ouise Thompson has revealed her fears of having “brain damage” after her PTSD struggle as she shared her recovery progress with fans.
The Made in Chelsea star provided the health update in an extensive post on Instagram.
Thompson confessed that she “fears for life” as she spoke of how her mental health issues “nearly destroyed her family” and worries about her fiancé Ryan Libbey, who also suffers from PTSD.
The 32-year-old’s comments come after several months of difficult episodes of the disorder, which developed after a complicated labor and delivery with her son Leo, who was born last November.
She wrote on Instagram: “Where am I with my recovery?! mmmm. I’m in a weird stage right now where I’m blocking everything. Maybe that’s how I said it in the beginning? I can’t really remember much because I’m still trying to protect myself from the pain. I don’t want to reread.
“This condition feels very repetitive. Finally it feels like everything happened a long time ago, but it also feels like it happened to someone else and not me. I feel like I have erased all my past and started life as a totally new person. A sometimes sick person.
“People tell me how far I’ve come, but I don’t remember how far. I can remember a weird amount of things from my childhood… sensory things will remind me of the weirdest memories from back in the day when I was 5-15, but then I’ve erased just about everything between then and now.”
Louise Thompson with fiance Ryan Libbey
† Louise Thompson/InstagramThompson admitted she is “struggling to move on”, adding: “To put it bluntly, I’m struggling to get on with ‘normal’ life. Every day I feel very unwell physically and every other day I seem to have a period of an hour (sometimes longer) where I feel confused in my brain.
“I don’t know what it is, but it feels like brain damage or a mini-stroke.
“Maybe it’s a weird processing experience. I can’t think or talk properly during those episodes. It kind of feels like I’m having a severe allergic reaction to something in my brain. I go from feeling really low and agitated and then feeling a rush of something and then I get the worst cramps around my pelvis but then my brain calms down.
“I was told this is not a result of my mental health medication?!? Can anyone help with the physical side of things? I’ve tried eliminating certain things and following my lifestyle, but I can’t figure out what it is. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern and it has nothing to do with triggers.”
Thompson added a series of lengthy posts when she said she wanted to learn how to “act normal” during her “brain troubles” so her son Leo wouldn’t see her “broken.”
She compared herself to dementia when she described her system as “still so out of balance” and asked for “someone to fix me” because she wants to get back to her “normal” self.
“My ghost has been EVERYWHERE and now I just want someone to fix me,” she continued.
“I know I want to be the normal Louise again, so why won’t my body and brain allow me to. Just when I think I’m about to turn the corner, I feel really sick. That immediately puts me in a bad place. Then I wonder: will I ever feel healthy again?”
She added: “When I’m feeling good now I spend all my time with my Leo because I want to take the pressure off Ryan as he is really struggling with his own PTSD etc (which he FINALLY admitted to me).
“He has manifested himself in very different ways and he has not yet started treatment, but I hope that when he starts it will be a dream because I hate to see him suffer.