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Thread: PTSD and Triggers

  1. #31
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    Hi to all my fellow PTSD sufferers!

    Sorry I didn't reply when this post was first created, as I was away from the site for awhile.

    I also have what's known as complex PTSD. Complex PTSD occurs from several traumatic events over time. I won't go into too many details (due to privacy and triggers), but mine were a molestation, broken home, major car accident, and in 2014, I found the body of my best friend, which threw me into the worst bout of PTSD and anxiety I've ever experienced. After that, I went through some grief and trauma counseling, both individual and group, went on medication, and made some serious lifestyle changes and decisions, and I feel like I've come out on the other side of it. I still have bad days, here and there, but I feel good about myself again and hopeful for the future.

    If any of you need to talk or need tips, please know that I'm here. Don't keep yourself and your troubles in isolation. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.

    Vee
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  2. #32
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    Hi Vee
    Lovely to hear from you, but sad under this heading.
    As you say, difficult to express our inner feelings and experiences without the risk of triggering a reader.
    PTSD can be a culmination of events as is with me and also can be different circumstances.
    None of mine were dealt with at the time and maybe they should have been, but sometimes that is not possible.
    I know mine affect me and I don't really want to experience the emotions and pain of those ever again.
    So, what do we do. Talk about it? Cry about it? Carry on with our lives regardless? I really don't know, but I know talking and crying are releases and its that which is difficult to do because who do you tell?
    I have no embarrassment in admitting quite a few calls to the Samaritans, who allowed me to bare all, be as long as I liked and didn't judge me, just listened.
    But I have to say between the emotional pains of abandonment, bullying, bad relationships and a bad car accident. That doesn't include the loss of people close to you and experiencing their pain and even health matters of yourself.
    Well, it's a pretty ugly picture of haunting.
    But I think of you can feel the now and the future with as many experiences of calm and pleasure, there's the hope of some balance eventually.
    Always allow yourself to have those moments of release and sadness is very closely linked with happiness.
    For example when a son or daughter gets married, it's both emotions. So if we can feel happy about our lives today or grow to make it happier, maybe, just maybe in time it will become easier to live with. x

  3. #33
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    I hear you, C.

    I can only speak from my experience, but I bottled up the molestation (actually I tried to talk about it but was dismissed by the adults in my life) and the issues with the car accident, and some other things I was grieving over until my best friend passed. It's like when that happened, all of the things I'd kept bottled over the years just raged to the fore-front along with the grief I was feeling over his death. That's why my life basically collapsed into a puddle of anxiety. I had hit rock bottom, to the point where if I didn't start dealing with my inner pain, I wasn't going to live any more.

    I think I kept it in for so long because it was like Pandora's box. Once I allowed the pain out, I couldn't get the lid back on without becoming a hot mess. That's one of the reasons I had stopped going to therapy. After therapy, after opening myself up, I couldn't go back to functioning in daily life for awhile.

    So after I hit rock bottom, I realized that I needed therapy again, I quit a lot of commitments in my schedule. I basically freed myself up to work and home. That's it. I was blessed that I could. It allowed me the time to do both individual and group counseling and have time afterwards to just be the hot mess for awhile. It was very hard at first. Especially group. I thought that after hearing all of these other people talk about the horrible things in their life all I would do is be triggered and retraumatized, but it was actually very freeing. The bonds I made out of that group therapy will last me the rest of my life. It was so comforting to know that I was not alone, that my feelings were "normal" for the circumstances, that I wasn't a bad person, that I could put my pain in perspective and choose to live my life on my terms. I still have lunch with a few people from group even years later. I'm so lucky that I live in a big metropolitan area where therapy like that was available.

    I think therapy is the ideal safe space, but you can create your own safe space to let some of it out. Like you have with the Samaritans. That's a good resource; there's no shame in calling them. Even a journal gives me some release. I especially like to write shitty things down on paper, and then throw them away or flush them down the toilet in my own ceremony of getting rid of them.

    Time helps, especially in terms of grief. It'll be five years this year since my friend passed, and the further out the easier it gets. The pain is still there, but it dulls with time. Its easier to remember the good times we had together without the guilt and sadness coming up.

