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.
I used to live in Kansas, and last night the news displayed a workplace mass shooting there.
Today I opened the newspaper from Montevideo, Uruguay and it said people there where I grew up are now arming themselves for self defense.
TW
I came here to the USA from Uruguay after a military patrol officer made me kneel in the street and pulled the trigger twice to his gun held to my head. It jammed twice, I wet myself, he laughed, and let me go. After years as a civilian in combat dodging bombs (literally twice) and bullets (lots) the amazing luck of that double close call got me to run away to the USA.
I'm a citizen, so I'm not an illegal Latin American here. I just break even making a living, but I've had a career here to live here and be safe and in the intervening years Uruguay has calmed down. So I've started going down there again every year preparing to retire back down there 5 years from now. It keeps me calm and hopeful to count on that.
But even though shootings in other places in the USA don't have to do with me, if they're familiar places they trigger my flight response. I have moved around quite a bit during my years living here in the USA whenever my PTSD flight response got triggered and I didn't feel safe. Reading now that there's an increase in guns back in Uruguay today brings on anxiety for me, too.
My retirement plan there in 5 years has assumed it to have become a peaceful sanctuary for me with my PTSD. Plus, Uruguay allows US citizens, which I am, to retire there with their pensions income tax free, so I can afford to retire there more than I can afford to retire here in the USA anyway.
Please know that this is not meant to initiate an NRA debate about guns. In Uruguay I was a gun owner who hunted rabbits and quail for food often before the civil war gave guns a different role in my city for years up until the one held to my head jammed twice miraculously. I can think of nowhere else for me to run to now, yet my PTSD flight response is getting triggered.
If I really think there is nowhere left in the world where I can be safe, let's just say that it is very, very bad for my ability to cope with my PTSD. I don't want to get into the details of exactly how right now. I can't take any PTSD medication like an Ativan like I used to take because of my 60% permanent kidney damage. So I am asking for some support if anyone has support to give. Thanks.
Today I opened the newspaper from Montevideo, Uruguay and it said people there where I grew up are now arming themselves for self defense.
TW
I came here to the USA from Uruguay after a military patrol officer made me kneel in the street and pulled the trigger twice to his gun held to my head. It jammed twice, I wet myself, he laughed, and let me go. After years as a civilian in combat dodging bombs (literally twice) and bullets (lots) the amazing luck of that double close call got me to run away to the USA.
I'm a citizen, so I'm not an illegal Latin American here. I just break even making a living, but I've had a career here to live here and be safe and in the intervening years Uruguay has calmed down. So I've started going down there again every year preparing to retire back down there 5 years from now. It keeps me calm and hopeful to count on that.
But even though shootings in other places in the USA don't have to do with me, if they're familiar places they trigger my flight response. I have moved around quite a bit during my years living here in the USA whenever my PTSD flight response got triggered and I didn't feel safe. Reading now that there's an increase in guns back in Uruguay today brings on anxiety for me, too.
My retirement plan there in 5 years has assumed it to have become a peaceful sanctuary for me with my PTSD. Plus, Uruguay allows US citizens, which I am, to retire there with their pensions income tax free, so I can afford to retire there more than I can afford to retire here in the USA anyway.
Please know that this is not meant to initiate an NRA debate about guns. In Uruguay I was a gun owner who hunted rabbits and quail for food often before the civil war gave guns a different role in my city for years up until the one held to my head jammed twice miraculously. I can think of nowhere else for me to run to now, yet my PTSD flight response is getting triggered.
If I really think there is nowhere left in the world where I can be safe, let's just say that it is very, very bad for my ability to cope with my PTSD. I don't want to get into the details of exactly how right now. I can't take any PTSD medication like an Ativan like I used to take because of my 60% permanent kidney damage. So I am asking for some support if anyone has support to give. Thanks.
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
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Once again I've had a fever today. I'm not going to the hospital because that's a huge waste of time but I did schedule a dr appointment for Wednesday afternoon.
Much can change, and not for the worse, and you have seen that change before. Hold to the fact you have *seen* places turn from war to safety.
There is a safe place for you in the circle of our hearts.
somtimes you have to change your plans because things dont work out how you think they will.
hoping you will find your safe space it is there somewhere i believe it
I did therapy from 1985 until 2007 until finally I had a breakthrough in 2007 concerning my PTSD from the incident of the gun jamming with me kneeling in the street near my house in Montevideo.
From that breakthrough in therapy in 2007 came my first trip back since 1989 to Montevideo in 2009. It was healing to take my 2007 therapy breakthrough there to see a peaceful Uruguay with my own eyes. My therapy plan revolved around returning from then on. I have returned annually until one day I could return for good to end my 40 year exile in the USA, and die there in peace having come full circle.
My username here is mujicaptsd because Uruguay's President Mujica had PTSD from years as a political prisoner before democracy, and yet he made it through.
From my 2007 therapy breakthrough to my annual visits in follow up to therapy since 2009 returning to make recovery real is literally all I have lived for during 7 years now. Therefore, I want to be clear and rational when I describe the state I am now in. Today's news is very, very distressing to me as to my ability to have any foundation whatsoever for me to cope with my PTSD.
Great awareness, great action. You recognized your trigger, your flight response and looked to your peer support network for a little help. What more can you expect of yourself?
As I have been saying since I started pinch-hitting with grandkids while parenting middle aged children, "Take it one dirty diaper at a time."
Stabilizing hugs, profie. Keep us posted.
I say that to say that while I don't understand exactly what you are going through, I do empathize to some extent. I am here for you if you need someone to speak with.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
Emily Dickinson
You are in my prayers. --- Pax, Vangie
You have been such a strength of reason here for a long time. I came here and found someone that was working as hard as I wanted to learn at getting better.
I can totally understand how a threat to your foundation of hope could shake you.
It sure did me.
But brass tacks.. we are who we are, where ever that maybe.
You often use "wherever you go, there you are."
I am always having to keep that in mind and it helps.
Hugs, you are a good person where ever you are.
J.