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Is my fear reaction to any noises from outside, or through walls, a result of my abuse?

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Sweetleaf

MyPTSD Pro
So I have logically deduced at this point, that my neighbors are just making noise in their garage. Playing music and stuff, I don't even know, just a lot of noise. It's Saturday, it's the late afternoon - it makes sense. I've done it a lot myself many years ago. This is -NOT- something that normal-me, pre-trauma me, would give a shit about. No big deal, I am a musician so I really don't care about other people's noise making. It would be hypocritical of me, lol. So in a like, "should people allowed to do this?" sort of way, I am totally okay with their noise making.

But I guess PTSD doesn't give a shit about my opinions.

Despite knowing the precise source of the noise, I am still feeling strong anxiety, like something very bad is about to happen. That sort of feeling. Like a cat that's been startled by some loud, sudden noise, that's how I feel - except it's drawn out, and lasting past when I figured out exactly what the noise was.

My abuser would get -very- agitated by the same sort of thing going on. Often, neighbors being -hearable- at all, would precipitate a day of suffering for me. I think maybe, hearing neighbor noise is triggering my physical/mental responses like it is, because neighbor noise became associated with my abuser becoming more volatile, angry, abusive, and just worse in so many ways?

Does anyone relate? Does this make sense? Is this why I have such a problem with hearing noise through walls, or noise from outside?
 
But I guess PTSD doesn't give a shit about my opinions
^^^ This, right here, needs a thousand likes.


My abuser would get -very- agitated by the same sort of thing going on. Often, neighbors being -hearable- at all, would precipitate a day of suffering for me. I think maybe, hearing neighbor noise is triggering my physical/mental responses like it is, because neighbor noise became associated with my abuser becoming more volatile, angry, abusive, and just worse in so many ways?

Does anyone relate? Does this make sense? Is this why I have such a problem with hearing noise through walls, or noise from outside?
Think you nailed it, right there. It’s a trigger/stressor for you. Other people make noise, you catch hell. The longer you don’t catch hell? Likely the worse it will be.

Which is one of the things that sucks hardcore about blunting abuse triggers. The space. The waiting. The knowin what’s coming.

From experience, that’s 2-3 triggers to sort, instead of just 1. The noise. The waiting. The worse.

What’s helped me the most? Joining in. Once I’ve realized I’m piano wire tight, deliberately doing the opposite of what I’d do inside of abuse. Singing. Going outside to praise them on their projects. Using it as an excuse to break out the super noisy on my end (not to drown them out, but to add to), heading over to offer them a hand, get shitfaced drunk, take a super luxurious bath... whatever it is that is sooooo not what I actually want to do. Build that habit to combat the habit that is hyper aware of others, in order to save my neck. Create conflict in my own responses. Eventually? It lets me start choosing between TWO impulses (oh no! :eek: vs hell yes! :sneaky: ) But it takes awhile. The edginess? Doesn’t leave easily, and crops up at unexpected times. Being gentle on myself with it, also the opposite of abuse, helps. But what helps the most is hardlining a different knee-jerk. To all 2-3 triggers. The noise just one of them.
 
Which is one of the things that sucks hardcore about blunting abuse triggers. The space. The waiting. The knowin what’s coming.

From experience, that’s 2-3 triggers to sort, instead of just 1. The noise. The waiting. The worse.

Holy shit I did not even think of any of that. I only just thought of the stuff I posted, right before I posted it. Helpful, thanks.

What’s helped me the most? Joining in.

I actually kinda already stumbled on this one myself, on accident, from being triggered by neighbor noise before. I turned on my synthesizer/guitar/bass and amplifier, and started playing music loudly, at levels that normal people couldn't tolerate being in the room with me at.

Stuff that is very grating to normal people, can be quite pleasant and cool sounding to me. Of course, at the right venue, normal people would enjoy those volumes, too, and it wouldn't be so grating. But, in a bedroom sized room? Yeah... best to have some hearing damage already, like me.

That said, I do wear hearing protection when I get loud enough for it.

It can still be hard to work through and play through the anxiety but it does help.

I also used to get paid to play on stage, so it's not like I'm sounding like shit, even if they don't like whatever genre of music I'm playing. I also used to give guitar lessons, but stopped because the students were always too lazy and I hated it because it really f*cked with my planning.
 
Unexpected noise when I’m stressed? Just can’t. Can’t. No way I’m CBTing my way through that.

The jackhammer. It’s blocks away. It’s on. Then it’s off. And my brain is doing cartwheels waiting for it to start again. The dog barking? Dogs do that. But it’s completely random, and that blessed lil creature seems to wait until I’m really strung out before it decides to start up.

Unpredictable noise when I’m already stressed. How awesome is ptsd. If I can’t muffle it out with calming music or background tv noise of my own? It’s earplugs time.
 
It may have zero to do with your abuse and everything to do with a heightened, oversensitive system.

I’m reactive to so much. Sounds, lights, how things feel, smells....none of this is related to my abuse. It’s all related to a broken nervous system. There’s no way you can therapy your way through that IMHO.
 
Build that habit to combat the habit that is hyper aware of others
This is brilliant- an idea that really speaks to me - I don't mean to jump in here with my own stuff, just wanted to say thank you for this, it's a really good idea!

And I clearly trimmed that quote wrong! Sorry!!!
 
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But I guess PTSD doesn't give a shit about my opinions
Awesome quote!

My trauma doesn't involve noise, so it's not a trigger for me, but loud noises drive me crazy and put me on edge. I won't go to a movie theatre, for example, I just can't handle the noise.

There's a neuroscience explanation, if you're interested. (If you're not, ignore the next bit.)

Our brains change in PTSD. Our sensory processing gets stronger and wires itself to our amygdala, our fight, flight, freeze response. What wires together, fires together. Over time we create a pathway from our sensory processing to our amygdala, because our senses keep us safer, and we are in actual danger so the response is useful, and reinforces that it's a good thing to send sensory information to the amygdala.

Our hippocampuses, the bits of our brains that deal with "where/when" are much, much smaller than other people's , leading them to go offline more often, and our survival brain is much bigger.

So. Ears receive sensory info, processing above capacity, this routes to the amygdala, causing us to freak out, our hippocampus doesn't kick in to tell our bodies not to worry because the danger is in the past, and we react like the danger is in the present.

I find grounding exercises helpful for the parasympathetic nerve freakout bit.
 
Yes. It's a problem like most things. I got better but we still shut the house up and put the fans on even in the nice weather. These are all beach houses and are right on top of each other. The people across the street moved thank God they were nice but they had a bunch of twenty something kids with twenty something problems and behavior so it was noisy. We are moving, same town, I'm worried about it but, we'll get by. I was much much worse a few years ago.

The AA book, which I look at now as basically having been written to people with trauma even though they didn't really mean to said, "we all are/were abnormally fearful." So what's abnormal? Lucy said to Charlie Brown "you're afraid of everything." " That's it!" he shouts in reply. I'm not as "afraid of everything" anymore. Is this abnormal seems like a hard question but at first yes, all my feelings were. Especially fear.
 
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