Greetings - PTSD From Violent Crime

[poundsixzeros]

Hi all,
I'm new here, though I probably should have come sooner. For the record, my username 'poundsixzeros' is the hexadecimal code for the color black (#000000). It seems appropriate for me these days. I have chronic ptsd from a violent crime which I survived 7 years ago. Using the media as a vehicle to find the perp, it became extremely public (tv, topic on local talk radio, etc) so I prefer to keep my real name to myself for now, if that's ok. I don't particularly like to call myself a 'victim of violent crime' because I see myself as a survivor. I know that's just semantics but it's what keeps me clinging to the wreckage instead of sinking into the abyss.

(TRIGGER ALERT) To outline the violent crime: I was hiking by myself in a canyon near my house after work. It's a place I'd gone countless times before and never encountered any adversity. It was a weekday so it was pretty quiet in the canyon except for a couple of guys hanging out on the side of the trail. After I passed, one of them jumped me from behind and pinned me to the ground. His hands squeezed my throat while he said "I'm sorry I'm going to have to kill you." Seriously. Of course I passed out. Thinking I was dead, he crushed my face with his foot and ran off with his friend.

I was in my early-mid thirties at the time of the attack and had a pretty cool life before. Not to say it was perfect, but compared to now, it rocked.

I have found that support groups for survivors of violent crime are few and far between. I don't hope there are others out there because I wouldn't wish this 'new' life on my worst enemy, but I would like to connect with those with a similar experience. It's pretty lonely in this place.

In addition to joining the gang, I'm here to find out if the joy ever comes back. I am trying to be patient, but does it ever come back? You know what I mean - when you laugh really hard but you don't really FEEL it. Things that make other people happy, the JOYS in life, (christmas lights, winning a game, the smell of an autumn day, the sound of aspen leaves in the wind) just pass you by as stupid, if you even notice them at all. Yeah, I'm angry about this but I squish it most of the time with patience. How long can that last [smirk]?

I want my joy back.

#000000

[anthony]

Welcome to the forum.

[veiled]

Welcome to the forum, six. Do those great pleasures in life return? Yes. Daily about everything, not for me. But the fact it can come and go now even if briefly means there is something to work for. BTW No need to do trigger warnings, this entire forum is a trigger.

[hollyberry]

I'm glad you found the forum

[poundsixzeros]

Thank you for the welcoming hollyberry, veiled and anthony. Thanks for the trigger advice. I should have known just from my own reaction ;-)

Cheers

[nie]

:hello: Welcome#000000

[vst]

Greetings #six. My experience is yes, the joy in life can return.

vst

[poundsixzeros]

Thanks nie and vst.
That's good news. I know I can't ask how long it will take...everyone is different in their progress...but I still want to ;-) I guess just knowing that it is possible,will keep me working and waiting. As long as there is hope...

[Seabeevet]

Welcome #000000

[just tina]

The joy does indeed come back, and it is very sweet. But I don't think it comes back when anger is still waiting for its due. I've found that the times I really got in touch with deep anger and rage by expressing it in a safe environment with a strong counselor that I felt alive again. It's like lightning ripping through my body. I actually laughed right after that a few times. Feeling my pain after being numb for a long time feels like moving back into my body. Can't have a good belly laugh while floating around outside my body and wishing I could keep my soul in a jar.

[just tina]

Poundsixzeros, I hope you don't feel like I'm taking over. I speak from my own experience, and thought you might relate. That's an invitation for you to speak more about yourself and the phenomenon of feeling cut off, if you like, not an invitation for you to address my issues.

Since there is an extreme physical aspect to your trauma and you are expressing a disconnect with the physical world, I thought you might be where I was once. It seems like talk therapy and reflection alone can ignore the body and contribute to a feeling of alienation from the physical word.

My apologies if I made you feel like I wasn't paying attention to what you said.

