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Sophie_M If you need to talk about Bondi Beach - Our community is here
  • replies: 8

Hi everyone, After the heartbreaking events at Bondi Beach on Sunday night, we know many people in our community may be feeling shaken, distressed, or unsure how to make sense of what has happened. Religious and political violence has no place is Aus... View more

Hi everyone, After the heartbreaking events at Bondi Beach on Sunday night, we know many people in our community may be feeling shaken, distressed, or unsure how to make sense of what has happened. Religious and political violence has no place is Australia and we extend our heartfelt condolences to the individuals and families affected by this tragedy. We wanted to create a space where you can share whatever you’re feeling - whether that’s fear, shock, grief, or anything else that has come up for you. If you need support from others in the community, please feel welcome to post here. Violence and acts of terror can bring feelings of shock, grief, profound sadness, anger and fear. It’s normal to experience these emotions while trying to make sense of distressing events. It may take time for these feelings to ease, but it’s never too early to seek support if you are feeling distressed. Beyond Blue is here for you anytime, by phone on 1300 224 636 or via webchat: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/talk-to-a-counsellor You can also support those around you by being available to them and listening. Thank you for being such an important part of this community, and for the kindness, honesty, and wisdom you continue to share with each other. We remind the community that Beyond Blue is here for all people in Australia, no matter what you believe, how you live or who you worship. Kind regards Sophie M

A_Tech PTSD for Medical and First Responders
  • replies: 276

Hi, Well obviously this my situation. I was hoping to find others here that might have a similar background to chat with, it can be so hard to talk about this stuff with non-med people (and I mean no disrespect, it's just often graffic or upsetting t... View more

Hi, Well obviously this my situation. I was hoping to find others here that might have a similar background to chat with, it can be so hard to talk about this stuff with non-med people (and I mean no disrespect, it's just often graffic or upsetting to others). Im a 40 year old female that has spent the last 10years in the State Trauma Hospital as an Anaesthetic Technician. My PTSD was brought about after years of exposure to shocking traumas, deaths, and no support from management. I would love to hear from anyone that has a similar story, or just wants to chat. Cheers

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moss_on_a_rock I feel like I’m trapped in a cycle I can’t get out of.
  • replies: 5

Hi all. I’m currently without housing security, have no car, no license, no money and no support system. I’m 24F and have lived with extreme agoraphobia and subsequently depression since I was 13. I also suffer from C-PTSD, fibromyalgia, OCD and am o... View more

Hi all. I’m currently without housing security, have no car, no license, no money and no support system. I’m 24F and have lived with extreme agoraphobia and subsequently depression since I was 13. I also suffer from C-PTSD, fibromyalgia, OCD and am on the spectrum (just found out recently and my family won’t accept/believe it and think I am just “lazy”. I finally got out of my small town again after having to leave the city due to my mental health being awful. I was living with my best friend and my beautiful cat in a great apartment, and, for the most part, I was happy for the first time in a long time. I still couldn’t work due to my agoraphobia, but I loved being in the city. I felt confident and beautiful, and ready to date. I met a man who what I know know as “lovebombed” me, before I knew it, he had upset some pretty rough people and he manipulated me by telling me that if I didn’t come with him, he wouldn’t speak to me again. I was so scared and confused that I left with him to his home place 12 hours from my own. Within a month he beat me and my father begrudgingly picked me up, believing it to be my own fault. Now I’m living back in my home town, in someone I went to school with’s backyard. I can’t/don’t want to get out of bed. My relationship with my best and only true friend I lived with has fallen apart. I am terrified of everyone and everything. My accomodation situation is becoming toxic, but I have no money to move and start again. I have been in treatment for 10 years, on every medication under the sun, have been in mental health units long and short term with no improvement, had 25 rounds of TMS and 9 rounds of ECT and Centrelink still won’t put me on the Disability Support Pension and have rejected me twice. Apparently I need a $500+ Autism assessment before they can accept it, despite my conglomerate of diagnoses. I’m just another product of the failed system at this point, and I’m worried I’ll become a statistic. I can’t even afford nutritious food for myself, let alone a $500 assess. I want to start a GoFundMe so I can get my assessment and money for a security deposit in a sharehouse but I am just full of shame. The only thing keeping my alive is my kitty. I just don’t know what to do.

