I don’t handle them. Triggers win every time. I’m a failure at managing my PTSD
No. You're not a failure. This is why: the triggers will win, every time, for quite awhile until you (a) get the hang of what you need to do to catch them in advance, and (b) have time to practice doing so.
You need to think about it this way: you experience the trigger, and
your job right now - the thing that you (as a person in treatment for PTSD) are responsible for - is to
make the necessary adjustment after the fact, so that in
future that particular trigger can be lessened. It will only be lessened. You aren't going to go from highly reactive to cool as a cucumber in this process...it's always going to take a number of attempts before you start to experience consistent results.
So: you learned on this last visit what you want to do for future visits to support yourself. Putting supports into place aren't at all a sign of weakness. Everyone - even the mentally healthy - needs help with gyno shit in one way or another. It's not a walk in the park kind of experience for
anyone.
I think that we PTSD folk sometimes expect ourselves to cope with stressful events
better than the average person, because we have the advantage of understanding the effects of stress/triggers in a more specific way. It's important to remember that there are very few people, if any, who can say they walk this earth with the ability to be always unfazed by everything - especially things that would be difficult for anyone, really.
I think you've done really well. Why? Because you prepped for the visit, you went in there, discovered that your prep plan worked for some aspects but definitely not for others. So now, you are adjusting the plan to cover some bases that you missed. I know you have some expectation that you're not supposed to need to have another go at the problem...I suffer from that, I expect myself to learn, get it right, and never again make a mistake or get it wrong. But PTSD recovery just doesn't work like that. Start changing your expectation of yourself - this isn't about lowering it, it's about getting realistic and more specific about how many steps there are to managing, then overcoming a trigger.
I see this is the “negative loop” therapist tells me about. How do I normally fix it? Cutting. But I’m not supposed to do that. There is nothing else.[/QUOTE]You've got a gap in your skills, then. Basically, you need something other than cutting that you can employ in order to interrupt that downward spiral, because this:
I have to just make all the feelings and memories stop somehow.
Is not realistic. For anyone.
Have you and your therapist ever discussed distraction techniques? Things you can do, when you feel the spiral coming on? It's probably a topic for a different thread, and you can certainly search the site for them. In DBT, it's the stuff called "distress tolerance".
