Sufferer Someone Is Under The Bed...

[Kaii]

I'm a 36 yr old crazy cat lady recluse (minus the cats, but add a dog). I was not always like this....

I have children and a boyfriend. I am a nurse. I used to like the outdoors and nature. I used to laugh a lot and was fun to be around.

BUT...
Now, I cry a lot. I don't leave my house. I lay in bed most of the day. I bring my dog everywhere with me. I only feel safe when I am with my bf. I feel angry and hopeless.

I have lost my life. I know it must be around here somewhere, I just don't know where...

You see, I joined a search party not long ago to search for a missing girl. My boyfriend and I are avid hikers, geocashers, own a jeep and I am certified in first aid and cpr. We were a perfect addition to join the 100+ member search party.

We broke off into groups of 6 and within an hour and a half, my group found the young girl....we found her body stuffed into a garbage bag in the woods. She was beaten to death.

I have not been the same since.

My entire life has changed.

I don't leave the house unless I have to. I feel unsafe. I feel "on edge" and paranoid when I leave the safety of my bed. I am waiting for something to happen, for someone to hurt me. I even worry about someone grabbing me from under my bed. I worry about someone being in my basement or hiding behind the door. I worry about someone hurting me when I am getting into my car or while I am nervously fumbling with my keys to get into my house.

I relive the day we found her body over and over in my head. The image of her broken body in the trash bag plays over and over again. I can see it so clearly, it's like it's right in front of me. That day is never far away in my mind.

I am afraid of the woods now, and dirt roads...and leaves and garbage bags. I feel like I am going crazy.

I have been avoiding all my friends and family. They make dates to go for coffee or lunch and I don't call them back. I just want everyone to leave me alone. I find it hard to get out of bed most days. I just want the whole world to leave me alone.

I am on stress leave from work but I worry that I will never be normal again. I worry that the next time I have a patient that dies on me at the hospital that I will completely lose it.

I feel sad and angry. It's not really anger but more intense like rage, I guess. I try and keep a lid on it because I am afraid of completely losing it. I feel so much rage towards the person that did this to that poor girl. I am not normally a violent person but I think about hurting that person.

I don't know what has happened to me. Where has the real me gone to? I feel like I am never going to be normal again. I have been going to counselling, doing journalling and am now on Celexa but I don't feel any better. I am hoping to find some more answers here on the forum.

Thanks for listening....

Hi, I haven't been here in so long that I felt I should write a new introduction:

I'm a nurse.
I was sexually assaulted by strangers twice, once when I was 18 and again at 20yrs old.
I moved on from that, got married and had children.

I volunteered for a search and rescue for a local missing girl in 2010 and got much more than I bargained for when my search party found her. She had been severely beaten, raped and strangled to death. We found her in a garbage bag in the woods.

The image of her body hanging out of the bag is burned into my eyelids. I have seen/thought about/replayed that day over and over every single day for more than two years.

I have a psychiatrist. I go to weekly counselling with a psychologist. I have had multiple medication adjustments and changes. I have had EMDR sessions. But I am still plagued by PTSD.

I am now on disability and haven't worked in almost two years.

I rarely leave the house.

I am constantly hyper vigilant, full of anxiety and paranoid. Because of this, I have three dogs, including a German Shepherd, that accompany me everywhere I go.

I am miserable, severely depressed and am starting to feel like I can't do this anymore.

This is me.

 

[Deleted member 5760]

Hi Kali,

Try not to think of yourself as crazy. PTSD is a normal human reaction to an abnormal situation. Best place to start is probably with the articles here (located in the home section). There's plenty of support here and I lot of people who will identify with your fears. We are a tight bunch (at least I like to think so). Everyone is supportive of each other and nobody will judge you as crazy so try not to judge yourself as crazy either. What happened is what is crazy (and I'm so sorry it did happen) - not you!

Welcome to the community..

 

[anthony]

Hi Kali, welcome to the forum.

 

[lonetree]

Welcome Kali,
I can understand your anger and desire to hurt this person. My wife was brutalized, abused and molested before I knew her but I still have to fight myself to not go after these people. It is her wish that I don't that stops me. I understand now that it would do no good to intensify the memories. I still have nightmares of breaking in on the act and protecting her.
There is nothing wrong with what you are feeling. It only proves what a good person you are. Believe in that as you work through this.
I'm glad to meet you!

 

[jesse]

Hi Kali you are NOT crazy. Stop thinking that way it only makes things worse and hinders your recovery. You sound like an awesome person i.e. a nurse, outdoors person, out helping with search and rescue, etc. You obviously really care about other people or you wouldn't be in nursing or have joined a search and rescue team. I think its completely logical that you would have PTSD after seeing something so horid. You are absolutely not crazy. I hope you find this forum helpful and I'm glad you joined us.

