Thanks Rose, that is what I really needed my husband to do with me, point out the things I did manage to handle well in that situation and validate that it was scarey to be in a storm like that.

I was full of anxiety all day yesterday, I just could not seem to shake it and it IS painful. I had to really think about WHY I was still reacting that way. It wasn't something I wanted to experience, that is what is so frustrating for me. It seems that when something like that occurs, I have to sort through my mind to all the other places I was upset like that and then confirm and validate how it all connects to why I get so upset in the now when I am caught off guard or feel invalidated somehow.

A person who doesn't have PTSD can recover and even have ways that they are desensitized to a lot of different types of experiences. But for a person with PTSD, a major loss or personal threat has actually happened, or some one grew up with abuse and disfunction and are more sensitive simply because there was a loss of somekind, that loss was "the loss of control over something sudden and unexpected".
And it could have been a constant invalidation that the child in that person never knew how to overcome as well.

I think about it this morning as a car with an alarm where someone touches the car and the car sounds and alarm. There has to be a definite kind of threat for an alarm to go off in that car. Well if a car had PTSD, it isn't just when the car has a definite threat, it could be a person walking along several feet away and just looking at the car funny that can set off that alarm. "Extreme sensitivity" is what I think about when I think about PTSD and how I experience it. I find that I have to really get to know when that alarm is going to go off on a much more conscious level than ever before. And sometimes I have to put that car in someplace very isolated so that alarm system wont keep going off, because it is loud and very disturbing and even dibilitating. The alarm is so sensitive that I have to work on each thing that sets that alarm off and then slowly take the car out and see if it can sit quietly parked without that alarm just quickly going off because there was something else that I didn't see to slowly fix and adjust.

As you can see, I am still trying to discribe what it is like to have PTSD. I am doing that for myself as well as for those around me so they become aware that what I struggle with is a lot more work than just hitting a button that will stop the alarm that can go off in a car. My car has been broken into so many times that it is way more sensitve and no it doesn't just sit in a parking lot only sounding an alarm if someone actually trys to touch and disturb it.

Open Eyes