My PTSD anniversary day is coming up in a couple days. I’ve already reach out to friends asking for help and support. I asked informed most of then as to why I needed the support and they understood and others just said if I wasn’t ready that’s fine.
Now that it’s a couple days away and I’ve been on a whole new level of anxious and depressed. I’ve been having more panic attacks and break downs which I expected but the support system I thought I created has left me alone.
Everyone tells you to ask for help and I did. But they didn’t listen and I’m alone. So what now?
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jayT67
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Now..u need to start thinking of urself n helping urself n put aside the ones who can't be there for u.Personally,for me,no one ever understood "anniversary"days so I had to do it on my own.I used to not leave my house..then I learned that it accomplishes nothing.I use those days to busy myself n do nice things for myself to distract.Years later..Im in a better place on "anniversaries " n even sometimes forget the dates...😀that means I win n these days dont have power over me.
Yes anniversaries are difficult times and especially if you don’t have a plan for that time.
I practice both mindfulness and grounding techniques and these have probably been the best thing I can offer.
When there are anniversary times associated with my traumas I have a plan, I write it down and I stick to it. I have a full day. I don’t wait for others to fill it I ring them and make plans to meet for lunch and dinner. I take myself off to a movie I want to see and I do this alone because while I need a full day I also need some alone time not to think about trauma but to be with myself. More so now I’m becoming comfortable in my own skin.
I hope you can find something you really like to do and do it on the anniversary.
For meits like turning the trauma around something that was so traumatising has the ability to fade when I add in something fun.
Sometimes I feel scared that I’m not strong enough to deal with it on my own and sometimes I’m not and it just makes things harder but thank you so much for the advise.
I'm sorry this is bringing up so much. And it's understandably an emotional time. I personally don't know the exact anniversary of my original significant trauma. I guess I was lucky in a way that I wasn't keeping track of the date around that time. But it's still a tough time of the year. After eight of them, it has gotten easier though. I know the month it happened and the day of the week it was on.
And I could probably work out the date fairly straightforwardly by narrowing it down based on the date of a different event that happened later that month.
But I won't let myself go there. I think on some level, I probably do know the date. Usually, I'll realise it's the end of the month and, with it, realise that the anniversary would've passed though.
But I understand for a lot of people they're bound to stick in one's mind. I feel like Lindyloo and hippolove have already given good suggestions so I'm just sharing my thoughts on the matter.
People often think of anniversaries as going full circle. Understandable, because the seasons go in the same cycle and the Earth has done one full rotation around the sun. Remember though, that in reality time is moving linearly, in a straight line, not a circle. You're not coming around back to that time again. In fact, you're getting further away from it every day.
Soon, you'll be exactly one year away from the onset of PTSD, and with each anniversary you'll be another year further away.
I can appreciate the anniversary bringing up a lot of grief though because it's a milestone, and some people may think of it as a milestone amount of time since the PTSD changed them as a person and they're not the old them, and getting further away from who they used to be before, for example. Or they may be thinking about where they'd be one year on if the trauma hadn't happened. So it is painful. If this is the case for you, I wrote a reply to someone about trauma and identity which may be of help, and I'll see if I can find it and edit it in.
The extract is here > I understand about wanting your old identity back, before the trauma happened, and getting to know yourself as you are now can be difficult and take a long time to get use to. I try to reassure myself that, trauma or not, we're fluid and continually changing anyway. As we go about normal life, we're gradually changing all the time, and are incrementally different to the person we were the day before. It's just in normal life it's barely noticeable and we adapt without realising. When there's trauma, however, it can change us profoundly in a relatively short space of time, therefore it's uncomfortably noticeable and unfamilar to us, and we won't have had time to adjust. So what you're experiencing here is understandable too.
As Nathalie said, it's possible to develop a post trauma identity. In recovery, you may also be able to rediscover an old aspect of your pre trauma identity that was temporarily buried under the trauma, but inherently still a part of you, and incorporate this into your new one. And while it'll never be exactly the same - like I said, none of us can go back to being our exactly the same past self, trauma or not - you can experience post traumatic growth in recovery and become wiser and more resilient.
I also remember reading a comment in this community of someone saying that they were going to celebrate, or had already celebrated, the seven year anniversary of their trauma. Every seven years, a human being's cells turn over and, at a cellular level, they become a whole new person. So this person knew that when they celebrated they would be a whole new person since going through their trauma.
The first anniversary, I'm sure, is always the hardest. It's one day, although I can understand it would probably feel like a very long day. But the sun WILL set on it. Time WILL continue to keep passing. And I'm sure that once it's over, you'll be feeling a lot better.
If you find the panic or pain is too much on the day, or on the lead up to it, please reach out. If you need immediate support, you can contact a Crisis Hotline. Don't sit alone with it. Although, as Lindyloo said, needing time to yourself is understandable too. Just make sure you have support to hand. The Crisis Hotline list is Pinned and we're working hard to make it as clear and as comprehensive as possible.
Thank you for everything you said and it help a lot more than I even thought. This is my 3rd anniversary but what make this one the hardest is 4 days before the anniversary I suffered the trauma of watching my biggest supporter die. So this is yr one for a new trauma and yr 3 for the life altering one. I also do agree with you that we change after traumas and I believe that the person I was three yrs ago died after my trauma and the person I am today was born and on some level I can be happy with that but on the other level I have more obstacles to face than before. I appreciate your response so much for the fact that it did give me some ease and I’m thankful for you for giving me that.
I totally understand not having support. I have my counselor and psychiatrist. They help so if you don’t you could check that out. Try and slow down take deep breaths, you could do yoga and meditation. It really honestly does help at least for me. Maybe go out and do something special for yourself. Something that you’ve been wanting. Maybe purchasing something and keep your mind off of it. I don’t know just an idea
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