first time

Hi Everyone,

I am not sure if I have posted this in the correct area.

I just wanted to say hello. I have been viewing this sight for a while now and it appears to what I am looking for. However at this moment in time I am unable to share with anyone what is happening for me. I think I am in denial over some things.

I wanted to know if it was normal to feel so afraid of everything and everyone? I have nightmares and what I can only relate to as time travel to the past and feeling as if it is happening all over again emotionally, thinking and feeling through a childs mind.

I would welcome any points of view as I feel so alone and very afraid.

Hi
You would be better posting this in the "your experiences of PTSD" section.

Yes a part of PTSD is that we get flashbacks of various kinds and strengths, anything from a full blown being taken back to the time of the incident and reliving it as though it were happening again, through reliving it as though standing back viewing it in detachment (bit like watching a film with you in it) to having intrusive thoughts, pictures and feelings (flashes of images kind of thing), different people get different things.

It may not be deniel as such because another part of PTSD is the difficulty in opening up our feelings and experiences with others, it can take quite a while to feel secure enough with someone to tell them what it is that set the PTSD off.
It seems if you are the sort of person who could voice this personal stuff easily then you would have found it easier to get it straight in your mind or work your way through it.

Feeling afraid and "on edge" is another symptom, our mind and body has had something traumatic happen and reacts by keeping us on alert in case it happens again, a throw back to when we were not top of the food chain and needed to be ready to fight or run i guess.

A couple of things to remember are that you are certainly not alone, barking mad or without hope.
Treatment can help but can take a little while to get from the NHS, just keep pushing your GP and ask to be referred to someone with experience of treating PTSD.

Good Luck and Take Care

Hi Indeeper,

Thank you for explaining to me about PTSD an how it can affect the way I feel and behave. Help for me is in the pipeline but as you say it takes time. For me now it is about how I get through until the cavelry arrive. I know that I will have difficulty finding my voice as I have not spoken to anyone about any of it, if I am honest I do not want to but at the same time I know if I do not it will haunt me forever. Something I could not live with.

If I have posted this in the wrong place should I have replied to you in 'your experiences' area or is it ok this once to continue this thread in the wrong place?

Thank you once again your words have helped.

Hi
You can move this to the general area if you want, i think you would have to copy your post and resend it over there or ask one of the moderators to move it for you.
Glad i could help.
yes, i know talking can be difficult, I didn't tell my wife exactly what i was seeing for years, didn't want her having this vision in her head, bad enough it was in mine, still haven't told everyone in the family, some i have told didn't help, they couldn't take it and i ended up feeling guiltier than before, so not telling some people, for me, is the best route BUT talking to my psychiatrist has deffinately helped, she says i will probably always have the flashbacks, can't unsee somethings and i have Complex PTSD (from more than one incident), but i am better able to cope and they don't upset me as much as before, it is a work in progress.
If i were to give you any advice to use until you see your 'Help' it would be to be kind to yourself, don't beat yourself up if you are having a bad day, if you are having an intrusive vision or feeling or a full blown flashback then just let it happen, give yourself time to get over it when it is finished and remind yourself where you are in the now, not back then.
Take Care of You

Hi

I am learning to be kind to myself and that perhaps I am not such a bad person if at all.

One way I have tried to deal with what is happening is by keeping a journal of how I have felt. I have allowed my husband to read some of what I have written but I do not share what I see in my head with him or any of the detail. He does not really understand but I think it is because I do not try very often to explain.

Thank you for the advice about letting flashbacks or intrusive thoughts and feelings run their course. I always try and fight them, ignore them or just become so busy and involved in helping others that I do not have anything left to give myself. I know this is something I must learn to do and hopefully in time I will.

Is it normal to sometimes have thoughts about wanting to harm yourself? These thoughts do scare me and I have come close to following through, I always think of my children and husband and that is what stops me. I am not always like this, I seem to be ok and getting on with life one minute and the next I am feeling so distraught and unable to cope.

I look forward to hearing your views on this.

Thank you.

Hi
You will remember that i am just a fellow sufferer too so cannot give you professional advice, but for me, yes i feel like that too, sometimes, and sometimes for a lot of times.
I hear that it is quite common depending, of course, on what your PTSD stems from.
It is the little bit holding on to life that keeps us going, like you, for me it is my family and not wanting to hurt them any more than they have been hurt before, coupled with a belief that if i were to commit suicide i would not see my loved ones after (just my take on things),

I think that the way through is to think and decide when you are having a good day that it would not be the right thing to do, make as many reasons as you can for not doing it and these will balance out the idea of doing it during the bad days.
I am also helped by having a wicked sense of humour and try very hard to find something, anything, at least once a day to put a smile on my face.
I also have pictures of the wife and kids I look at during the bad days to remind me why I can't do anything to me.
Take care of you.

Thank you.

What you have shared with me these last few days has been an enormous help. I no longer feel like a freak.

I feel I am standing at the the entrance to a tunnel where if I look hard enough I will see a light in the far distance and that is where i need to be, the other side of this light is the real me. What I do not know is what hurdles lay in the way and how easy or difficult they will be to overcome.

Taking the first step is always difficult as it is one of acceptance, without which I know I will not move on. I think it is accepting that what happened was real and horrific but having spent a life time in denial it is difficult to do this. Small steps will get me there I am sure.

I understand you cannot give professional advice but what you are able to give is your personal experience not a theory but real life experience which has made a difference to someone that someone being me.

