When you cannot cope

Trauma and subsequent PTSD puts me in place when I struggle to cope. In July 2023, after some events it go 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 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 short chat I asked can I lie down on sofa. I was able to rest and nap for more than an hour without being hit by flashback of the injury for the first time in last seven days. I wish there was place like this 8 years ago when I got injured. It helped me a lot and now it is on my emergency list.

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 very good skill to be independent and capable to face challenges. The list of advantages is very long. Then it might be difficult to realize that in particular difficult situation it is better to seek help. The good indicator might be is feeling overstressed. Short time stress helps to focus better. However, if it continues over 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 in very short time it may become problem on its own. I do not remember a single night of good sleep in last 8 years, and I would remember it as it would be such a rare and significant event. However, I would say 3 night coming close to no sleep is a time you should look for a 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 is just shows the level of suffering. It does not mean that you want to die, if you wake up with 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 planing end of your life or these thoughts become prevalent seek help urgently.

What type of help you will look 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 the 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.

My case

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 has been very stressful or situations, there have been situations when none of the available options were good. However, I always was 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 what I need to do and take action. This time it was very different.

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

Finding help

Finding help when you are overwhelmed might be very difficult. The information may not be so easily available, there were many places that may help, but when you check you find out that they will not help (due to budged 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 reduced cognitive capacity and search becomes difficult. Then you might feel that you 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 a bit about my search, then solution that I found so far and what I am still looking for.

My case

Almost from the start I was looking for help and struggled to find it. This gave me motivation to create this site.

Emergency list

Place	Address	Comments
Newtown Safe Haven	168 Missenden rd, Newtown