Need Help With Startle Response Before Someone Gets Hurt

[Jimmy1]

I am probably going a little out of my depth here. There are a whole heap of therapies.
EMDR, CBT, Brainspotting, and numerous others. Everyone responds differently to different therapies.

If you have been diagnosed with PTSD then your traumas are not going to fix themselves.

My advice would be to consult your psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist. Find one that specialises with combat and go from there. Even find a Veterans Centre.

Who did you serve with mate???? And where???

 

[Wagon]

So are you saying in essence that my repetitive nightmare is basically a backlog on filing? How the hell do I ever catch up! Do you mean that 'turning it into a memory' is basically giving the brain a chance to finally store it away?

Hey Wolverine. Ned (another member) and I have discussed this in reference to other PTSD behaviours. We relate it to bad computer program loop. I think what Jimmy said is spot on about REM sleep and filing memories. But with us we get stuck in a loop, that goes for allot of other behaviours as well. Same shit over and over........hard wired. It is exhausting in itself.

The trick being getting "unstuck".

I think it can be done........just slowly slowly. Anthony the site owner has posted about practising good behaviours and responses. It's good advice. Just like in the military. drill drill drill. Except now we have to drill to be "Normal" Whatever that is. I may get better, but I'll never be normal. Jimmy will tell you that much. lmao ;)

Hang in there.

Wagon.

 

[deborah l. boylan]

Hey Wolverine! I don't want to ask for info if you don't want to give it, but after reading one of your posts is sounds like you were a POW. I can't imagine what you must have been through.

As for me, I was in Fallujah and Al Asad Iraq in 2005. I'm a surgical nurse so we dealt with the wounded and dead along with the incoming mortar rounds and escaped prisoners. I was finally able for the first time to look at some pictures of my unit from Fallujah about a week ago. Funny, I remembered everything like it just happened, but I couldn't tell you what I did yesterday. Its like I'm stuck there. That is when my life stopped or changed or whatever. Looking at those pictures stirred up some things inside of me. Mostly anger followed by sadness. A lot of tears were shed, which seems to be the only thing that I do well anymore.

I'm glad that you are here and I hope that things get better for you. As Jimmy says, we're here for you mate. Take care.

Deb

 

[wolverine]

Wagon - yes, yes, it is like being stuck in an infinite loop! I just wish I knew what to drill in regards to my nightmares - if I knew, I would do it!
Deb, you hit it on the head - it's like in my sleep, I'm stuck the day of our escape. It's like f*cking Groundhog Day. I too can barely remember what I did yesterday or what I'm supposed to do tomorrow. It's like I'm frozen in time in a sense.

Jimmy, you keep hammering away at the question - I'm a PSC and am not at liberty to share details of who, when, why, where. I can tell you I was captive from 2003 to 2009, and it did not take place in MEAO, despite the corresponding years to that conflict. And I'm afraid that's the limit of what I can reveal. As much as this may be frustrating in certain aspects, the boon is that these restrictions on sharing the surrounding operational details do actually give me greater freedom to talk about the personal experiences I survived within captivity since without providing a context of place or involved parties I can discuss freely what I endured and certain aspects of the escape that still haunt me. I know you will understand that there will always be certain questions I can't answer and certain details necessarily left vague or left out. In the end, the who, when, where, how, why are less important than the PTSD symptoms I'm trying to deal with and the specific incidents I'm trying to process. Probing questions end up feeling like an interrogation session to me and I tend to panic. I'm conditioned not to respond to personal questions so please don't take it personally if I tend to flare up at questions I find 'threatening'.

I know as an ex-captive my experience differs in certain aspects from the experiences of many on this board who are solely combat survivors, but don't let that make anyone shy of offering advice; many of our hardships during deployment share similar veins and I'm sure there's probably other members who at least went through SERE which gives them an inkling. But in the end we've all got combat/complex PTSD so again I don't want my experiences as a captive to make anyone feel shy of responding to my threads. I've already gotten more help on this one thread than I've had in a long time.

 

[Jimmy1]

Wolverine, I don't mean to be hammering you, and I don't know what 'PSC' is, but you have to understand where we come from here.

One of the rules of the forum is that you have to be a veteran and have PTSD.

We get all types of loons on here and even have people with PTSD who are veterans that are too schitzo for this site.
We also get non-veterans, psychs doing university degrees, and all sorts trying to join in.

Most people place an introduction up with where they served, or mention this within threads. Its not up to me at all mate, the Administrator 'Anthony' is the one that reads through threads and does all that crap.

Hope I did not offend.

Jimmy

 

[wolverine]

Jimmy, I apologize, I absolutely knew why you had to ask and I understand the rules of the forum; I just tend to get extremely tense when asked certain questions, even the most benign ones from coworkers, cashiers, etc, like my name, birthday, address, place of work, etc. It's my instant reaction to consider the questions threatening and it's very hard for me to realize they are not, and any question at all when repeated gets a reaction out of me because I suddenly consider it interrogative.
Like I said, don't take it personally, it's a reaction to a trigger and I usually calm down after the fact.
I probably should post an introduction in the intro forum, I realize I kind of just jumped right into posting here without anyone getting to know me first.
PSC/PMC just stands for private security/military contractor. I'm a vet, just not from a public branch of regular forces.
Back to the topic though, I should probably start a new thread on nightmares since they are getting so bad they causing me to wake of with such severe panic attacks that I have to take Ativan which knocks me the f*ck out and makes me have to take work off. Right now is my second day in a row this week having to call off work; yesterday was because of the Ativan and today is because I never slept because sleep brings the nightmares - so I'm in a double bind because without sleep I can't make it through my shift and with sleep I end up waking in a panic attack requiring meds that make me unable to work. I don't want to lose my job and the nightmares are keeping all the symptoms like hyperarousal, anxiety, panic, lack of sleep, flashbacks, etc, going. If I could get the nightmares to stop or scale back I think a lot of my waking hour symptoms would decrease... and I wouldn't be putting my job at risk so much.