Does Anyone Else Get These Intense Reactions?

[fly away home]

Perhaps jess, you could start with little steps. Can you see that the cat which bit you had most probably been abused?. Most definitely has a hard life and most likely bit you out of fear? If you can understand the reasoning for people's reactions then you can build compassion.
So this gives you the ability to look at these things and note that the reaction was not about you but about them.

They may have hurt you and it doesn't make it ok but you can understand why and when you understand why it makes it much easier to move forward and not hold onto the anger or grudge.

Disregard if this is not helpful.

 

[Friday]

Just to jump into diagnosis for a minute :

And Keep in mind I'm oversimplifying a tad / not covering every eventuality

- Disorders are "normal" things taken to extremes. Like everyone has bad memories, regrets, anger, shame, nightmares, anxiety, etc. But not everyone has PTSD.

- Most disorders share symptomology with other disorders. Some, so closely, that they're either sister-disorders (like ADHD & Bipolar disorder are sister disorders), or are actually spectrum disorders (autism spectrum is one of the better known ones).

- Disorders are classified by possessing a whole constellation of symptoms along with a few hands down requirements. With PTSD, that's CriterionA.

Black & White thinking is both a totally normal human personality characteristic as well as a symptom in several constellations. Aspies, BPD, Depression, and several other disorders all have it in their constellations.

When you have a disorder you'll sometimes twig to someone else also having the same disorder ... But an important thing to remember is that even if our radar goes off... It can be wrong. My ADHD radar pings all the time, and most of the time I'm correct (just like if you hear someone talking about something in PTSD-land, your radar pings). But it's very, very, very important not to self diagnose. Because there is always a whole host of other things something could be... And treating for the wrong thing is actually quite dangerous. Not in simply medication-land, but what works for someone who is neurotypical (or has disorderA) will often make things worse if you're actually dealing with disorderB. And then it also spawns a whole lot of confusion/misinformation.

_________ just a few examples______

To use ADHD (since it's the disorder I'm most familiar with).

Meds... When my son is having problems sleeping, I'll make him a triple shot of espresso. Bam. Out like a light. Why? Because ADHD has opposite-stimulant-reaction. ((But give that to a neurotypical kid and they've got insomnia, and give it to a bipolar kid and you've just triggered a manic episode.))

Misinformation... I can't count how many times someone has said their "ADHD" was cured! Simply by taking this supplement! ...Long suffering sigh... No. Your malnutrition was cured by taking a nutritional supplement.

Work smarter not harder... Neurotypical kid forgetting to do half the things asked of them? Cut back on the number of things asked of them. Slowly add more responsibility until they can prove they can do what they're first asked. ADHD kid forgetting to do half the stuff asked of them? Give them more stuff to do. Because whether you give them 2 things to do, or 20, they're working at about half mast. Give them 2, they'll get 1 done. Give them 20, they'll get about 10 done. What you want to work on with ADHD is increasing the percentage, not the total. If you never give them three, until they can do 2... You're setting them up for failure. Just like giving a neurotypical kid 3 before they can do 2 is setting them up for failure.

 

[Friday]

I do extremes in other things.

Although one is actually in cutting people off/out entirely. I never know when it's going to happen...but after some mystery number of offenses (any one of which honestly rates the shove off)... That person is dead to me. I don't even hate them. I'm completely indifferent to them.

What I wonder, though, is whether or not you're logging offenses? Like you've always loved cats, but then there's this, and this, and this, and this... Small annoyances, gradually building up over a period of time...Which you're not actually aware of (or giving proper weight to, if that makes sense?) and finally it's the straw that broke the camel's back? Or if it really is LoveLoveLove-Hate. With no warning whatsoever?

_______
Me Stuff :

That's what happened with me an people. I thought it was like a light switch... And it is... Except that there's a whole lot leading up to switching them off. But because I wasn't placing the right value on "annoyances" it seemed like it was out of the blue. Things that in and of themselves aren't "enough" to rate being cut off as well as things that absolutely did rate, but I was making the decision to move forward, anyway. I was blind to both. So I was blindsided an awful lot.

Another: I was really proud of myself for having maintained "my ability to trust"... Until a very dear friend of mine pointed out the obvious: I "trusted" the whole world. Whoops. Because trusting everyone is the same as trusting no one. There's no discrimination, no personal accountability, and no self trust. (Because if I trust everyone, I'm not trusting myself to make varying levels of judgements against people: deciding if they're trustworthy or not, and to what degree I am going to trust them). My judgements had become so compromised, and I was so afraid of being "wrong" it dumped all my own personal accountability in everyone else's lap. It's not my fault. I'm not responsible!

Here's the kicker. The reason I was compulsively handing over the "blame" onto everyone else... Was that I was actually blaming myself & unable to place blame where it needed to lie.