I have since your last email thought of one positive thing in my life each day sometimes I have had more than one and I am now going to start a positive thought book and on those really bad days I will have something to look through that will make me feel good about myself again.

Thank you for talking with me and using your own traumatic experience to help and guide myself and others in my book it makes you one of life's special people.

Thank you x

Hi
I am pleased that it may have helped you, if you find you want to talk about your experience and would like to keep it private you can P.M. me, sometimes it is easier to write things privately than to talk face to face with someone, feel free.
Another thing that helped me was to write down what i was seeing but that i felt i could not talk about. i then locked these away in the safe, i even distroyed some but still felt a bit better having given them a voice and bringing them out of my mind back into the real world.

I have tried to write down what I see and feel, what I actually do is write around what I have seen and felt. I kind of turn it into a story because then I do not have to own it, it is just that a story that belongs to someone else.

Just now I am trying really hard to pack away my memories as I cannot cope with what they are doing to me and it stops me from caring for my family in the way that i like too. I think that if I don't acknowledge it it will go away.

Have you ever tried to do this?

Hi
Yes my early bouts of CBT or in those days talking therapy was just that, teaching you to pack your experiences up put them in a room in your mind, lock the door and have the key so you could unlock it at your leisure.
Problem with that kind of thinking has proved to be that it is a lovely neat way of thinking of things but my mind doesn't work like that, what actualy happened was i put it from my concious mind, so my subconcious mind just worked away on it behind the scenes, trying to make sense of the horror, by the time it raised itself to my concious level again because my mind had still not worked it all out, it had gotten a lot more disjointed and has now taken a lot longer to sort it all out again.

I know there are instances when it is too soon, too raw, too upsetting or just plain not the right time to be dealing with it, but I really do feel the earlier the better because i struggled for years going down totally the wrong track, trying to push through the flashbacks only to become more and more distressed, trying to ignore them only to have them become more frequent, now I have learnt to let them happen but to be able, on a good day, to be more detached, to watch it like a movie, as though it is happening to someone else and when it is over to make myself aware of my surroundings and the fact I am here now not stuck back there and then.
I said on a good day because it is a work in progress and I do have bad days still when I get sucked into the past with a really strong vivid flashback that has me straight back there without too much warning, we just do our best.

BUT
If it works for you then who am I to say you are wrong, only thing I would say is you need to be well for your family and I have found that although the early parts of CBT upset me more than before i started i still functioned for my family and job, not easily I will admit, but I now feel as though i am getting back some of the old me, on good days.
I am even getting back into training for my divemasters certification, first instructor level of scuba diving.
Take care

You have given me lots to think through, so much of what you say makes sense, I just do not feel ready for the therapy that I will be getting. Half of me wants to blurt it all out and get it over and done with the other part of me just wants to hide. Does the time ever feel right or is it a case of take a deep breath and go for it?

Re diving my daughter enjoys diving and went with her father last year to Egypt and took a PADI certificate of some sort. Unfortunately she will have to take a refresher before doing the next level as she has not done a dive since. she refuses to dive in the UK she says it is too cold. Good luck with your divemasters certification, I hope it goes well and that you enjoy it.

Take care, thank you once again

Your daughter will probably only be asked to do her first dive with an instructor in tow and have to do a couple of the skills she has learnt whilst on that dive before moving on, she will probably find it all easy, we all have to do a scuba review dive if we havent dived for over 6 months.

I don't know if there is ever a good time to be talking about something that hurts so much we are keeping it inside, if we are keeping it from our loved ones that should be an indication of how hard it is to talk about, these are the very people who would give us most support and compassion.

Part of the symptoms of PTSD is a reluctance to talk about the incident so the professionals expect it to be hard and so should we, but it appears to be the only way to deal with it is to get it out there and examine it.

I would say get advice as to whether the professionals think you can deal with it now, you needn't go any further than that if they agree the time isn't right, there need be no pressure on you to proceed until you feel ready.

The first part of my meeting with my psychiatrist was that very subject, she asked what was happening in my life to see if i was ready for the treatment.

Take care

I seem to have so many things I want to know about, really just need to check that what I am experiencing is within the normal limits.

I have dreams and sometimes visions which are quite violent but are some how out of context with what actually happened.

An example:

This was a vision: A paper plate with a body on in the foetal position the body appears cut and bruised and in need of help (I am unable to tell if it is naked or has a small amount of clothing on) and I am just standing there and doing nothing. It is in colour the paper plate even has a fluted edged which is pale blue and the rest of it is white. The body is not central on the plate but to one side so it is hanging over the edge but all limbs are on the plate. It is so obviously in pain and great distress. I do not know what has happened to them but do nothing to find out or give comfort. I do not know if they are male or female but I do know they are adult.

I can work out where some of this may be coming from but not the significance of the plate or my actions or rather lack of them.

The other thing I see is peoples faces I do not recognise and they are upside down or skeletal in appearance. I find myself asking them what they want as I get the feeling they need something from me but I do not know what.

Is it ok to have such odd experiences like this?

Hi
I couldn't comment on your dreams and visions, that one is best left for the professionals, not to say that i think there is any thing wrong with having them but they are not what i get but someone else on here may be getting something similar.

I think as long as you can still differentiate between what is a dream and what is reality and not get too upset by them wait to talk to the pro's.

Odd experiences, yep i do get those.

Take care