Overwhelmed By The Sound Of A Motorcycle And Car Collision

[Powder]

I'm a medium small town lady at a conference in the metropolis of my state. I have anxiety as it is about cities.

I wanted a calming walk by a lake with trees, because we don't have much of that where we live. At the park, everyone was on drugs, doing drugs, or making threatening glances while drunken in public. Even a woman walking outside the park staggered and nearly fell into the oncoming traffic! After passing a man wearing only a large poncho, I wanted to leave.

So on the way back to the hotel, I said I have never felt like going on a walk in a park was like surviving a level of a violent video game, until now. We were in sight of the turn to get to our hotel, when I heard a loud metal scraping sound that I've never heard before. I turned and saw a man fall down by his overturned moterbike, which was crumpled under a small car. The driver of the car got out and talked to the man and called 911. The man on the ground started to sit up and then gave up, lying back down in pain or shock. Two other men ran out into the four-lane street to help. Cars stopped to avoid hitting them.

I felt the shock feeling come over me, and then I began to cry and feel triggered. I grew very nauseated and all my pain welled up inside me. I felt all my collective trauma surface. All I could hear was the scraping metal, and when I saw the man's movements of shock and giving up, I saw what PTSD feels like all the time, that my body can't handle the shock and awe, even though I want it to. It gives up on me.

I've hit a coyote and I've seen what dogs do when their owner is in an accident, how they run anxiously in circles, in a panic, while the paramedics try to contain them. Flight.

My body swelled up, my hands swell, my heart feels full and heavy in my chest, my stomach aches and heaves, and my legs become lead. I shiver and my chin rattles as my teeth chatter. I am cold, and I feel I will pass out. I can't walk, and soon I'm stumbling like the druggies at the park.

My PTSD makes me feel that the constant pain and crisis of the city raises my stress levels too high. The noises, sights, and threatening lack of social order (or at least the appearance of it) makes me want to retreat back to the small town country setting with quiet and more predictable, uneventful life.

I wish I could enjoy the city, but apparently I cannot. I'd considering becoming a hermit on a mountaintop and/or petitioning to have motorcycles banned from public roads. I've seen too many bodies on the road for my own good.

 

[Powder]

I also should add that I wanted to help, which sometimes over-rides my PTSD response if I feel a sense of positive power and agency. But as others were already doing so, my husband's goal was to get me away from the scene. I think sometimes, being coddled with the PTSD is loving and other times, it deprives me of a sense of mastery or "ways out" of the cycle of feeling powerless.

My ears are ringing. I seem to not be able to talk to my husband. What do you do when this hits? An unexpected new triggering event: how do you shake it off?

 

[Seasounds]

I'm so sorry that you had this new trigger. On so many levels, it was traumatic.

The helpful part I can offer, related to your injury, is on the sound trauma aspect of your experience. My first time was 15 months ago. Like yours, it was a deep, and rattling trigger. It fesulted in me spending more time, lying frozen.

After 2-3 months, of my usual counseling, and dramtically decreasing my exposure to TV, radio, noise, and peolpe, I finally came off the ceiling. I still have tiinitus-ear ringing.

I'd say that, the first two months, it was hard to shake the feeling of being attacked, helpless, and defenseless, with the trauma. My ear ringing increased my anxiety, and there was the deep grief of 'losing silence'.

On the third month of recovery, a therapist helped me reframe the ringing-from an attack sign, to 'just a quirk', so that I stopped escalating. My grief and anger gradually diminished, too.

Now, like PTSD, it is a daily grief that I live with. Truthfully, I feel empowered to work through most any 'person caused' trauma. Sound trauma, I was thrown for a loop. I was helpless to defend myself, and I could change the ear ringing. Couseling helped process this invisable trauma.
Calming massage helped, too.

Even though my sound trauma would cause ear damage in most people I looked into drugs rated to sound sensitivity: benzos are. I'm on small doses of them.

I hope you get support, and I wish you healing.
And I hope more people post regarding witnessing traumatic events.

 

[Mystery]

Hi Muse, I can really relate to your experiences and thoughts about city life and so sorry that you were affected by what happened. I can drive through a big city and only in daylight, walking in a city at night, is really difficult for me and I avoid it altogether these days.

