Louise Thompson shares candid post about her trauma and PTSD
Former Made In Chelsea star Louise Thompson welcomed the birth of her first child, a sweet baby boy named Leo, in November last year, with her fiancé Ryan Libbey.
However, what was supposed to be a blissful moment soon turned into a nightmare as Louise suffered from a severely traumatic labour and birth experience, which resulted in her staying in hospital for over a month.
As a result, Louise has developed PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), depression and crippling anxiety. Taking to Instagram on Monday evening, the 31-year-old shared an extremely honest update, talking about where she’s at now, mentally.
“Where the hell have the last three months gone? Leo turns 15 weeks today and my brain can't comprehend it,” Louise remarked, adding that the last time she opened up about her trauma was back in January, “and I haven't felt strong enough to talk about it since.”
“If I could use a few words to describe the past month they would be: SCARED, CONFUSED, PARALYSED, AND TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL,” she added.
“My brain keeps deleting memories in order to try and protect itself and it’s so scary. Trauma and fear have no understanding of time. I remember a therapist told me that a few months ago and I didn't understand what she meant. Now I do.”
“Extremely scary circumstances get trapped in your brain as a fight or flight response and they don't get processed like other memories. They don't leave with time. They get trapped in your subconscious.”
“To be honest I’ve been too scared to post about how I’m feeling because I’m not even close to feeling like a normal person yet. I remember when I first posted about PTSD I got really triggered by comments saying it could take 6/9 months to process and I HATED hearing that.”
“I stopped reading everything. I've had to block out any health related content to protect myself. Now I have come to terms with the fact that my life might never be the same again, but things honestly can’t get any worse than they’ve been over the past month so hopefully i’m at the beginning of my actual recovery.”
“I thought that living in hospital for a month was the worst time of my life. Wow I was wrong. I had control over my mind then,” she confessed.
Explaining how she came to this state of mind, Louise said, “Something happened about a month ago where my mind and body came crashing down in tandem. I guess I had been in self preservation mode/survival mode up until that point. Then the real mental health hell began.”
Taking to the comment section on Instagram, Louise continued, “It’s very hard to describe in words what I’ve been going through but I have buckets and buckets of notes I’ve written to myself which I will look back on when I’m feeling better or at least a bit more like ‘Louise’.”
“These are just some of the ways in which mental health has gripped me, and I wouldn’t expect you to understand unless you have experienced a debilitating mental illness but here goes.”
“I’ve been petrified of my cupboards. I’ve battled a phobia of my fridge and bathtub. I’ve felt so disconnected from reality it’s very scary. I wore the same clothes every day for a month. I couldn’t wear any makeup for a month.”
“I couldn’t go into the nursery or the basement. I haven’t been able to look after Leo because I’m scared he’ll trigger anxiety. I’ve felt terror and confusion in my head that is so paralysing yet painful I want to smack my head into a wall,” Louise candidly wrote.
“I couldn’t leave the house for 2 weeks. Sometimes I honestly feel like someone has poured actual poison into my head. I am petrified of what the medication might be doing to me. I’m scared that I’ll forget to do basic tasks like eat and drink water.”
“I often feel so brain fried that I can’t function at all, all I can do is lie down and stare into space with the occasional outbreak of tears. I love crying, tears are better than everything else I go through because the emotion of sadness is much easier to make sense of than the emotion of fear. Gosh I wish I was just sad.”
Continuing, Louise said, “I have depression, severe anxiety, avoidance and ptsd (although standard ptsd hasn’t kicked in yet because i’m too overwhelmed). I have spent countless days staring into space.”
“I analyse every single thought that pops into my head from the moment I wake up until the moment I get to go to sleep and they’re all horrendously intrusive. I love sleep because I get to escape for a bit, although I have had ridiculously unpleasant nightmares over the past week.”
“My body and my mind are trapped in fight or flight and they think that everything is a threat and that I’m dying all the time. I am scared of my own existence. I am scared of my past, present and my future.”
Louise goes on to explain that even in sleep she is not at peace, admitting that she wakes up “moaning and crying because I’m in torture. I haven’t been able to feel, smell or taste anything in ages. My senses are all blocked. Sometimes I feel like I have electric shocks in my head.”
Explaining how she cares for her son, Lousie says, “We now require a lot of help because often I’m too scared to look after little Leo because I’m worried he will remind me of what happened to my body.”
“I’ve screamed and cried at being asked to put clothes away in my cupboard because my mind won’t let me do it, it won’t allow me a spare second to concentrate on anything but suffering.”
“I’ve not been able to communicate at all with people even on the most basic level. I went to a restaurant for lunch with my mum and Ryan and felt so dead in the head I thought I was about to slip into a coma. I’ve repeated to myself a million times asking ‘what is happening to me?'”
“If I’m outside I fear coming inside, if I’m inside I fear going outside. I can’t find answers for why I’m feeling so bad. I feel chemical surges that take me back to feeling normal sometimes. I wake up covered in sweat all night long.”
“Honestly I’ve been at a level of rock bottom that I never knew existed. I never understood suffering or suicide before,” she confessed, adding, “I have learnt a lot over the past 1/2 year. I used to watch fires on tv and not relate, now I understand the trauma.”
“I used to hear about PTSD after war or abuse, now I understand the trauma. It is not as easy as ‘you survived the past, so now you live’.”
Concluding her lengthy update, Louise tries to finish on an uplifting note, revealing that she’s started to see “a glimmer of hope.”
“I have quite a lot of people, processes and medication to thank for that. I will share more as I start to feel a bit more compos mentis. What I want to remind anyone that is suffering is to KEEP BLOODY GOING.”
“It can and will get better. Crisis teams and medication can help. Don’t be too proud to ask for HELP,” she advised.
If you or someone you know is suffering with their mental health and are looking for support, reach out to the Samaritans by free-phoning 116 123, free-phone Pieta on 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444.
