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Knock on Back (Patio) Door After Dark

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A couple of months ago I was asleep in the bedroom and I woke up to hear J talking to someone in the living room. His voice was calm so I fell right back to sleep. When we woke up for work I asked who he was talking to. I assumed it was his brother on the phone. Nope. Someone knocked on our door at 3 o'clock in the morning.

J sleeps in the living room a lot. His vigilance is in overdrive during the night. He can hear everything when he's "sleeping" so he knew someone was coming up the steps. And the outside motion lights came on. He answered the door. Only cracked it a little and there is a baseball bat right by the door.

Some weirdo "wanted to talk and hang out". J cussed him out and told him he must be drunk or f#cking stupid to knock on our door in the middle of the night. Told him to get off our property....

While J was telling me all of this I was thinking I can't believe he was so calm talking to this guy. I thought if that ever happened J would put his hands on someone. He didn't.

He was calm on the outside but I knew he was freaking out on the inside. And I knew it kicked ptsd into overdrive.

His sleep is bad already. After this happened he was in bad shape for weeks. After
I would fall asleep he would go to the living room. Started keeping a knife nearby, again. Angry. Worried about me. etc. etc.

We never found out who it was because J didn't know him and I didn't see him.

I have to say the motion lights are awesome. We have a couple in the yard and one at the bottom of the stairs so J was able to see who was coming up the stairs before opening the door. J is a protector and he needed to make sure the man was OK and not in any danger before he cussed him out. 🤣

It enforced his reasoning for all of his safety measures.

Sorry for the long story just want to let you know you're not alone in your feelings. A knock at the door at any time of the day or night is enough to worry anyone and it would definitely set ptsd symptoms off.

Get some motion lights and the doorbell camera is cool too. We're looking into them now.

Take care. 😊
 
That would send me into high alert into the next day, after something like that I don't think I'd even be able to sleep. Thankfully nothing like that has ever happened to me before. Whenever I'm here and someone drives up and comes in, that is enough to make my heart skip a beat often even if nothing is happening. Too many things involving that have happened before on that note. In fact that's how a lot of situations started. Car pulls up, loud people/yelling, door slams open, and it's all downhill from there. I am also a knife sleeper, it's like my teddy bear. I started doing that a long time ago when I was in a different situation, it just makes me feel somewhat safer.
 
My neighbour is in her 80s. Soon after we moved in and had established a bit of a friendly relationship (we’d been quite chatty on several occasions) she brought up in conversation one day that she didn’t like answering the door after dark, so could we please not ever knock in the evenings. (We hadn’t ever knocked in the evening, she was just letting us know for future reference) She said she had lived in some scary places around the world when she was younger and married, so I think she was always primed for some kind of violent disturbance even though where we live is a pretty safe town. Now, living alone, and not being able to see well either, an unexpected visitor after dark was very anxiety-making for her. We had her phone number, so if there was some kind of emergency, we had a way to contact her.

So, I wonder if just asking your neighbour to please not call round after a certain time or after dusk etc would do the trick? Perhaps she comes at that time because it wouldn’t bother her if someone rocked up to hers then, and she just hasn’t considered that other people would be unsettled by it? Hopefully, it doesn’t need to be a big confrontation. Just you asking her not to come round after a certain point. Up to you if you want to say anything about why that is. If she then ignores your request and keeps coming anyway, that’s then a different conversation…

If you really don’t feel up to having a conversation about it, you could always pop a note through the door. But I suppose you can’t then see how the message has landed and whether she has taken it in. And you wouldn’t even know if she’s actually read it.
 
I have some real weirdos here one woman in particular right next door she floated by me yesterday when I was in the yard and didn’t even look at me . If she knocked after dark with flowers it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

I don’t mind that sort of horseplay if I gauge her as no threat . That’s how I feel about where I am right now . It’s summer and I’m outside, I’m gonna have run ins with them but, in general they’re no threat.

I don’t feel like I have to do battle anymore I’m too old lol. If anyone wants to act up seriously ill call the police .

She doesn’t sound terrible . I know that isn’t to say you don’t feel threatened . I hope it resolves easily for you.

If not, I’d warn her that you don’t feel much like company coming over unannounced and, if she keeps it up the police will keep her company.
 
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