Example of terrible/emergency situation you handled well?

Hi, I have PTSD and depression. Basically I live my life in both a safe and sad way almost as a way to protect myself. So if I feel happy for a short time I feel scared. In other words, a happy safe life seems so unfamiliar to me that I keep fearing either bad things happening (hypervigilance of PTSD) or me failing at dealing with them in a successful manner (hopelessness and helplessness of depression).

Example: one day you wake up and you think, Oh thank God I'm feeling better and I feel more hopeful about the future, could my depression be lifting? Then suddenly twenty minutes later you think, But what if the phone rings and dad just had a heart attack?! Or mom was in a terrible car accident? Oh no I can't handle any more loss, it's gonna feel terrible to go from the little joy I'm feeling to the horrible depth of depression, so let's just stay depressed, let's not get excited about the joy. I will lose everything I have anyways, including myself, and it's only a matter of time before disease or accidents takes away my loved ones and myself too.

But then another part of me says, NO, NO!! Says I'm sick of doing this to myself, I WILL be able to deal with traumas and emergency situations, I'm not gonna go back under the cover of hopelessness and helplessness of depression, I'm not gonna stay home again today and hide in my safe place, I will force myself to face the world, I will be able to deal with emergencies and to do so it does not require that I remain so tense that I can't sleep at night (my current situation) and so tense that I can't feel anything and so tense that I'm always startled. NO! But then I think, But how do I know I can handle it? When you're depressed, it's tough even taking out the garbage, answering the phone, and taking the bus (oh god, that rare occasion that I have to do it, torture).

How do you do it? Do you worry about those emergency situations that seem to combine the worst of feelings, the helplessness of trauma and hopelessness of depression, the fear and misery of loss, the deep feeling of incompetence? Have you been in such a situation since you been traumatized or depressed? How did you handle it? Did it result in a loss? Were you exhausted? Were you at peace? Did you prevent loss? How would you describe the experience overall, the terrible anxiety and shock at first, the worries of worst case scenario, the hopelessness, and how did you feel after? You don't have to share or tell me anything but just say as much as you want and thank you very much for sharing with me whatever you do.

Hi,
I had a terrible car accident when I was a teen. Since that I have undiagnosed PSTD i believe. In addition to flashbacks I have night terrors. Like you I used to have a lot of those thoughts anticipating or fearing tragedy. Also I had unwanted physical reactions when being in a car with a bad driver or a driver that liked to speed. I never got therapy for PSTD. I managed to self-discipline those thoughts. When perceiving those thoughts coming to my mind I started regulating them: first, analyzing them, telling myself they were not rational. Then diverting my mind to other place, doing something, etc. during the time I lived overseas I used to call my mom everyday , but if I had those thoughts, I would call her again. It helped. I am not able to divert my thoughts related to depression, or, better said, I can do it, but only sometimes.
I was not trained to manage my thoughts although I think that all the years. I went to the church helped, as we used to do a lot of spiritual exercises

I'm not sure I understand the question after reading the text but I'll answer the subject. There have been a few emergency situations but a couple of them are very memorable.
A young woman had an accident in which the brachial artery in her arm was cut. Someone called 911 but nobody was actually doing anything as blood was spurting from her arm. I put her on the ground and soothed her while I made a compression bandage to slow the bleeding. The EMT said I saved her life but I doubt that. As far as feeling anything I don't recall anything except a need to comfort the woman and a sense of urgency for a professional to arrive. I was on auto-pilot.
The second one was a workplace accident. A man was splashed by a corrosive cleaning agent. Nobody was doing anything helpful and the man was in agony. A co-worker and I got the man undressed and got water hoses to rinse the chemical off and cool him down. We kept him talking to keep him from freaking out as parts of his skin were peeling away and he was scared to death. Auto-pilot again. What I was thinking was basically why weren't precautions taken to keep something like this from happening, where is his supervisor, why is his foreman standing by the exit talking on the phone, and why isn't whoever is trained for this situation here handling this. Also stressing about why it was taking so long to get an ambulance. I had just gotten one of his co-workers to get my phone out of my pocket and call 911 when the EMTs walked in the door. Afterwards I (and my co-worker) felt anger and frustration that it took so long to get emergency help and that this man had been instructed to do something that was so obviously unsafe.
I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing you were looking for... hope it helps you.

