News T-minus 10 Days (and Counting)

[EveHarrington]

This is not a debate thread. This is in this particular forum because it pertains to news. I urge others who want to debate to start another thread. Thank you. (I can't handle the debate stuff, it's more of a discussion of after effects.)

In 10 days-------the 9/11 15th anniversary. I thought I was better able to tolerate it over the years, but no. I am going to start my "no news" period from now until mid-September.

CNN is debuting a new 9/11 movie and I just saw the preview ad for it. I'm already getting that shaky break down feeling that happens whenever I'm exposed to anything related to 9/11. This many years later and I still can't handle it?

I'm watching a CNN movie about a cult with a leader who molested members. I'm a CSA survivor and it's not fazing me in the least. Perhaps apples and oranges, but the 9/11 stuff is the only thing that ever affects me like this (well, now-----it's hard to remember all of the CSA related feelings).

Am I alone in this? Are others still affected after so many years? I wasn't directly exposed to the events of that day, just the media over-exposure. I'm not sure why this still shakes me to the core. Or how past trauma may be feeding into it all.

Thanks and :hug: for all-----

 

[sedna]

This is not a debate thread. This is in this particular forum because it pertains to news. I urge...

I really doubt that you're alone.

It sounds like a PTSD response to me. 9/11 hit people with PTSD harder I think. Of course I dont include those personally effected by that tragedy in that comment.

Because of the ' this makes no sense, I cant understand or prevent it ' emotional charge. Everyone felt that way. As a person who has lived with that already...and maybe not processed it, that will go a lot deeper.

The movie you're watching that has no effect, is also somehow a typical response, I cant figure out to explain it. It happens to me and I don't understand it either.

I think I transfer my emotions on to other things. I feel permanently dead to what should make me feel trauma. I really needed to think about some of that type of disconnect tonight actually, thanks for this post.

 

[Enaila]

One of my students is reading a book from a series called "I Survived" on 9/11. I started to remember in detail the day. This was the same year some of my intense trauma happened. I was struggling to keep myself and boys safe that year and then not even the world felt safe.

 

[Neverthesame]

I remember Mum waking me up in tears. Watched the news with her for a bit. I was 17. I r remember thinking it was tragic of course, but death is not something I really understood at that point of my life. It was all so very far away.

Though there was something that was bothering me in the back of my mind, something odd. Whenever the news changed to a reporter near the base of the towers, there was this weird thumping sound. Then the first tower fell, I immediately assumed it was the sound of vapourised jet fuel combusting in flashover, or building supports buckling. Creepy sound though. It wasn't until years later when I learned what that sound was actually caused by.

It was people.

It was the sound of people who were suffocating and burning, deliberately jumping from the building, hitting the ground. Because falling to their deaths was preferable to burning to death. It wasn't a couple, here and there either. In the short time the news feed was from up close, there would be dozens of them.

It still makes me feel ill to think about. I was witness to the sound of the last instant of people's lives. People like me, people not like me, people with their own lives, mothers, fathers, children, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters.
People who grew up somewhere, have memories of family and friends, school, first dances, kisses.

All gone, forever.

Truly awful. So unbelievably sad.

 

[Friday]

I'm not sure why this still shakes me to the core

Your country was attacked?

I grew up with that & spent half my adult life living in places where soldiers may well drop in at any time (or their munitions), but it's probably safe to say that most Americans born after WWII haven't experienced that kind of threat to their foundational security before. We live in an incredibly peaceful nation. Excluding a few short battles on distant islands, we haven't fought a war on our own soil since the Civil War In the 1860s. ((Also excluding westward expansion / the massacres happened in advance of the leading edge of our nation. Same era. Also excluding attacks on our embassies and bases overseas, as we DGAF about our people in the military and state, as a rule as a nation.))

It took me a long time to figure out why so many Americans were so gut checked by the 9-11 attack... Which is less cold than it sounds (promise)... But finally realized it talking with some British & Israeli friends. Oh. Right. This is new for them, isn't it? It's not part of their national identity that this shit happens. This is shit that happens to other people, other countries; not them, and not their county.

Finding out someplace you thought was safe, isn't? Tends to jar people. Whether a home invasion or invading force. It's a violation, either way.

 

[Deleted member 541]

I hadn't really watched TV in yrs. only had the most basic of cable at that time. Think it was like channels 2-13. Just real basic. Then 9/11 happened, and I became glued to the TV. I took time off of work, I became hyper focused on all of the news. Had anxiety, at work I would turn on my customers TV while I worked.

