Clarissa’s Story

When I walked into the doctor’s office on May 9th, 2011, I wasn’t expecting to be diagnosed with unintentional post-traumatic stress disorder.

In December of 2003, I experienced my first death of someone whom I loved and considered my family. It was incredibly difficult for me. Being just 12 at the time, I didn’t know how to handle the death or how to grieve. My plan was to ignore the situation and pretend it didn’t happen. Starting in August of 2006 to January of 2011, I experienced eight more deaths of people who I knew, four deaths were people my age, five deaths happened in a time span of just 10 months. Some deaths were easier to grieve than others, but even by 2011, I still hadn’t grieved over the first death I had experienced. I started to feel down and depressed back in May of 2010 and it continued the rest of the summer. I just related it to my friends going off to college and the fact that I was staying at home attending community college. Once December hit, I knew there was a much bigger issue. All I could think about was death. I was fearful of people around me dying, myself dying, my family dying, how I would handle another death, and how people would handle my death. I became fearful of driving because I knew three people who had died in car accidents. I was constantly afraid of someone hitting my car or for some freak accident to occur that would kill me. I was afraid to leave my house, leave my friends, and I would think to myself that this was the last time I would ever see them, or they would see me, because either myself or they would be killed. I was afraid to walk into a room and be told bad news that someone else had died. I would go into panic mode anytime I would get an unexpected phone call or text message. My heart would be pounding every time I checked facebook in fear of seeing a status saying “RIP.” I lived every single day in constant fear of when the next bad thing would happen or when the next death would take place.

I still have the same thoughts and I still live in constant fear of when the next death will occur, but it is much more manageable now. I have now been on medication and have been in therapy weekly for almost a year.