When you cannot cope

Trauma and subsequent PTSD put me in place when I struggle to cope. In July 2023, after some events it got so bad that I could not cope (this is also not the first time I got so overwhelmed). PTSD symptoms got so strong that I could not feel safe no matter what I did. None of the strategies and tips that I had so far worked. I was not able to find help so many times before, but I thought I will try again. I was offered to visit a place called Safe Haven on 2023-08-02. I felt welcomed there. People here showed empathy and care about how I feel, understood the burden of troubles and tried to help. After a short chat I asked if I could lie down on the sofa to have a rest. I was able to rest and nap for more than an hour without being hit by flashbacks of the injury for the first time in the last seven days. I wish there was a place like this 8 years ago when I got injured. It helped me a lot and now it is on my emergency list.

There is one more place that can help.

Not being able to cope

We all do have some hard times in life. Problems may build up over time or they may come suddenly, it may be our own mistakes or completely out of our control. It does not matter. Sometimes, it may get so difficult that we can not deal with it on our own. Humans are social beings. We are not meant to deal with difficult problems on our own. We are physiologically adapted to seek others for help and to recognize when others need help.

The first challenge is to recognize that you need help. It is a very good skill to be independent and capable of facing challenges. The list of advantages is very long. Then it might be difficult to realize that in a particularly difficult situation it is better to seek help. The good indicator might be feeling overstressed. Short time stress helps to focus better. However, if it continues over a long time and it significantly reduces your capacity to act, you better seek help. This is what your body is telling you. The other good indicator is when you are so stressed that you can not sleep. Sleep is very important and lack of it may become a problem on its own even in a very short time. I do not remember a single night of good sleep in the last 8 years, and I would remember it as it would be such a rare and significant event. However, I would say 3 nights coming close to no sleep is a time you should look for help urgently. The last thing to mention would be having suicidal thoughts. It is normal to have suicidal thoughts when you are suffering a lot. It just shows the level of suffering. It does not mean that you want to die, if you wake up with the first thought "I want to die". It just means that your subconsciousness was not able to find any other solution while you were sleeping and you need help. However, if you start planning for the end of your life or these thoughts become prevalent, seek help urgently.

What type of help you will look for depends on the problems and severity of it. I am writing about the case when it is crushing bad and you just can not cope with it. Ideally you should look for help before it gets so bad, but that is another topic. Let me give you my example and then what has helped me and I believe can help others too.

Dark summer 2023

For timeline and details please check 2015-03-30 road traffic injury.

Before I got PTSD, I did not know that there can be situations when I cannot cope. There have been difficult times, there have been very stressful situations, there have been situations when none of the available options were good. However, I was always able to move on. Sometimes it took some time for stress to ease or to deal with the grief, but I was able to think about what I needed to do and take action. This time it was very different.

How did it happen? It got extremely bad after a very offensive and unfair Personal Injury Commission NSW tribunal (I cannot remember such intense bullying by using the power given by the government), and even more unfair determination based on absurdly incorrect statements (that I can explain only by corruption). I lost any hope in getting justice and PTSD symptoms were extremely intensified. My body was in a constant state of immediate threat to my life. None of the attempts to calm down were helping. I could not sleep at all. As soon as I fall asleep, I am hit with flashbacks from being hit by a car. I would wake up with a full panic attack. I needed a new way to deal with it or I would not last long. I kept calling help lines, but the relief was very short lived, sometimes panic attacks would continue even while speaking and I would be so nauseous that I could not speak at all. Went to the GP, unfortunately did not get any useful help. At night I would be so overrun by fear that I could not be home, few times I caught myself wondering at night and talking to strangers, went to the police station to get some feeling of safety there and ended up in the emergency department a few times.

Finding help

Finding help when you are overwhelmed might be very difficult. The information may not be so easily available, there are many places that may help, but when you check you find out that they will not help (due to budget or some other constraints). Sometimes people do not understand what you are going through and dismiss it just because they do not understand. Not to mention that stress significantly reduces cognitive capacity and search becomes difficult. Then you might feel that you have exhausted all options and there is no help. However, do not give up yet. Getting adequate help or even good advice is difficult, but there are places that can help. Let me tell you a bit about my search, then the solution that I found so far and what I am still looking for.

Desperate search for help

Almost from the start, after I got injured, I was looking for help and struggled to find it. I tried every place I could think of, but every time I got the same answer: sorry, we can not help you, but you may try there. So, I have learned that there is no chance to get help. After I tried everything many times, I can tell that there have been some options I was not able to find or in some cases I have not been persistent enough. The suffering I went through and still going though took 8 years of my life. The year before the injury felt like the best year of my life and it was meant to continue. It is gone, no return. However, it could have been different. This gave me motivation to create this site. Already 8 years ago I wanted to write what to do and how to cope. It has been a long road I have walked so far and even much further to go, before I will be able to recover to some degree. However, I found some things that help even at the time when you feel that all hope is lost and your body demands to run from danger, but there is nowhere to run. Here are the things that I have learned.

Emergency list

I keep an emergency list on my table. If you are struggling with mental health problems it is good to have it close by, so you do not need to search for it.

Weekly time table

1	2	3	4	5	6	7
10:00-16:00 Newtown		10:00-16:00 Newtown	10:00-16:00 Newtown	10:00-16:00 Newtown		12:00-16:00 Darlinghurst
17:00-21:00 Kogarah	17:00-21:00 Kogarah			17:00-21:00 Kogarah	17:00-21:00 Kogarah	17:00-21:00 Kogarah
			18:00-21:00 Coogee	17:30-21:00 Summer Hill; 18:00-21:00 Coogee	17:30-21:00 Summer Hill

Help call lines

Name	Phone	Web Site	Comments
Sane		https://www.sane.org/	Very knowledgeable how to deal with PTSD. You may need to wait a bit longer than in other help lines, but if you are dealing with PTSD then it is worth to wait.
Men's Line
Suicide Callback
Lifeline			Lifeline helped me so much, that it is the main source for help when you are in crisis. I strongly contacting them when you are in crisis and do not know what to do. Also have their number in your phone just in case.

Safe Haven addresses

Place	Address	Comments
Newtown Safe Haven	168 Missenden rd, Newtown
Kogarah Safe Haven