All a very big tangled web.

Once I was able to discriminate ... Person A I trust to this level, Person B to that level, Strangers at Nil until I got to know them... And to have those levels fluctuate (like so and so is grieving, so I'm going to lower their trust factor for awhile because they're not entirely rational... Or this person is consistently showing that I should be able to safely place more trust/responsibility on them)? I was also able to trust myself enough to
- let go of blame that wasn't mine (that's on them)
- see how certain things built up / decide they were "worthy" of attention
= my world got a whole helluva lot more shades of grey in it.

... Again. This is just my story. Not sure how much, if any, translates.

 

[Sandstone]

I saw something interesting on TV the other day about how phobias start. They suggested that when we have a strongly negative experience, our brain looks for the cause and labels that as something to avoid in future, so we don't risk repeating the experience. So in the examples they gave, someone who had choked while eating became phobic of solid food, and someone who had been scared as a child when her mother ran screaming from a spider became phobic of spiders.

It's a perfectly normal, healthy learning response to danger carried to an extreme. We are meant to learn quickly to avoid dangers. So maybe we, as PTSD sufferers, are even more alert to dangers and even more inclined to develop the extreme reaction of labelling, in your case, every cat as dangerous.

 

[J_trustno1]

@stenni : yes, after the pain I got from the bite. My forearm swelled up and the tetanus jab they have given me has made it impossible for arm to move. My entire body sore and aching. So now I am hating the consequences of that bloody stray cat :(

 

[digger]

@stenni : So now I am hating the consequences of that bloody stray cat :(

Are you able to see that that bloody stray cat is probably a traumatised cat whose probably had a lot of bad experiences with people, probably has had trust in people broken again and again in it's life and probably consequently engages in some black and white thinking (people are dangerous, I need to attack them before they attack me) of it's own - sound familiar?

 

[Friday]

Aaaaaaaand... Here I hate being Capt. Obvious & Debbie Downers lovechild (esp. as I know a lot of people here are med pros/ don't know if you are or not).... But I spent 2 weeks in the hospital and had several major surgeries following a simple dog bite (irrigated & medicated in the ER, med family / well taken care of after, but puncture wounds are a bitch), I've had "worse" and been just fine / no infection. Pure bad luck. Cat bites are often worse than dog bites as far as infection goes. If the localized redness is extending (draw around it with a sharpie so you know if it's growing or receeding) or you can't bend your elbow... You need to go back in and be seen. Hopefully it's just a reaction to the jab. But if it's an infection, you could lose your arm if it's not seen to quickly, and the infection can go systemic which is major bad news. The lady down the hall from me was catbit and there for over a month (and was fine, but she had gone septic).

 

[J_trustno1]

The cat was friendly at first. Allowed me to pat it. Then it even rolled on its back but I didn't touch the belly because it's the most sensitive area of a cat. It then jump all of a sudden on my right forearm, grabbed it with its teeth and attacked my forehead + eyes with its claws. I didn't cause any threat to the damn thing then why did it attack me all of a sudden?

 

[digger]

Like I said, it's probably had a traumatic past, it'd be rare for a stray cat not to have had some trauma in it's life. It probably craves affection but at the same time is scared. Who knows what triggered it, but something obviously did - you don't have to deliberately do something for it to be triggered. Think of the times you get triggered, are they always as a result of someone deliberately trying to hurt you? - it can't be held accountable for knowing whether you are a threat or not if it's history tells it that people can hurt it.

Just because you've been told you tend towards black and white thinking, doesn't mean that you have to accept that as the only way to think, or the way you will always think. It doesn't have to be a self fulfilling prophecy. Being aware of it is the key to changing it. You can decide to hate all cats from now on, or you can chose to think about how you would rather react to this situation and what you would prefer to think about cats. It's fine to say 'I feel like I hate all cats at the moment' but it's also fine to say that that is an overreaction and if I look at this rationally, I can see that it is just something shitty that happened - it's not personal. Perhaps you could begin by changing I hate cats to I am nervous around cats now because of this experience.

 

[The Albatross]

I think I'd focus more on hating the consequences that resulted from the decision to pet a stray cat. The cat reacted, simple as that. I do though agree that I would take a hard look at black and white thinking.

 

[StarChild]

The cat was friendly at first. Allowed me to pat it. Then it even rolled on its back but I didn't touch the belly because it's the most sensitive area of a cat. It then jump all of a sudden

Jess, this specific behaviour sounds more, as if this cat was in heat. And one thing I learned: Never touch a cat in heat! Because they're unpredictable. - In my language, we call a cat in heat "rollig" which means, that they roll often on their back.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

give it to a bipolar kid and you've just triggered a manic episode

I imagine this is different for adults becasue I have bipolar disorder and when I drink Starbucks espresso I don't become manic. ;)