‘Loneliness is the Ebb and Flow of an Unsettled Tide’: PTSD and its Repercussions on Relationships

By Alexa Jeffery Garza

*TW*: sexual/physical abuse, abandonment trauma, PTSD 

Here I am again, fingers to keys.

The loneliness is profound today, a giant sweeping tsunami that I wish would whisk me away

Whisk me into their arms

The only one close enough to fill the void is me

It eats away at me, gnawing at my heart chakra, taking gulps of my self-esteem.

A looming shadow that has followed me since childhood

Loneliness is no stranger but she’s barely visible to most.

How to rid myself of her? I ask. Write, I answer.

So here I am again, fingers to keys.

Distraction only works for so long before the same fears and insecurities start bubbling up between the cracks. Writing is the only way I know how to transfer feelings, drop the weight, fill the void, and distract the mind.

I need to pass on the heaviness, distribute it amongst words, ask for help ask for love ask for presence.

Loneliness is a quiet sneaking fox, stalking me, predator and prey.

I’ve spent a lifetime hearing that the happiest seeming people are the saddest; the ones surrounded by others the most alone. I have friends and family that love me. I have a dog that would never leave my gravesite and a beautiful child that would be traumatised without me. Yet every night I close my eyes, I live in a world in which my entire existence is ridiculed, tormented, and ignored. I’m meaningless. Then I wake up.

My therapist mentioned the correlation between loneliness and post-traumatic stress disorder during our last session, and she really caught my attention with her phrasing: profound loneliness. A loneliness that buries itself like a tick and sucks the life out of me so fully that, more often than not, I feel like I’m barely living anyways.

I decided to do some research (I’m a psychology major, after all). I needed to know the why to my trauma. It turns out, loneliness and PTSD are highly related to one another and those suffering from the trauma disorder are way more likely to experience deep-seated feelings of loneliness as a result.

I’m a twenty-nine-year-old woman with a preteen. My PTSD stems from childhood sexual assault(s) and a pregnancy two years after my period started, as I desperately searched for some stupid kid to love me the way my parents couldn’t – this post isn’t about parenthood. The abandonment I faced in those months of teen pregnancy by the people that I thought were my friends, those who told me they loved me, only exacerbated the isolation I’d always known. That’s normal, according to the science.

Two types of PTSD exist that can affect a person’s psychosocial wellbeing and result in feelings of loneliness, and mine is the complex kind. I’ve talked about PTSD before, and most people associate it with war veterans and refugees. I mean, that’s what I first associated PTSD with when I learned of it – not even knowing I suffered from it myself. I used to think the fight/flight/freeze response was normal, waking up in tears or sweats from a graphic nightmare that most people would be horrified to hear the details of.

PTSD is a psychological disorder that stems from one or all of the following, according to the DSM 5: witnessing or experiencing an event that threatens or attempts to endanger one’s life; sexual violence; and/or serious injury. Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) turns one event into multiple events or exposures that happen over a prolonged period. While this of course relates to war veterans and refugees, it can also relate to those who have: experienced physical abuse (including repeated instances of physical bullying in childhood and adolescence, domestic violence in the home); experienced intimate partner violence; witnessed (or been involved in) a fatal accident or injury; and/or experienced sexual abuse or assault.

In today’s age, the range of events that can cause someone to develop PTSD is vast, especially when we look at the instances of mass violence that have worsened in the past few years (like school shootings or wars). But loneliness isn’t a symptom of PTSD – it’s only a byproduct of it.

Symptoms of the disorder include distressing memories, distressing dreams, flashbacks, sleep disturbances, hypervigilance, negative beliefs about oneself, reckless behaviour, persistent negative emotional state, feelings of detachment from others and dissociation, to name a few.

See, my loneliness doesn’t relate to anyone in my social circle; that’s the challenging part to understand. It relates to my trauma. I can be surrounded by people that love me and still feel detached and misunderstood by every single one of them.

This sentiment is echoed in studies across the board. According to Yagan et. al. (2019), ‘loneliness can be defined as a condition in which a “sense of apartness and distance is accompanied by feelings of pain and discomfort regardless of the reality of being alone.”’ It’s both a mediator and a moderator to complex trauma, meaning it is reinforced by trauma – and it acts as a reinforcer of trauma.

For example, CPTSD creates an inability to trust and feel safe with others, and that results in self-isolation, which produces feelings of loneliness. Yagan et. al explained it well in their study on addressing loneliness in CPTSD (2019):

Disturbed relationships (...) manifested by feeling distant from people, difficulty in staying close to people, and tendencies to avoid relationships because they end up being painful, are clearly connected to the patients’ difficulty to trust and feel safe, but at the same time contribute to greater social isolation and feelings of loneliness. In addition, symptoms of emotional dysregulation such as experiencing intense reactions, requiring long periods to calm down, being easily hurt, and feeling uncontrollable anger (...) or being numb and shut down also contribute to adversities in relationships that lead to loneliness.

It is the feeling that roots itself in the belief that I am unworthy, doomed for abandonment, and meaningless – lessons trauma taught me. Predator and prey. Trauma alienates you; it tells you that you’re weird and broken and exposed, different from everyone else. You believe it, and you shy away from potential as a result.

I’m writing this because I’ve learned something scientific about my mental health. In a way, it has bridged the gap between diagnosis and manifestation. That is to say, the medical jargon of being diagnosed with PTSD has been translated into the whys and hows of my (conscious or subconscious) PTSD behaviour.

I’m reminded that loneliness is the ebb and flow of an unsettled tide. There are days I want it to suck me under. Other days, I embrace it – and myself. I look for solace like I’m collecting seashells. I step outside of the lonely, and then I give her attention.

It’s okay to struggle and to feel alone. As a result of trauma or not, these are the experiences we’re faced with and we should take them as they come. Put your pain into writing, music, or art. Dance with it, run with it, and remember what it is: an avenue to a deeper understanding of yourself, an open door to emotional and creative expression. Sometimes a tsunami, a shadow, a fox – and then a poem, a blog post, a seashell.

Take care of your Self, even the lonely parts.