PrincessMilktea Sexual assault is one of womanhood's darkest, most unreported rites of passage
  • replies: 12

It happened to me again tonight. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised it happened - or that I'd be blamed for it. Why was I chosen? Why was I made to feel unsafe in my own body? Scared of my own shadow? We're taught to cover up, get home before dark... View more

It happened to me again tonight. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised it happened - or that I'd be blamed for it. Why was I chosen? Why was I made to feel unsafe in my own body? Scared of my own shadow? We're taught to cover up, get home before dark, watch our drink, re-think that mini-skirt, keys between the knuckles - ritualised surrender to the reality of sexual violence and misogny.I can't walk anywhere now with someone behind me without my heart thundering, my blood rushing to my ears, my mind haunted with flashbacks. I can't tell my man why I'm simultaneously aroused yet ghastly afraid of the very things that make him so attractive to me, of his larger muscle mass, those meaty, square-tipped fingers that could just as easily bestow violence as they did rapture. I can't tell him that I can't associate sex without violence and violence without men.I can't tell him those things because he'll just look at me with some mixture of sympathy and confusion, the one worn by a bystander observing a reality he will never face but understands on a rational level, exists. And sure, men are raped by other men too, and in some ways this serves as a larger humiliation for the male ego, yet the acute vulnerabilities exclusive to women, but absent in men, makes the threat far more proportional and unimposing for the latter. Men will never experience other men the same way women experience men, and in this decoupling, is why discussions of rape culture and patriarchy will always be mediated through the fear of the victimised and the indifference of the invulnerable as she negotiates her worth on his deaf ears. There is no fairness in this. No justice.And though I'm harrowed by my experiences with sexual assault and male indifference to it - I know that when he asks me later tonight if I'm doing okay, it'll send a deluge of shame down my spine for having thought so ill of him, even in generality. Time for a cry.

lana_cat Dealing with PTSD symptoms for sixteen months now.
  • replies: 3

I left an extremely emotionally abusive five year relationship sixteen months ago and I feel like I have done everything I'm supposed to do, in terms of cutting all contact with the abuser and never seeing anything to do with him again, but I am stil... View more

I left an extremely emotionally abusive five year relationship sixteen months ago and I feel like I have done everything I'm supposed to do, in terms of cutting all contact with the abuser and never seeing anything to do with him again, but I am still having regular flashbacks to episodes of abuse, almost constant rumination about everything that happened, often intense feelings of depression and worthlessness, and frequent feelings of disassociation where everything suddenly seems alien and strange. I'm literally never happy. I haven't been happy at all in the past sixteen months. Even though the relationship was highly abusive, it was somehow easier dealing with the intensity of the abuse than it has been dealing with the flashbacks and trying to process everything in retrospect. During the abuse, there is so much adrenaline and you are reacting in the moment, there is seemingly no time to really digest what is happening, and the abuse was almost non-stop for all those years, there was never a moment where I had space to truly reflect or escape the intensity of it, and perhaps that's why I'm still trapped in PTSD sixteen months later. I've recently started therapy as well, but it's honestly been triggering. I avoid most triggers as best I can. More subtle triggers are hard to avoid and can spark a flashback before I know it, but anything directly related to the abuser I try to avoid. I just feel like it's taken over my life. I don't feel free of the abuser. I don't know what I'm doing wrong to not be able to get over it. I've poured myself into my passions, my art, travel, improving myself, but at the same time I'm completely numb when it comes to meeting people -- I can't stand the idea of a new relationship or intimacy with anyone ever again, it just makes me feel terrified and sick. My future feels empty and bleak in that sense. I have zero desire or interest in being with anyone, ever, because I now have a deep distrust of men that I can't shake. I'm so tired of flashbacks, they are so real that it's like time travel, suddenly I'm right back in the moment and it's fresh and I can hear his voice as if he's speaking to me directly again, saying terrible things, and all the intricacies of the abuse, the way I was objectified and used and reduced to nothing. I don't remember how it feels to be happy.

Lyssaa Scared of liking someone
  • replies: 1

Hi everyone,Recently, I think I've started to develop feelings for a guy that I've met at uni- for reference the two of us have been talking over snap for nearly two weeks now and have hung out once in uni. So far, all I'm seeing from him is green fl... View more

