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Natural Disaster Natural disasters and ptsd

  • Thread starter Deleted member 37474
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Deleted member 37474

The rain finally stopped from Hurricane Harvey. The entire Greater Houston area is mostly destroyed. My house is fine, my family is alive. But I am not okay. I go from hyper cleaning to frozen to panic, random crying. I was rather calm during the intense rain, 16 tornado warnings, and non-stop emergency flood warnings. I went through flashbacks related to being trapped and distortions of people wanting me dead. Guessing non-ptsd people don't do that. My one friend tirelessly helped others while I froze in my house that was surrounded by a "river over major highways" moat. I am lost as to the income hit that we will take from this. The mortgage company doesn't want to help us, all they will do is wave late fees for three months. We are both mostly commission type jobs. People are out donating money while we really can't. I want to help and I freeze or fear seeing the massive amount of people that are traumatized. Then I feel guilty. Is this normal? Is this ptsd? Do I just suck as a person? Do I not know how to be generous? How do I fix this?
 
Tex,
You're responsible for keeping /yourself/ safe and well, and yours to whom you are responsible / that cannot take care of themselves.

You aren't responsible for anyone else.
Nothing to feel guilty about, and nothing owed.
You don't suck as a person, the contrary: You are a stellar person. You still care so much for others while the situation is terror inducing & you aren't in a position to help as much as you'd want & are lacking the means.

That means you're a wonderful person.
One minute a time and /do./ put yourself first.
 
I do think that you are a good person and everything that you are experiencing is normal for going through a natural disaster. You are going to be okay one way or the other. It is so scary to survive what is going on and taking hits on your income. You have a lot of stress right now. Try to make yourself and your family as comfortable as you are able. You are a good person, with PTSD from trauma and now you are going through something so terrible and it has affected all the different parts of you. You are going to be okay, I will believe for you if you cannot and I think you may be experiencing some bad survivors guilt and being limited in your resources. It hurts I know but you have done nothing wrong.
 
It is not necessarily wise anyways after a serious event to make decisions. There may well be plenty of time and opportunity to assist others and be of service or helpful when others have gone back to leading their lives. That's what I learned about it (Hurricanes Erin and Opal mostly, but I've been through 5 - none of course anywhere near the devastation that you all went through.)

You handled, and are handling it as best as you can "at this time"... and that's all you can do. Don't over think this, k?
 
It all sounds like a really normal reaction @TexCat - some people respond in a crisis by doing and doing, and others are a bit more frozen by it. It's perfectly ok to be trying to work out the impact on you and your loved ones and to not be able to do much to help others. It's ok to be worried about your own situation and for that to be all consuming. That isn't PTSD necessarily, it's a normal, human reaction to a wide scale crisis.

Be kind to yourself and don't focus too much on what other people seem to be able to manage - you don't know how they're coping behind closed doors.
 
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