This shouldn't still bother me! (Possibly triggering? Not sure)

Thanks for the update and the link. Go to the psychologist anyway, even if your dad doesn't "believe" in needing them. He may just not realize or want to think he's showing weakness by needing such help. (Really now, the studies of the mind-body connection er um ENMESHMENT aren't that old )

No problem! I'm going to go anyway...maybe by the time I get to see someone, dad will have come round to the idea. (This might be a stupid question, but what's enmeshment? I haven't heard the word before. )

hehehe I used enmeshment because the body and mind are not just connected but meshed together throughout our cells. You couldn't separate them out (like we used to think) if you tried!

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Main Entry: en·mesh
Pronunciation: in-'mesh, en-
Variant(s): also im·mesh /i(m)-/
Function: transitive verb
: to catch or entangle in or as if in meshes <deeply enmeshed in the plot>
- en·mesh·ment /-m&nt/ noun

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Merriam-Webster online

Ah, ok...thanks! That makes sense.

Rio,

I am glad that you are going forward in getting psychological help for yourself....it helps to have someone guide you to a good therapist, it can help you feel better about the first meeting.

The one thing I have realized about when we are children is that we are a sponge that soaks everything in. We don't even know what we are soaking up at the time. It isn't until later when we realize how we end up feeling about what we experienced. I know when I was young, there were many things I saw & experienced, but it wasn't until later in my life when I reacted to something that triggered my memory that I was able to look back with help & see a correlation to what I had seen or experienced as a child. When you actually go through a trauma even though you didn't realize what it was at the time, it can come back to you with something else similar. It brings back all the feelings & fears. With your older knowledge of what happened & has happened in many other similar school situations that brings out the upset feelings that you would have had if you had been older at the time.

PTSD does cause many other symptoms I am only finding out about since the trauma I went through was only 1 1/2 years ago.....without any closure......which I am trying to work on. My therapist has told me to go over & talk over everything & the more I can do that, the better the chance to be able to handle the flashbacks & other symptoms.

It is good that you have been able to talk about your feelings here. Then putting together the pieces of your feelings can help you deal with your upset feelings. From what I understand, the feelings don't go away, they just get easier to live with & the more we understand our thinking & feelings, the better we can feel.

I am still working on this, so can't say how well it works, but I hope that as you get good help for yourself, you will start feeling better......but triggers will always exist......& lessen with time.

Take care,
Debbie

Thanks, eskielover.

That's a good point, I've heard people say that children absorb everything around them as well. I still don't see what I went through as being a trauma, though - it would have been for the people who were actually there, who were in the gym, but I wasn't! Yet I realised today that even just reading the number 1996 makes me think about it.

Good luck with working on your symptoms! ((eskielover)) And thanks, I'm glad I've been able to talk about my feeling here as well. I wish they would go away, but at least they should get easier.

Thanks again!

I have found that traumas are different to different people.

I know that when I was going through the situation with the home care person who claimed to be an RN & caught her pulling ID theft with my Mothers ID & then when she had the police called to accuse me of abusing my Mother , & then she OD'ed my Mother on Morphine, I didn't know what I was going through at the time, & my pdoc nor psychologist didn't know what I was going through either.

The fears that it brought out in me, not knowing what she might do to me to keep me quiet wasn't something I defined as a trauma at the time either. I didn't really know what was happening at the time except for all the separate pieces that were going on around me.

A few weeks later when I was really sick, it still wasn't defined as a trauma either. Even months later when I realized that I had preceived it as a trauma, the psychologist that I was going to at the time told me that yea, things like that where care givers steal things from the person they are caring for happen all the time. The trauma wasn't validated until the psychologist understood the actual fear that I was dealing with.

Trauma is a hard thing to define. Mostly things seem like just something we live through & because we aren't effected exactly, but are just around the situation, we just have lived through it. What we don't see much of the time is how much effect the situation actually has on us internally...in our subconscious. Sometimes the trauma can be just the what if we had been........ Or like me.....what if she had enough influence on my mother to make her say that I was being controlling....I would have been arrested........what if she wanted to keep me quite because I had filed a report with APS already.....she could have messed with the car I was driving....or someone could have showed up at the house when I came home & beat me up.....or.......yea, alot of the what if's were based of situations I had seen on TV shows, but who knows WHAT IF??????

It seems to me that even if we haven't been actually effected by the situation, we are a part of it when we can see ourselves in a possible fearful situation during the trauma.

