How To Keep Safe During Halloween: Cues And Triggers To Dissociated Suicide

[super_saiyan]

I don't know how to explain this very well. I am sorry if this doesn't make very much sense at all.

For 18 years I grew up in a ritualistic abusive group. My therapist has explained that I was programmed to respond in certain ways to certain things. Halloween is always massive for me; I am terrified. I don't know how to stay safe. I do not feel suicidal - I do not want to die. However when I see certain things I am cued to go into a dissociative state where I need to kill myself. I have no control when this happens. Certain objects, certain phrases, certain animals etc. I don't want to compile an exhaustive list. It's too late for me to try graded exposure to these cues, but at the same time it is not possibly for me to exclude the possibility of seeing one of them.

I have been asked by my mental health team to create a risk management plan and to tell them what to do to keep me safe. I don't want to be sectioned over this period but I sinply do not know how to keep myself safe in the run up to halloween when I am triggered to go into a dissociative state. I find myself in vulnerable situations; I find myself having sex with random men having no recollection of how I've got there or how I've met them; I have hurt myself whilst dissociated; I have re-enacted things. In more extreme states, during past halloweens, I have tried to kill myself and very nearly been successful. My compulsion to return to the group is always so intense during this period too. My team have asked for a kind of 'respect my wishes' thing. How they should respond. I have been relocated due to risk and I am safeguarded but when dissociated I feel compelled to return to the area of danger and to my group.

I don't know if this will make sense to anybody. I am so sorry for posting this. I am desperate for any advice. I am going to try to work on a crisis plan tonight.

I need to survive this halloween and be safe; from myself and from other people. I don't know how though.

Thank you.

 

[hodge]

Super Saiyan, I wish I had expert advice for you, but I am concerned. I know this is easy to say, but do NOT return to your group. DO work on your crisis plan. How is it going?

You can find things to do around the house to keep you busy during this time. You can stay on the forum. Go on chat. People will support you there. I certainly will if I'm there. Just do anything that will keep you at home and safe.

 

[sun seeker]

What you are saying totally makes sense, and I believe you and have utmost empathy for your pain. I don't know what you can handle right now and don't want to trigger you, but I know there is information out there on how to stay safe at these times. Maybe have someone you trust help you look it up. First and foremost, I'd say make sure you are not alone until after the danger is past.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Do you have a good friend to be with you so the friend is aware and can help keep you safe? My heart goes out to you in a big way, because I am also a survivor of ritual abuse and programed, brainwashed into being suicidal if I go into a church. So I avoid going to church.

I do not celebrate Halloween. I keep my porch light off and I have movies that are a good distraction to help me to make it through the trick or treating time frame.

I wish you the very best. I am so sorry for what you have suffered and endured. Hugs.

 

[The Albatross]

With Giz as when we are seemingly powerless accountability or an arrangement with peer support is a good thing. In your case 3D (in real life) may help/be assistive?

 

[super_saiyan]

I really desperately need this deleting. It is not safe for me to have this posted. Please. I have reported it but it says you won't delete it.

 

[Friday]

I really desperately need this deleting. It is not safe for me to have this posted. Please. I have...

The feeling of exposed-exposed-exposed!... Is a symptom. I know there are times when I post on here that it feels as identifying as if I just gave my GPS coordinates, DNA sample, photos of myself, and a map to my house with the hours I'm most likely to be there.

Learning to objectively step back and go

Trauma surrounding:
- Ritualistic Abusive Group = tens of thousands
- Suicidal Triggers = Millions
- Relating to Halloween = Scores of Religions, Millions of individuals
- Child Abuse = Hundreds of Millions
- Currently located in the UK = 7.2 billion (instead of the population of the UK 63 million, because we have no idea if your abuse happened there, or Finland, or Arizona, or Dubai. We don't even know if you *live* in the UK, or just tend to post on your Heathrow layover between Israel & Montreal)

People who find other people for a living couldn't find you, or even make any kind of guess as to who you might be or be associated with, based on any of the information you provided above. You aren't a needle in a haystack, you're a needle in a needle stack.

There is absolutely nothing identifying in what you wrote.

***

<grin> & Congratulations on surviving Halloween! :D

 

[Megyn]

The feeling of exposed-exposed-exposed!... Is a symptom. I know there are times when I post on here that...

"Exposed exposed..." rings true. I've always felt like that, since I was a kid. It's comforting, yet odd to me, we all experience the same symptoms.