anthony
Founder
alanmeacock said:Perhaps I should just go along with things and kind of shut down mentally? But I would resist that and that would compound my dis-ease.
Yer, shutting down mentally is not really the best approach to PTSD. You are coming to terms with what is happening to you, which is a great start. We all have to start somewhere, and once we get past denial, that is the best method forward. What you are going through is normal for PTSD, so don't feel different, because you not. Your not mental, your not crazy, you are the same you, with a slight addition of PTSD now tacked on. The PTSD tends to take over us, and consume us whilst we try and ignore it, however; when we learn to live with it, and work within its bounds to a point, our lives then become much more bearable, to say the least.
I often say to people that you must embrace your trauma. This is not really a touchy feely type saying, it is more outlined from myself as saying, "accept what is now, and work with it, not against it." Working against PTSD, or attempting to fight or suppress it, fails each and every time. People end up here saying they are better within themselves, when suddenly their traumas are popping up once again to bother them significantly. This says to me, that a person hasn't really come to terms with their trauma yet, nor accepted it, and are still trying to fight it, suppress it, or bury it, non of which work, because our minds are the controller of when and where memories are given back to us, and statistics have always proven nothing but positive that memories will return to haunt us if not dealt with completely.
alanmeacock said:Still have trouble with triggers nine months on...read about and my councellor mentioned 'the body remembers.' So in a trauma our mind does not take in everything only the most immediate danger, but our bodies with all the ancillary senses going on like touch, smell, hearing, skin temperature etc are taking in stuff also but which is not registered with our normal mental recognition routes. Obviously what we see is probably most important. So anyway things I don't know about can still send me into anxiety, a smell,etc but I won't recognise it! Am I making sense here!
Alan, you are making perfect sense. People often discover that they find new triggers through other senses, ie. if your a vietnam vet, the smell of jungle could trigger you, where the sight of a jungle may not. The touch of something may trigger you to what a touch of a body, weapon or event felt like when you touched it. People more often than not just think its about the incident that occurred, and often don't know about the larger picture in relation to mind recognition and triggers.
Nine months on, and your still having triggers. Honestly, get used to them, because you will have triggers your entire life now. The difference is, is learning them and knowing which ones you can push past, and which ones you cannot. Its like me going to a shopping centre. I can push past going to a crowded shopping centre if I have had time to prepare myself for it mentally, however; if I am in a shopping centre around the time school gets out, and the centre suddenly goes from light traffic to crowded with school kids, my anxiety goes through the roof and I must exit immediately.
The reason is, is that I had no mental preparation to accept the crowd, thus it is like being within some operation zones where one minute there is no crowd, to the next a huge crowd forming from an event. Trigger!
So, I now make allocations to adapt these to me so I can continue without being triggered. Example, I no longer will go near a shopping centre if the time is even close to when school is let out, ie. 3pm - 3.30pm. I will always ensure that I now go to a shopping centre well before these times on a weekday. I never go late night shopping on thursday nights, because the crowds are more often than not, to much for me to cope with even with preparation. So I avoid that night. I can go into a shopping centre on a Saturday though, if I know about it the day before, and prepare myself mentally with such thoughts as:
- It is a safe environment, and not a war zone
- People are not out to harm me within the shops
- I am not on operations now, this is peace time
- etc etc etc
So that is an example of some control over triggers when identified as one.
No control! An example is helicopters flying on roof tops. Well, living within a military town, you will get helicopters flying on the roof tops. I can't stop them, I can't avoid them, and if when it happens, I get triggered. So... I moved from a military town to a city where military exist, but are not really seen, nor do I ever have helicopters flying on the roof tops. This is an example of avoidance when appropriate to a trigger. Some triggers can be beaten, some adapted, some just need to be avoided.