It is kind of the same as when my husband didn't think he was dealing with depression because he didn't seem to himself that he was as bad off as I was when I was dealing with my worst depression. Sometimes even though we don't see it, it still is there even though it does't seem that way to us.....& why should we feel that way anyway....it wasn't as bad for us as it was for the people who were actually effected.

We still are dealing with the trauma in our own way.....less or more, it is still trauma that we are dealing with. Once we understand the relation it has on us, & others can help us deal with it, that is when things can come into perspective.

I had to realize that what I was experiecing was dealing with a trauma even though I didn't even know what I was dealing with at the time, nor did others. It wasn't until I actually filled a report with the police that the situation I went through was validated.

I hope this helps you realize that sometimes even though we don't think something has effected us as bad as it has, it really has had more effect on us than we realize.

Take care of yourself......
Debbie

Wow! I'm sorry that happened.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Trauma is a hard thing to define. Mostly things seem like just something we live through & because we aren't effected exactly, but are just around the situation, we just have lived through it. What we don't see much of the time is how much effect the situation actually has on us internally...in our subconscious. Sometimes the trauma can be just the what if we had been........ Or like me.....what if she had enough influence on my mother to make her say that I was being controlling....I would have been arrested........what if she wanted to keep me quite because I had filed a report with APS already.....she could have messed with the car I was driving....or someone could have showed up at the house when I came home & beat me up.....or.......yea, alot of the what if's were based of situations I had seen on TV shows, but who knows WHAT IF??????

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Thanks, that makes sense. There are definitely some "what if's" - what if I was there, what if I did lose someone, what if it happened again...

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I hope this helps you realize that sometimes even though we don't think something has effected us as bad as it has, it really has had more effect on us than we realize.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> It has, thanks again.

(((((((((((((( Rio )))))))))))))))

I'm really sorry to hear you were at the school in the Dunblane year. Just because it didn't affect your yeargroup, and just because you were only six years old, doesn't mean it won't affect you later, as you're finding out. I think a lot of things which happened when young, and which didn't have much significance at the time, can grow to be something far more meaningful in the future, as you've seen for yourself...

I think that the events then would have an influence on everyone at the school then, in various forms... I don't see how such a thing wouldn't have an effect. It didn't involve your yeargroup but now you know what did happen, I don't wonder that you do think about it a lot. It's a major thing to happen. Perhaps you're just more perceptive and sensitive than other people in your class and so things have a greater influence on you, especially if you're retrospective. Maybe it *did* affect your classmates and the other yeargroups at the school, but perhaps they view it as being in the past and accept it happened and look to the future... but I think there are bound to be others who also have your problem too, but who, like you, don't speak of it...

You could speak to your parents of how you feel about Dunblane, but to be honest I think it would be better to speak to a counsellor/ therapist about it. For one I think your parents would have been very scared to hear about what happened to your school and I imagine they'd have been very relieved to hear it didn't happen to your class, and I suppose that trying to talk to them about it would lead to them trying to avoid thinking about it because obviously, it would have shocked them. Also... I think that even if they do want to talk to you about how you feel about Dunblane... there is a possibility that they might just belittle how you feel... not out of malice but more out of misunderstanding... thinking you should have 'got over it' by now... and which would more or less confirm how you feel. But I think seeing a therapist is a good idea, because you would be talking to her/ him and you'd have no emotional connections or emotional expectations of the therapist so you'd be better able to express how you think... I'd imagine so anyway, maybe though not at first.

Anyway sorry to write such a long answer... and btw... Happy Birthday!

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Rio_ said:
I've heard people say that children absorb everything around them as well. I still don't see what I went through as being a trauma, though - it would have been for the people who were actually there, who were in the gym, but I wasn't!

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

You were still in the school though, you probably knew some of the children there, and you knew the gym and you'd have played in it and used it in the years you were at school... it all has an effect.

(((((silver_queen))))) Thanks. I think it did affect other people at the school as well, but mainly those who knew people or who lost friends or relatives. Around the 10th anniversary there were some TV programmes about it, and I know I wasn't the only one who couldn't face watching them. Apart from around anniversaries, though, nobody seems to speak about it.

I have tried talking to my parents about it before, but it always feels really awkward. I don't think they like talking about it. Hopefully it'll be easier with a therapist.

Don't worry about the long answer...and thanks! Sorry my reply was a bit late.