I Suffered From PTSD Until I Got Specialized Care

While some health issues are visible to the outside world, many people face chronic conditions that don’t have externally visible signs or symptoms—also known as invisible illnesses. In mindbodygreen’s series, we’re giving individuals with invisible illnesses a platform to share their personal experiences. Our hope is their stories will shed light on these conditions and offer solidarity to others facing similar situations.

Whenever I talk about my mental health journey, I always start by saying that I’m one of the lucky ones. There are a lot of people in this country who still really struggle with their mental health and don’t know that care exists. That’s why I’m on this mission to change what care looks like so that everyone can become the lucky ones.

Trigger warning: This article includes mentions of sexual assault.

My struggles with trauma

I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia with a fully intact family that did everything to support and protect me. I have the most incredible parents and brother and really had a very privileged childhood.

Then, when I was 14 years old, I went to a concert. At that concert, I was sexually assaulted. Afterward I struggled with anxiety, depression, and PTSD—all the fun things that come along with a traumatic event.

Despite having incredible parents, it took them nearly two and a half years to find evidence-based care that treated my underlying trauma, as well as the manifestations of that trauma. When I was 17 years old, they discovered a brand-new residential treatment center in California. It was a last-stop effort, and luckily that program saved my life.

My treatment journey

I was in treatment there for 45 days. It was a residential treatment center, which means that you live with the people you’re in treatment with, and I was the second girl ever to be admitted to the program. I remember meeting my roommate, and when she told me her story I thought, “Whoa, are we related? How are you so similar to me?” Then, four other girls moved into the house, and everyone who moved in had a similar story. This was the first time I really felt like I wasn’t alone, which was incredibly beneficial to my healing process.

In addition, they used evidence-based trauma treatment, which I had never received before. Things like EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), which I had never done prior to being in residential treatment ended up saving my life. 

During my 45-day stay, I had an opportunity to recover. Most people who have complex PTSD struggle with it for the rest of their life. But for me, I haven’t had any symptoms of PTSD since the residential treatment.

I was 17 when I left, and I went back home back to high school. I went to a new school for my senior year, and whenever I would meet anyone new, I would tell them my story. It definitely did not make me the most popular girl, walking around leading with my trauma, but I thought it was important that everyone knew that help existed. 

I had lived in a space of believing that I was always going to be tormented and I was never going to be able to sleep through the night again—that I was going to struggle forever. But after I got access to treatment, I learned that all it took was evidence-based care and a community to heal.

How I used my experience to give back

When I graduated from high school, I reached back out to the founder of the residential treatment center and asked him if I could intern for the summer before college. It was still the same small, six-bed home, so I moved to California for the summer and subsequently spent the next 11 years working full time throughout college and after. I helped him grow it from a small treatment center into what’s known today as the gold standard for residential care, and that was an incredible journey.

I got to witness so many people like me heal and make a full recovery, which was so inspiring and kept me wanting to continue to build that treatment center. But no matter how quickly we built, we could never keep up with the demand. Every single day we had more people on the waitlist than we had in treatment. When I left it was 300 beds, which means we could help a couple of thousand kids a year. 

But what we know is that in our country, there are millions of kids who are struggling and need access to care. I knew that building a residential treatment center for a million kids would be impossible and cost prohibitive, but I wanted to create something that was accessible to everyone so that everyone would be able to experience the same lifesaving care that I did when I was 17 years old.

There are many evidence-based practices for trauma treatment, and it’s really about figuring out what works for you. I used to say that it was like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. We can expose you to TF-CBT (trauma-focused CBT), and that really works for some people. 

For me, I didn’t love TF-CBT, but I loved EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It’s a form of psychotherapy that was developed in the 1980s but has become popular only recently, designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories.

You can actually deliver it virtually, which we learned during COVID, and it’s just as effective. For me, a lot of somatic therapies were really helpful as well. I needed to learn how to be back in my body. Getting back into your body and feeling again is an important part of recovery, as long as you’re safe and supported while doing that.

Please click the link below to read further:

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/i-suffered-from-ptsd-for-years-this-was-treatment-that-helped-49340a