Retraumatized By A Hallucination?

[open eyes]

About a week & a half ago, I had a severe dissociative episode that lead to a panic attack. Feeling completely segregated from my body, I wandered out of my house & around the streets I live on in the middle of the night. I felt no emotion. Suddenly I saw a person in a black hoodie standing at the corner of a street I was coming up on. (Although I'm not really sure whether it was a hallucination or not, because I've had similar episodes which I hallucinated during.) I started screaming, hyperventilating, & I sprinted away as fast as I could, until I eventually collapsed in the middle of the road from oxygen debt. I thought the person was going to chase after me & kill me.

Ever since that night my PTSD symptoms, which had been slowing the past few months- have been back & extremely intense. Is it possible to traumatize yourself? Can a hallucination be traumatizing if I thought it was real at the time & believed my life was in danger?

 

[yoshixvx]

I think it's completely possible for hallucinations to traumatize and re-traumatize us. As someone who also suffers from hallucinations and delusions (related and unrelated to PTSD), I have noticed that they tend to feed the existing trauma or perceived threat of trauma. So for me, my hallucinations are based on previous episodes of bullying, CSA and prior emotional/psychological abuse inflicted by my abusers. Some of those hallucinations are the actual voices of my abusers. Am I being abused by them continuously? Yes, and my C-PTSD is more severe than it would have been if I did not have the hallucinations (or delusions to precipitate them). But I've developed a few tricks to reduce the fear..

What has helped me is learning to spot the patterns of hallucinations. So for your case, seeing a hooded person and becoming paranoid might be a future indication that you are hallucinating. Try to also think back to how you were feeling before this incident occurred (were you eating healthy, getting enough sleep, etc). Often a lapse in self-care, or stressful experience, can amp up the intensity of positive symptoms like hallucinations.

Also, it has helped me to reality check with someone. If you see/hear something, ask a trusted person if they are experiencing it too. Once you get the hang of identifying thoughts or experiences as delusions (or non-reality based), you will feel a sense of ease. You can start living your life again and not have it affect you as severely. Sometimes these things go away on their own, but my experience is that ignoring them or being in denial tends to make them come back with a vengeance. But it seems like you have a firm grasp on the fact that it was a hallucination, so you are on the right path. :)