Eve, thanks for starting this thread. You are not alone. It's in your sentence.. over-exposure.
I believe the news media was irresponsible. It left every single person in the position to be traumatized.
It didn't matter one iota where you or I or anyone was located. - We all were there - because we had the news, in one way or another. I had CNN running that night. The news we got through that time was about 40 minutes of coverage, they kept repeating the same report over and over. The radio or tv puts you right there, and now so does the internet. The towers didn't fall once, they fell hundreds and thousands of times.
I don't know about others, but I wanted the news on to know....well to know if there was actually *new* news. And that's where I get to the irresponsibility of the media. They took the most awful bits and bombarded everyone, the whole country and beyond. "Eyewitness accounts" not needed .. There were and are more than enough ways to witness. I knew it was not good to keep watching...like a deer in the headlights...even up to today...yet I find it strangely compelling. I have to work pretty hard to stop myself from watching and listening.
Over the years, I've learned that a person with PTSD, or a person at a tipping point, may not be able to think through each new trauma in a helpful and healthy way. Sometimes I tell people - and this is my own personal phrase that I use as an example, to people who don't understand - that my brain is broken. That I cannot process things properly, I am unable to react and be upset and then move beyond it in a healthy way. I can't do it. I hope to learn how to process these things - that is one reason I continue therapy over these many years - I hope to learn how to process traumatic things without feeling helpless, hopeless, devastated...and alone.
I try to remind myself that I'm not alone.
You are not alone.
