Anyone else primarily struggle with autonomic hyperarousal (not nightmares) and been prescribed Prazosin? If so, how effective was it and how much did it take to calm your constant fight or flight?
Ever since I opened up about my trauma and how it affects me, family and friends can’t stop texting or calling me to either check up on me or try to make plans with me. Talking about the trauma just makes things worse so I don’t want to talk about it.
I’m also easily overwhelmed and one social event, is enough to last a week at least. I withdraw after it, but then get bombarded every single fucking day with text messages and I’m about to lose my damn mind. Leave me the fuck alone! Don’t let me have to deal with your anxious need to make sure I’m still alive, you’re just making things worse! I’m about to throw this damn phone in the ocean. My god!!!
(Not sharing specifics)
My trigger is pretty common on the internet especially in the circles that I am in and it makes it harder for me to enjoy my time on it. I don't have access to therapy and I'm wondering if it's even possible to remove it or desensitise myself to it so I no longer have such an extreme reaction. What do I do?
Hi
I'm going to be starting Cognitive Processing Therapy soon. I've read good things about it and it's clinically proven to be very effective for PTSD.
The part I'm wondering about is how to pick only one traumatic memory to work on. If you've experienced many different types of abuse and traumatic events which seem to have affected you in different ways, depending on the types of events how do you pick just one memory?
Hello, new Comer here. I've had PTSD for a couple years now.
I finally got a job after 2 years of severe agoraphobia and avoidance issues. I've held this job for 2 weeks so far. It's extremely nerve-wracking, terrifying and down right awful, but I managed it. I work in cleaning for Airbnb's and people's homes.
The problem happened this morning. An airbnb I cleaned got a bad review for poor cleanliness. I spent hours cleaning that airbnb, bit i digress. My boss, justifiably, contacted me and was upset because she had never had a bad review before.
I broke down completely. It wasn't even that I had made a mistake, it was such a raw fear response that I ended up sobbing for hours, and even regressed in my self harm bad because it set me back so much. How do you guys do it? How do you guys work, and even somewhat function?
How do I even go to work today??
Almost a year ago I was the victim of a major car accident. I was tboned by a large pickup truck running a red light. My car flipped on its side and I had to crawl out of the sunroof with the help of first responders.
Driving, specifically in windy road and the freeway, has become unbearable. Any kind of right turn in a windy road at high speeds makes my body feel like when my car flipped over. When driving on the freeway, it takes a huge mental load to pass a semi or other large automobiles because it’s a giant thing on my right side. I get intrusive thought that they will side swipe me or worse my car will lose control. Sometimes I still get scared when I’m even riding shotgun.
I am constantly taken back to that moment of the incident.
What can I even do? I doubt this is something I can just “get over” or that exposure therapy will help with. This is mostly just a rant. Just did a multi hour drive and needed vent. I can’t live like this
Is that they think they can use gifts and nice things as a reason why you have to put up with them literally screaming at you over everything. It feels so manipulative because then you feel bad being unhappy. They’re so shallow they don’t realize that’s supposed to be extra not the only thing keeping the family together.
I experience severe foreshortened-future symptoms, and I haven't figured out how to manage them. I'm scared every day. I don't know if the future is guaranteed, and I struggle to pursue long-term goals while simultaneously thinking, “What's the point? My world could burn down any day now.”
I want so many things for myself, but I'm just scared. I'm so scared. What's the point of building something if it won't matter in the long term because it will eventually be over?
I have so much evidence that the future is safe enough, you know? But somehow, that evidence never feels like enough. It's just hard.
Thanks.
TW: abuse, suicide
I've been physically and emotionally abused by my mother for 28 years. Its like torture kind of abuse. Now I'm suffering with the flashbacks,trauma, depression,and anxeity that I can't stop. I believed in God that's why I'm still alive and enduring the symptoms . But today I just realized I'm not sure anymore if God exist so now I don't have reason to keep suffering. I don't know what to think anymore. My mind is just blank.
I'm a 23 years old girl, and everything happened so fast. It all felt so surreal, and I remember how I felt in those moments so vividly. At first, I genuinely thought I was dreaming. Even afterward, I kept trying to convince myself that I was dreaming because there was no way this was actually happening. Then I started feeling like nothing around me was real, like the whole life was just happening inside my head. Eventually, I started panicking and praying.
Thankfully place was evacuated pretty quickly, and I made it out safely but there's some deaths and injuries unfortunately.
I know how lucky I am to have made it out safely, and I’m so grateful for that. But at the same time, I feel so depressed knowing that I’ve actually experienced this side of the world firsthand.
I thought, this was the hard way for me to learn that tragedy is real, and that horrible things like this actually happen to people every single day.
I can try to ignore the news and go on with my life as if everything is normal, but that doesn’t mean these things aren’t happening somewhere in the world.
And now I just feel so sad. I’ve been having all these existential thoughts and questions about life. Like, what’s even the point of all this? How are we supposed to just go back to our normal lives after experiencing something that makes the entire world feel so different? How do you go back to being the same person you were before?
I’m grateful I survived, I really am. But I also feel so overwhelmed by everything that happened, and I honestly don’t know what to do with all these feelings.
If there's anything that helped you cope with the aftermath of a traumatic experience, or anything you think might help me right now, please tell me. I'd really appreciate it. I genuinely don't know what I'm supposed to do or how to start processing all of this.
