Smell of fire triggers me

[SeekingAfrica]

We have regular heating that is okay-ish. But we are in a house so when it's awful outside(snowstorm etc), we have a wood furnace that you can fire and eventually it overheats the room it's warming and heats up the whole floor. But the smell of like inscents burning (or whatever you do as Christian to cleanse the home of bad spirits) just brings me back to being 6y old and to SA.

And now just the smell of fire, the smoke, the crackling and the increasing warmth are making me hyperventlate and panic. Like I'm sweating and I can't breathe and my eyes are burning. And it's like I get an awful migraine and my thinking is foggy.

And the warmer it gets the more I procrastinate.
I can't think.
What do I do to get over it??? I seemed to think it's getting better, but I don't think so today. Or maybe because I was generally rattled this week it feels worse again. It just makes me ignore anything and just want to run and run until I'm out of breath and far away. Some triggers I can analyze and know why they are connected and somehow logic my way to a better reaction slowly. With this it's not that way. I just have to get out.

 

[Friday]

What do I do to get over it???

Provoke the olfactory trigger, on purpose. IE burn a grams worth of kindling. Put it out. Burn another gram. Put it out. Over, and over, and over… just like you’d chip away at any other trigger/stressor. In your own time. Totally controlled. Over a period of days/weeks/months.

 

[arfie]

it sounds similar to my light phobia. my light phobia even reacts to light metaphors. my eyes literally ache when forced to listen to sunday sermons, bad poetic cliches or the like. amateur child pornography sets and gang rape beneath a farm light set up one booger bear of a therapy resistance on this particular phobia.

somehow logic my way to a better reaction slowly.

phobia means, "irrational fear." inside my intensely logical process, logic is worthless when dealing with irrational phenomena. i allow my survival instincts to handle the irrational while i focus my logical functions into mindful handling of the survival reflexes. @Friday 's suggestion of exposure therapy works to some extent, but not expecting logic from the illogical help more. i deal with ^it^, play by play. sometimes i can sit through a light lover's poetry reading. sometimes i need to find someplace else to be until i can get the aches out of my eyes.