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A Question For The Community

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pepper_e

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A mentor of mine, someone who has always been there for me, recently told me this:

The further away you are, the easier it is to deal with.

Well, it has been 2 years and I am on the other side of the planet from where my 'event' occurred, and it is not getting easier.

My mentor does not have PTSD, so does not know what it is like

My question is this, for those that have had this longer than myself, is there merit to this statement? Or is this a kind sentiment from someone who doesn't grasp what it is like to have PTSD?
 
She may just be speaking from her point of reference as a person without PTSD. Maybe the most traumatic thing she's experienced was the loss of a loved person or pet. In those cases, time heals those wounds.

If you have PTSD, you just know it waxes and wanes. We have to be mindful not to allow our stress cup to overflow. I've had this for 50 years. I've had times of being very stable and happy and also periods of extreme depression and anxiety. Wouldn't I just love to know that time could make this he'll go away. Not in my case.
 
The further away you are, the easier it is to deal with.
I am on the other side of the planet from where my 'event' occurred,
Was your mentor referring to physical distance? It would make more sense to me if he/she was referring to being emotionally further away from a situation or having (had) less direct involvement in it. Can you explain a bit more about the context your mentor used the statement in?
 
I consider myself recovered. I've had ptsd since 1999. It's only in the last few years that I've made the most significant steps. Those steps were the exavt opposite of creating distance. I moved 100's of miles away from my home town in 1999, it didn't cure my condition, you past does not stay where it occurred. I used to create distance by pushing myself to be someone who wasn't hurt. I distracted myself with ambitions, arbitrary achievements, relationships, fad, hobbies, drugs, drink, education....the list is long and desperate.

It finally burnt me out physically and mentally 4 years ago.

An understanding of the hardest thing I had to do, came from reading a newspaper article about a Roman poet called Horace. The journalist was observing his own modern life through the prism of one particular 2,000 year old poem called 'Atra Cura;. It's about a man who gets on a horse to try and outrun his own fears. He only stops having to run when he stops and faces himself.

I don't know what your trauma is. Mine was 6 years of being abused, raped, drugged and severely emotionally and psychologicaly hurt by my father.
I had to stop running from how much all that devastation had hurt me.

I still live with the foundation of years of battling this, which curtailed some aspects of my life I wish it hadn't. I still have learned patterns of behaviour that I used to cope with, that I would like to change. But physiologically, emotionally and mentally I seem to have been allowed out of the prison ptsd had ket me in for the last 16 years.
 
If for example you're a victim of rape or violence, and your attacker(s) live in one town, then yes, physical distance is important to healing because physical safety is important to healing.

Being in the same town where you see your attacker periodically, for example, will be triggering, so in that case being away would help.

However, my T told me the old adage that "wherever you go, there you are". Meaning your psychological problems don't stay behind when you move away. And if you move to another town, there will almost certainly be someone else's attackers and potential attackers there.

Now if your T was speaking of emotional distance, yes I suppose so, but I think emotional distance would be dependent on some healing taking place already. Chicken and egg thing there.
 
I think it can be both things, for me at least. It depends where I am in my head. I'm going to take the memories with me wherever I go. So if I haven't dealt with them they're still going to be there.

At the same time I've noticed (as have others) that away from my home town I am much more relaxed, almost a different person. It's something I'm thinking about at the moment. A part of me wants to up and move away- I'm still living in the home I grew up in, the home many of my traumas took place in. Outside of this house the streets are filled with memories too. I think they are what stop me relaxing. Even though I have many good memories of living in this house, even though I have friends in this town, that connection to the past in every familiar street, in every familiar face, is holding me back. I just don't know what from right now.
 
They were right in one thing, if you're away in some way, there's something to put between you and the event, but it isn't an all saver. The memory's still there, /you/ are still there, and it's a good thing you are.

So yes, that statement isn't untrue if it doesn't aim at 'cure'. If it does, it's a miss.
 
I moved to the other side of the country (over 3000kms) from my abusers, but I didn't heal because of it, instead I pushed it down, ignored it, pretended it didn't matter, and slowly self destructed.

It took me 30 years after leaving my abusers to finally self destruct to the point where I had no option other than to get help.

By the time I finally got help I had restricted my life severely in an effort to stop being triggered, my T once told me I was like a zombie existing, not living. He wasn't far wrong, I had isolated myself from everyone, because when I packed my bags, my baggage came with me.

Distance didn't heal me, nor did time, until I was able to start changing the disfunctional beliefs I had, nothing changed for me because I was trapped in a pattern of behaviour that had me reliving the past, and projecting my abusers onto the people who were now my family, friends or work mates.

Distance is a great thing now I am in treatment, it helps me to feel safe, it's a new beginning and now I have cut out any communication with my family of orgin, I don't have those triggers come up anymore.
 
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