Feeling PTSD'ish

[Carey]

So.  My friend's niece died a little while ago.  (she's also the mother of my daughter's best friend). She was 37.  It started as gallbladder trouble and now she's dead. Her children don't know yet.  I know her daughter very well, but her, not so much.  We were acquaintences.  But Im sitting at my desk at work literally SHAKING. Having flashbacks to the day we were told Chad was gone.  The reaction I had, the reactions of my kids, feels like it's happening again right now and I'm freaking out a little.  I have to stay at work, but I don't know how

[donswife]

Yes, realizing that a family is about to experience what we all went through

is paralyzing

you start to feel everything that happened to you and your family at that moment and whats to come for them

Take some much needed deep breaths and breaks from work

hopefully your half way done with work and can go home soon

take care

[Brenda]

PTSD is not just for soldiers.  Any traumatic event that you're a party to, or somehow connected with, can cause PTSD.  Sure, you might not be ducking every time you hear a car backfire, but when you're exposed to something that might trigger memories of your own experiences and you have the reaction you're having, it sounds like PTSD to me.

 

I was diagnosed with PTSD (reluctantly - long story, but I had a hard time believing that my own minor trauma of losing my wife was sufficient to cause PTSD because it's something I associate with prolonged exposure to horrific things in war and the emergency services and child abuse etc., not the common or garden experience of losing someone close which everyone eventually goes through.)  Go see a professional counselor who can help because PTSD can ruin your life.

 

Don't brush this off as something you just have to suffer through.

[SieOma]

How are you doing now, Carey?

 

[Carey]

I made it thru the work day and went home to bed.  Tomorrow is the funeral in the same funeral home where Chad was. I havent been back there since I picked up his ashes. A friend's father died last week and I had intended to go to the visitation, which was also at that same funeral home and I ended up chickening out. I can't do that this time. I have to go.  I've had flashbacks all weekend and several crying fits. It feels selfish cause no matter what I do it draws attention to me, and this is not my loss this time.