Hi everyone,Recently, I think I've started to develop feelings for a guy that I've met at uni- for reference the two of us have been talking over snap for nearly two weeks now and have hung out once in uni. So far, all I'm seeing from him is green flags, and maybe even some signs that he likes me- he asks me how my day has been, he told me over snap that he thinks I'm really pretty when he was drunk and the next day he confirmed that he does think that, he's told me I have beautiful eyes, and during the day we hung out after class he was really easy to get along with and we joked around a lot. All my friends are saying it sounds like he likes me, but due to my past experiences with guys I'm afraid for a few reasons.My last relationship was nearly four years ago and even though it was only a few months and I was young, I was left with a lot of self-esteem issues- him and a girl who I thought was my friend at the time but actually wasn't were close with each other throughout our relationship and would always say they loved each other, and he facetimed her on one of our dates. He also made a joke about my acne, which at the time was a huge insecurity of mine, and didn't treat me very nicely overall. My other major experience with a guy during high school was with this guy who liked me consistently for four and a half years whom I was friends with, but he could never seem to take no for an answer and would constantly find ways to subtly touch me, be around me and do things which made me uncomfortable- making a photo of the two of us his wallpaper, always staring at me, implying to his dad that we were dating and even going so far as to admit that he used to drive his car past my house sometimes. Because of these past experiences, I'm afraid of a few things. I'm afraid that this guy might not actually like me but is just saying nice things to me because he has some ulterior motive or is trying to play me, because I'm convinced that no guy could ever actually truly like me as a person. I'm also afraid that even if he does like me, he'll either turn out to be an arsehole like the guys who have liked me in the past, or he just likes me for my looks or something- again, because I don't believe a guy could genuinely like me. All my friends are trying to reassure me and I feel so stupid- does anyone have any advice for me, or any kind of input on this situation at all? I hope everyone is having a wonderful day

Shawtyreckless_ Family trauma and loss
  • replies: 4

I grew up in a really conservative home. I never saw my parent's show any form of affection with each other. Im only now realizing the impact it's having on my relationships. I remember the first fight I witnessed between my parents. I saw how horrib... View more

I grew up in a really conservative home. I never saw my parent's show any form of affection with each other. Im only now realizing the impact it's having on my relationships. I remember the first fight I witnessed between my parents. I saw how horribly my father would treat my mother. He didn't respect her, he didn't care about how his actions hurt her, and us as kids. As a kid I was oblivious to their fall outs. I would see some things, my mum crying and praying in her room. My dad not coming home until very late and sleeping in the garage. I'm now 17 years old and Im only now seeing the damage it's having on me. I'm getting flashbacks of trauma I experienced at age 5, and all the fights they've had. I resent my father now because, he was someone I looked up to from when I was reeeaally young. Like he was a superhero to me. He took care of the family. He worked all night making sure we were fed and had somewhere to sleep. But I just feel like it was all meningless knowing that he didn't want us. It was really easy for him to walk out and start a new life without us and I'm bottling up my true feelings because I have young siblings who have no clue what's going on right now. My cousin says I'm strong. But I don't believe it. I don't. It took 2 years for me to move on from my uncle's death, and now I'm dealing with the void from my father leaving with no explanation. I just think I'm the unluckiest human alive. But what hurts and scares me the most is that, after everything that's my father's done to my mother, the cheating, lying, sneakiness... I know she would take him back in a heartbeat even when it's draining for us too.

P12 Long Term Trauma
  • replies: 6

I received a recommendation to start a new discussion when my main discussion has apparently not initiated discussion with other than one other member over the past few months. I would like to ask whether anyone may share their experience overcoming ... View more

I received a recommendation to start a new discussion when my main discussion has apparently not initiated discussion with other than one other member over the past few months. I would like to ask whether anyone may share their experience overcoming long term trauma? My experience is that the prevailing strategy is to assume that long term trauma exists because the individual holds an incorrect belief. Therefore the solution is to correct the belief. However, I found it almost impossible to change a belief that is validated by stronger evidence than that which is suggesting an alternative belief. Thank you.

mmMekitty Poems by mmMekitty *TW*
  • replies: 21

Hello everyone, I’ve written poems with content which some people may find distressing to read. I write to express thoughts & feelings. Sometimes these are vivid. I welcome any response from anyone, whether comments or with poetry of your own. * Paci... View more

Hello everyone, I’ve written poems with content which some people may find distressing to read. I write to express thoughts & feelings. Sometimes these are vivid. I welcome any response from anyone, whether comments or with poetry of your own. * Pacific Shore Thinking too much. Now I'm in pain, All those memories come up again, Who can stop the memories, put them out? Who hears my whimpering effort to shout? "Go away! Get off of me! You're not the brother I want you to be!" I can understand, but Mommy, I can't ignore - you weren't there for me. Money can’t replace your protection. No money makes up for a lack of affection. Casting your ashes off a Pacific shore Won't bring us together, no, no more. [April 2022] * Shipwreck A shipwreck, Tossed about at sea, splintered boards, Rubbish & debris, A broken heart, A shattered me. [April 2022] mmMekitty

Echtis What is this?
  • replies: 2

The more I think about the things that happened, the more afraid I feel. Some of it I can deal with, some of it results in confusion as well as fear. I had an accident a few months ago that nearly killed me. It left me with bad injuries that I still ... View more