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  4. #34
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    Vee
    As I read your post tears were trickling down my face. Whether it was your story and words or my emotions coming out, it touched me, even touched a nerve maybe.
    And how right you are about no one around to listen when these events happen and I'm so pleased you persevered and found that therapy and friends to help you along the way.
    And I think you are right about remembering the good times when you experience loss and not suppress them.
    Pandoras box is a good description of how it all erupts or even stays shut. Maybe that's a good way of looking at it and to only take out bits at a time when you feel you need to deal with it to move on in life.
    I just want to finish my post by saying how much admiration I have for you. Your courage, your empathy and your lust for life.
    Life gives us hurdles and I have no doubts that you will tackle them all. x

  5. #35
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    Thank you for your kind words

    I am so grateful for the life I have, the comfort I have and the family and friends that I do have. I think my "lust for life" comes from being Jewish, and just having the examples of so many of my people who didn't get a chance to have what I have. How can I take that life for granted? My friend wouldn't have wanted me to live out the rest of my life unhappy. He'd have wanted me to go on and do all the things that he never got the chance to do. So I'm trying
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  6. #36
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    Exactly Vee
    I too lost a dear friend who was more like family to me to unfortunately suicide. I grieved for a long time and made a keepsake journal to help with the process.
    But you have to imagine them saying to you, "you have a life to live and it pains me to see you so sad".
    You can still have your moments of sadness and reminiscing, but they wouldn't want you to be burdened with grief forever.
    And when you do something nice you can smile to that person. I like to raise a glass to my dad occasionally and I talk to my late mum quite regularly and as for my friend I lost? I met my other half through that person, so he left me a wonderful gift.
    There's a saying, "something good comes out of something bad". Look for that and honour your friend by living your life. x

  7. #37
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    C,

    You're absolutely right. I talk to my deceased auntie all the time, so I understand

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  8. #38
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    So much love to everyone on this thread. I love that this subsection has been restarted. Even with us few on here it's nice to know that we're not alone isn't it! I'm particularly triggered this afternoon, but when I feel that I'm in a better place I'll share my story as well.

    Carnation you are absolutely right that you have nothing to be ashamed of! We didn't ask for the hand that we got dealt. I know it's easier said than done, I'm still ashamed of my past, not as much as I used to be, but still.

    Xxx
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  9. #39
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    I'm going to try now actually. I'm not sure if I'll post but we'll see. I don't have one single incident that resulted in my PTSD but several. I guess then I will just give a quick outline of my life?

    I was born of a narcissistic mother and alcoholic father. We were poor and didn't have much. I was born in 1990, my mother very sadly had a stillborn in 1991 and then my younger brother was born disabled in 1992. I was neglected because of these tragic circumstances.

    When I was 3 my father left. I very clearly remember him leaving us. He was stood at the front door of our old house with a red leather suitcase. I said "Where are you going daddy?" and he said "out", I asked "When are you coming back?" and he said "I'm not" and I ran over to my mum, who was holding my baby brother, and cried. After that my mum made it as difficult as possible to see my dad.

    I grew up (probably understandably) in the shadow of my disabled brother, my childhood went without much excitement for the most part. I enjoyed school and had some friends.

    My mum met her future ex-husband when I was 9 or 10. He moved in and started sexually and mentally abusing me pretty quickly. He would tell me disturbing things like my mother finds my brother sexually attractive and that he (my step-dad) was going to die and his heart would explode and blood would come out of his eyes and mouth, etc. When I had medical symptoms he would catastrophize them to me and make me have panic attacks. I remember one time when he saw that I had bruises on my legs and he handed me his health encyclopedia and showed me that unexplained bruising meant blood clots.

    When I was age 11 I started hanging around with the bad kids on my estate. I started smoking cigarettes and weed. I was overweight and my 'friends' never really liked me, they bullied me and made fun of me, but kept me around and to be honest they were all I had so I just went along with it. I fell in love with the first time with a boy and he was too ashamed of me to tell anyone so just came to me in secret. After my mum had gone to sleep, my step-dad would abuse me and then I'd wait up all night for the boy I'd fallen for and he'd come up, have sex with me and then leave. He would only come once every week or two though, sometimes it was months inbetween, but I'd always wait up every night until 4am for him to come.

    After he got a girlfriend he wasn't ashamed of I begun to let him go but it took me years to get over him. Along the way I'd been 'recruited' into one of the Asian grooming gangs in my area. The men would just be nice to us at first. They'd take us out and give us free drugs and alcohol, drive us around in their fast cars with their loud music and we thought it was amazing. Eventually they'd start to drive us up to the moors when we were off our faces on drugs, they'd either force us to perform oral/vaginal sex with them or they would threaten us - ie. if we didn't then they would leave us up here alone on the moors. That was a way of breaking us in, I think. Eventually we would just do what they told us when they first asked us, we learnt they'd get it one way or another anyway. We would get picked up on a night and then taken to wherever. Different towns, hotels, cars, moors, etc. and would say to us things like "Will you look after my cousin for me?" and then we'd go off with their 'cousin'. I finished my educated age 13 after being kicked out of school. There was a real camaraderie between the girls in the gang and I think that's what held me there for so long. That and the drugs...

