Post Traumatic Stress and Triggers

Since my son's death, any untimely death of a young person is a trigger for remembered grief.

For me it is part of living with my memories.

I have had experience treating it.


It can last for ever, but doesn't in most people.


I think being conscious of the triggers is enormously helpful.

Your whistling wind trigger is, I presume, uncommon enough for you not to have experienced it often?


If it caused you major problems (which it sounds like it doesn't? Sounds thoroughly normal to me.) you could make a recording of it next time it happens, or find some sound effect on tape that triggered you, and play the goddam thing until you relaxed, and do that until it stopped being a problem.

Noddy - I can't imagine how difficult that must be. ((((hug)))

Dlowan - Yeah, not a major problem for me. I just find it fascinating that the mind can hold onto that info for so long and that while knowing consciencely that the body isn't actually in danger again, still cause it to respond in a fight or flight manner.

It made me wonder if somewhere down the road, if not already, Ky has heard that metal sound and reacted. If things like that even from infancy stick with us and resurface, but remain unidentified.

The obvious traumatic events that some experience, like war or the VA tech students, THAT I can see sticking with you forever. I wonder how often we have reactions to more subtle events in our lives that we think are distant memories.

Squinney--

A functioning person is probably full of unnecessary little quirks. I very much doubt that down the road Ky will hear a metallic crunch and slap a little old lady. She may raise her voice when she hollers at the kids, "Stop that noise," but anyone raising kids hollers some.

One of my stepsons has been in three accidents--two fairly serious--when cars coming from the left have ignored stop signs and broadsided him. He's very aware of traffic coming from the left--which is not a bad reaction.

Of course there is J. Edgar Hoover, injured in a left-turn accident, who decreed that F.B.I cars should never make left-hand turns.

I have been treated for it. Lingering issues, still.

Mostly an interested and empathetic bookmarking for now, squinney.

Noddy - we were in another accident a few years later, hit by a feed truck and rolled down an embankment. I wasn't so thrilled with highway driving for a while, but am not bothered by it now unless I get sandwiched by semi's. That can be nerve racking for most anyone else that isn't also in a semi.

Yeah... lotsa quirks in people. I usually like quirks for their individuality.

Flushd - interested in hearing more if you like.

squinney, post traumatic stress disorder emerges in different ways. For the year that I was a caretaker, I hid. After Bud's death, it has taken a long time for me to level out. I no longer see a doctor here, because I don't trust them.

I have come near dying in three separate car accidents, and why I didn't I will never know.

Noddy, I didn't realize that your son had died.

For me, the triggers were myriad and once I identified one set, another would crop up. It could be as inconsequential as a spot of sunlight on the floor, or glancing at a clock at a certain moment. I never got a handle on the triggers.

What helped a lot was learning how to control the panic attacks (ear buzzing, vertigo, prickly palms, palpitations, overwhelming need to run) that result. Thank you, Audrey (my counsellor).

Four years after the event, they are very rare now.

In 1990, I was in the hospital, in a sterile room, for over 2 months. At one point, I developed a high fever. The doctors kept taking blood tests, to attempt to determine the cause of the fevers.

For awhile there, I believed that I was not going to make it. My life was completely out of control, and I felt abject helpnessness. For a short time, I was convinced that the doctors did not know anything, and that I simply would expire, with them never knowing what caused my death.

I found myself curled up in a fetal position, not doing much of anything. When I would feel particularly upset, I would whimper, like a frightened child.

After I recovered, (I had a staph infection in my lines) and returned home from the hospital, I believe that I had a touch of PTSD. Anytime I would become frustrated, over the littlest thing, I would find myself whimpering, like I did in the hospital. I was awash in the same feelings of helplessness.

It took a bit of time to get over those feelings.

One of the most annoying aspects of PTSD is that while the triggers are usually specific and my personal memories are usually specific, the emotional jarring shakes loose all manner of unpleasant memories which have to be neutralized one by one.

When I'm doing Psyche Under Siege, I'm not being assailed by a single sniper--I'm repelling the entire Foreign Legion--usually in the wee hours of the morning.

Since you started this thread, I've been thinking and remembering what it was like to be at that time when I felt right at the throat of symptoms, and triggers, and generally just wondering "What in the hell is wrong with me? Am I truly crazy now?".

It felt like my own personal hell, and I'm amazed to look back and see where I am now. It's really nuts.
I was always 'out of it', red with rashes, my sleeping was all over the place with nightmares - sleep walking - times where I wouldn't sleep for days on end then doze in the middle of a conversation with a friend - lots of numbness and lots of panic and lots of feeling crazy.
I don't know if it ever completely goes away. It does change who you are, but sometimes I think there is some good from that with the bad.

