Need anniversary flashback managment fast.

[Fadeaway]

It's that time of year again, just came sooner than I was expecting. But yup, step outside my door and right across the was less than 30 feet is an already lit and decorated tree. Thought, I had a good two more weeks.

It sucks to have a trigger that everyone not only loves but shoves down your throat for a few months of the year. I can't make it another two months when it has only really been one day of full on flashbacks any time I want to smoke.

Hubby and I already got in a fight because I wouldn't go inside the store with him because I knew I would melt down.

I really tried to prepare this year, but my best friend and I are not speaking right now, as a result of triggering each other (she has ptsd too.) My other friend has too much on her plate with her troubled child. Everyone else is going to be out of town, including my psychiatrist and therapist.

I want to talk to me T before he left but doxepin my psych had just put me on, left me feeling like I had been run over by a freight train, but hey, I slept 15 hours! :wideeyed::eek: Where is the dying of shock smile? Well I missed my appointment because of that. anyways hubby being a dick again because he is misinterpreting all of my ptsd symptoms as something else and accusing my of using the PTSD as an excuse.

I am going to end up being committed by the time this month is over if I can't get a grip.

I have already had my limit for the who season in just one day. What do I do?

 

[scout86]

If you could find a nice Buddhist or Jewish facility to be committed to, you could look at it as a vacation?

(Probably not helpful, huh?) What are your flashbacks like, in general? Not the details, unless you want to but are we talking about re-experiencing things with all your senses? Just some of them? (Which ones?) Do you know it's a flashback at the time? What else can you tell us?

 

[Deleted member 41765]

Holding out a cyber hand to you @Fadeaway. I'll wait to say more. Scout asks good questions...

 

[Tornadic Thoughts]

Breathe.....flip the thought script to a soothing thought or one that prompts nurturing actions vs. ass kicking.....pretend the lit trees are something else that makes you laugh instead of tense up....remember folks are simply doing what they've been conditioned and programmed to do their whole lives, so it's never going to change, ever. Most folks who dearly love it will continue to view anyone who doesn't as being a scrooge or a non-believer and whatnot. Many will never truly innerstand.

Find a favorite thing you like to do that actually helps your nervous system arrive in chillville and keep doing more of that....if there are things you like to make (food, crafts, helpful guidelines for areas of expertise, bags of items for homeless individuals, care packages for domestic abuse victims, goody bags for pets in shelters, etc.) maybe you could spend some time making them to share with strangers, acquaintances, or local organizations that accept that stuff.

Explain to the hubby (in writing would be my choice based on how I trip over my brain and can become emotionally charged while talking) that this is simply very necessary and he can either help or hinder, but to please allow the space and time needed while you take care of your well-being, and kindly remind him a hug and some genuine heart-felt support would be nice on occasion ...but be sure you are both clear on HOW to show each other said support and such, though...The Five Love Languages book really opened my eyes to how most of us blindly try to communicate in our relationships, allowing deep resentment to build for years, and then do your thing as you most need to.

With you in thought as this is my absolute least favorite time of the year, too. I'm battling it this year by making and gifting vegan gluten-free goodies, hula hoops, and magnetic awareness tile magnets to pay forward to random folks when I begin to feel overwhelmed. Instead of ho, ho, ho-ing, I'm hoop, hoop, hoop-ing and happily acting like a damn fool at any given moment.

The process of the making keeps me distracted and soothed, the anticipation of seeing the smiles and hearing the laughter (especially with the hoops) once shared keeps the momentum going, and I feel a sense of loving accomplishment in several ways once it's over, both in managing my symptoms in a healthier manner than I used to, and I helped lift the spirits of another being who may very well have been hurting just as badly and longing for a meaningful connection of some sort, just as I had been.

Avoiding it on the tv, radio, and the internet is a pain in the ass, too. We can't escape it no matter how hard we try. The hellish helliday season is upon us, just like clockwork. I'm too tired to fight it off and bitch about it any longer...I must love myself through it. Let's create our own roadshows as our distraction and flip the helliday script, even if only in our own minds, being as how that's where it has to start anyway. Hope this was helpful in some way...if not, my apologies for rambling on.

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

Can you get away for a while? Not sure how you are money-wise (and you don´t have to tell me either). But perhaps you can rent a cabin someplace where the christmas frenzy has not caught up yet?

Sorry to hear your husband does not understand. Seems to me that having protective people around can really help with triggers. Do you have relatives or other friends that could maybe explain this to him? If they tried to explain it, it´d be from a different perspective and thus maybe he´d keep more of an open mind.

In the meantime try to keep your head "with you". Not with christmas, and also not with the things that your mind connects to christmas. By that, I mean for example doing exercises that will remind you, you are you, and although this craze is going on around you, it does not affect who you are, and it has no power to harm you.

Like perhaps humming meditations where you feel the vibration of the sound, or something with singing bowls, anything that will help you connect with your body and remember your actual self, the one that isn´t defined by all those other things.

Good luck Fadeaway :)

 

[Deleted member 41765]

Like perhaps humming meditations where you feel the vibration of the sound, or something with singing bowls, anything that will help you connect with your body and remember your actual self, the one that isn´t defined by all those other things.

