Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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*Trigger Alert*
OK, my visit back to my old battlefields where I got PTSD in 6 years of combat has really gone well. I've only been triggered a couple of times by a motorbike backfiring. Like gunfire in the old days on these old streets.
But today I got myself triggered, but good. I had no idea what would and wouldn't trigger me when I accepted my therapist's challenge to do this exposure therapy and come down here to South America. Sometimes you let the big things slide but you sweat the small stuff.
Today it was the tiniest thing. In traffic I saw an old Ford Falcon, a model of sedan from back in the 1960s. Who cares, right? But back then during the civil war I survived that gave me PTSD, one side used 4 door Ford Falcons for their secret police. They prowled the streets and pulled people off the sidewalk in broad daylight and tortured them. Ever see those World War II movies where the Nazi Gestapo drives around in a certain kind of car? Like that.
The torture usually wasn't even for interrogation purposes. They'd made a grid of the city map where I lived and established a quota of civilians on each block that they'd torture and then release like catch and release fishing. So the whole block of neighbors would know afterwards and have fear instilled in them. They didn't even care who they tortured, anyone would do. They practiced on homeless people they dumped in the ocean from helicopters afterwards. It was the administration of fear by negative reinforcement of the general population. Done very objectively and coldly, and yet very intimately and personally painful. That's what left me so hopelessly and helplessly enraged for the rest of my life when it happened to me. It broke me, yet it wasn't even personal, it hadn't even mattered who I was.
It happened to me on a sunny spring Sunday afternoon, a Sunday like today, when I was 15. I knew nothing any interrogator would want to know, but they tortured me until they nearly killed me. *Trigger Alert* I apologize in advance for saying what happened next. At the end point in the ordeal the office in charge of my torture session pulled out his sidearm, held his pistol to my head, and started laughing. It dawned on me that it was likely I was about to die. I remember just gushing my pants with my own urine. I beg everyone's pardon for mentioning that, but that's what nearly being scared to death felt like.
They tortured me in front of another group of teenaged boys and then released us all, and word got out just as the secret police routine for terrorizing the civilian population called for. So when I saw that old Ford Falcon today that old fear that was conditioned into me gripped me again. Seeing that car in the midst of traffic was like seeing a killer shark hiding in a school of minnows. I went straight back to my hotel to calm down.
I'm doing OK now. I'm glad I'm alone and don't have to try to talk to a travel partner about dinner plans or any other minutia, because I'm not really communicative about casual life at the moment. I'm just so thankful I have you people on this site to tell such a weird story to. Being freaked out by the sight of a certain model and make of car is just goofy out of context. But in this context it makes sense. Exposure therapy means getting exposed to some old sights from the past, and today exorcised one of my old ghosts for sure.
OK, my visit back to my old battlefields where I got PTSD in 6 years of combat has really gone well. I've only been triggered a couple of times by a motorbike backfiring. Like gunfire in the old days on these old streets.
But today I got myself triggered, but good. I had no idea what would and wouldn't trigger me when I accepted my therapist's challenge to do this exposure therapy and come down here to South America. Sometimes you let the big things slide but you sweat the small stuff.
Today it was the tiniest thing. In traffic I saw an old Ford Falcon, a model of sedan from back in the 1960s. Who cares, right? But back then during the civil war I survived that gave me PTSD, one side used 4 door Ford Falcons for their secret police. They prowled the streets and pulled people off the sidewalk in broad daylight and tortured them. Ever see those World War II movies where the Nazi Gestapo drives around in a certain kind of car? Like that.
The torture usually wasn't even for interrogation purposes. They'd made a grid of the city map where I lived and established a quota of civilians on each block that they'd torture and then release like catch and release fishing. So the whole block of neighbors would know afterwards and have fear instilled in them. They didn't even care who they tortured, anyone would do. They practiced on homeless people they dumped in the ocean from helicopters afterwards. It was the administration of fear by negative reinforcement of the general population. Done very objectively and coldly, and yet very intimately and personally painful. That's what left me so hopelessly and helplessly enraged for the rest of my life when it happened to me. It broke me, yet it wasn't even personal, it hadn't even mattered who I was.
It happened to me on a sunny spring Sunday afternoon, a Sunday like today, when I was 15. I knew nothing any interrogator would want to know, but they tortured me until they nearly killed me. *Trigger Alert* I apologize in advance for saying what happened next. At the end point in the ordeal the office in charge of my torture session pulled out his sidearm, held his pistol to my head, and started laughing. It dawned on me that it was likely I was about to die. I remember just gushing my pants with my own urine. I beg everyone's pardon for mentioning that, but that's what nearly being scared to death felt like.
They tortured me in front of another group of teenaged boys and then released us all, and word got out just as the secret police routine for terrorizing the civilian population called for. So when I saw that old Ford Falcon today that old fear that was conditioned into me gripped me again. Seeing that car in the midst of traffic was like seeing a killer shark hiding in a school of minnows. I went straight back to my hotel to calm down.
