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| | Notices | Welcome to PTSD Forum. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a life threatening, debilitating disorder that can break down a sufferer’s body through anxiety and stress. Further it poses a significant suicide risk resulting from the brains neurological imbalance and chemical depression. Sufferers often live in denial, thus this community is aimed at helping PTSD sufferers help themselves through others experiences, guidance and education. We are here for the sufferer, spouse and families surrounding PTSD. Spouses and family are too often forgotten in this equation, and often they receive all the worst that PTSD has to offer. If you're involved in any way with PTSD, get registered and help yourself now. Non-active members will eventually be deleted. If you are not a sufferer, carer or someone within the mental health industry, and active, then there is little reason for you to be a member of this forum. Non-active members with zero posts are deleted periodically during the year. |  | | 
13-01-2007, 09:20 PM
| | | | Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: UK
Posts: 729
| | But is it not controlled exposure to start with? Like you told me with the roads otherwise I could try and cross a motorway first couldn't I? I'm confused now.  So with exposure therapy you only limit your time with the problem? Not the content? So I shouldn't be seeking a tame film eg. Bambi to watch, it could be Too Fast Too Furious, but I need to limit the time in front of it? Is this right? I dont understand.
I know what I do with the TV is wrong but its better that way. I will stop doing it. I just hate the sound of screeching. It gets me more when I'm relaxing. | 
14-01-2007, 12:06 AM
|  | Administrative Editor PTSD | | Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 7,443
| | Now your getting the idea Claire. Yes, now your on the right track. Exposure is about building up, not avoiding and not being in control. Yes, you can control your exposure is what I refer to, ie. you MUST expose yourself beyond your comfort levels, NOT within or to your comfort level.
Often when trauma is involved, the problem is quite amplified, ie. with yourself you may not currently be able to cross a road at all unless with another person! Then again, you might, but you get panicked about it. If you can do it, then go and do it over and over again, until you get so drained that your brain just doesn't care anymore about crossing the road. If you can't cross the road by yourself, then what I have said previously would apply, ie. you build yourself up, you find things to focus upon, etc... a staged buildup. If a person had an extreme fear of crossing the road and were incapable of crossing a road by themselves, and dissociated even with another person holding them for support, then going out and crossing the road constantly would most likely make them collapse or have a serious breakdown. If a person could cross the road, but just gets symptom outbursts a couple days later, but can cross the road by themselves without too much issue, then you would send them out to just continually cross a road, time after time, until such time as they did get close to physically ill, but by the end of it their brain would have learnt that it no longer needs to fear crossing the road. Yes, that person would still have serious side effects days later with symptoms, but they would dissipate soon enough and their personal boundaries of crossing the road would have been pushed far beyond what they had.
It is an individual approach, and each persons ability and symptoms are different. You must look at the severity of your inability to cope with it, and determine whether you would just go rapid at the problem and hit it constantly until you fell over with exhaustion, or whether you would need a staged approach for weeks, months even, until the time they could hit it over and over til exhaustion, just to reinforce the new boundary to their brain.
You want to expose yourself to screaching, then go buy "Tokyo Drift" from the Fast and Furious series, as that contains lots of it, and literally force yourself to watch it or listen to it even as you plod around the house, play it over and over, until your mind learns that the sound by itself is not going to hurt you. Then you might go to a race meeting, so you see real cars with real screeching... just to push your boundaries a bit further again. You would eventually build yourself up to such a point where you would get in a car and go and intentionally speed up, break hard to screech, and repeat it over and over. Staged progression generally works best. | 
15-01-2007, 09:32 AM
| | | | Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: UK
Posts: 729
| | Tokyo Drift? are you serious? straight for the jugular? I dont fancy that. Not one bit. Has it got meaty exhausts reeving too? I cant stand them either. If I have to tolerate them, the sounds make me really, really angry. I want to punch something/someone. | 
16-01-2007, 03:36 PM
|  | Administrative Editor PTSD | | Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 7,443
| | You asked, I provided! That type of movie is something you can progressively do to help your mind associate with noises as not being bad, all from the comfort of your home. Let it play, see how long you last. Start it again the next day, see how long you last, repeat over and over, each time seeing how far you get into the movie before turning it off. Eventually, you will make it all the way to the end of the movie, then you repeat again and again, until you make it to the end without your mind rattling you in any way. | | Thread Tools | | | | Display Modes | Linear Mode |
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