Some television ads do the same thing to me too. The things that seem the worst are ones with a lot of sensory input, like sounds and facial expressions of anguish, like community service announcements for learning first aid with simulated scenarios. I can't watch them. There are some ads that I completely block my ears and close my eyes while they are on. Some things are just not suited to exposure type therapy imho.

When I experience an unexpected new trigger, which is uncommon nowadays, I allow my nervous system time to come back into equilibrium in a low stimulation environment (well the previous baseline anyway). That takes it own time. I tell myself that I now understand a little more about myself and that if it happens again, I will know what to expect so I won't react so badly and I will balance out even quicker. I really do believe that the first one is the worst. It's the unexpected sudden, sensory input overload that causes a bigger reaction for me.

I do have to admit, I'm an avoider. So my coping skills are limited compared to a lot of people here but I'm venturing out into the world more and more. I find music is really soothing and good for blocking out sensory input when I need to. Like wearing headphones and just using it to distract my mind when I'm 'wobbly'. I play chillout music alot and I notice straight away how my whole body calms down and my breathing relaxes.

Husbands are not one of my areas of skill! I hope that someone can offer you some suggestions about what you ask about talking to him. My partner is only beginning to understand that sometimes I need to disengage for a short time and it's not his fault. I just curl up next to him and having him close feels good. Men like it when we don't talk I think, it takes the pressure off them to have to talk themselves. Well it does to mine. Maybe reassuring your husband that you don't feel like talking and giving him an idea about what you do want, will make him feel that everything is ok.

 

[Friday]

It's the stuff where I want to be able to do something and cannot (or do not)... That is the hands down absolute worst. For me, it also just links up happily with every other time I've been helpless/trapped/unable to act. Can't just have an isolated event. Nope! It digs around and finds friends. Every single other durn time, and then they all tackle me together. Annoying, that.

It sounds like you were already halfway there... disappointment (wanting to be able to achieve XYZ at the park, and no joy... But were still holding it together) coupled with helplessness since you can't magic the park into the peaceful place you were looking for, only to be whacked upside the head with a huge "can't do anything about this" moment right afterward.

No wonder you fell apart!

Doesn't sound like a new trigger at all. Sounds like you found yourself in 2 bad situations back to back, and after getting through the first admirably, simply didn't have enough left to handle the second on top of it. Or third, even... If you look at the city stress as the buzz you were trying to soothe as 1, failur in the park as 2, and then an injury motor vehicle accident, with a pinned man trapped, unable to help or do anything about it, literally right in front of you as 3. Sheesh. You're do better than you think you are, that's for sure.

Honestly, what I've found works best If I'm already half-comatose? Tears, guilt, shame, sucked into a black hole? Is to get angry about it. Go take it out on a bag, or laps in the pool, or something, anything... That lets me surge some adrenaline and fight the black hole. I have to do something to wake myself up and get myself out (or I get sucked under). But I'm also really limited in my emotional range at that point. Fear, anger, lust are what I personally have access to when I'm numbing to pieces and falling away. Fear is out/ a really bad idea for myself personally... So that leaves me with anger or lust.

Granted, lust would be nice, but I don't have access to that 24/7 (or at all, even, these days. Vexing), but I do have access to a floor for push-ups at the very least. At least the anger, directed in a healthy way, burns itself out fast... And then I can focus on calming myself down.

Failing that, if I'm too far gone for anger to wake me up? Sleep & meds.

I realize none of these 3.5 things may be the best choice, or even useful to you, but they're what I do. For now, anyhow.

 

[Powder]

Thanks, so many changes and stressors have been keeping me from returning to the forum since that night. A job offer that was not going to pay enough to survive on. Had to say "No thanks," and then deal with people at work who were upset that I would even interview elsewhere and felt abandoned.

It is nice to read about how others respond to such situations and calm down.

I guess having two kids at such different ages has lessened my ability to see any soothing activities as viable. Having kids is an exercise in dealing with being a caregiver, not a self-soother. I just feel like freaking out inside most of the time now and just in one long silent scream.