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.
My PTSD came from molestation by a pedophile as a kid, the domestic violence I survived, and the fact that I was raised in a war on a foreign mission field by parents woefully ill-equipped for the challenge.
My parents were adult children of alcoholics who reacted to their parent's alcoholism by becoming just as addicted to extremes of fanatical religion. What church group they joined isn't the real issue. I won't name it because it's really about my experience of it from my parents, and not so much the group. My parents would have turned any religious affiliation toxic because, sadly, they were motivated more by fear from their past, not as seekers of a way forward.
So it took many years of therapy for PTSD from severe abuse from my violent religious fanatic parent before I grew to the point that I could embrace religion in a healthy way for myself, little by little. In my 40s I became a minister myself, albeit a different kind, a hospital chaplain. I served people of all faiths and people of no faith on the job for 10 years until I had to quit for my own health reasons. I loved it.
Still, all the while I felt rather emotionally allergic to the particular religious group my parents belonged to. I never refused them service, but I didn't seek them out as they could trigger me easily. It was fine, I figured I was allowed a pass after all I'd been through, and I felt it's fine not to be all things to all people. We all have our limits, I didn't lash out at that group, and I kept my feelings about them to myself. It seemed to be resolved.
Today, though, a colleague at the college who belongs to that religions group specifically sought me out for support. I've only taught at this college a couple of years since leaving hospital chaplaincy/ But she identified her religion early on as my parents' relgion, the one that triggers me. So I've politely steered clear.
Well, today I surprised myself with a breakthrough. When she came to me for some spiritual help and religious support (I teach religion at the college as well), I was able to hang in there and listen to her. I was able to hear her despite the fact that she used all the familiar buzz words of that religious group.
I couldn't believe myself as I listened and realized I wasn't being triggered as much as before. In fact. not that much. Those buzz words are associated in my experience of my parents' mental imbalance with savage, bloody beatings. In the past when I heard them they kind of drowned the rest of what was being said out of conversations. It seemed like something I couldn't help, and I accepted it as such.
But today I heard past those old familiar triggering buzzwords. I did it without betraying my own beliefs and my own healthy boundaries about my past, too. I was able to hear and support this person. I didn't do it to prove anything to myself or anybody, either, because I'd made peace with not being about to hear those buzzwords without triggering.
WOW. I feel like it was a little breakthrough for me. Like I'm getting better and can be less defensive even as I accept my PTSD triggers and self care needs.
I attribute a lot of it, seriously, to the security and self confidence coming here to DS PTSD has given me in the last year and a half. I know if anything like that triggers me and I say so here, my peers will understand and not judge me. So I'm more relaxed about myself out in the world.
Has anybody had such PTSD "kryptonite," to use the expression from the Superman comic book as to his one vulnerability, and then found themselves getting past it a little?
Not just related to religious tolerance, but just acquiring a higher tolerance for the kind of people who used to trigger PTSD memories of the past.
Memories so strong that for your own PTSD symptoms' sake you avoided them, but now don't have to so much?
I'm not saying it's cured forever, or anything like that. I just didn't know I was capable of it this one time. I find it to be weird, but nice nonetheless. Especially since today was the birthday of one of my parental religious extremist abusers, my mother, who beat me bloody as a kid.
Usually the date alone every year used to be depressing for me, as I posted yesterday here. Now I talked today with a woman of the same relgious group as abusive mom and was surprisingly fine.
Anybody have this slight improvement experience with your own PTSD trigger "kryptonite"?
My parents were adult children of alcoholics who reacted to their parent's alcoholism by becoming just as addicted to extremes of fanatical religion. What church group they joined isn't the real issue. I won't name it because it's really about my experience of it from my parents, and not so much the group. My parents would have turned any religious affiliation toxic because, sadly, they were motivated more by fear from their past, not as seekers of a way forward.