35m, I'm trying to recover from abuse from this person that was really abusive to me and I'm just struggling still with the shame. My abuser would say things to me & just treat me like a child. They would put all these labels on me and make me out to be at the abuser when they were the ones causing abuse to me. They would also call me crazy or whatever. It's been years since the abuse and I'm still trapped. It's like I'm trying to get myself permission to be who I am and in my mind but I'm fighting the shame which is the remnants of the abusive things that were said to me. I don't know if anybody else struggles with it. This will really go away someday and I will recover from this? It really wasn't my fault, all the things that were said to me and saying that I don't deserve things and whatever?
F/29.
I have been no-contact with my family for years, but they keep reaching out. I've blocked them, lived in several countries, and they always seem to find me. I haven't had social media for years because I've felt too scared to share anything about my life without them using it. They constantly try to guilt trip me into talking to them again.
Main abusers are my mother and grandmother. Without getting too much into details, they manipulated me into being the porcelain doll they wanted me to be, to the point I erased my whole personality just to be the person they sought to turn me into otherwise I was met with physical, mental, and psychological abuse. It appears my grandmother is dying and asking about me, and yet while I feel guilt... I become a deer in headlights just thinking about facing her again. Everytime my mom calls me (she keeps getting new numbers because I block them, but I haven't blocked her latest one because she now knows where I live and I'm afraid of her showing up and playing victim which she has done before multiple times) I get super paranoid and have suicidal thoughts. The nightmares get worse, too. It's like every time I try to go out of hiding and live my life, they show up, and I want to disappear.
I am afraid in my own home. When she calls, I turn off all electronic devices, I don't play music or watch shows with volume on during the day, or I take sleeping pills to make the day go by faster, only really feeling safe after 5 PM because I know they won't show up unannounced after that time.
Hi, I’ve been experiencing neuropathy for a few months now after a lot of stress and unprocessed trauma (I guess) and I’m really looking into plant medicine as my last hope almost.. I’m very far away from myself so all the tips for places or plant medicines would be welcome 😔 thank you for your help.
That's pretty much the whole post. Just had a crazy panic attack and I feel like I can't avoid it.
Does anyone notice any times of the day where they become more sensitive to triggers?
Or any patterns in general?
I feel “normal” in the morning then I get extremely sensitive/emotional around 6pm. That’s usually when I’ll have episodes (or crisis, whatever they’re called).
Feel free to share your experiences!
I’m not a veteran but an ER doc that worked during the worst of Covid and saw death on an unimaginable scale, stacking bodies in freezer trucks, running out of life saving equipment, doing literal battlefield level triage protocols in an urban American city. saw hundreds die up close in horrible ways personally over over a year or so.
I see a therapist now who works mostly with veterans and healthcare personnel and active duty military, I am on a journey to recovery however have imposter syndrome that I “don’t deserve to have PTSD” given that I haven’t seen what veterans have. how have you guys coped, healed and grown? but I feel the wisdom of those of you here that have dealt with this will help those of us in fields where PTSD is not recognized or is taboo to talk about it.
ive been exercising, doing therapy, quit any alcohol, working on sleep hygiene and generally being kind to myself, understanding its my body in a fight or flight mode. Been working on being around crowds and people and finding peace with the things I see at work and living my life. i really respect how the veteran community has worked towards making this a less taboo topic in their world. A lot of fields have a “be hard and shut up and stuff it down” mentality and it’s really taboo to talk about these things
I guess it never really goes away. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety at 14 when i had my first attempt, things got worse and I got ptsd from an abusive relatonship at 15-16. That trauma has not let me go on with my life.
My first year of college was okay, i still had a lot of family issues, but I really see no future now. I've been in therapy for so long and my parents have spent so much on my health that i don't want it to go to waste. I was getting better, and now i'm thinking of ending it again, but i don't want to disappoint my parents. They are my only reason right now. I've made up with my dad, i would like to finally be a daughter, but i don't see myself in the future, because i'm studying biology and all my friends are already in labs, projects, even go to the gym constantly, and i tried to do so too the last semester, but my mental health declined so much. Why can't i do other tasks like others? Why can't I take a lot of things at the same time? Some are already travelling abroad for scholarships because they have perfect grades.
I used to cut, my scars have healed, but if i counted other forms of sh aside from that, i've never really been clean. I hate feeling like this again, I don't see myself working in the future. Every thing i learn in college goes after an exam, while my friends still remember everything. I hate being so behind, that my trauma doesn't even let me sleep some times and flashbacks make me dissociate from the classes. Everyone excels in something, except me. I didn't want my trauma to define me but it seems it does.
Sometimes I want to come home to a warm meal and a hug. My friends live with their parents, i've moved alone to the capital because of university. I'm supposed to be a good student, but I can't think of a single good quality nor something i excel at. I'm not planning anything but my own thoughts are worrying me, and it makes me feel ashamed to think like this again.
With what's been going on in the news recently and also just in normal life I come across things several times a day that trigger me in regards to SA. I don't seek these things out, sometimes it's just a news headline,a commercial or advertisement. So much of everything in the media we see is see s*xually triggering because there are so many innuendos placed everywhere.
I won't go into detail about that though
But I just got triggered by a news headline and it just makes my mind spiral out of control and I lose focus completely on what I'm doing. I feel stressed and angered and it ruins the state of calm I had.
I try my best to control the media I take in but I want to know what should I do when I see or hear a trigger to keep me calm and prevent a crashout?
I had a difficult childhood full of trauma, and even in adulthood, my life has still been difficult. Somehow, I really like Backrooms and Weirdcore it kind of feels like an apology. Is there a reason for this, or does anyone else feel this way