• šŸ’– [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] šŸ’– Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Other Let's talk about torture.

You as well Lionheart, I always appreciate reading your comments. šŸ«‚
I try to be positive and say helpful things, but mostly I just speak from my heart, and I try to share my experiences with trauma and recovery. Hopefully you will continue to like and enjoy my comments. I enjoy reading your comments as well. šŸ˜

You have been through a lot too and I hope you find peace, if you haven't already.

Bright Blessings,
Lionheart
 
So I think there is a HUGE difference between torturing someone for the joy of it and protecting yourself or someone else.
I am a total mama bear.
If someone threatens those I love all bets are off. I will do whatever is necessary to protect them.
If someone threatens me? Been there - killed the guy
Both situations are disturbing because i know I don't have an "off" switch. I truly fear my anger - which is one of the reasons I rarely let it out.

But at the same time I don't consider either of those situations as "torturing" someone
I consider that protecting others and/or self defense - depending on the situation.

@Weemie and @Friday you both have skills I don't have and you have been forced to use those skills to harm someone who wasn't a threat. Plus the way you learned those skills was beyond traumatic. So of course you would second guess yourself if you even thought about using them in any situation

But there's a huge difference between saving someone from a rapist, or protecting your family, or rescuing someone from a life threatening violent situation. If I'm in a fight for my life or to save my loved ones I want someone with those kind of skills at my back. Period.

That's not torture. That's not harming someone for the sheer joy of it.
That's using what you know to stay alive or help others stay alive.

Can my fight with the terrorist be called "torture"? II know my reactions were based on ptsd rage and that's what saved my life. I know I had a chance to walk away once he was down and I chose not to because I KNEW what was going to happen if he caught me and there was no way in hell I was going back to that room.

I know is that it wasn't my fault he didn't choose an easier victim
That the choices HE made were the reason I was in that fight.
That it felt good to keep stabbing and kicking him and watching him bleed
That I wanted him to die painfully
That I won because my rage was all consuming and I wasn't going to lose again.

Did being a torture victim make all that possible?
Had I learned something I could use or found some kind of skills in what had been done to me?
Was I just born that way?
Did my actions and reasons make him a victim of torture?
Beats the hell out of me

Would I do it again to protect myself or my loved ones?
In a heartbeat

And please know I'm not trying to discount your struggle. I cannot even begin to try to image what you feel when you think about being on the torturer side of this discussion. But I can tell you that when I think of WHY you had to take on that role it is completely different to why my monster did it

Your situations were impossible
There was no force. I
Of course there was force. The force of YEARS of conditioning, programing, terror. Just because they weren't standing right there didn't mean you didn't see them.

There was no good answer
There was no free will
There was no option to say no
There was no joy in their suffering , even if it felt good to be the one on the other end for a change because that was a trauma response, not an actual reaction of pleasure.

You are NOTHING like our monsters.
They did the things they did out of the sheer joy of damaging others.
You did what you did to stay alive - and in some cases to save others.
They felt only happiness at the outcome
You felt only regret and guilt

Those are the HUGE differences between bad people who are monsters and good people who have to make horrific choices to survive against all odds
 
I will bump this thread just to add my thoughts.

In my experiences, I saw OTHERS tortured. I saw people beaten by staff, going beyond what clearly would have just been restraining someone. I saw actual sleep deprivation used on someone, not to interrogate them but as a sadistic punishment for not following rules. I saw people paraded in front of me completely nude as punishment, and to remind us of what will happen if we slightly inconvenience our jailers.

I was screamed at by an adult 3 times my size to the point I was physically cowering and weeping. I saw adults casually let other inmates fight each other until it was apparent real physical damage had been done and really only intervening so they wouldn't kill each other. I lost significant weight from the meager food I was given over my time I was locked up.

But I still want to move away from the idea that I was tortured. Only recently and after a few conversations with others have I really begun to question it. Its because THEY used the word torture. Maybe had these things happened outside of a scenario where I was physically incapable of leaving I would be able to say that no, it wasn't torture, just a lot of f*cked up experiences. But the fact I was quite literally trapped might make me lean towards yes, this is torture that I experienced.
 
Last edited:
I'm re-upping this thread again to talk about the damned f*cking dentist. Any tips on how to manage from "the club" would be fantastic. I'm fortunate that most of my dental problems were fixed at 19, but now I have a godawful toothache (oral hygiene has always been extremely difficult for me) and I was supposed to go to the dentist today - since getting on assistance I found out that I have coverage now.