The more I think about the things that happened, the more afraid I feel. Some of it I can deal with, some of it results in confusion as well as fear. I had an accident a few months ago that nearly killed me. It left me with bad injuries that I still haven't recovered from. My spine was compressed so badly I have permanently lost some height. I should mention that I was diagnosed with PTSD before this, nearly two years prior regarding seperate childhood events. Initially, I didn't think I had trauma around the new event. But now I suspect I do. It has become a source of guilt, anxiety and resentment. Before the accident, I had this excited, semi-nervous thrill for what was ahead. I was going to do something challenging, but possible. Now, I get afraid walking up a flight of steps with a backpack on. I can't carry things up staircases either, I have to walk sideways with my back to the rail and both hands gripped to it, with whatever it is slung over my shoulders in a bag. I used to rock climb with friends, but now the idea of it even fills me with that same, excited nervousness I described before. I used to want to go skydiving, but now the idea makes me feel scared just writing it. I'm sure I've developed a new fear of heights. It doesn't make sense, as the stuff on the staircase only vaguely resembles the incident. I know my body can't tell the difference, but I know as time goes on I'll learn of even more things I am irrationally afraid of, just like I did with everything before it. I feel sick and weak. I don't think I have many triggers, but this new one is so absurd, it seems laughable. "Oh, I'm afraid of stairs." To be fair, when I think about it my other triggers and fears are pretty comedic too. But then I remember that this is a sign of something very fundamentally broken in my brain and it makes me rather sad.

GrowingSlowly PTSD and requested for Info from potential employer
  • replies: 3

Hi, im looking to see if anyone can offer any advice. I have recently gone through a second round of applications for a job I’ve wanted for a long time. Long story short, preeployment medical was perfect except for my PTSD. They requested further inf... View more

Hi, im looking to see if anyone can offer any advice. I have recently gone through a second round of applications for a job I’ve wanted for a long time. Long story short, preeployment medical was perfect except for my PTSD. They requested further info from my GP on whether she would see my fit for duty, she has signed off as we have had this controlled for 6 months on meds. they have now sent me a new request for even more INFO! They want to know when PTSD was diagnosed (fine) but they want to know WHY I have PTSD!!! Long story short, my stepfather raped me for 6 years and got me pregnant, a constant legal battle to put him away and a termination in another state. It is now 10 years later and as explained, the employer has been made aware by my GP that I am cleared. How do I go about this? They want this info to come from my doctor too. Not from me?! they also requested as to how long I’ve been on medication which the previous medical report already states? is this ok for them to ask me why I have this condition? Is it relevant when my doctor has said in her medical opinion that she knows this condition would not affect my ability to work as a rail safety worker? I need some serious clarification? it’s seriously overwhelming when they want to dive so deep into all the reasoning behind this condition.

Echtis Unbelievable Rage
  • replies: 1

Hello. I'll start this off by stating that I have no intent to harm myself or others. This is me just expressing myself. I don't really have anyone to tell this stuff to aside from my psych. For some reason, I snap to the, arguably true idea that I d... View more

Hello. I'll start this off by stating that I have no intent to harm myself or others. This is me just expressing myself. I don't really have anyone to tell this stuff to aside from my psych. For some reason, I snap to the, arguably true idea that I didn't deserve what happened to me. It is an idea that makes me furious. I never asked for this, I never wanted this, and I certainly never wanted to be the person I am now. When I see people being mistreated that anger rises up inside of me again. I want to scream and shout at the person who is acting inhumanely and without empathy. I want to physically injure them, or tell them honestly what I think of them, which is that they would be better off not existing. Instead, I don't do anything, say anything, I'm frozen, as I'm afraid if I do anything reasonable like telling them to leave the person alone, I will let everything out. I am afraid if I confront them, and they touch me, I will snap and attack them or do anything else that I can think of in that moment. But no. I do nothing, and watch another person get bullied or abused by a stranger or an SO or a friend. The guilt hurts almost as much as the rage. That I did nothing, that I let another person treat someone that way when I could have stopped it. Then I remember what I think, that I want to hurt these people in my anger, and I remember how utterly emotionally broken I am. It all just culminates. I don't know what to do with my rage. I am tired of being a victim and watching perpetrators do their thing, ruining more lives action at a time. It is so bad that I cannot do anything except sit down and try not to explode. Anger management doesn't work. The second I acknowledge its existence it consumes me along with grief and I have to try not to break something. I don't know how to deal with this. Sorry if I repeated myself. I just don't know what to do anymore.