[just tina]

physical world

[poundsixzeros]

Hi Tina,
Not at all - the though didn't cross my mind! I really appreciate your comments - please forgive my tardy response. I loved what you said in your earlier post! Comments like yours make me feel like I am not the only one, and that there is hope. I'm glad you found a strong counselor. I haven't had good luck in that realm and have pretty much decided to go it alone. I actually had an EMDR counselor who refused to do EMDR with me because I needed to get my life in order. How jacked up is that? If my life were in order, I wouldn't be there in the first place. Another one was trying to treat me for ADHD, which I do not have. Another one asked if I had suicidal thoughts. WHen I said 'sometimes' he threatened to put me in a hospital. It was that innocuous. Not a prevalent thought in my head, just a passing thing. There is no quicker way to get me to stop talking than by threatening to take the one thing I have left, my physical freedom, especially when I was baited in the first place.

Consequently my boyfriend is the lucky recipient of my sometimes mis-directed, and usually over the top, anger. But that's another story.

Please don't take offense to my tardy reply - you have a beautiful way with words and I do appreciate them!

[just tina]

You're on time when you get there. Glad to see ya.

The strong counselor I referred to was a lay-counselor in Re-evaluative Counseling, and we weren't dealing directly with PTSD, but one session was amazing. I've taken the best from a lot of different counselors and left the rest. In the old days, talk therapy was it, and I benefited from a lot of free counseling with interns at college. They were pretty wrapped up with their schools, so I'd always come to a point that there wasn't much else for me because I didn't want to join the cult and constantly wrangle with their dogmatic theories about who I was.

I had a great counselor at the VA for six years, but we were only allotted twenty minute visits. After he left, there hasn't been a steady one. I asked a prescribing nurse I had seen three times for twenty minute med checks, to write me a disability letter for school (I'm going back again). She started to write that I was paranoid and psychotic. I said, "What are you talking about?! You have six years of my records from a psychiatrist, and there is nothing there about me being paranoid or psychotic."

She turned and looked at me like she was forced to level with me for my own good, and said, "You have extreme fear, therefore you're paranoid, therefore you're psychotic. If you don't believe me, look it up in the DSM." Then she pointedly looked over at the DSM---the only book on her bookshelf.

I told her to just pull up the letter the last counselor wrote, print it, sign it. She did.

I'm going to look for a private counselor who will take VA money soon and I dread the whole process.

Alone is better than paying a poorly educated quack to diagnose you with things you don't have. Sheesh.

Stay in touch when you're feeling alone and don't like it.

Be kind to yourself. (Take it out on your boyfriend. (kidding.))

[poundsixzeros]

I hate to say it, but you are 'lucky'. I don't have any VA benefits. I don't even know what 'Re-evaluative Counseling' is. I was just attacked as I was moving through the world like everyone else but now I can't. And there are no extracurricular benefits for that. My crime victim 'benefits' ran out years ago, before the ptsd even kicked in full force. I cannot keep a 'regular' job (I develop websites at home for less than a burger flipper at McDonalds. Seriously. I used to make 80,000 a year. Ouch.) so I cannot afford counseling, even if I found one I liked. I pay an arm and a leg for my own health insurance which would get cancelled asap if they even knew I went to counseling. Such is life. No. I have nothing to be angry about [smirk].

ps. don't get me started on the boyfriend ;-)

[just tina]

I didn't know I had VA benefits until 1999. Luckily, my college had low tuition. I tried all different kinds of sources and services. I usually paid on a sliding scale.

I feel lucky to have the VA....though I have some very mixed feelings about it. I never made much money. I honestly didn't think we humans would be around this long.

I've met other previously highly paid-professionals with Phds driving cabs, and people who were raised upper-middle class scraping by on assistance and SS. Was a caregiver for the last 8 years. I see a lot of disorientation, in the people I've known who have suffered such a financial fall. I suspect we'll all be seeing a lot more of that in the future. I'm thinking the costs of counseling might come down a bit, at least.

You have plenty to be angry about. Are you doing the workbook? Or taking any kind of organized approach to dealing with your current malaise? Not saying you should. I've been completely without resources and suffering at times, myself. So I had to wing it. That was before the internet and the Great Flood ;), but there were a lot of books out about PTSD and I journaled a lot.