work? With this, I can easily get sensitive over one small unacceptable thing. This takes me to my fear of not being perfect or not being good enough to anyone.
Being not good enough is one of the things that triggers my PTSD. When I feel I’m not good enough, I figured that there is no point for my life. I thought that no one will ever accept me no matter how hard I tried. As my PTSD triggers with my flaws, it reminds me of my teachers in elementary school harassing me for being slow despite I was only trying my hardest back then. Ever since then, whenever I do my college work or anything else, I always make sure I don’t fuck anything up. I don’t want to risk myself being yelled at for making one teeny mistake.
At times… I would beat myself up for not doing any of my shit right. I would punch myself in the head repeatedly and scream, “What the fuck is wrong with you?! Can’t you do anything right?!” These are the same words my abusive teachers said to me when I was only small, young and naive.
I can’t stand the pressure, from others and from myself.
I can’t face the humiliation. I can’t face crying my eyes out when being yelled at. I cannot face others being so hard on me. I need to stay away from laughter, from all the trouble around me and I need to make sure everything goes right for me.
There you have it. Now you know why I’m afraid of everything. You can all thank my post-traumatic for this.
-By Nicole Cheng,
September 17, 2016