[UpDownMiddleGround]

I have been experiencing a bit of paranoia over the last two weeks or so. It started off really bad but settled down some over time. I thought initially that it was leading to psychosis and didn't really want to tell anyone about it. (I posted about it in the bipolar forum).

Two weeks ago when I went in for my therapy appointment, my mood was pretty low. Hopelessness, etc. My therapist told me then that what I was experiencing had to do with trauma. I didn't really believe her because I couldn't identify anything specific that was causing me to feel that way.

Yesterday, we put the pieces together. Oh. My. Goodness. I am a mess now.

Possible trigger:

I had a car accident about two months ago. I froze after the accident and was kind of disconnected from what was going on around me. I was with it enough to call the police. When the officer arrived, she instantly lit into me about how I had to be speeding at the time of my accident in order to end up where I was. i certainly didn't feel like she was there to help. (By the way, I wasn't speeding . . . it was raining). That accident and interaction with the officer sent me into a tailspin and I have been there since it happened.

Well, we uncovered yesterday that my interaction with her is tied to not being able to trust the adults in my environment as a child. We did EMDR and brain spotting yesterday. From that, all of this sexual abuse stuff started coming up again. It's been a while. . . will I ever get better?

I'm trembling as I'm typing this. My heart rate has increased, and I feel like I'm about to jump out of my skin.

I keep getting these flashes of memories. Some seem to be non threatening so I'm not sure why they are coming up. Stuff I have not thought about in years. I really don't want to process all of this. I want it to stop. . .

[Open Eyes]

It is good that you are realizing there is a connection to what happened and something in your past and have talked about it and written it out too. Losing control of one's car and having an accident is definitely scary, but then having a police officer/authority figure talk down to you in an angry tone can make it worse, more traumatic. It's not surprising if one has a history of trauma that involved someone older with authority be mean that could come forward in a flashback be it emotional or visual. Unfortunately, police officers can be mean and quick to blame. I believe you when you say you were not speeding and it was raining, I had an accident like that myself so I know the rain can be slippery.

It's important that you acknowledge whatever comes forward and remind yourself that you are ok now. It's good that you got to talk this out with your therapist and even here where others can listen and comfort you. One of the things I have realized is how in a lot of my past traumas I did not have a witness or someone there to comfort me. We cannot change our past, but one thing that helps tremendously is to have access to someone that will listen and validate and comfort and in a way that we finally feel "safe".

Unfortunately, when it comes to police officers they tend to get calls where people have been reckless and careless and after a while of being exposed to that constantly, they can get mean and short tempered the way you described. I had a student who's father was a police officer and he told me that in his job it's a steady diet of dealing with people that are mean and angry so they definitely spend most of their time seeing and dealing with the negatives in humanity.