Quote:
Originally Posted by birdpumpkin
I froze. My neighbor even told me and my husband later that it was like I froze when he was there trying to save me from our fire. I had just put my birds/cage outside on the back porch and was about to spin around and go back inside to - do something. I had no actual thoughts in my head, but my 10 cats were in there, and that's what I told him when he grabbed my arm and tried to lead me away. And it was like I froze and didn't know what to do - go with him or jerk away from him and go inside and try to save my cats. I feel I caved because I went with him. That's when I began to panic, too, as he led me away to his yard. And I still regret not trying to at least help them somehow. I didn't care about saving myself at all. I just wanted to go inside and get my cats. And they all died. I agree - I would rather have suffered smoke inhalation and had to go to the hospital knowing that I at least tried to help them and do something, anything rather than what I'm going through now feeling I just left them behind in danger.
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Well, I'm glad you didn't suffer smoke inhalation! And I'm glad that as you didn't care about saving yourself your husband saved you.
Thank you for writing. You say very beautifully what that moment is when we become the ones who get stuck in trauma, and stay stuck as others carry on.
My experience of freezing is that it was giving up, like suicide. I was going to let strangers pluses to attack do whatever they were going to do to me, because I was so tired...I have had that terrible feeling of guilt toward myself. If was relieved when in imagination I shot one of them. That restored a lot of myself to me. Its like my jody had an action it needed to complete and when it did, even in imagination, it was satisfied. perhaps for you , completing the action of going back to open the door and let the cats out will free you from the stuck place.
Peter Levine's ideas about ptsd are very good. I know im not the Wyoming example of ptsd recovery but im still around trying for having read Perera books and been willi.g to try David Bercelis TRE. If I ever do get well it will be because I didnt rely on medical doctors alone.