But now I've grown more and more sensitive to my triggers
That’s why avoiding triggers and stressors never works, long term; they get WORSE, instead of better.
In the short term, like I need to get XYZ done this afternoon? Avoidance works great, which is why it can sucker people in. But in the long term? Triggers and stressors get worse, and worse, and worse; the consequences to them (panic attacks, flashbacks, symptom spikes in general) get worse, and worse, and worse; so one’s life & world get smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
Other than GTFO of this house, does anyone have any advice for controlling flashbacks that keep getting worse?
GTFO MIGHT help??? But it’s not guaranteed, even in the short term, because of how avoiding triggers & stressors just makes them worse… and you’re already doing badly. More likely, your brain would simply attach all the triggers & stressors you deal with now, to the new place. If you were doing really well, moving would probably buy you some time to work on those triggers and stressors, but that’s all it would be; bought time. They’d still attach to the new place. It would just take longer.
INSTEAD, I’d very strongly suggest that you start working on eliminating the triggers & stressors, rather than avoiding them.
There are 2 ways to do that, with PTSD
- Root Cause (trauma processing), which is top down, by cutting off the head of the snake.
- Exposure Therapy, which is bottom up, targeting individual triggers and stressors, chipping away at them until they’re polished so smooth they no longer provoke any kind of reaction, whatsoever.
Personally, I tend to make a double list of the triggers & stressors that are
impacting my life the most <<< (baseline criteria for both lists).
1. Big, bad, gnarly, & gonna take me a while to sort (months and longer).
2. Annoying little f*ckers, easily sorted within a few days/weeks.
That way I get a LOT of traction by ticking off lots and lots of little simple ones, for every big complicated one. But everyone has their own personal preferences in what to tackle, and in what order, for the best effect on them & their lives.
Some reading for you
To answer this question, lets first define a psychological trigger. A trigger is an activated traumatic memory due to your present environment via one or more of your five senses, sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. A trigger will result in a symptomatic or behavioral response. To fully...
www.myptsd.com
Triggers are part and parcel of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). If you have PTSD, you have triggers of some kind that cause a symptomatic reaction. The positive to triggers is that with time and effort you can remove them or lessen the symptomatic impact to non-distressing levels. Many...
www.myptsd.com