TRIGGER WARNING; talks about being triggered and dysfunctional family


so today i was very excited to go clothes shopping since i had cleaned out my closet and desperately needed some new ones, but i found it very triggering. I was determined to keep pushing forward and buy the clothes i wanted even though they brought back aweful memories and emotions about my mothers ex-fiancee who wore what seemed like alot of the clothes i had picked out. I really wanted to just get out and check around for T shirts instead but the store i had barley had any, so i stayed and picked out  more shirts that i liked, but it seemed like anything with buttons or something you would expect looked like something a golfer would wear just triggered me worse.

in the end i settled for a black nice button up, on i could wear with my ties, and an an orange button up that im wearing now, and went to the next store, but i couldnt shake the aweful feelings i was having and it kinda ruined the experience for me.

any pointers?
any one else with PTSD having problems with being there self because of some bad things that some dude(s) had done? 

i wish this day was over:/
~o

Quote from: Orangaline on November 10, 2014, 04:53:17 PM
any one else with PTSD having problems with being there self because of some bad things that some dude(s) had done? 

Yes. There is, sadly, a number of people with PTSD and PTSD symptoms around here as well as many survivors of stuff.
I have a personality disorder with symptoms of PTSD and I have trouble being myself due to the way people tend to react to me and the fact that I now expect it and have trouble comprehending other reactions.
So far, the ways I have of pushing through my fear is to just do it, dare myself to, and remind myself of who I am. Flashbacks are more difficult, but when I recognize that one is happening/is going to happen, I withdraw into myself, focus on my breathing, and remind myself that I'm safe and that it will pass. It helps that if I'm with my friends, I can tell them I'm having a flashback and they are understanding.

I have many symptoms of PTSD and it's highly likely that I have it but I haven't been officially diagnosed yet since I had to stop seeing my therapist right when we were starting to go over the symptoms I experience. I don't know if anything I share will help and it seems like I bitch about my family a lot, even on here, but it also helps me to write about things even if no one reads them so here goes.

I have a very dysfunctional family as well and have gone through emotional, verbal and physical abuse my entire life. Until just a few years ago I thought it was normal for families to behave this way but I was wrong.

I've been numb for a very long time. I don't look forward to or get excited about things people normally would like holidays or vacations just for example. My girlfriend has helped me a lot with the numbness though. I look forward to having a life with her one day so the feeling of always being numb and never having anything to look forward to in life is very gradually starting to go away.

The most common thing I experience are flashbacks. Sometimes something will trigger me and I'll just zone out as an incident of abuse replays in my mind as if I'm reliving it. When it happens I usually just sit down, if I'm in a place where I can, and try to let it pass. It helps to focus on my breathing because it pulls my mind back to the present and sometimes prevents me from having a full-blown anxiety attack. I try to consciously control my breathing, the "breathe in... breathe out" type of thing. If I do have an anxiety attack I just let it happen, I sit down and cry it out or whatever I need to do as I tell myself that it will pass too and it always does.

Occasionally the flashbacks will manifest in the form of nightmares that continue throughout the night and keep waking me up. When I'm woken up by a nightmare I try to stay awake for a few minutes and sort of reset my mind. I'll go get a glass of water or go check on one of my pets just to take my mind off of whatever may have been triggering me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

It's really rare but I do experience auditory hallucinations from time to time and when those occur it's like I'm re-hearing (if that's even a word) the verbal abuse from my mother or father screaming at me. A lot of times when I'm screamed at (yes, they literally do scream) their voices will continue to ring in my ears afterwards and if I'm triggered I'll hear their voices screaming at me again even if I'm in a room that's dead silent. These can be really scary especially because for some reason they seem to occur right as I'm falling asleep or right as I'm waking up. Luckily it doesn't happen too often and I understand what's going on now, that I'm not "crazy", and it seems to stop as quickly as it started. It can still be unsettling sometimes though and I haven't quite figured out what triggers it yet.

Sometimes just being around my parents, mostly my father who has been the primary abuser, will trigger me and I'll start to shake or breakdown into an anxiety attack if I'm around him. On the flip side sometimes I become uncontrollably angry. When that happens I just get away as quickly as possible and my girlfriend helps me calm down by talking to me about other unrelated things to take my mind off of the anxiety. The anger is a lot more difficult to control though and I'm not sure how to deal with it yet. A lot of times I find myself turning to self-harm as a way to try to calm myself down and kind of snap out of it but I would never, ever suggest following my example in that. The one and only thing I have found that works is if I'm extremely angry I'll go outside and just stand there and look at the clouds or stars or something. It sounds cheesy but it makes me feel small and it seems to minimize my anger too. It really helps if it's cold outside too because then I can literally go outside to cool off.


In the case of certain clothes triggering you it might help if you find something else to associate the certain styles with rather than letting your mind automatically associate them with your mother's ex. If you like button-downs, for example, but find them to be triggering try Googling those types of shirts (when you're ready) and looking at pictures of guys wearing them and the different brands. It will take a while but gradually you'll begin to associate that style with an image you saw or a brand you liked rather than associating it with the ex.

Yeah, I get some triggers sometimes and I'm really, REALLY paranoid that if I ever get on T I'll end up looking exactly like my bio-dad. I have green eyes and men with green or blue eyes scare the **** out of me, I just get evil vibes off them like they want to hurt me, probably a response to things from my past. I do not want to end up scared of the person in the mirror!

But yeah, some triggering things require doing whatever you can to be distracted or step away from the situation. If I were you I probably would have cut the shopping trip short and gone home to hide in my room/gone somewhere else just to be somewhere else. But maybe being able to continue shopping, even if it was in a different store, was a step toward reclaiming clothes and your mind from that person.

It sucks that there was a non-good person in your life stealing and corrupting your fashion sense. But you shouldn't have to feel that pain forever. Exposure over time can help -- seeing yourself in those clothes and not him, seeing others who are actually decent people in those clothes, etc. but it's definitely a hard road to get to a point of being comfortable.

You deserve to be comfortable in your own skin, and certainly in your own clothes. Life's too cold without them.

Contravene, thank you for sharing. Your post is very personal and emotional and I very much appreciate the openness of it and the selflessness of you sharing it to help others who are also struggling with severe distress.

Quote from: pianoforte on November 12, 2014, 04:58:49 AM


Contravene, thank you for sharing. Your post is very personal and emotional and I very much appreciate the openness of it and the selflessness of you sharing it to help others who are also struggling with severe distress.

same here