After yrs of watching the anniversary role calls, of the 9/11 victims and watching the same things over and over, I finally had to stop watching any and all news. I just can't watch news at all anymore. Haven't in about 4 yrs now. I even have a hard time reading the news online. I sort of just skip over things.

I think I must have seen those towers fall thousands of times with all of the news I watched.

 

[hodge]

I'll never forget 9/11. It wasn't long after that that my PTSD came on. It was like the fuse that lit my PTSD into gear. When I first went back to therapy after my symptoms started, my therapist asked me when they started and I told her it was not long after 9/11. She said she'd heard that from other clients as well. It was an enormously traumatizing event here in the U.S., especially if you lived in a major city or had ties to one. I was living here in rural Minn. at the time but on the phone all day with colleagues in Detroit who had been evacuated from the downtown buildings and my mother and brother stuck in traffic. I later would have nightmares of gangs of jihadists invading small towns everywhere here, going door to door with AK-47s.

 

[hodge]

Sometimes, I wonder that if 9/11 didn't happen, would I have ended up with PTSD. I've always had anxiety and depression, but not PTSD until after that. Eh, it's a moot question, I guess. I've got it. And I also think the run up to the war in Iraq (for which justification I never believed in for a second) plus all the news about the priest abuses during the same time period contributed as well. Those were awful times, though I think not as awful as now. I feel it's always more awful to be affiliated with an abuser than to be the abused.

 

[Justmehere]

It took me a long time to figure out why so many Americans were so gut checked by the 9-11 attack... Which is less cold than it sounds (promise)... But finally realized it talking with some British & Israeli friends. Oh. Right. This is new for them, isn't it? It's not part of their national identity that this shit happens. This is shit that happens to other people, other countries; not them, and not their county.

Finding out someplace you thought was safe, isn't? Tends to jar people. Whether a home invasion or invading force. It's a violation, either way.

I think this explains maybe why I wasn't as jarred by it as most people. A primary caregiver in my life as a child worked for the defense dept and told me a little of their work. I was exposed to threats to national security at a very young age. I had so many nightmares about it before 9/11. It was always something in my life. Maybe this is why 9/11 didn't initially impact me as much as others. For me, it was almost expected... Like oh, and there it is. That's why so and so was a stressed out a-hole about their job. There actually are people trying to hurt the country.

I was super duper young...

I remember how I was running a particular event for a non-profit that had been scheduled months in advance. A blood drive was included in the event. On 9/13 people would come to the blood drive and yell at me because we didn't need anyone else to donate blood for our area or NY. We were maxed out.

People felt so helpless and they wanted, even demanded, to do SOMETHING... I quickly realized they were seeking to counteract that deep helplessness and fear that they felt.

So I quickly gathered up a list of things people could actually do, and that helped.

My heart goes out to all who are shaken and triggered and to those who have lost so much. :hug:s

 

[trying2movefwd]

NOT alone. I can't stand it either.

 

[EveHarrington]

I think I figured out a part of why it still affects me so much after 15 years.

That day was bad enough. Nobody else that I saw or spoke to that day had an outward display of distress like I did. (I phrase it this way as we all react differently.) And then in the following weeks, months, years------I was living in a very pro-war "we're going to get the bad guys at any cost" sort of society. (My perception.) I didn't have much support in the following days, weeks, etc and it was hard to even find people who were like minded. Not supporting the war and all its "glory" got you pegged as a spoiled rotten UNamerican. It was bad enough that so many people died, but then it was all about MORE killing. I remember keeping my thoughts to myself, my feelings to myself. It's like how they say how trauma resolved easier if you have support. It stands to reason that my struggles never resolved because I felt silenced and isolated. This is just my personal experience and I mean no disrespect or invalidation toward those who experienced direct trauma that day. I guess any issue will fester if it goes unresolved for years. But this is typical for me----I've felt silenced and voiceless much of my life (Trauma/CSA effects.)

But even now I feel like a spoiled brat for letting this affect me as it does. Who would I talk to about this? I think most people would laugh at me and think I'm pathetic. :-/

I've got to stop now. Even this is hard. I want to cry.

 

[EmmaOwl]

I remember Mum waking me up in tears. Watched the news with her for a bit. I was 17. I r remember...

Neverthesame: As another poster has mentioned, it is extraordinarily difficult to speak of. But what you saw, and overwhelming, you could see that some were strangers who took one another's hands while doing this. At least that's how it appeared to me. There were definitely many many strangers hugging in the street.
Your phrase it makes you feel ill. That is exactly the word I use. Ill. I have lots of physical sicknesses that I describe in different ways, but for some reason this word is set in my mind for this particular trauma, the word is reserved for this. This makes me feel ill. And I am so sorry.