Anxiety To The Extreme

[Jimmy1]

Anxiety To The Extreme

Finally after hiding for the last 2 and a half years I am facing my demons.
Thanks Anthony for the encouragement and putting it in words I can understand.

I wrote my trauma's out in dot points along with a lot of mindless rambling.
I only managed to get two pages done and that was yesterday morning. I have not looked at the pages since then.

I see Anne my counsellor/therapist tomorrow afternoon and she plans that we tackle them head on. That is why I am anxious. You could even say scared.
Fancy being afraid of the words you have written.

I know it is all for the better, but I want it to be over now.

Jimmy:(

 

[anthony]

Mate... well done. All normal and don't make yourself more anxious about being anxious... as that is very realistic of anxiety. Take your largest, most feared trauma, and you tackle that first. It will make you the illest, it will also subside a majority of your lesser traumas though as a result. Trauma therapy will raise things from even childhood that you may of found traumatic. Dismiss nothing and resolve everything. It may take a month, it may take six months, it may take two years... just smack the shit out of it head on though and your day to day will become much better.

 

[BioHazard]

Great job, James! I understand about being nervous about talking to your therapist about it. I haven't reached the point that I can face my past enough to write it down and discuss it. Best of luck talking through it with your therapist!

 

[Jimmy1]

Mate, I have never felt that I have been ready either, and If I had the chance I would not confront any of my demons. But enough is enough and I wanted to be a good father to my boy and realised unless I stopped evading the issues, I would never have a sort of normal life.

I may not have family support, but I know I have the support of my therapist and the people in the forum to help me through. Thank you all

 

[BioHazard]

Good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks that they aren't ready to write it down. Something to think about, I guess...

 

[anthony]

Mate... being in Oz is a good thing, as you have my numbers when absolutely needed. Family are not always supporting nor understanding of PTSD. Hard to support something one doesn't understand.

 

[gibrokedown]

Mate... well done. All normal and don't make yourself more anxious about being anxious... as that is very realistic of anxiety. Take your largest, most feared trauma, and you tackle that first. It will make you the illest, it will also subside a majority of your lesser traumas though as a result. Trauma therapy will raise things from even childhood that you may of found traumatic. Dismiss nothing and resolve everything. It may take a month, it may take six months, it may take two years... just smack the shit out of it head on though and your day to day will become much better.

how do you take your most feared trauma when none make you afraid, when your mind does a weird transferrence to what i am living now and aims that fear at what could happen instead of what did happen? I would have a hard time doing what you wrote, i feel nothing about the images and experiences back then. but i freak about everything to do with my daughter. how can i not feel a damn thing about the stuff I've seen and done. they are like movies I've seen only with combat injuries i have to live with. I felt fear during only one incident really that even happened. and that was only because I nearly died but even have mixed emotions about that situation as well. I do have fear that something like it could happen again though, to me or my daughter. or am i jumping way into the future in this ptsd program and should back down and move slower and start somewhere else?

 

[anthony]

Hi,

The quoted response was not in response to you, so therefore it would not apply to your situation and emotions.

Your greatest fear obviously is something to do with your daughter. So then that is your greatest fear that causes "you" the greatest distress. Thus the method still applies, but in your situation, it is not about combat, it is about something you fear with your daughter that creates your symptoms. Tackle that fear...

Everything is not about combat. A traumatic instance that bothers you most could be something from your childhood, something you did to someone else that now creates immense guilt within, etc etc. The list is infinite. What gave you PTSD does not always equate to being what the problem is. The problem can be in any prior part of your life...

It is not uncommon that an adult who endured long term child abuse functions for many years and "may" develop PTSD in adulthood from some small incident that was the icing on the cake, so to speak. All the trauma the person endured during childhood, they may have no real issue with that, as a child's brain is extremely resilient to forgive and forget, even though in adulthood it may disturb them... the actual problem is often abandonment, unloved by parents / caregivers, that a parent / caregiver was the one who abused them... trust is lost and broken, etc.

Point being... PTSD is not always about the traumatic event itself... its about what bothers you the most, what haunts you the most, what is it that is causing you the distressing symptoms. Identify the cause, then that is what you tackle.

 

[gibrokedown]

Hi,

The quoted response was not in response to you, so therefore it would not apply to your situation and emotions.

Your greatest fear obviously is something to do with your daughter. So then that is your greatest fear that causes "you" the greatest distress. Thus the method still applies, but in your situation, it is not about combat, it is about something you fear with your daughter that creates your symptoms. Tackle that fear...

Everything is not about combat. A traumatic instance that bothers you most could be something from your childhood, something you did to someone else that now creates immense guilt within, etc etc. The list is infinite. What gave you PTSD does not always equate to being what the problem is. The problem can be in any prior part of your life...

It is not uncommon that an adult who endured long term child abuse functions for many years and "may" develop PTSD in adulthood from some small incident that was the icing on the cake, so to speak. All the trauma the person endured during childhood, they may have no real issue with that, as a child's brain is extremely resilient to forgive and forget, even though in adulthood it may disturb them... the actual problem is often abandonment, unloved by parents / caregivers, that a parent / caregiver was the one who abused them... trust is lost and broken, etc.

Point being... PTSD is not always about the traumatic event itself... its about what bothers you the most, what haunts you the most, what is it that is causing you the distressing symptoms. Identify the cause, then that is what you tackle.

I apologize for reading what your wrote to someone else and putting my two cents in, but it caught my attention and posed a very serious question for me. Although I am told I do in fact have combat ptsd anthony, just my life situation is causing my brain to focus all of that negative fear and energy towards the now. I see the past replay repeatedly and wonder how i didn't die the day I was injured so severely. I get serious guilt for leaving my fellow troops in their time of need. and so on. It's just manifesting in a new way the older i get. possibly because the situation I am in has been compared to the stress levels of a war. It would take a day to explain that one and how that is possible. so I will refrain. Thank you for your help and information. I take everything I can absorb in my damaged brain and try to apply it.

 

[anthony]

Gi, if you're living in what could be construed as a war zone, then everything manifesting is perfectly normal.

Again, even your fear directed towards your daughter, perfectly normal.

The difference is that you have to look at what is at the surface and what is the actual cause. They are often two very different things. The surface focuses on the here and now, yet is often very far from the cause. The cause is still in our here and now, yet resides back in the past... so it can be dealt with in the here and now, but the memory/s are in the past. What we feel from those memories are what often causes the problem, being the here and now.

Living in a war zone is an absolute to manifesting PTSD symptoms... no doubt about it.

Living next to a crack house or in a neighbourhood that has constant gun shots ringing out, etc... that will keep PTSD symptoms heightened, because you're in a civilian environment, yet combined with a war zone threat.

 

[JarHed]

I know what my greatest fears are, I won't say them here. At least not yet. I'll soon be taking them on also. I start a new type of therapy soon. I think I just have the hope of getting through it and maybe, just maybe having some sort of 'real' or 'normal' life for the time I have left. So my best wishes go with you Jimmy, and to everyone who makes the decision to 'take on' that thing that eats away at your insides in a slow and insideous way and eventually wins. Don't let it win.

I sometimes feel like I'd rather hump a 100lb pack a hundred K over broken glass without my boots than really look at what makes me feel the way I do sometimes. I think the former would be way easier. I'm still in the war zone.

Jar

 

[anthony]

I agree... it is actually far more difficult to be honest with oneself and face our greatest fears, normally emotional based / thoughts versus, being in combat zones to begin with was easier, as you knew what the problem was and what had to be done. Psychology... crap shoot.