    When I was 15 I met my first proper boyfriend. He was an angry stoner but we were pretty good friends. He was a compulsive liar and stole off my brother, grandma, myself. But we had a really good friendship and I kind of stayed put. By 17 I'd finished being abused by my step-dad and these men and I went to live with my boyfriend in a grotty bedsit.

    Life was fun there. We had no money and would walk around picking money or cig butts off the floor, but we had fun. In the bedsit/shared house there were some characters. One guy called 'psycho Dave' stabbed a man at a bus stop, he got sent to prison. A perve that was also called Dave moved in there and would try and get sexual favours out of me and another girl that lived in the building. A drug dealer named Russ lived there and tried to pimp me out to a Portugese man that lived there and said I could have half of the money!! Obviously I didn't do any of that.

    My boyfriend would still lie and steal. He also used to wait until I'd fallen asleep to masturbate over me and then eventually have sex with me. I'd wake up (obviously) and ask him what he was doing, he'd tell me to just go back to sleep, so I just laid there. He'd do this so often. I really had no self worth at this point and put up with it.

    At 18 I got pregnant and gave birth at 19. I was agoraphobic by this time, but that period of my life didn't last too long thankfully. My grandma died in 2009 and my boyfriend didn't really give a shit and I had ended up getting close to another guy and ended up leaving my boyfriend with the flat and taking our son. I moved in with this guy, Alex, he wouldn't let me see my friends or family, was controlling and would call me awful names, he would cheat on me and smoke weed around my son. I left after around 6 months and ended up back with my narc mum. Alex sometimes had drug-induced psychosis and would threaten me for years. He would tell me he would hurt my brother because he knew how much my brother meant to me.

    My stepdad had left her at this point so it was just her and my brother in a 3 bed house. She wouldn't let me have my bedroom back though and so I slept on her sofa for 18 months with my son in a cot in the corner. I got £150 a fortnight ESA for my son and I and had to give her £80, plus buy all of our own food. This meant that I couldn't save up to leave. Eventually I got a council house and the minute I got the keys she made me and my son move in despite having no furniture apart from beds, no carpets, no oven or anything. We got a fridge and lived off sandwiches and pot noodles for a long time until I could afford otherwise. I started racking up debt when living there as I had no clue about money and just wanted a nice house that had carpets etc!

    At 23 I got my first job in care. I LOVED it and was really good at it. I got several of my friends jobs there too. My CRB came back showing my juvenile record of criminal damage and ABH - I'd broken my mum's window and punched my stepdad (different occasions) and they called the police. The same week that I found out I'd lost the job I found out I was pregnant by a guy that I'd known for 2 weeks, despite being on the pill, and I had to remove my brother from the care of my mother as she wasn't looking after him. So in my little 2 bed, undecorated council house was pregnant me, my son, my brother and my then-boyfriend.

    I am now married to the above mentioned man. I have worked and studied my ass of and am a deputy manager, working 2 jobs and raising 3 children. I'm still carer for my brother although he lives in a flat around the corner now and is almost fully independent. My brother and I both start university this September and are the first in our family to do so! at least for a long time. I am currently waiting for the arrest and hopefully the conviction of members of the grooming gang. Life is looking up. I'll never know what it's like to be loved by a parent, I won't know the woman that I could have been if I'd have been born to different parents, I won't ever know what it's like to be IN love with a man and have him love me back, but I have my children and I adore them as they adore me. They will have a good life and will never have to go through what I have. I'm still only 29 and intend to study to PhD level and live a life that I'm proud of, loving my friends and family and helping other trauma survivors professionally.

    If you've read this far well done.
    Last edited by EmmerLooeez; 05-08-19 at 17:44.
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  10. #40
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    Re: PTSD and Triggers

    Oh Emmer

    First of all can I say well done!
    For posting your sensitive and private life, which will not have been easy for you.
    For surviving and battling to make your life better.
    For your bravery and determination to build a better future.
    And for not blaming yourself.

    As I read through your post it strangely didn't shock me, but it did feel me with sadness that you had to go through all of this.
    I can't stress how important it is to have a stable and loving upbringing for any of the readers.

    Emmer, you may have had an incredibly unfortunate and painful past which was forced upon you in one way or another and I am amazed that you have come through it all.
    I hear, abandonment, lack of love, abuse, desperation, low self esteem, pain, neglect, lack of respect.
    Oh my, you've survived all that!

    People like us find it difficult to open up for fear of being judged and the norm is to keep this stuff in our heads.
    And, unfortunately there are a vast amount of people that have 'been through the mill'.
    But, I think it makes you the bravest you can be and a determination that makes you succeed in life.

    Thank you Emmer, for sharing and being you! x

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