Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
Back in the US of A. Got in last night. The trip to Uruguay took 24 hours door to door. The trip back yesterday took 21 hours.
The plane stopped in 2 other capitals on the way here. As we left my hometown of Montevideo where I got PTSD and fled to safety from when I was 17, I got triggered with memories of how scary those times were. I white knuckled flashbacks in my seat for something like 4 hours.
Then as we landed and left other South American cities, I had fun II relaxed, kidded around with other passengers, no triggers, no flashbacks.
So even the flight home taught me something about my triggers and my PTSD and where my flashbacks come from. I'm a little more fear free.
Thanks to everybody for their support in my going down to face my fears. The first time I tried it was a failure. I ended up in the Uruguayan ER and then on a plane back to the US asap.
This time, exposure therapy worked for a second time. Both times it was because I was in touch with you on DS PTSD via Internet from there. DS PTSD made the difference for me for real.
Does anybody else have a story about facing a fear and getting something out of it?
The plane stopped in 2 other capitals on the way here. As we left my hometown of Montevideo where I got PTSD and fled to safety from when I was 17, I got triggered with memories of how scary those times were. I white knuckled flashbacks in my seat for something like 4 hours.
Then as we landed and left other South American cities, I had fun II relaxed, kidded around with other passengers, no triggers, no flashbacks.
So even the flight home taught me something about my triggers and my PTSD and where my flashbacks come from. I'm a little more fear free.
Thanks to everybody for their support in my going down to face my fears. The first time I tried it was a failure. I ended up in the Uruguayan ER and then on a plane back to the US asap.
This time, exposure therapy worked for a second time. Both times it was because I was in touch with you on DS PTSD via Internet from there. DS PTSD made the difference for me for real.
Does anybody else have a story about facing a fear and getting something out of it?
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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First, I hope everyone is doing well, and continuing to fight that good fight! Keep up the great work on yourselves; I'm rooting for all of you!So, I started doing therapy at the beginning of the year, when I was in my most depressed state, but with my therapist, I made big changes and steps in the right direction. But, over a month ago, she couldn't take my insurance anymore, and I had to stop...
Welcome back to the US. Glad it went so well for you and even more glad you allowed me to bear witness.
I hope you are celebrating this major victory.
Yeah, reed, it was a major victory. But I was the underdog there at the start. That 4 hour period of white knuckling PTSD flashbacks on the first leg of the trip home was tough. Departing triggered re-living how I left the first time at 17.
I was literally pouring with sweat, and I had no privacy being strapped in with 2 other passengers beside me. Also, just how do you ground yourself when you're going through flashbacks at 30,000 feet in a jet airplane? I hadn't thought of that. Duh.
Someone here has probably done it, though. What helped for me was that we landed and I had to make another connection on another flight, this time not out of my home town airport. Totally different, things went fine. Victory indeed! Toward the end of the flight I was chatting and joking with other passengers. What a difference.
As for me: Facing my fear of my reflection is my toughest one--- still working to do it --- but y'all here on the board inspire me to keep it on the to-do list!
As for me: I faced my ant phobia. (Related to something my sis did to me, tho' I was so young I had no clear memory of the first incident, only the other 6 years of it.) Anyway, I commented on the DS Phobia board on it, hoping I was not alone. Turns out, ants are not a common phobia.... but a great person here suggested a therapy route and helped me through it.
I got three things good out of that fear-facing.
1. I don't freak out if I see an ant. Anxious, yes, but no fears, even if I see a nest of htem (as long as it's outside---in my house, I reserve the right to be grossed out!)
2. I was able to talk about ants rationally with pest control, and in so doing, made a friend of our pest control guy:-)
3. It gave me something to point to as I try to face other fears--- that I *can* do it, with help and hope.
Does that count?
Happy Homecoming!
My sister was caught torturing me using ants, then other bugs later. I got yelled at for being a sissy if I reacted to bugs or ants but when I was 9, I flipped out so bad---screaming and all--- that my parents realized my sister hadn't just done it the once, she'd done it over and over.... and over... *shudder*
The year after she gave up bugs, she tried bats. *sigh*
That one, she only did once. My parents were *not* amused by a flying mammal in the house!
Getting over that fear was soooo liberating--- and taught me a lot about insects --- and really helped me see that I was not a wuss for being that scared all those years since I'd been conditioned so young. Very liberating. Took the burden of "weakness" off me.
Gteting a positive outcome from facing a fear is really amazing, isn't it? It's just... freedom from something inside your own head, so to speak.
have to stop and take tranqs before typing this out...
As those who know me know, (interesting grammar there!!), I have a partially crushed spine. I got it on March 5th, 2005 on a Sunday afternoon. I was going to be riding the horse I bought for my daughter to work on her training under saddle. I accidentally left my helmet on the groom box as I led the horse to a stump to get on. I had been on her about 20 times before, my young daughter several times. I draped the reins over the saddle horn and using the stump, just swung my leg over and sat down in the saddle, after verbally telling her I was getting on. The only difference from the last 20 times was her reaction...
She took off like a wild bronc. I did not have my feet in the stirrups, did not have the reins, did not even have a hold of the saddle horn as she begun bucking with her back feet extending high above my head.
I am told by my daughter that I did not make the full 8 seconds, more like five or six. When I came off, I landed on my head hard enough to crush part of my spine from the force of the landing...
Eight months later, out of the full torso brace that I wore for six months, found me standing on the tailgate of my truck while my 13 (?) year old daughter help my horse, Shaman. It took probably ten minutes of her coaxing me for me to sit down in that saddle - and I cried harder than I ever have in my life. After a couple minutes of my horse standing as still as a stone, I got off - but two days we did it again and this time I was ok for her to lead me around for a couple of minutes.
To this day, about one in ten times I sit down in the saddle on Shaman, even though he is standing still as stone, I can FEEL that mare bolting and bucking.
It took a lot of umph, but with coaxing from my daughter, last fall, for the first time since my accident, I got on a horse that was not Shaman. I sat down on my daughter's horse, Firefly, who I had helped train. Not a horse to ever hold still, Firefly triggers flashbacks like crazy, but I am actually to the point that I can ride her down the trail or just around the pasture.
It is not riding a horse that scares me... it is getting on them. I can do it, but still, every once in a while, I cry as I am slipping my feet into the stirrups. Shaman does not mind.
I am off to go wake my daughter so she can drive me out to go riding. Maybe I should ride Firefly today, just to make sure I can. I cried Friday when I got onto Shaman...
yadlim, who has never told anyone that... but my daughter knows