H Andersen

Two things become excruciatingly clear during a PTSD-causing event. First, death is inevitable. Second, it is ever-present and can occur at any second. This is what always lingers foremost beneath the surface of a PTSD experiencer’s mind. This constant awareness of death as an inevitable occurrence isn’t the only force at work. It combines with the PTSD-associated loss of sense of invulnerability to form quite a combination with which to come to terms.

Freedom in an existential sense means not having an external structure. Humans do not enter a world that is inherently structured. Webb asserts that we give the world a structure, which we ourselves create.

Isolation means that no matter how close we get to another person, a gap always remains. We are still alone. Meaninglessness stems from the fi rst three: death, freedom, and isolation. If we must die, if we build our own world, and if each of us is ultimately alone, then what meaning does life have?

After the PTSD-causing event, PTSD sufferers are overcome by an overwhelming meaninglessness of life. If there is no meaning in anything, and death is the result of everything anyway, why go through the motion of living?

HEALTH ISSUE | APRIL 2021

PTSD travelers have two decisions to make. They have to choose whether to live or die. We can will ourselves to die. But if we choose to live, we have to give our individual world a structure. This is something only we can create for ourselves. The PTSD-causing event wiped our slate clean, with all its structure and habits. All our wishes and desires, joys and fears, likes and dislikes –gone. All our loves and hates of friends and foes, marriage and partners, children and friends–gone. Our soul left with the event, while the body remained on Earth–lost. No-one tells us what it is we are suffering. We have no idea what happened to us. We are unaware that to create a completely new structure for our life is a necessity if want to live. There is nobody out there to enlighten us. The experts pretend to know about how it is to live with PTSD, but they are the blind leading the blind. They have no idea about the reason for a despair so overwhelming and colossal that it opens the way to hell. Consuming pharmaceutical and other drugs only makes it worse. It’s not about healing; it’s about reconstruction. PTSD is actually a gift. But we don’t see it, and the professionals have no idea. Thus, the knowledge of imminent death at any given moment of life, the ensuing refrain becomes ever-present: “Why go through the motion of doing anything?”

The initially incomprehensible feeling of desolation and emptiness within creates the need for isolation. The sense of an overwhelming bleakness of life and living suddenly felt within

creates the need for isolation. The feeling of barrenness in everything one sees and everything one looks at creates the need for isolation. The sense of being in this world but no longer of it, creates the need, the desire for complete isolation. This isolation is needed to subconsciously fi gure out what happened to the Self. The isolation due to the complete feeling of desolation we feel is twofold, though. It precedes the decision whether to live or die.

As mentioned, isolation means that no matter how close we become to another human being, a gap remains. We are always alone. So why go through the tedious effort to maintain old relationships? What is the purpose, if death will part us anyway? Why bother? The isolation we feel is twofold, though. Due to the PTSD-generated existential crisis brewing within, we need time for isolation, peace and quiet. We need this time to fi gure out what has happened, what is happening and what, if anything, to do about it once we decide to live.

When seeing her fi rst stewardess at age 5, Nattanya knew she would follow in her footsteps. Too young to fl y at age 17, she instead began to sail as stewardess on a Danish freighter. A couple of years later, she married and worked as ground-stewardess for Lufthansa German Airlines at Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport. When children failed to announce their arrival and with a desire to permanently leave Europe on her mind, Nattanya began to fl y for a large North American airline while in her time off sailing the seven seas, trucking throughout North America and obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree. She and her dogs now live in a seashore village on Vancouver Island, where she is completing The PTSD Fallacy II and III. You can always fi nd the latest information at nattanya.ca

HEALTH ISSUE | APRIL 2021