I would really like to know…
October 3, 2012I would really like to know why it is that even fairly recent memories often times trigger huge emotional surges. Why do positive memories evoke the same surges? And I am not talking about something grand like a wedding or something you would expect to bring an emotional high. I am talking about a PTSD-like reaction to common place memories…both from long ago and from the last few years.
I wonder if there is something in these positive and neutral memories and in the more recent memories that is tapping into the past negative ones. Could it be that there are triggers that relate to the past?
Or…could it be the time of year is also affecting me? Overall, it does not feel like it. And this has not just happening recently. I have been this way for a very, very long time. There is something about remembering that affects me. I either remember differently from others or I remember with an emotional surge. Or at least that is for the majority of memories.
I have lain in bed and started to recall something (not a new memory…something I already knew) and I would suddenly start to shake and I would find myself pushing the memory away. Why????
My flashbacks have almost always been the body/emotional kind. Only once in a while would I get the visual kind. When I do get the visual, it is almost always a really quick flash and a huge surge of emotion…PTSD time. I don’t have the space and time to really explore this, so I am just trying to live with it. Ugh!
So, here are my thoughts, for whatever they are worth. I hope that writing will help inside.
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I learned that the body cannot differentiate what kind of ‘surge’ it experiences, so happy events can feel just as traumatic as unhappy events (especially when we’ve experienced significant trauma).
Yeah…that makes sense, Meredith.
I know it is probably futile to write this…but I HATE that even the positive feels as bad as the negative! I HATE that the recent is caught up in the far away past and that it all rolls together in the emotional realm. Grrrrrr!
It’s erosive. There comes a point when I just want to start screaming, in general, and it scares to think I’d never stop… so I don’t have a good scream, and then it does build into the scream of banshees and I think I’m not normal, at all.
Once upon a time, although I knew ‘something’ was wrong with me, I also had a balanced awareness that having a good tantrum about life, in general, got the jitters out and I could go on with my day. I didn’t do it when anyone was around, but everyone around me was better off for it, and so was I. I thought it was human frustration that needed dealing with… and sometimes I think I had my head together a lot better then, than now.
I SO hear you! There are times when I just have to get the emotions out…and, yes, everyone else is also better off for it. I am good at hiding my emotional turmoil for the most part. But there are times when I am “touchy” and I really need to get things out.