Other feeling PTSD triggers from unrelated trauma?

[Strangelongtrip]

I'm hoping this makes sense I'm in total "overdrive" with anxiety right now. My T says this is pretty normal but I was wondering if anyone had experiences with this (and I feel strangely like I've posted about this before but forget....yay brain cognition issues). Do you feel like you're "triggered" by seeing something traumatic that wasn't your exact trauma but could also give people PTSD? Maybe it'd technically be called a stressor but it feels exactly the same as a trigger to me, it's an immediate reaction of flashbacks and panic and hypervigiliance.

My primary trauma is abuse/rape/sexual assault etc and on and on but I have a similar reaction to watching war violence in films that I do seeing things I actually experienced. I had the same reaction to 13 Reasons Why as I did 1917. It took me a week to recover after watching 1917, and I stupidly watched another war movie tonight. It was about German occupation in WWII, so I guess logically it had the same themes as my trauma, e.i. being unable to escape a terrible situation, constant threat of violence, but I don't even want to compare what people in war have gone through to what I've gone through. My life in comparison seems like small bananas lol. I just have the same reaction and I feel really weird about it. I feel like maybe that's bad to admit, that it makes me feel like that. I just feel trapped and panicky and unsafe. I feel so stupid for watching a movie about that when I know how it affects me.

 

[Ronin]

I think it's pretty normal if your trauma was violence, to be triggered by violence.

It's, in that case, the violence causing the reaction... not that the same type.
Nothing stupid in wanting to have fun with movies and getting triggered.

 

[Strangelongtrip]

Thank you @Ronin that makes sense! It’s weird bc like cartoony violence like in super hero movies doesn’t bother me. It’s REAL violence that I know happened to someone during some time

 

[Skywatcher]

Yes. I am currently in a pretty bad place because of a cluster f*ck of stressors. It started with my T moving to a different office. Then a person at work slammed a door at me because he was angry when I said “no.” This was followed by a higher level person honoring what the angry person wanted. Add in the Weinstein trial, people’s opinions on social media, hormonal shifts in my system. It has all been too much at once and I feel it setting me back. I even asked for a T phone call just to see if she is real on a day that the world seemed strange and I was so dissociated that everything seemed off. I keep floating in and out of that state.