Triggered

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this?

I took my friend to the emergency room today because she was having troubles breathing (it all ended up OK). But during our wait, I was quite triggered by the whole hospital setting, as I have been to the emergency room several times for feeling suicidal.

Just the setting in general, the nurses and beds and people triggered me...but the worst was when I saw two cops bring in a mentally unstable man. The first thing that happened were some irrational thoughts: "They're here to get me!" "I'm going to relapse!" "What if I need to go back to the hospital?"

For almost two months now I have been out of hospital and basically feeling fine, going to school and living normally. It just scared me to be suddenly flooded with past memories of several hospital stays on the psychiatric floor, and thoughts of relapsing and the worst happening. =/ I guess I'm still scared.

Is this common?

I would imagine this is common- being hospitalised for a mental health issue is traumatic in my experience.

I work in a hospital and often see patient being escorted in by police. My office is next to a ward (not a psych ward) but even then I get flashbacks of being in hospital myself and the emotion comes back every time. Every time I walk onto the ward I get triggered and want to run out. I feel scared that the doctors I work with can see that I am unstable and that one day they will admit me to the psych ward.

It sounds like you have been doing really well lately...Can you speak to pdoc or T about it what has happened so that you can keep on the right track?