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reg12 · Nov 06, 2009, 09:23 PM

I am sorry to hear you are having a hard time. Why is it coming up now? Because it was one of the worst experience of your life. Sometimes we tuck things away in a neat little package on a back shelf, thinking they are handled. Then we find out later that all we did was ignore them and just hid them from our sight.

I have found for me the only way to overcome these things is that I must face them and get the control back. If I do not then it controls me. Maybe you can start by taking control of that elevator. You push the buttons. You decide where it goes. Own it when you get on it. When you get your control back, you will find it to be just an plain elevator. Once you get your elevator back, then try something else. Keep your goals as small as possible. Take care and let us know how you are doing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elysium3006

Two years ago this last August, I was hospitalized for 3 days for major depression/CPTSD and an overdose.

I was on a hold and not allowed any of my belongings. I couldn't come and go when I pleased....I couldn't go outside...I couldn't get away from the screaming and kicking people getting strapped down by the staff....

I felt so embarrassed to be there....

A nurse, in a psych unit, on a hold, with other (working) nurses staring at me from the other side of the desk. I felt judged. I felt pitiful. I felt lost and misunderstood. I felt stigmatized.

I don't remember much about my stay. Just brief flashes of memories in my mind. My biggest memory I have from that experience was from when I was in the ER...dressed in paper green scrubs sitting in a room with a bed that already had restraints strapped to it.....ready and waiting. I refused to sit on the bed because of it. I didn't want them to strap me down.

I remember when they stepped out of the room and my mother went out to the waiting room to give my family an update...I remember taking the break off the bed and moving the bed to block the door and provide a barrier to keep people out. I then pulled all the covers off the bed and went and crouched in the back corner of the room buried under the covers...sobbing.

It's weird...when I remember all this...it is all like I am seeing it as a movie. I am watching me do all these things...like I'm outside of my body. I guess that's the dissociation?

So why is this coming up now?

My new nursing contract...it's at this same hospital. I haven't been back there since....and they have a special elevator that goes up to the psych floor....and I have to get in it and take it each day I work.

I can't help but think about it. I want to be hired on by this company, and I want to enjoy my experience working with them....but I am dreading everyday, going to work, standing in that elevator and remembering so clearly...yet so far away...the memories of one of the worst experiences in my life.

Sorry...just needed to get that out.