General Does feeling triggered give you cold and/or hot hands and make you sweat?

[Never_falter2]

What is it like when you are triggered/your spouse is triggered? Does it give you first very cold and then hot hands? I am just asking because I think I found out that it is one indicator of how he is feeling.
Like when he is a bit triggered he gets very, very extremely cold hands and indicates he wants to leave and when he cannot get away and it gets worse he gets hot hands and starts removing his pullover and this (Vet removing his pullover... and other things like checking in his cell phone, playing with his phone and keys) is a sign when I realize he is very stressed.
We say we get pale in the face with fear, which happens to vet too... but he goes pale in the face with fear and when the situation does not improve he goes red in the face with even worse fear.

I am just asking this because I did something what offended my vet (see “offended over triffles“). I basically gave him advice when he was very stressed @Ronin thought that he felt like I was exposing a weakness to a non-ally (whenhe was most likely feeling very fearful).
Is It better to give no advice to a sufferer if he already has hot hands/red face?

Is there such a thing in you/your sufferer?
Freezing=a place feels bad
Sweating=a place feels very bad and you cannot get away?

 

[Sweetpea76]

Is It better to give no advice to a sufferer if he already has hot hands/red face?

Yes... if he’s already ramped up, and that’s one of the indicators that he is, then it’s best not to give him unsolicited advice.

 

[Never_falter2]

Stupid question @Sweetpea76 and every supporter: What do you do if you are at a restaurant and you notice your Vet might be feeling fearful? We have a code word for when he wants to go but unless he does say that he just wants me to ignore it. Sometimes he wants to put one arm around me (but that wouldn’t be possible in this case).

Question for the sufferers: what do you want your spouse to do when you are at a restaurant and they notice you don’t like it?

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I sweat like a greased pig when triggered and will soak my shirt and sometimes go through several shirts. Sweatinf badly is a big indicator to me that I'm highly triggered.

 

[Freida]

My hands are my first indication I'm triggered -- they start to hurt horribly. Then I get cold/shivery/etc.

Hubby almost always sees it before I do...but pointing it out to me is challenging because it's such a sense of failure. He may say "do you want to go?" but that's about all he's going to get away with.

I think the failure part is the hardest thing. Still, after all these years of therapy, I'm in a fight with myself not to lose it. When a trigger happens I should be able to handle it. I should be able to control it. I should be able to hide it. That I'm not able to -- and that hubby has to step in? That is just ..... so very embarrassing. It makes me feel like a complete and utter loser who can't control her own mind or body. That's why I get pissy. I'm not mad at him. I'm mad that I lack the self control to maintain my facade that I'm ok. I'm mad that these triggers still have a hold on me. I'm mad that it is never ending.

How can hubby help? i don't know. I guess it depends on how badly I'm triggered.
I know that's not a terribly helpful answer but..... such is life with ptsd. :(

 

[Never_falter2]

No, it’s not embarrassing. It happens to the best of us, can happen to literally everybody. Can you try to think of ptsd as a wound instead of as a failure? Remember how you told me your therapist told you to see it that way.

I might have advice for hurting hands ?. Do they get very, very cold and look pale and even a bit blueish when they hurt? This sometimes happens to my vet... and I THINK it is when he is triggered but to be honest I am not sure - because he often doesn‘t talk to me in a way that makes sense?? sad but I got used to it, he only tells me like “Ouch my hands hurt“ - than I say “let’s care for your hands“ - and I guess that’s all what he expects.
However how can one make hurting hands better? If you have the same problem he has then holding the hands under warm water or using a pocket heat pack helps. I might be wrong but I am under the impression that he starts feeling a bit better once his hands are warm - or maybe he starts feeling better because somebody cared... because Vet knows exactly where we have our pocket heat bags and could get himself one but instead he tells me his hands hurt. (I wondered if I should write that or if it makes us look silly. Well, I have trust you are being nice).
However my other theory is: if being triggered is giving you a symptom than fighting the symptom decreases the triggered feeling because the mind communicates with the body, but the body also communicates with the mind. I heard that this is how propranolol works, which some ptsd sufferers use to combat nightmares. It stops the heart from racing and that makes the sufferer feel less stressed and have less nightmares.

 

[Sweetpea76]

What do you do if you are at a restaurant and you notice your Vet might be feeling fearful?

I tend to leave him be, because there really isn’t anything I can personally do to help him at that point. He’s great at appearing calm when he’s stressed, so by the time I’d notice him looking panicky it’d be too late. Sometimes I may hold his hand or put my hand on his leg if he seems uncomfortable because he finds it grounding, but that’s about all I can do. He’s pretty good at stepping outside to smoke if he needs a break, or just getting up and leaving though... he doesn’t care about looking like an asshole. We don’t have any kind of code word, unless “f*ck this place” is a code lol. He’s adjusted to where he’d rather just leave than have a panic attack. If he needs to bail he knows I’ll automatically clean up... get the check, have the food wrapped to-go, make excuses and say our goodbyes, etc. I think that’s comforting in itself.

 

[Ronin]

I don't have the hands / shakiness issue, though to the other part of the Q, I want my supporters to cover normal world scenarios for things.

Because The waiter is having a bad day may not even occur to me on days my brain is sooo sure the waiter's trying to cover for his crew poisoning the whole restaurant.

Similar, pointing out many pots are for a lot of steeew, all the yummy :happy: no don't think of the head traumas and fighting in here, was awesome take too.

But I'm weird. Don't think vets are commonly my degree of batshit with this.

 

[Never_falter2]

Sorry I didn’t answer. Just wanted to let you know that I don’t think you are crazy.

I am not sure if my guy has the same kind of fear about restaurants. I think not...

but I know it tressed him a lot when he heard that there was plotting poison attacks. It was on the news here. A terror suspect was caught. He advised me not to buy pig meat in the days before Christian celebrations (because he figured that a terrorist would most likely poison pig meat or alcohol because it is only enjoyed by infidels).

However I do not think it is one of his major fears. There are enough other things for him to be afraid of.