In this episode:
Venessa: Living on high alert happens when your body and mind stay in survival mode. Even when the danger has passed, a nervous system that's always scanning, even in everyday moments that should feel safe. Georgie, can you share a little bit about your journey with PTSD in whatever way feels safest for you today?
Georgie: I was a police officer for 12 years, and during my career there were various different things that occurred either in the course of my duty and off duty. And there was a couple of incidents in particular, one where I was sexually assaulted, and then later in my career, where I had to do CPR on a young lad that had been run over.
It was really strange because dealing with that incident, I didn't, at the time, think I was traumatised by it. I did feel a massive sense of failure because I hadn't been able to bring him back to life, and it wasn't until a month later that I then had someone drive into the back of my car in the exact same spot on the dual carriageway where I'd been doing CPR on him in the central reservation.
And as soon as she slammed into the back of my car, I just looked up and saw the sign that I'd been fixating on when I was doing CPR. It was almost like it just triggered this intense flow of sudden emotion around it. And a lot of the recollections I had of that incident were missing parts.
So I didn't remember anyone telling me I'd done a good job. I didn't remember anyone telling me that I'd tried my best, but there was nothing more that could be done. I couldn't really accept even when someone said to me that there was never any chance of him being revived because he actually had a catastrophic injury. I forgot all of that and was so hyper-fixated on the fact that I hadn't brought him back to life and that I was the first sergeant on scene and that I must have looked to everyone else like I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and that they must look at me and think I'm an idiot.
Venessa: That's what you believed?
Georgie: That's what I believed, yeah. And I had to drive that same route to work every single day. So every single day I thought someone was going to run out in front of my car. If I saw a road sign that's there all the time, I was thinking, "What if there's someone behind that road sign?" Or, "What if I've mis-seen that and it wasn't a road sign, it's actually a person that's about to run out?" Even though it wasn't me that he ran in front of, but it was me that dealt with the aftermath of that. So I didn't want that to happen again.
And then obviously for then being in a car accident myself in that location, it just gave credence to this idea that this place was a dangerous place.
Venessa: And can you talk us through some of the sensations you felt when your accident happened and it all just came flooding back?
Georgie: It's really weird, but because of being a police officer, and I think people will probably be able to relate in any role where they have to deal with emergencies, if you have to just switch yourself on to deal with something, that's what I did. She went into the back of my car and I immediately thought, "Right, police mode. Right, we need to get off the road. We need to make this safe. We need to do this." And then got to the edge of the road. One was in enormous pain, which the adrenaline I think had distracted me from.
I also suddenly just had this realisation that what I'd been fearing had come to pass, and it amalgamated into this big feeling of like that I knew that something bad was going to happen there. I knew it was going to happen and I was right.
Venessa: And that kind of tragic coincidence really is just going to add to that feeling that you had. That's just very layered. So Phil, what would you say about that?
Phil: It's just really normal, isn't it? It's just that logic of, yeah, roads are dangerous and this situation is dangerous. Being a police officer means you're more likely to be surrounded by dangerous situations automatically.
So it's almost like human nature programs us to look for danger, to check for danger, to make sure places are safe, what it is, to try and reduce the chances of bad things happening. And then you're trained to look for it even more, and then you go into those situations and then something bad does happen.
So logically it makes all sorts of loads of sense for your brain to go, "Ah, no, you see? We told you this was going to happen."
Georgie: Mm.
Phil: And then we think, "Oh God, well what should I have done differently?" Or, "How should I have managed this?" And then our biology starts to create that anxiety before we're getting there. So our body's telling our brain a different story before we even get there because that sort of adrenaline that's running through you is now stored with that memory.
And that memory that's maybe slightly mis-stored. So trauma memories slightly mis-store themselves because they're not logical. So sometimes when we go into those accidents and we have that bump...
Georgie: Mm
Phil: ...it remembers this bit of memory over here and not that bit.
Georgie: Yeah.
Phil: And I think that's really scary because it can feel really weird because like, well, I don't remember that happening.
Georgie: Oh, yeah.
Phil: And did it happen?
Georgie: I've seriously sat there and thought, "How did I forget that that happened?" Like how have I had to convince myself so confidently that everyone there thought I was an idiot? There was no proof of that. I just got this assumption purely from my own self-esteem, I suppose, which had...
Phil: I think that's just...
Georgie: ...taken such a knock, yeah.
Phil: ...such an important point. We often view ourselves in others' minds.
Georgie: Mm.
Phil: So we worry about how they might view us, and especially you're going in thinking, "I've got to take charge of this."
Georgie: Yeah.
Phil: And people are looking to me. You've got that expectation, and then we're not great at being kind to ourselves.
Georgie: No.
Phil: We're our own harshest critics of going, "Oh, well, no, I must have done something wrong."
Venessa: So Phil, with Georgie's experience, though, those feelings would already have been there with anyone experiencing or many people experiencing trauma. But it sounds like by coincidence, something bad did then happen in that circumstance. So does it make it more traumatic?
Phil: I think trauma's so confusing anyway. I don't know if it makes it necessarily more traumatic. I think it comes with so many different factors...
Venessa: Mm-hmm
Phil: ...of who's around you at the time, what's happening at the time, what support mechanisms come around you, how your biology's working at the time as well, whether you can regulate, whether you can do all of those bits. So I don't think there's a worse way to experience trauma.
