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.
A major difference I am finding between live and on-line support groups is the physical cues. (Body language, smell, et al) It is allot easier to see sudden pain (triggered?) in a human face than in typeface. The physical cues make it much easier to know when and how to change the subject, post haste. They help me know when amends have been made for the faux pas at hand. Time to move on.
No such cues in typeface. What rates a "TW" for one group member is not a problem for another. Some of my own worst triggers (e.g. lights) are somewhere between benign and soothing for most people of the world. Others have told me that is true for them, as well. One person's comfort is another person's psychotic trigger. I can't expect the world to give up light metaphors just because they are a potent personal reminder of my country gang rape and child pornography experience. I can't expect an acquaintance or stranger to even know that about me. I certainly don't enjoy telling the stories. . . But. . . The visual cues can help them know that "seeing the light" is not helpful for me.
I have experienced and witnessed great healing progress in my live groups when members help one another work through the trigger-events. I have yet to experience it in an on-line group. I wouldn't know when I am witnessing it. All the forum spats just seem to hang there like an unresolved threat.
How do I compensate for the absence of physical cues? Should I? Taking someone's typed-word for it is not going so well for me.
Thoughts?
No such cues in typeface. What rates a "TW" for one group member is not a problem for another. Some of my own worst triggers (e.g. lights) are somewhere between benign and soothing for most people of the world. Others have told me that is true for them, as well. One person's comfort is another person's psychotic trigger. I can't expect the world to give up light metaphors just because they are a potent personal reminder of my country gang rape and child pornography experience. I can't expect an acquaintance or stranger to even know that about me. I certainly don't enjoy telling the stories. . . But. . . The visual cues can help them know that "seeing the light" is not helpful for me.
I have experienced and witnessed great healing progress in my live groups when members help one another work through the trigger-events. I have yet to experience it in an on-line group. I wouldn't know when I am witnessing it. All the forum spats just seem to hang there like an unresolved threat.
How do I compensate for the absence of physical cues? Should I? Taking someone's typed-word for it is not going so well for me.
Thoughts?
That's how I approach it here, b/c you're real to me. Not just pictures and words. You're feelings and injuries and memories and jobs and everything else.
If we come onto the board and say nothing that could be at all triggering to anyone else, how will we ever reveal what's bothering us enough that we can use support?
BTW, the other one is PNA (Please No Advice). Also excellent, as Lilly said, is FF (Feeling Fragile).
I wasn't on the board for a good week at least, didn't even lurk, b/c my emotions were *not* in my control, and it wasn't safe for *others*, I wasn't sure how to read my own name let alone anything else. I kept it to my DS journal, my therapist, p-doc, etc., and that's an option, too. Then you can set the journal to "private" or "friends only", and it's a way to feel safer, still share the Messy Stuff, and get support or advice or so on. IMHO only, of course!