So it took many years of therapy for PTSD from severe abuse from my violent religious fanatic parent before I grew to the point that I could embrace religion in a healthy way for myself, little by little. In my 40s I became a minister myself, albeit a different kind, a hospital chaplain. I served people of all faiths and people of no faith on the job for 10 years until I had to quit for my own health reasons. I loved it.
Still, all the while I felt rather emotionally allergic to the particular religious group my parents belonged to. I never refused them service, but I didn't seek them out as they could trigger me easily. It was fine, I figured I was allowed a pass after all I'd been through, and I felt it's fine not to be all things to all people. We all have our limits, I didn't lash out at that group, and I kept my feelings about them to myself. It seemed to be resolved.
Today, though, a colleague at the college who belongs to that religions group specifically sought me out for support. I've only taught at this college a couple of years since leaving hospital chaplaincy/ But she identified her religion early on as my parents' relgion, the one that triggers me. So I've politely steered clear.
Well, today I surprised myself with a breakthrough. When she came to me for some spiritual help and religious support (I teach religion at the college as well), I was able to hang in there and listen to her. I was able to hear her despite the fact that she used all the familiar buzz words of that religious group.
I couldn't believe myself as I listened and realized I wasn't being triggered as much as before. In fact. not that much. Those buzz words are associated in my experience of my parents' mental imbalance with savage, bloody beatings. In the past when I heard them they kind of drowned the rest of what was being said out of conversations. It seemed like something I couldn't help, and I accepted it as such.
But today I heard past those old familiar triggering buzzwords. I did it without betraying my own beliefs and my own healthy boundaries about my past, too. I was able to hear and support this person. I didn't do it to prove anything to myself or anybody, either, because I'd made peace with not being about to hear those buzzwords without triggering.
WOW. I feel like it was a little breakthrough for me. Like I'm getting better and can be less defensive even as I accept my PTSD triggers and self care needs.
I attribute a lot of it, seriously, to the security and self confidence coming here to DS PTSD has given me in the last year and a half. I know if anything like that triggers me and I say so here, my peers will understand and not judge me. So I'm more relaxed about myself out in the world.
Has anybody had such PTSD "kryptonite," to use the expression from the Superman comic book as to his one vulnerability, and then found themselves getting past it a little?
Not just related to religious tolerance, but just acquiring a higher tolerance for the kind of people who used to trigger PTSD memories of the past.
Memories so strong that for your own PTSD symptoms' sake you avoided them, but now don't have to so much?
I'm not saying it's cured forever, or anything like that. I just didn't know I was capable of it this one time. I find it to be weird, but nice nonetheless. Especially since today was the birthday of one of my parental religious extremist abusers, my mother, who beat me bloody as a kid.
Usually the date alone every year used to be depressing for me, as I posted yesterday here. Now I talked today with a woman of the same relgious group as abusive mom and was surprisingly fine.
Anybody have this slight improvement experience with your own PTSD trigger "kryptonite"?
I also think going back to your place of origin this summer really helped put a lot of your demons to rest.
As for your question, I don't have triggers to things, per se. Rather, I get upset over certain behaviors of people and how they make me feel. I hate abandonment feelings, feelings of mockery, non-validation... But my husband's helped me a whole lot. He's VERY supportive of me and he's made me realize that the world's not out to take me down. Just certain people, lol. So if I trigger from one of the Good Guys, then I know it's about me and I can talk myself off the ledge.
And now that I have kids, I'm not about to go ape sh!t on some stranger in a gas station or something stupid like I used to do.
There are still days I miss my old life- happy hours and late night jazz sets- smoking a pack of cigarettes over a dinner of olives, if you know what I mean.
But that's my past and I'm all about fish sticks and mashed potatoes. My wild nights now entail starting a movie at 8 so I can still be in bed by ten. This life does a LOT to burry my Kryptonite.
Are we maturing, I wonder?
I think you're right that the trip back to those old South American battlefields this summer for that exposure therapy made a difference. True that.
I'm so happy for you! And your sharing has enlightened me much... I feel validated here..
Baby steps, I guess some would say, but milestones, in our wounded souls.