I think trauma just happens when it happens, and I think we look for the perfect storm of, "Oh, this must be traumatic," or, "That's more traumatic because of this." I think everyone's different, and as long as you can go, "Well, for me, that was difficult, that was upsetting, that was traumatic. I'm struggling with that," that's how you understand what trauma is for you, not what trauma is. And I think there's difficulty with people going, "Oh, well, that can't be trauma because it's not X, Y, Z."
Venessa: Yeah. So Georgie, you mentioned about being hyper-vigilant and just always on alert. So for people who've never experienced it, being on constant alert can be a hard thing to imagine. So can you walk us through an ordinary day when your nervous system is switched on high?
Georgie: Of all the symptoms of PTSD, that is probably the one I still struggle with the most. Whether it's an element of being a woman, because I think that there's an element of always being a bit more on high alert, whether it's having been in the police and seeing that dangerous side of life all the time, so I kind of see threat in every corner, or whether it is because I have, like we've said, I've got this proof that bad things can happen.
I feel this sense of constantly looking over my shoulder and feeling an anxiety and a sense of almost feeling sick sometimes because I'm so nervous. But I don't think I come across to other people as nervous. I'm quite a bold, vivacious person.
But underneath it, I'm almost planning how to safeguard myself if something happens, whether that is, "Right, how am I going to fight back if someone grabs me right now?" And it is that right now someone could grab me, what am I going to do?
Or it will be getting here on the tube, what am I going to do if a bomb goes off? And I haven't got experience of a bomb going off around me, but I have experience of dealing with casualties in life-threatening scenarios, and I'm always trying to think how I'm going to deal with that.
It's just a very intense and tiring train of thought to constantly be on, and sometimes it does feel like when I've found those people and places of safety where I feel calm and at peace, which I didn't think for a long time I'd ever find again, it's so nice to be able to switch off because I do feel like I'm always on.
Venessa: Thank you. Phil, so someone with PTSD is hyper-vigilant, as Georgie was just describing. What actually happens in the brain and body, and why does the threat system get stuck in that mode?
Phil: I think Georgie's described it really well. We should be vigilant. Vigilance is a core necessity as humans. We've got to have that. We've got to scan the world for danger. Is it safe? Is it not safe? What do we need to do? How do we prepare ourselves?
So we're doing that in the background all the time. Our computer in the background is running that program. When bad things happen or traumatic things happen, suddenly we get tuned into it more. We start to pay attention to it more.
We think we think about that first. We don't. We feel it first because our bodies know what to do. Our old brain goes, "Right, okay, we need to get ready to fight, flight, or freeze." We either need to run out of this situation if it's dangerous or fight our way out, or we just need to freeze and stop.
So our bodies are already doing this, and our biology is going, "Right, we need to prep you to go." So it does feel exhausting because it means all our muscles are tightening up, our heart rate's starting to go faster, all those types of bits.
So when that hyper-vigilance comes in, everything gets keyed up in us, and it's how to regulate that and how to bring that down that's really tricky because your body gets used to being on that level and gets used to being hyper-vigilant. You try to calm that down, that sometimes feels more dangerous because it doesn't feel potentially natural.
It's like, well, I'm used to having to be this keyed up. So part of it is being able to find some safety so you can let that drop down a little bit and be okay with that and not have bad experiences off the back of it, and then retraining your brain and your body to understand what your body's actually telling it, not what it thinks is going to happen.
Venessa: Yeah. And Georgie, people often misunderstand hyper-vigilance as being dramatic or anxious. Have you experienced others minimising or misreading what you've been going through?
Georgie: So I think that there's an element of it depends on people's emotional intelligence and also their life experience, what they've been exposed to themselves. Sometimes that can be a benefit. For example, if you've got someone that has been exposed to a similar situation as you and understands that that was traumatic and can be supportive through it, it can be really helpful.
On the other hand, if you have someone where you've gone through something that's traumatic for you, and it's minimised by them saying something like, "Oh, I've done it loads. I've done CPR loads."
That then makes you doubt yourself, and it makes you feel like, should I actually be responding in this way, or am I overreacting? It took me a while to accept that those people maybe don't mean to be offensive or upsetting in what they're saying. They just don't realise that everyone reacts differently to things.
I think the big thing is trying to find people that get it and that can relate and support you without being just constantly in the trauma. So it's not just finding people and then constantly going back and forth talking about all the bad things that have happened to you all the time, but it's finding people that maybe have had a bit of life experience that has given them a little bit of compassion for other people as well.
Everyone is going through something behind closed doors, even the happiest people you see. I went to work every day as a police officer, fully made up, looking like a boss, and every day, I got back in my car, and I sobbed all the way home and sat on my driveway crying my eyes out.
Appearances can be deceiving, both physical appearances, but also how someone's life looks from the outside.
Venessa: Yeah. Thank you. So Georgie, what strategies, even small ones, have helped you feel more connected, especially on the days when switching off just isn't possible?
Georgie: I do think that getting out in fresh air and just looking at actual grass and flowers and trees and animals and wildlife and things like that, instead of being in a cold, clinical office environment or stuck in your room or your house or something where you might have made it lovely and homely, but ultimately, it can become a prison.
I get out, and I just feel grateful. One of the big feelings I was experiencing at the height of my PTSD was a feeling of just not wanting to live this life anymore and not wanting to be around, but I also didn't want to die, and I think I just hit this point where I had this realisation that if I wasn't going to die, I might as well live.
And I think that comes back to what I was saying about when I go out and go for a walk, and I appreciate it because how lucky am I to be alive and live in this and get to experience this?
Previously, I was very stuck in the doldrums and thinking that there was no hope, whereas now I see hope everywhere instead.