But couldn't make myself even attend the preliminary "make a plan" appointment. I don't usually use the "T word" with clinicians but I felt like it was necessary to let him know just because, like, "I have PTSD" doesn't really explain the magnitude of my reactions to the dentist - or explain the kinds of things he should avoid doing, or the reasons why, or to figure out how to not kill him if he has to do something. I actually hurt my pediatric dentist in a total fit of rage/panic, so this isn't a hypothetical.

Something about being in that seat with someone standing over me, especially focused on my mouth, just immediately brings my mind back to "stress testing" and tasers and water and blood and shit and piss and medical equipment. Making me better, pushing me to my limits, it's "for a reason" to "make me better." To make me better able to deal with sadists and psychopaths and child rapists.

And unfortunately I can't take benzodiazepines because they make me even more violent/erase what little impulse control I actually have. My actual medicine, the dextromethorphan, is still in the mail so that's out as well, the only option is potentially zopiclone but I can't predict what would happen if I mixed that with a real, specific PTSD trigger (will it keep me calm or will my impulse control evaporate and I decimate everything in front of me? Worth risking it?)
 
What about fast acting thc and/or nitrous?

THC is absolutely no-go, I have a fairly extreme negative reaction to it. I am interested in nitrous because I have such a great response to DXM, but I am not sure if he offers it. If he does, that's definitely something I will bring up (because I know for a fact if I had enough DXM I would neutralize any violent tendencies, I would probably still have some kind of emotional outburst though - but that's not really very meaningful and I can just warn him to ignore it).

So the likelihood of nitrous having a similar effect is strong - as it's the same class of drug. But, it's also a drug I have never had, so I honestly have no idea how I would react to it. Which is also potentially a huge risk. I know for a fact that when shit goes sideways, it goes really sideways, and people get hurt. I know I sound like I'm being dramatic but I really can't overstate how fundamentally awful this situation could be for anyone unfortunate enough to be in my direct proximity.

This guy is like f*cking 80. I don't want to kill the man!
 
Nitrous was kind of the go-to drug for dental anxiety for a long time. Some dentists donā€™t like working with it because it makes some people think they are stand-up comedians or get very flirty. Iā€™m not sure how itā€™s treated in Canada. I go to Mexico for my dental work and they said itā€™s either illegal or not standard practice. In the states itā€™s pretty easy to find dentists that offer it but itā€™s rarely to never covered by dental insurance, you pay a premium to get it.
 
With you.

Even ā€œjustā€ going with my kid twice a year sent me into an utterly charming headspaceā€¦. Shudder. I usually dropped him off at the Gā€™s for a sleepover afterward just so I could stop sucking it up, and go lose my shit in private. And we had the BEST dentist when he was a kid. Not a pediatric dentist, but amaaaaaazing with kids. Kept threatening to retire, and finally did after 30 years of talking about it (in his early 90ā€™s). He once pulled me aside, and said I did such a good job of hiding it that it embarrassed him how long I took him to notice; but if I ever wanted a 3 day benzo script twice a year?He just appreciated so much how good I was bringing my son in & makin it fun/normal instead of an ordeal. šŸ¤£

My only ā€œrealā€ options in are

- Meds that work
- Sucking it up now, to explodify later
- Pulling out my sociopath hat from my back pocket
 
With you too. I donā€™t have any tips, just wanted to drop in and say that Iā€™ve not been to the dentist since ermā€¦2019 šŸ«£
 
Dentist scares the crap outa me too. šŸ„¹

I was lucky - I found a good one. After I bit him (ya. seriously) we had a conversation about what he could do to make it easier for me. Nitrous didn't help at all, so we decided to go with ativan. He started me on a pretty massive dose, so I slept thru the appointment. The best thing was that ativan is a memory blocker, so I wouldn't remember the next day that I had been in and it wouldn't reinforce the fear cycle.

That in itself was dicey because, well, I was asleep while people were doing shit to me, so.... The meltdown happened later LOL

I react like you do to valium and halcyon, but weirdly not to ativan. Maybe ask for a very small dose to take at home to see how ou react?
Another option is ketamine?

If it helps, he said that military/first responder folks are hugely problematic because they are control freaks LOL
And when I finally, after years, fessed up to the ptsd thing he said that my reactions made perfect sense.
 
Back
Top