 

[AdamAnt]

Welcome Kali. Sorry for what you've been through and I truly hope you find some answers here.

 

[deer_in_headlights]

Welcome Kaii,

I'm so glad you are here. I hope you will feel very welcome, and very much at home, supported and cared about as you journey with us toward healing.

I used be involved in emergency medicine, including volunteering for remote backcountry Search & Rescue.
I'm so sorry you saw what you did.
PTSD can hit hard particularly when it entails experiencing that level of evil, of man's inhumanity to others.
It hits at our very core beliefs of what it means to be safe among others in the world.

As you work with therapists, and you come here and feel surrounded with love and caring, it is my hope that your faith in the goodness of most people will return, (with wisdom about protecting yourself in the world).
I hope soon the fear dissolves and your confidence is restored.

Please keep reading and posting here, it helps.

Wishing you peace, comfort, healing, Kaii.
With a warm welcome from my heart to yours, deep caring and concern,
deer

 

[PTSDT]

Hi Kali, You and your boyfriend are heroes. Heroes often suffer in silence. Everyone with PTSD is a hero. We have all been through extraordinary situations and survived them. Maybe we were our own hero. Maybe we were a hero for others.

Unfortunately, being a hero sometimes caused disruption to the brain. Parts of our brains react to our heroism within dire circumstances sort of like Kyrptonite to Superman.

It is so confusing. We were so strong. We did what had to be done. We survived spectacularly. Some of us have one incident that makes it happen. Some of us (I'm in this group) have long term repetitive traumas. And PTSD hits some of us and it doesn't hit others.

I would recommending reading as many of the articles here on the home page as you can. I would also like to suggest that you do some serious research about PTSD treatments for one time incidents. There are new discoveries that show if one gets the right brain retraining quickly after the incident, they can reverse the effects much easier. I was not diagnosed until 4 solid years of trauma and didn't start getting the right kind of help (even though I saw several counsellors throughout) until recently. If at all possible, call around (maybe the emergency medical people involved in the search) and ask them if there is a trauma specialist they use or that they recommend. I can recommend prolonged exposure therapy. Regular CBT did nothing for me but keep me hanging on.

Heroes sufferer more than those who do nothing. Heroes are above the average.

 

[MamaBear]

I am so sorry you saw what you did, but I am so glad you found her. You brought peace in knowing to her family. I am a law enforcement officer and I have to work cases like this all too often. In a perfect world this wouldn't happen, but you were forced to see something the average people in this world will never see.

 

[Mikayla43]

I just have to say i agree that you are a hero. In bringing the family of the murdered child peace, you lost yours. I'm sorry for your horrible trauma and hope you can find peace again.

 

[Bin]

Hi Kaii,

firstly: apologies for not picking up on this sooner, but I am also new to the site and finding my way around here.

From what you describe, you have what is rapidly becoming recognised as 'secondary trauma' based upon the experiences of emergency services personnel (and others) who, though not directly victims of accident or abuse, nevertheless can be traumatised by what they experience on a regular basis as a result of their job: the 'dark side of human experience that, mercifully, most are spared from.

There can be no doubt that your experience was truly horrific at so many levels and has clearly had as greater impact on you as interpersonal abuse has on others. In other words, it must not be 'weighed' against other forms of trauma and minimised. I have always argued that PTSD is about loss, of one form or another and, if truth be told, multiple losses. Examples might include loss of innocence; loss of sense of safety; loss of faith in humankind; in other words, the very foundations of our 'self-concept' that are suddenly overwhelmed and with that, our sense of who we are. Trauma is, quite literally, a life changing event as everything we once believed and held dear, is suddenly 'wiped out' and we lose our familiar anchors to the world we once knew. This alone can be very frightening.

The symptoms etc that you describe are typical - you are far from alone in your suffering in that respect. Many highly competent people have reported a complete inability to function post-trauma - a consequence that causes them significant distress in its own right. I guess what I am trying to say is that your world has been turned upside down and inevitably there is a period of adjustment needed before recovery can begin, but recovery is a realistic goal. You can 'be normal again', though I think it is safe to say you will never look at the world in quite the same way again.

May I ask if you have been diagnosed yet with secondary trauma? As a nurse, your profession should be aware of this. Also: how are the other people who were with you at the time coping? Hang in there, it will get better.

Bin.

Oh, and one more thing: you're not crazy, you have been severely traumatised. The two are NOT the same! (Though I know exactly where you're coming from!)

 

[rpgamber]

Welcome Kaii. I am happy you found this site.