Love this and plan to use it myself!

 

[Fadeaway]

@scout86 yes, I know it is a flashback at the time. It is pure horror of and panic, that gut wrenching pain of death in the center of your chest and and helpless to prevent the raw guttural cries as I hear the news repeated in my head over and over as I beg them to stop telling me. The shear isolation that no one actually cared the reaching out to my grandmother in one last desperate attempt for a hug and her snarling at me in disgust remembering me that she doesn't do hugs.That desperation that if I just get one I would be ok. The panic of no one caring enough as I beg and scream to be taken to a hospital so I don't die and no one taking me serious.Of someone intentionally and maliciously withholding emergency medical treatment. I am stuck in these places and can't get out it is visual but mostly the emotions of grief and fear that I felt. Just as fresh as when it happened. Time diminishes nothing.

@Tornadic Thoughts I am kind of mostly stuck in doors right now due to weathers, not having a car and not close to a bus stop. Lack of money is also a huge problem. I love the 5 love languages, it rings so true for me, but my husband thinks it is silly, and i try to get him to take the test and he can't see it as anything more than the type of quizzes that tell you what super hero you are based on your favorite color. It is probably a defense mechanism for him.

Do you have relatives or other friends that could maybe explain this to him?

That is kind of part of the problem. I have no living relatives. Never truly had a family growing up. Never got to do the thanksgiving or xmas as a kid and was never invited to a thanksgiving as an adult but boy oh boy did I spend years fishing for invites. I was born with out aunts, siblings, cousins, or a full set of grandparents. Just a grandmother forced to raise me against her will, my abuser and a step grandfather that I meant the world to me but according to his own words, we weren't family.

 

[scout86]

There's a lot of useful information there. I think I'll have trouble coming up with much you can use because I don't do "feelings" that coherently. I don't have what I think of as flashbacks real often. When I do, it pretty much involves physical senses. If I can sort out that it's not actually in the here and now, that usually helps. There was one incident, a couple years ago, when, after I told my T about it, he said, "You might want to find a different way to think about that." My first reaction was WTF???? But, when I thought about it (instead of arguing with him) I looked at how I was thinking about what the trigger was and considered that I did have some choices about what I thought. I actually did come up with a different story in my head and that helped. It's funny, but his line "You might want to find a different way of thinking about that" has really stuck with me. I've found that a lot of times, if I stop myself from just "reacting" and "think" instead, it helps. Uses a different part of the brain.

The one things I've dealt with that's a little similar to what you're talking about, I think, is that I used to automatically react to communications from my mom like I was still a little kid, living in her house. It took me a long time to figure out that was what I was doing. Once I figured it out, it helped to remind myself that I wasn't a little kid, I wasn't dependent on her for anything, and she was just a little old lady who couldn't do anything other than try to be manipulative and/or mean.

The common thread, for me, has been to recognize what's going on and then sort out that "that was then, this is now". Easier said that done, but it seems to get easier with practice. I don't know if that's at all helpful for you?

 

[Tornadic Thoughts]

I'm sorry things are so complicated and you're feeling imprisoned and defeated by your feelings and the mindlessness of those you are surrounded by. Having a mate who isn't at all willing to do what it takes to help bring healing peace and communication to the relationship makes it even more complicated.

It's difficult enough to exist in our own skin some days, then add the snarkiness and dismissive tones we hear from others and the suffering gets kicked up a few notches. May relief soon arrive in some kind form or fashion. I most often found relief in others who weren't blood related, but rather kept seeking individuals who seemed to connect heart to heart. May you find the same.

It finally sunk in for me around the age of 50, after 4 decades of trying otherwise, that the relatives I was trying so hard to be loved and accepted by were the very ones who created and fueled the hellish shit show in the first place, and I finally realized they'll NEVER be the ones I should turn to for any type of genuine heart-felt support and/or acceptance. They obviously aren't humanly capable of providing any of that, or they already would have.

 

[Freida]

One of my biggest triggers is football so I know exactly what you mean about not being able to escape horrible for months at at time.

You can't escape the season if you live in America but you can re-write it to suit you. Close up the doors and turn off the tv/radio/news and read books or do projects, or go out of town, or work at a homeless shelter, or make blankets for babies in the hospital, or, or or. Find something that can distract you and makes you feel better about YOU. Not what the the family, or the hubby, or the horrible people you are surrounded by want from you.
What do you want?

A thought .... Can you take your horrible experience and help someone else through theirs? Maybe through the schools or a dv line or local charity or whatnot? I have a friend who does that as a coping mechanism but she is way further along this ptsd journey than I am. I'm totally not that kind of person! So I'm just tossing that out there as a way to look at things to distract yourself, not as anything snarky

As for family -- I'm from a very small one and one of the things my mom told me growing up was that blood doesn't make a family so go out and find the people you want in yours. I have 3 "sisters" who are not related to me, but they are who I'm spending the holidays with this year.Would I have liked to have a big rowdy family to spend the holidays with like you see on tv? Yep. But. I'm also happy with the little one I have created that knows I have triggers and works with me to try to keep them under control and accepts me for who I am...PTSD and all.