Today I had a little moment. I had some trouble snapping myself back to reality.
Why? I can't even give you the details of the trigger exactly.
I just know it has to do with spring, and lots of laughter, and lots of loud noises and laughing and people all over. Carrying on, and letting their kids roam a little too close for my comfort to the road while traffic whizzes by.
On my home, I had a time where I thought I might be lost and was seized with panic. Talked myself down, but mostly, just waited for a big landmark before I could start to regain my senses.

Anyways. One of the most troubling and deeply-ingrained parts of it for me is that up-and-leaving that can happen sometimes.
Dissociating, I suppose.
Something can trigger me off and I'll 'click' off just like a snap. It served me well but can be a real bitch.
I know there will be nightmares that night, or anxiety, or something to work through (that I thought I was done with!).

And the real kicker is the weird tension it produces in social settings, it sets off anxiety in me about being a weird outsider or something. Trying to bring myself back up to what is going on. 'Cause for blocks of time, I'm not hearing or absorbing any of it.

It's a freezing up. I truly believe it impacted how much learning I was able to do for a good chunk of years. Like, I, totally, was like, a space cadet.
It was embarrassing, often. And painful and not something very easy to talk about or relate about.
How much activity I was limited to. How much it influenced the activities I did choose.
Trying to either drug away or generally just keeping those feelings from rising. Avoiding anything that hit too deep. Hiding out.

It does make me wonder how much of human behavior is actually pure learning from experience. And with what we are as humans: what that point is that can make us 'break', 'snap', 'leave', 'just can't take it anymore'. ...you know, do we have a point of no turning back?
And it has made me wonder why and how some people become so ill and some never do . I think I have some good ideas about that.

What happened in Virginia has set off some strong reactions in me. Partially because I have been exposed to it media wise from the beginning, through nights of work of constant cnn, and newspapers and chatter and photo displays of the gunman shoved in my face while people sound off and yell "monster" and apply their own personal tragedies to it.

To be totally truthful, it is not the event itself that has hit me so deeply, but the reactions of 'ordinary people' that has really sent me reeling.

Whatever you may think of this, it didn't surprise me that it happened, and it didn't shock me beyond the HUGE coverage and outbreak on it.

And that people are feeding on it so cheaply. Y'know? There is so much repressed crap people carry around from day to day. It hits me hard that so much effort is put into keeping it a secret, the huge acts. Makes me feel a little loopy.

There is still a part of me that is geared to chaos, and honestly, it is still strange for me to go about life most of the time - like most people do - trying to pretend that everything is fine and safe and insulated.

There is a part of me that is scary to let people know about, and that can scare me, that I know, and it feels very animal.

So I find it hard to consider that some of us may think they are special somehow, and are immune, ....I don't know, there are a lot of different kinds of monsters, eh?. !

Sorry if this does not answer your question well.

Flushd--

Excellent post.

Remember that healing happens in spirals. You don't go directly from Sore & Suffering to Healed & Happy. The journey is a spiral and you have to cross the same ground over and over with deeper and deeper understanding.

I wouldn't be surprised if thousands--or even hundreds of thousands--of people have had both conscious and unconscious powerful, painful memories triggered by the shooting on the VA Tech campus.

Other people's painful memories can become very dangerous to you--and you realize this with an urgent, life-preserving instinct.

You aren't crazy--whatever crazy is--you're in survival mode.

Hold your dominion.

Flushd,

I've been back to read your post through a couple of times and I know you understand some of the stuff I've written, so I hope it's okay to tell you, thanks for saying what you've said here.

I've also been feeling freaked since the shootings - nothing to do with the event itself - but with the way people in the US (and to a lesser extent, but similarly in the UK) have reacted.

Yesterday when I saw pictures of students letting go white balloons before the start of their first day back, I felt sick.

Nothing can mask the stench of Iraq, not today - nor forever in history

Since the shooting I've had more than normal triggers.
Today I was rolling a cigarette and the paper suddenly split open on one side, so that the tobacco bulged out, like a wound.
I was sickened and fascinated by it at the same time….Christ
Recently I can't help but see parallels between my childhood experience and the abuses that are taking place in the world today.

I'm becoming more and more reclusive as I grow to have less and less belief in society


Flushd, I admire how you deal with yours - I always have.
It's about time I told you that

Take Care
Peace,
Endy

Flushd and Endy - To pull through somthing so traumatic... I'm in awe. Grandma would have referred to it as a strong constitution. Whether that is naturally ocurring in some personalities or learned, I don't know.

When we returned to our home in the light of day, having fled in the night dodging trees and felled power lines that were still live, I wanted to collapse. I wanted to weep at the end of the threat. Bear wouldn't let me. He said I couldn't because of the children, and that I had to "Buck up." That's probably not what he said literally, since that isn't a term he would use, but it was what I heard because that's what Dad would have said. So I did.

So whether it is learned or innate, whatever it is that gets one through, you have it and I applaud you.

Squinney--

Motto for Good Women: "Cope now, collapse later."