I had a severe back injury far from home in 2011, the circumstances surrounding which have been detailed elsewhere. Irritatingly, my glasses were lost and I spent a week at a hospital in Germany unable to see anything clearly and bedridden.
I also had a sensitivity to loud noises, and thought about the event a lot. With nothing better to do, and being forewarned that post-traumatic stress was a severe problem, I got control of the situation by deliberately reliving the event over and over again until the adrenaline stopped.
I still do it, sometimes; if I hit a pothole and that surprises me, or if I find myself otherwise unaccountably stressed and unfocused, I go back and smooth it out again.
I read your post before my accident (and again just now), and it’s interesting how much better I understand the trauma.
There’s the stereotypical “You don’t understand true pain”, but I’ve swung in the opposite direction. Whether it’s a story as severe as yours, a splinter, or social discomfort, I feel it and I’m so sorry. Suffering is suffering and it all sucks.
How you dealt with it was interesting. I hated every time my mind would think about the accident because it was scary and I could have died if I reacted differently, but you also could have died, but you purposely relived it. If I could go back, I would try intentionally reliving it on my own terms.
I have found that it does a really good job of separating the feelings then from the feelings now, because I can just keep verifying to myself that I’m actually fine, and so is everyone else.
How do you feel about the surprise of the event? I feel like the dominant feature in my recovery is the preparation I had beforehand: I knew when I joined this was a thing that happens, it being the most publicized part of the war; there are a hundred thousand people it has happened to before me who described it; we have general emergency medical training and maximum-intensity safety gear; we have hours of specific training for how to respond to it; I personally had the habit of visualizing it when I sat down in the truck; I knew that day we were going to drive until it happened to someone. I was about as prepared as humanly possible, and getting blown up still sucked. Yet I never had to deal with feeling like I couldn’t believe it even happened.
That’s interesting. I was definitely very surprised, no expectation that something like this could happen. Though, when I went into shock, I said “good thing I have another good eye” on the way to the hospital, so I was never in denial of how bad the damage was.
I was not prepared for the panic attacks, nor did I even think of a plan of action to work through them until a couple months afterwards (as mentioned in the post), which was Elo’s idea. It wasn’t obvious to me that I would have panic attacks or that there was a way to get past them sooner.
You said you knew it might happen, but had you heard about the “reliving the trauma” method from others? Was that something you just figured out at the hospital in Germany?
I said “good thing I have another good eye” on the way to the hospital
HA! After I crawled away from the truck, I was laying between the engine block and the cab, and my gunner was kneeling a little ways away pulling security. After a little time I said to him, “After due and careful consideration, I have decided explosions are even more exciting from the inside.”
He was unamused. Too bad—not a lot of opportunities to deliver that joke.
The two things I knew beforehand were that episodes of spontaneously reliving the event are the classic example of consequences I did not want, and that there is a technique called exposure therapy, which usually entails deliberately exposing yourself to some trigger until you normalize to it again. Doing it on purpose was like exposing myself to no trigger, I figure. I’m confident this isn’t how it actually works, but I kind of felt like every one I went through deliberately was one less I would have to go through while driving in the car or something.
If I someone else I know gets in an accident too, I’ll tell them they might experience panic attacks and how to work through them safely. That might be the most helpful thing.
Empathy.
I had a severe back injury far from home in 2011, the circumstances surrounding which have been detailed elsewhere. Irritatingly, my glasses were lost and I spent a week at a hospital in Germany unable to see anything clearly and bedridden.
I also had a sensitivity to loud noises, and thought about the event a lot. With nothing better to do, and being forewarned that post-traumatic stress was a severe problem, I got control of the situation by deliberately reliving the event over and over again until the adrenaline stopped.
I still do it, sometimes; if I hit a pothole and that surprises me, or if I find myself otherwise unaccountably stressed and unfocused, I go back and smooth it out again.
Empathy is right.
I read your post before my accident (and again just now), and it’s interesting how much better I understand the trauma.
There’s the stereotypical “You don’t understand true pain”, but I’ve swung in the opposite direction. Whether it’s a story as severe as yours, a splinter, or social discomfort, I feel it and I’m so sorry. Suffering is suffering and it all sucks.
How you dealt with it was interesting. I hated every time my mind would think about the accident because it was scary and I could have died if I reacted differently, but you also could have died, but you purposely relived it. If I could go back, I would try intentionally reliving it on my own terms.
I have found that it does a really good job of separating the feelings then from the feelings now, because I can just keep verifying to myself that I’m actually fine, and so is everyone else.
How do you feel about the surprise of the event? I feel like the dominant feature in my recovery is the preparation I had beforehand: I knew when I joined this was a thing that happens, it being the most publicized part of the war; there are a hundred thousand people it has happened to before me who described it; we have general emergency medical training and maximum-intensity safety gear; we have hours of specific training for how to respond to it; I personally had the habit of visualizing it when I sat down in the truck; I knew that day we were going to drive until it happened to someone. I was about as prepared as humanly possible, and getting blown up still sucked. Yet I never had to deal with feeling like I couldn’t believe it even happened.
That’s interesting. I was definitely very surprised, no expectation that something like this could happen. Though, when I went into shock, I said “good thing I have another good eye” on the way to the hospital, so I was never in denial of how bad the damage was.
I was not prepared for the panic attacks, nor did I even think of a plan of action to work through them until a couple months afterwards (as mentioned in the post), which was Elo’s idea. It wasn’t obvious to me that I would have panic attacks or that there was a way to get past them sooner.
You said you knew it might happen, but had you heard about the “reliving the trauma” method from others? Was that something you just figured out at the hospital in Germany?
HA! After I crawled away from the truck, I was laying between the engine block and the cab, and my gunner was kneeling a little ways away pulling security. After a little time I said to him, “After due and careful consideration, I have decided explosions are even more exciting from the inside.”
He was unamused. Too bad—not a lot of opportunities to deliver that joke.
The two things I knew beforehand were that episodes of spontaneously reliving the event are the classic example of consequences I did not want, and that there is a technique called exposure therapy, which usually entails deliberately exposing yourself to some trigger until you normalize to it again. Doing it on purpose was like exposing myself to no trigger, I figure. I’m confident this isn’t how it actually works, but I kind of felt like every one I went through deliberately was one less I would have to go through while driving in the car or something.
Ah man, sorry your joke bombed.
If I someone else I know gets in an accident too, I’ll tell them they might experience panic attacks and how to work through them safely. That might be the most helpful thing.
On the basis of this line alone, I regret nothing!