nbay2013

Thank you for your words. You know, trauma is so insidious. It was not until several years ago, did I think of how horrible it really was. I minimized it for many years. I think when we are in survival mode; i.e. feeding, housing, caring for my child, day to day, year to year, it was all I could do to keep the demons at bay. Avoidance is the key to survival. And then years later it starts bubbling to the surface. My ex-husband is back in my life due to my daughter having a serious illness in the last 8 months. Having him back has been a terrible trigger. I can barely cope with being in the same room with him.

4MyBoys

My experience with ERMD was replaying the experience that kept flashing back with my counselor and I had to hold these pulsing devices that he kept changing the speed of the pulses on. I have not had a flash back to that particular experience since.

I was not able to go over everything I have issues with though. For instance, if I hear a particular ringtone, it almost give me a heart attack. It was the one I had for my Ex. He used to call me a million times a day at work. My new boss has the same tone and when it goes off, I almost come out of my skin. I have thought about saying something but I am hoping to get desensitized to it. I am distanced enough that I feel I can do that now. A year ago no way, I would have been in tears.

Court is still a big issue for me. Mine are more panic attacks while there though. You would think that after going for two and a half years I would be used to it.

I still freak out when I hear a F-250 diesel coming up the road. Yes they have a different sound than other diesel. Weird I can tell that, I am so not a car or truck person but that sound meant he was almost home and I did not know what I was going to get..........\\

4MyBoys

LifeRecovery

There is a great book by Peter Levine called Waking the Tiger (I think). It is about trauma and the new research and findings on it.

For me some of the body centered therapies helped (I used this instead of EMDR but there are similarities). Somatic psychology type things. I did some body work at the same time with someone trained in trauma pieces and how they manifest in the body.

I also took a training (not a therapist) in therapy and the lecture on "normal" trauma reactions helped me to normalize my own behavior/trauma.

Emotional Freedom Technique helped (tapping) and I think there is a thread on this here from a bit ago.

It was not better with any of them all at once, but it did get better for me. Again I do not have any of what I call Big T trauma, but I had enough to get into some bad situations in my life.