I'm doing OK now. I'm glad I'm alone and don't have to try to talk to a travel partner about dinner plans or any other minutia, because I'm not really communicative about casual life at the moment. I'm just so thankful I have you people on this site to tell such a weird story to. Being freaked out by the sight of a certain model and make of car is just goofy out of context. But in this context it makes sense. Exposure therapy means getting exposed to some old sights from the past, and today exorcised one of my old ghosts for sure.
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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...
you were just kid at time, even if you were older reaction would be same
no one is immune on torture, no need for pardon it is very understandable and once more im sorry that you were tortured
I had one friend years ago and she told me how she somehow survived torture I heard it from others too
exposure therapy is about facing fears and having enough courage to start it and continue it
The fact that I wet my pants always made me ashamed. I was brave under torture and did not cry or scream or beg. I controlled mind and body from the waist up. Even though I was just a boy I took it like a man. My eyes tear up as now as I write this and I remember how hard I tried to be brave, young as I was.
But I could not control my body from the waist down, I could not control my body's fear and I lost control of my bladder. And in front of the officer and the other teenagers he was having watch. I knew those boys from school. After this happened, they never spoke to me again. I was shunned, isolated with this horrible experience. They turned their back on me because I had been weak.
The officer with his pistol to my head really laughed when he saw he had scared me so much I wet myself. I'll never forget that he felt like he had "won" then. His humiliation of me was complete.
This was the world I was in for 6 years, a dog eat dog place.
I went home and got a beating from my abusive dad, too. I was so outraged that he beat me instead of comforting me, I just wanted to lash out at him in my rage. I went to my room and lay down on the bed. My family kept an old shotgun for hunting under my bed, and I lay there thinking about using it on him or on me, or maybe both. I decided no, before going that far I had to try to get out of the country alive, get to the USA. It was my dream. I didn't know about PTSD then. That my pain would be with me forever. I truly thought if I could get out of the country alive, all would be well forever.
It was a childish dream, but it was a dream I needed back then. There was nowhere to take refuge in my land, not in the street, not in the home. And dreaming that naive dream helped me avoid becoming like the people who hurt me, a killer, a person who would hurt his own father. I didn't want to be that guy, even though my father hurt me then and many other times, too. I did not hit back and took it and dreamed of the USA.
In 2 more years I did get out to the USA. 2 hard years of swallowing more abuse on the street and at home. Then even when I escaped that trouble, here in the USA nobody understood where I was coming from. They had never heard of my country, they had never met people like me and didn't know how to respond. I had to be careful not to talk about my extreme experiences. Just bottle it all up.
I'm glad my world isn't like that now. I'm so glad that sometimes there's mercy in my world, and kindness, care for others, decency, humanity. Lots of that here. This site is an oasis of hope. People here don't turn their back on you when you admit you hurt. People don't just look away and pretend nothing happened. It is a blessing to be real and be treated with respect here.
Thank you, sidarta. I'm sorry that you understand because your land went through this, too. But it is extremely nice of you to say you understand and to offer your friend's example. It is healing.
These days I get a mini version of that reaction from black or white SUVs. Black for the Feds and white for the Border Patrol. Let's hear it for the War on Drugs and The Patriot Act.
Do we feel secure now?
You were not weak- you were incredibly strong to survive that and still talk about it today with such clarity of mind. PTSD is a b1tch, but you survived! That's something to be damned proud of!
Your car story makes total sense and I think that a lot more people would sympathize with you that you'd think. Not that you'd want to rush out and tell the world, but how many people experience something similar with way less severe experiences? Could be the name of an ex. Songs can make people cry. So can the smell of something.
To me, you are probably the most well adjusted person when you consider everything.
You probably will feel like a marathoner when this is all finished and will not really feel like celebrating. But I hope once you get back home to DC and "normal" life, you will allow yourself to do a major happy dance for all you're accomplishing!
Hugs.
I never encountered another FordFalconPhobe like myself before. I'm so glad I posted that here to find out, once again, as we always learn here: you are not alone.
And as to your question, it seems the safer we get the scarier it is. Hmm.
Deli, I've wondered that many times, too. Why is the shame mine? Shouldn't the bully be the one to be ashamed? It's bass ackwards.
Thanks, Deli, for considering me well adjusted. It's taken time. I'm adjusting a lot on this trip. It's really helping, and helping to be able to post to you all at DS PTSD along the way in the process. Very helpful indeed.
Jewell, thanks for telling me I have nothing to feel sorry for. For years I carried that episode with the secret police inside me as a secret. I had this idea that I had let somebody down there right at the end of it with my bodily reaction. Somehow I believed that others going through the same thing had gotten through it more nobly than I had.
Bringing the secret to light in therapy and to friends like you who've been through traumatic moments as well, I realize it's not so. My therapist and people like you tell me that all of us can have reactions like that and not feel like we didn't hold up under stress.
We did rather well, under the circumstances. And we're still here and still reaching out to encourage each other. It's great to get that secret out and see it's not a shameful secret after all. This trip has been worth it already, and it's only two thirds over.
Be well, everybody!