Activity

@anne-of-lothlorien

O.K. I have a couple of things to add, although everyone has done a great job answering, so I’m not sure if this is really helpful or not… oh well. XD

So, about four years ago my dad was a bee keeper. He was really enjoying getting into it and it was really a neat hobby. One thing being a bee keeper means is that you will be stung. There’s just no avoiding it. When you consider your bee suit you don’t say will I get stung, you say where do I want to be stung. Well, one day he went out to a hive without a suit on. Some people don’t use a suit at all and it’s ridiculous in my mind. Anyway, he had been stung many times before and had no problem, but this time he got stung in the chest, ran back to the house, and was fine when he came in. Ten minutes later he was having violent symptoms, vomiting, loosing vision, he could barely move. In the end we discovered that he is deathly allergic to bee stings. He decided to give immunotherapy a shot, but whether or not it was working we didn’t know until he got stung again. In which he was riding in an ambulance thinking that he was about to die.

So, after all that, he began to have panic attacks. Now let it be said that my dad is not a wimp in the least, he grew up as a redneck in East Texas, and some of his stories have us going, oh man, daddy… But for some reason he started having panic attacks that would cause him to feel like he was going into a reaction again. Things like his left side would go numb or his heart would start racing really bad, things like that. I know driving for a while was really scary because sometimes the thought of him getting into a reaction while at the wheel was terrifying. One day he had an attack (which was right after the reaction so he thought it was a delayed reaction) that had him pulling off the road because he thought he was going to pass out. This was several years ago now, and he’s over it, but it was something that he went through.

I guess maybe my idea is that 1. Panic attacks/PTSD isn’t for weak and cowardly people as we might originally think. I think that was sort of our idea for a while until my dad realized that it wasn’t a mental weakness, it was a physical reaction to something triggering that reaction. I think even subconsciously our brain can train itself to send our bodies into reaction. This may be more on the PA side of things, but I think it could help in writing. 2. It takes time to retrain your brain. In these things that we might think are easy to just “get over” it’s not so simple. I’d have to understand it a little better to give specifics, this is not entirely something I really have spent much time understanding or writing, but those are my two thoughts. 🙂

I have a character that I’m working on who doesn’t really have PTSD, but he has a lot of flashbacks to when his abusive dad left him and his mom. His life goal is pretty much to protect other people from people like his dad who might hurt them. Every time he sees people hurting other people/certain things people might say to him will cause him to lock up into his own memories pretty much. Somewhere in the book he accidentally kills three fellow students and after that he alienates himself from his friends entirely because he’s devastated that he believes he’s become the monster that his dad was. Closing up like a clam, feeling tortured by his own mind, and in this case, beating himself up pretty bad titling himself things like monster, killer, bad guy, dangerous, not safe, etc. Not quite panic attacks, but he’s definitely not whole. I don’t know if any of that was helpful…

Also, another thought is asking yourself what your character is willing to do to deal with the pain. In my opinion, generally people end up hurting themselves more as they look for a way to help themselves deal with things like that.

@sarah-inkdragon

Oh my word… I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that’s like. I love my siblings so much, I know losing one is one of them would break my heart.