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Everyone is out to get you...me

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Cecemomo

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Here's a question for thought. Is it just me or does no one around you understand what you went thru or are currently going thru? By this I am referring to, I have days where it just seems my hyperviligence and anxiety is so high because of others judging me or not knowing I have PTSD. What am I suppose to do, where a f*cking shirt or get a tattoo that reads "I have PTSD think before you say something wrong to me!" I have been home bound for 6 years, unable to deal with social situations but even though I do not work people such as a person at the store, or a dickhead neighbor, or a passerby when my therapy dog and I are out walking gives me a shitty look. Really? Can anyone answer me.
 
So there is an element of what Friday said.. but also, it's easy when you feel unsafe to look for a million reasons to validate that belief.

Realistically people probably aren't thinking *anything* about you if it's just casual interactions. Do you feel like strangers knowing you have PTSD would somehow explain anything?

If we turn it around, how much do you speculate on what mh conditions other strangers have n how much judgement do you give over it?
 
I get what you mean. I work a bar as therapy and its bloody tough. The other day we had a group of drunk lads in and one of them totally freaked me out. I handed him his drink and he made a comment about my rather extreme shaking. I wanted to say something like 'it's not you, it's my PTSD'. It's an honest thing to admit as the guy was just a drunken kid and no real threat, but it was very embarrassing and him calling me out for it was a typical drunken lad way of bigging himself up. I had considered a tee shirt with something that reads. 'I have PTSD, if you witness me shaking uncontrollably, run away.. I'm on the brink of killing you because you looked at me the wrong way !' Of course I wouldn't kill anyone and the teeshirt is probs a bad idea, but I'd just like a way to take the pressure off and somehow explain that there are real reasons for my strange behaviour.
 
people such as a person at the store, or a dickhead neighbor, or a passerby when my therapy dog and I are out walking gives me a shitty look.
Going to give a different perspective… my sense of self was so minimal that I didn’t believe I deserved to look anyone in the eyes. I stopped checking whether or not someone was looking at me for about 20 years. I felt safer that way. I also wanted to avoid anyone thinking *I* had given them a shitty look.

I developed a sense of self/selves and now I look at people to get a baseline understanding of my environment and because I’m curious—maybe I’ll get a friend.

When I avoided eye contact with everyone I was very confused and also tormented in my head. At that time I was unaware of my trauma. I was also unaware that I was projecting “they don’t want to see me.”

Now I don’t think that everyone wants to see me, but I think some might and Im curious who looks at me or doesn’t. I sometimes smile at people and sometimes don’t. Believing I knew others’ thoughts without talking to them hurt me, but I was hurting in lots of other ways too.

Therapy with a caring therapist who saw past my many defenses and patiently encouraged me has helped immensely.

So my response is that what you are experiencing is probably projection and splitting because logically it’s impossible that everyone is focused on your downfall—that would be a cognitive distortion. If not useful please discard.
 
I work with the public, the amount of times people gave me looks or got creeped out cause my moves got a bit more robotic and/or my speech fell apart when I was having a ptsd episode I couldn't count on all my fingers. No one gets it, no one cares, and if they did they wouldn't be able tto understand anyways. I come to expect that though, no random people care about me and I can't expect them too but just treating me like a human would be nice. I have a million things going on in my life at once, I'm one of the top performers in the place, and all everyone else seems to do is laze about but I'm the one that gets continuously treated like i have rabies because in the current conditions my body and mind aren't capable of working correctly all the time? Makes my blood boil sometimes before I realize again that it's not even worth it focusing on and letting it get to me.
 
I wouldn't say everyone or anyone is "out to get me". That requires that they have a plan and are in the process of using it to"get" me, whatever that is. At times, yes, there has been a campaign in place to set about events that hurt me in not so small ways and it is provable and even admitted to me directly, without witnesses of course.

But everyone? no. All the time? no.

What I fear most in this arena is the way some people treat other peoples lives and health with a total disregard. There are the famous mass murdering predators and we are all at risk of being in the wrong place with those folks swimming in our seas, but me personally? I fear the uncaring selfish people of this world that will drive home drunk to avoid a cab ride home and the morning cab ride to retrieve their car. Or take a phone call while driving to avoid having to pull over. Or allow an unsafe condition to exist in a workplace because fixing it means loss of profit.

Those and many like them aren't out to get me, they just won't take the steps that I would take to save them, and they won't care a bit if they "get" me, one way or another.
 
Online is what triggers my PTSD most of the time. I can ignore people most of the time. If I am interacting with someone online or watching a movie my PTSD starts to get worse.
 
I wouldn't say everyone or anyone is "out to get me". That requires that they have a plan and are in the process of using it to"get" me, whatever that is. At times, yes, there has been a campaign in place to set about events that hurt me in not so small ways and it is provable and even admitted to me directly, without witnesses of course.

But everyone? no. All the time? no.

What I fear most in this arena is the way some people treat other peoples lives and health with a total disregard. There are the famous mass murdering predators and we are all at risk of being in the wrong place with those folks swimming in our seas, but me personally? I fear the uncaring selfish people of this world that will drive home drunk to avoid a cab ride home and the morning cab ride to retrieve their car. Or take a phone call while driving to avoid having to pull over. Or allow an unsafe condition to exist in a workplace because fixing it means loss of profit.

Those and many like them aren't out to get me, they just won't take the steps that I would take to save them, and they won't care a bit if they "get" me, one way or another.

You explained this very well, I get paranoid but I don' think everyone is specifically out to get me but they're all possibly so unstable that I'm in danger and through being in the wrong place at the wrong ime I could be the target or one of them. This will especially happen if I hear someone getting really loud around me and they have any hint aggression to their tone at all, if it's like that fake sounding kind of happy with that it's like you just gave a shot of adrenaline. I do not do well when I see people obviously faking being happy in a certain almost mocking way because whenever that happened before in my life something bad was about to happen. It's like flipping a switch and suddenly I can't think straight and get really disconnected from the world around me. Everything gets really loud, intense, and hostile, I also ge a bit of a tunnel vision like effect on my perception. But that reaction my system has isn't restricted to just that, it seems to be where I end up when I'm really upset with something that hit me where it hurts in my mind. You know how all the aduls sound in Charlie Brown? That's what the people in the world generally start to feel like but far more morbid way that has a really threatening edge to it. Then in that state I really start to lock up a bit or shut down because any move can send any of the potential crazy people into a frenzy about anything. I have actually worked through these episodes before as I go on auto pilot but I still look very odd and can't control my voice well. It's the worst of worlds when I get stuck there.
 
@Bigmess thanks for the compliment. There is a feeling that the relationship between the size of a crowd and the potential for chaos that has grabbed me by my lapels, I spend a lot of time like you, just ignoring the words but carefully monitoring the tones of the herds I find myself in. Like the adults in Charlie Brown, as you say. I can’t be in a group of ten or more without taking stock of the demeanor of and finding the exit routes from the crowd. Outside looking in is far better than inside looking for a way out when it comes to my fellow humans
 
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