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Becoming afraid of the dark

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I get it.
my school job was at a photo processing place, I worked the paper and negative processes so my life was in the dark room and i was fine with entire weeks with maybe 20% of my life in light of any kind.
now, if I have unknowns in the dark I have to explore the area before my mind lets go of the constant 'WHATS OUT THERE?"
I think it is related to my first responder crap, ironicly my biggest aversion to the darkness is looking for stuff in the dark with a flashlight. I cannot seem to do it without remembering some of the things I have found in the dark and that I don't want to do that again.
while travelling, I try to get to a motel before dark so I know whats around me without exporing the dark, I take my last looks around the house before sundown when possible, and i have motion detecting lights and cameras all over the place. i sleep with a night light. It isn't that hard to prepare for sundown everyday with a quick look around (when I get home from work before dark, 45th parallel here) and having motion lights gets me the rest of the way.
I get it @bellbird, it's a bit embarassing to say you are afraid of the dark but at some level I think we are all wired that way and our lizard brains would like it very much if we would just go to sleep at sundown, in a secure and comfortable place. I think of it as "consciousness of the unseen". Not so much scared as forewarned and aware that there is stuff out there beyond our vision.
 
I gotta ask my T about this stuff. It's kind of crazy but I never thought about it that way but when I was young I had a fear of heights.
Last year it came back. As soon as we did trauma work it came back bad. Really bad. TV, Computers, everything, if it showed a view down it made me uncomfortable to say the least. I was playing Half Life and there is a piece where you walk along the ledge on a cliff - couldn't touch it for months.

It's gotten better over the last year but still, anxiety when elevated is heightened.
 
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