Last week, Lady Gaga disclosed she has been living with PTSD for years. The trauma that caused it is rape. She wrote about the diagnosis, how it impacts her and why she has disclosed now.
It's not easy to own this diagnosis or the symptoms that come along with it for a lot of reasons. There's still a lot of shame, stigma and confusion about struggling with pain, especially emotional or physiological pain, and a lot of denial about the causes of traumatic stress. In adults as well as in children, as many of us at ACEs already know.
I'm grateful she went public so others can get more information and education and feel less shame. She's also helping to bring a female and civilian face to PTSD (#FacesOfPTSD). That's important and necessary. Most Google images that come up when one types in PTSD are still of men in the military and of brains. Images of ANY women and children remain hard to find. She has a lot of teenage followers and they, like many adults, might not know a thing about fear, the brain and how and why the pre-frontal cortex works. She can help change that.
Plus, Lady Gaga's letter is important for another reason. She shows how much the response of our loved ones and community can make following this diagnosis. The pain of PTSD is often compounded because those in our lives don't believe, understand or know that the condition is real and/or how to respond. Lady Gaga's symptoms were made worse by people (including herself) denying her needs and issues.
As with many conditions, those who have it are often in the position of dealing with it while also needing to educate others about it, too. Often, we are educators, advocates and this can be exhausting. It's most tiresome when we are struggling with symptoms of disconnect, numbness, anxiety or depression, etc.
So I applaud Lady Gaga for not only sharing her diagnosis but how it has impacted her. I applaud her for sharing what she is learning about healing trauma as well.
Excerpt:
I also experience something called dissociation which means that my mind doesn’t want to relive the pain so “I look off and I stare” in a glazed over state. As my doctors have taught me, I cannot express my feelings because my pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain that controls logical, orderly thought) is overridden by the amygdala (which stores emotional memory) and sends me into a fight or flight response. My body is in one place and my mind in another. It’s like the panic accelerator in my mind gets stuck and I am paralyzed with fear.
When this happens I can’t talk. When this happens repeatedly, it makes me have a common PTSD reaction which is that I feel depressed and unable to function like I used to. It’s harder to do my job. It’s harder to do simple things like take a shower. Everything has become harder. Additionally, when I am unable to regulate my anxiety, it can result in somatization, which is pain in the body caused by an inability to express my emotional pain in words.
But I am a strong and powerful woman who is aware of the love I have around me from my team, my family and friends, my doctors and from my incredible fans who I know will never give up on me. I will never give up on my dreams of art and music. I am continuing to learn how to transcend this because I know I can. If you relate to what I am sharing, please know that you can too.
The full text of her open letter published on her Born This Way Foundation website, is here.
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