Fear

[Engineer]

Many things keep me up one of them being my fear of darkness. The other is my paranoia that someone is waiting until I close my eyes to attack me. I close my eyes and try to block it out. But, all I see are flashbacks. Before I know it I am on high alert. Turning on the lights and searching every nook and cranny for an intruder, or something that seems suspicious. Of course there's nothing there. So, I turn it off and repeat. The fear worsens and before long I have all the lights on. Now I can't sleep because the light is disturbing me. A sudden noise and I've immediately got a weapon of some sort and I attack. Almost injured my mom by throwing a chair at her. I missed. But, I worry because sometimes I wake up to loud noises and half asleep when I'm less aware have this same reaction. What if, one day I don't miss and this time I have the baseball bat instead?

 

[SophiaWisdom]

You are in the right place - you know what might be super helpful for you? The PTSD polls forum. I've answered maybe a million of them. :)

The hypervigilance and paranoia are so common. I saw what you said in the chat room and I feel the same way - I want to kill people all the time and I say it all the time. When my CPTSD is up, I curse out anything in the house that falls over, makes a noise, or is difficult for me to interact with. I have totally screamed curses cuz I was so angry, though I have only cursed AT once person once (I usually try to curse ABOUT someone to someone else, prevent me from acting out TOO much.)

All very normal. When I first started EMDR anger was my #1 emotion. I felt that I was just one big ball of anger and nothing else. I felt so violent I've described it as wanting to feel someone's blood on my bare hands.

It's been a few months sicne I found this forum and about a month since I found my new therapist and things are much improved. But definitely you're in good company here.

 

[Engineer]

What's EDMR?

You are in the right place - you know what might be super helpful for you? The PTSD polls forum. I...

I love the PTSD polls forum. So much fun answering questions.

 

[SophiaWisdom]

What's EDMR?

This is how I understand it - it's the #1 effective therapy for PTSD, and has grown sophisticated enough that it also works for CPTSD as well. (others may disagree)

You can see it highlight automatically in our posts b/c it's such a big treatment process for this crowd - if you explore EMDR in the forums you'll find a ton of info on it. Much more than I have even begun to read - in fact this is the first place I went to when I started looking for an EMDR therapist and I used the information from here in super valuable ways. IT's why I think therapy is so successful - this forum helped me understand it better, work with it, and at least walk through the painful process with others.

I even started a thread (in Therapy I believe) about my process lol.