The Beast of Acute PTSD

 I am going to talk about acute PTSD and DID.  I am going to talk about a specific PTSD account in my own life.

When I was a small child around 5-6 yrs old, a military aircraft crashed behind my house...I witnessed this crash...I spoke about this event in an earlier blog post from March 1, 2020, if you want to go back and see the documented evidence of this military disaster.

Now, when this happened, almost immediately the event was erased from my mind, taken away. repressed if you will.

Fast forward to April of 1995.  I was living in Oklahoma City, on the 19th of April, the Murrah Federal Building in Downtown OKC was bombed.  I happened to have been standing in my yard when this happened...I felt the concussion of the explosion under my feet, I heard the explosion, I saw the smoke in the air, and immediately my mind went to "plane crash"...why?  I don't know, the earliest reports were natural gas explosion...it was later revealed that it was a bombing by Ryder truck, but my head would not get rid of "plane crash"....after the bombing I started to have nightmares of planes crashing, in my dreams I saw the planes in the air, faltering and falling to the earth in a horrific explosion, I would try and run to the plane to help, but I was paralyzed, I could not move...these dreams were several times a week.  I blew them off as just a repercussion of the bombing.  Then, I started having issues with the sound of low flying planes...if they got too loud, or I felt like they were flying too low, I would start to panic, sweat, and shut down...waiting for the plane to crash into me...this just got worse and worse over the next years.

I started to remember, or think "have I seen a plane crash before?"  I felt like I had, but I could not put my finger on it.  Eventually I became so afraid of airplanes I refused to fly.   My paranoia got worse and worse.

I believe I was trying to remember, and yet the alters were working frantically to keep that memory from me...but the trigger of the bombing cracked that protective repression of that memory.  It was coming to the surface...so I started asking my mom, was there a plane crash when I was little, did I see a plane crash, how come I am remembering a plane crashing at our house???she said that never happened and I just have a vivid imagination....so I let it go, why would she lie about an event like that?

But the dreams and paranoia only got worse...

Finally I left Oklahoma and moved away, to a safe place.  Once here in Virginia, I started talking about my weird over the top memories, I told my advocate about seeming to remember a plane crash among other things.  Well, he decided to go on the internet and research the dates and times and place of where my memory of the crash might have happened.

He found documented proof of a military plane crashing just behind my house, just like I remembered, even down to describing seeing the tail of the plane sticking out.  IT WAS TRUE...OMG...

WHY DID MY MOM LIE TO ME?

Everything started making sense, I did not dream or make this up.  I witnessed, heard and smelled that crash.   I was dragged down off the chain link fence I climbed up on to see better,  the phone ringing off the hook, the chaos, the fascination...all of it.

The trauma of witnessing a horrific plane crash was a PTSD making event.   But I had no ideal.   Not until 1995 and the bombing triggered the series of events to unlock my repressed memories, to encourage my alters to slowly start giving me more and more memories.

Acute PTSD can be dormant for a long time, but it only takes one specific event to unleash the traumatic memories and the horrific emotional distress of that moment.  PTSD can affect your thought patterns, your decisions, your fears without even knowing why you feeling or thinking a certain way...it hides in your brain.  You think you are crazy, you cannot understand why certain things "freak you out so much", it makes no sense, especially to others....they just think you are over reacting or just being theatrical....exaggerating for attention..so you stuff those "irrational thoughts" down...

Which only makes the PTSD worse...I have pretty much remembered the whole plane crash ordeal...the pilot ejected but died hitting the ground, that was in the article...I initially thought I did not remember seeing any bodies on the ground...but did I?  I have a very vague memory of seeing like mounds of smoking debris...was one of those mounds the pilot??  That is a question that will probably never be answered or revealed to me...maybe I did actually see the dead pilot, maybe I didn't...but the rest is absolutely true.

Since learning the truth and working through the pain of that event, the dreams of planes crashing has stopped.  I have been able to fly again, even though I prefer not too.  

However, living by an airport here in VA has been a challenge.  Occasionally a plane will fly super low over my house, the noise of the engines deafening and I will panic and black out, only to come too again, either in a ball on the floor or in my closet...

I know now, that is an acute PTSD attack.  I cannot stop it from happening, but now, I can breath better, and rebound more quickly.  I can explain my odd behavior and reactions to that low flying plane and I know it is PTSD.   I am not crazy.  What a relief.

My advocate says DID is like having PTSD on steroids...and he is 100 percent correct.   

Smells, sounds, music, anything can trigger a PTSD attack, if it is in conjunction to a specific horrifying event of the past.  I have so many triggers, and I feel like most of the time I am walking on egg shells trying not to destroy my fragile new life.  

I do not know if PTSD is curable...DID is not...therapy medications and such can help with managing the complications of PTSD and DID, but it does not cure a person.  It just gives us sufferers tools to work with in managing PTSD events.

My heart goes out to soldiers and others with truamatic PTSD...I understand it now, I understand the fear, the absolute fear of something happening,  going to happen, can't stop it, happening now in real time...when in actuality, it is not real time, but a flashback in your mind...you are there in that place and time...you cannot control that...it is not actual reality of a situation, but in your mind, it is reality and you body reacts in kind.  You have no control over this.

As I am coming to terms with my abuse, with the events that established my PTSD, and working through those,  the PTSD attacks are becoming fewer and fewer.   My alters are realizing that now I am in a safe place with an advocate that believes me and in me, and is supportive and does not doubt me.  People with PTSD need an advocate like that, someone who can put their own feelings and opinions aside, and embrace you, your feelings, your fears, without judgement or ridicule, or lecture.

That is the best medicine for PTSD and DID,  Understanding, patience and compassion.  Trusting your memories with someone who won't betray you, call you crazy, make fun of you, or dismiss you, goes a long way towards the healing you need.   

PTSD does not get better over time...but it can be managed better over time...the event that caused the PTSD may be over and long gone, but an event with maybe familiar smells, sounds or whatever, may trigger that previous PTSD event.  Familiarity or similarities can trigger memories of events...it does not have to be a low flying plane, it could just be a loud crash, but in my head, that loud crash was a plane, and I am paralyzed with fear and in full blown PTSD mode.  Only later to find out that loud crash was maybe a dumpster being dumped into a trash truck, or car hitting another car, or a tree crashing to the ground, shaking the ground...all that can trigger my mind into thinking "plane crash...run hide..." its the nature of the beast...the beast of Acute PTSD.

S, T