Axiom,
The nature and shape of my trauma is different than yours. So take everything with a grain of salt. Also, I am new here, newly diagnosed and only a month into treatment.
Quick bit about my trauma: History of trauma, including a few illnesses (serious case of mono in college that left me with a 9 year bout of fatigue, meningitis twice--once as an infant, once in high school) and growing up in a household with one parent with undiagnosed PTSD that dominated the family dynamic. Fast forward to two years ago: trapped in a tough situation for over 18 months with my wife as new landlords with a tenant from hell who came with the building. Our lives, property and home were threatened repeatedly. The law and city bureaucracy was unable to intervene. In fact in several cases, they treated our dire situation as status quo. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for this out of control ward of the state. Our tenant finally surrendered her apartment (which sat right over our bedroom) after being arrested for assaulting a police officer during an incident not related directly to our building.
Flashbacks: I get them. Get them bad with violent physical reactions. Tactile. Visual. Audial. Olfactory. Even spatially. I've not thrown up yet from them, but often feel like I will. I also get both internal and external shakes really really badly. I too am afraid to leave my apartment in part because of this. The other part mostly comes from how exhausted I feel from simply maintaining poise when dealing with strangers and acquaintances.
I have a very good therapist who is sympathetic to my position. She has some personal experience as a landlord herself. (A lot of properties in NYC are multifamily, so you find landlords in the strangest places sometimes.) So I didn't have to explain a lot of the backstory of my experience to her. I felt an immediate sense of respect from her. I think this is important if you are shopping around for therapists. Also, and I think this is key, she is a trauma specialist.
Currently, we are tackling my disorder without drugs. I don't think we've begun dealing with day to day management yet. I'm still mostly homebound and out of work.
She uses a combination of psychotherapy and EMDR, brainspotting and hemispheric stimulation (via oscillating audio stimulation). I was very skeptical about all these things. (I remain skeptical about accupuncture and accupressure at this moment because I've not yet experienced those combined therapies). We've gotten to a point in one short month where she can coax out rather violent and difficult flashbacks in her office (some days they are just ready to fall out though!)
She then has me hold onto those flashbacks. Almost like surfing them and if I can open my eyes where she does some of the EMDR or brainspotting work--both of which involve engaging the eyes in specific ways. All the while I have those wonderful headphones on with that specific audio stimulation ocillating from ear to ear. She has me hold onto that flashback until I no longer can--not out of fatigue but until it gets slippery. Some flashbacks do. Some don't and we need to let go during a session. But the ones that get slippery actually seem to shift in my brain. They become less vivid. Details get lost. She says this is shifting memories. Afterwards, I sometimes get a very thick cottonheaded feeling. And it feels like the back of my brain extends out and to the sides--just this big fluff of gossimer webbing. And it's tough to think. It's a similar physical sensation to after I've been crying really really hard for a while. I guess in a lighter moment I think of parodies of old advertisments: "Feel that tingling? Then you know it's working! *toothsparkle*"
After working for only one month, I've noticed that I'm starting to do this involuntarily sometimes after flashbacks almost as a self soothing mechanism. And I even get that soothing cotton headed feeling now on my own from time to time. Even happened last night after picking up a potatoe of all things--the smell of it, it's weight and density--triggered a particularly nasty flashback.
Anyways, that's some of my newbie experience. I hope you can find a treatment program and if it helps a professional that you can trust and fits for your circumstances.
Prior to getting help, a week before my diagnosis, I had a breakdown. I wasn't hospitalized but I think I was close. I don't think I was immediately suicidal but for the two month preceeding I definitely was having some suicidal ideation at times and fairly consistent death wishes. I felt almost as trapped by my undiagnosed disorder as I did by that woman from hell. During those moments, death felt like it might be the only way out of suffering. But now that some of this is in the sunlight--at least for me and amongst those I love and love me back--I don't have those severe thoughts as much. The ideation has pretty much gone away entirely. And only on really bad days, like when you have a really bad head cold, do I wish for death.