For as paranoid and anxious as I can feel sometimes, I've always been remarkably calm and clear headed when the ess hits the fan. Just a few situations I can recall:

-A man prowling and trying to get into my house at night, when my wife(then my girlfriend) and our female roommate were both at home. I didn't freak, woke my wife up, handed her the phone, told her to call 911 and tell them we have an intruder and to keep the lights off and to stay in the bedroom, and I went out and stood perfectly still, in the dark, in the room he was trying to get into and then went and stood by the window. He saw my outline, even in the darkness, and took off. The police came to our door a few minutes later and advised us they had caught a guy running through peoples yards.

-When I was 20 my father tried to OD. It was the middle of the night, he'd gotten himself another DUI and came home after being released from jail, we got in a fight, and I stormed off and drove off into the night. I had a bad feeling and came back home to check on him, sure enough he was in bed and I found some empty bottles that I know had previously contained some very strong drugs. I took them to him and calmly asked him to tell me the truth, did he take these, how long ago, et cetera? Then I called 911 and waited with him in his room.

- When I was 19, my father had lost a very significant amount of money gambling, had come home and called my Uncle telling him he was going to use my shotgun to kill himself. My Uncle asked him to put me on the phone, and once on the phone my Uncle advised me that he had had my Aunt call the authorities while he was on the phone with my dad, and that the house was at that moment surrounded by the police with guns drawn, and I needed to get my father to calmly walk out the front door with his hands in the air. I get my father to follow me, calmly assure him that he's going to be alright, they aren't going to shoot him, they're going to get him help et cetera(he's freaking out immensely now that he knows the house is surrounded), told him I'd go out first and he could follow me. I open the front door and put my hands in the air and slowly step out the doorway, sure enough there are about a dozen guns pointed right at me I appraise them of the situation, advise them my father will come out behind me with his hands up and then slowly walk toward them. All the while staying remarkably calm.

I've had quite a few hairy situations in my life and could go on and on, but I feel like I've already over-shared. It does feel nice to type those out, I don't typically talk about all the messed up situations I've found myself in.

Thank you George, Clara, and Mikeyboy. In particular I appreciate the detailed report of things you have made here. Sometimes I imagine bad things happening and feeling powerless and helpless (like catching me by total surprise and me not able to do anything whatsoever, almost the kind of thing where you walking out on a sunny day and hear your dad died in a horrible car accident and you just stand there frozen like it makes no sense, like you could do nothing about it, like it could happen to you, it just...makes no sense). But worse yet is if you are actually present and can do nothing either, stand there frozen and later guilty. Then you get totally depressed. In short, sudden loss is awful and can make you totally depressed because you did not have time to adapt. But if you were also present in an emergency situation and did nothing, you get on top of that, survival guilt and start to question who you are.

But I read over these and tell myself it's possible, like bad things happening in future, I can always work my way through them one step at a time. I will do what I can and so not worry about survival guilt of PTSD. It's not like bad things will be my responsibility. But also I want to be able to be of some help and do my part, if I see something bad happening, whether to my loved ones or a stranger. Nothing worse than being witness to something awful and just standing there traumatized and frozen and later on live life feeling depressed and helpless. If you guys were in situations with prowlers, with guns drawn, with family overdosing, with bleeding arteries, corrosive chemicals on a person's skin, with car accidents, if you witnessed them happening to others and also to your family and yourself and were able to do something, there is hope that life can move on and we may not get frozen in trauma or in the past, and we may even be of help to ourselves or others. Thank you.