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What Is The One Thing You Wish People Knew/ Understood About Ptsd Or Trauma?

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I wish people understood that talking about my past can set off flashbacks and it hurts to re-live the horrors. I wish more people would respect my boundaries, and not try to push me to talk about things that I'm not ready to talk about. Prodding to satiate their curiosity about my past, is not going to help me heal, it's going to trigger excruciatingly painful flashbacks that can be quite traumatic. The loving thing to do is listening calmly, with compassion, to what I feel up to sharing without digging at me for more than I’m ready to share. I want people to respect my boundaries and listen when I say that I can't handle talking about something, that it is upsetting me.
 
I wish people understood that while they assumed you were feeling nothing they undestood you were feeling as much or even more than they were. I wish they understood I feel worse about myself than they could make me feel. I wish they understood that I am more than the sum total of ptsd parts. I wish they understood what may be easy for them may be much more difficult for me. I wish they understood I am trying as hard as I can. I wish they understood I didn't ask to be this way.
 
Yesterday my mother in law told me that I could just stop going to therapy if I would make a breakthrough and just quit dwelling on the past. I wish she would at least research it. I don't want her to understand because that would mean she would have it. But there is so much physical evidence now. Brain scans etc...
 
I wish people understood that there is a definite distinction between having a thought, attitude, view or emotion, & having a PTSD reaction. They originate in different parts of the brain. We can't just choose not to be reactive by chilling out, not worrying etc (it's good to do that, but it's no sure protection).

The prompt for the symptoms may be an identifiable stress or trigger, or not. But it has already registered in the primitive part of our brain where fear is processed, long before we have a conscious thought about it.

People really do say "Don't get upset," expecting it to help! "Upset" is generally not what I'm feeling - UNTIL my heart starts pounding, or my chest feels like it has bricks stacked on it, or I think I'm going to be sick. That's upsetting.

I don't get like this because I worry! The physical shit happens so suddenly, I don't have time to worry. It happens BEFORE I get upset, not because I got upset. What I feel is ill, not worried.

This state is the end product of a lifetime of "choosing" not to worry.

You can tell yourself any upbeat tale you like about what life throws at you. The body knows the true story.
 
I wish people understood that there is no objective measure of suffering and trauma is trauma is trauma is equal ground. I wish people would stop comparing their trauma to other people's trauma as better or worse. "You've had it so much worse than me." It's not an objective thing. It's not a contest. We all have PTSD & it all hurts. The end.
 
I wish people would stop comparing their trauma to other people's trauma as better or worse. "You've had it so much worse than me." It's not an objective thing. It's not a contest. We all have PTSD & it all hurts. The end.

Very true, but sometimes it is difficult to see it that way. It is not our traumas which bring us together. It is PTSD itself, the symptoms and how it affects our lives.
 
That genuinely thinking about meaning and spiritual aspects can be helpful (but difficult) - but ideas like "This too shall pass", "Everything happens for a reason" or "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger" should not be put forward by people without PTSD.

If you've been there yourself, I'll listen to your views on this. If not, thank you but you have no idea what you're talking about.
 
Thay I can be having a wonderful day totally grounded in the here and now, and then... there is a touch, a smell, a phrase that I hear, a tone of voice, and sometimes it can even just be how some one else walks into a room... then my world tilts, I turn to stone, it is as if I'm caught up by a whirling wind and I'm gone... I have about as much control over it as humanity has control of a tornado.
 
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