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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. |  | | 
07-02-2007, 09:01 AM
|  | | | Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Oranjestad, Aruba
Posts: 2,305
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Yeah I guess it's like being prepared. At least that's a nicer way of thinking about it. I always think it's because my brain is ****ed up now. |
07-02-2007, 09:52 AM
| | | | Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: UK
Posts: 729
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Another way to look at it is that we're the survivors! Its just that our basic survival instincts are extremely heightened and not exactly necessary in the world we live in. May have been handy in cave man times!
PS. What is Tim Hortons? |
07-02-2007, 10:02 AM
| | | | Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Oranjestad, Aruba
Posts: 2,305
| |
Yeah that's a good way of looking at it too Claire. Mine isn't very positive, sorry! Quote:
Originally Posted by Claire  PS. What is Tim Hortons? | Tim Horton's is a coffee shop where you can also get food, it's extremely popular here in Canada. There's even a Tim Horton's on the Canadian base where my uncle was stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Tim Horton was a hockey player originally, hence the name. |
07-02-2007, 11:07 AM
|  | | | Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: T. Bay, Ontario Canada
Posts: 3,244
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Timmy's has great coffee.. but way way too many windows.
I only go there when my anxiety is really low and usually very late at night (like 3am) to sit otherwise, I do drive through.
I watch doors windows, placement of objects, everywhere. At home, at dads whereever I go. In fact when I walk in a place, the first thing I do is "scope" it out before I find where I will go to sit.
bec |
07-02-2007, 05:41 PM
| | | | Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Oranjestad, Aruba
Posts: 2,305
| |
Quote:
Originally Posted by becvan I only go there when my anxiety is really low and usually very late at night (like 3am) to sit otherwise, I do drive through. | Oh I've never been to Tim's late at night... maybe it would be different for me then. However I guess I'll never know, because a certain person who shall remain nameless would never let me go out that late anyways!! :tongue: |
07-02-2007, 09:59 PM
|  | Administrative Editor PTSD | | Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 7,443
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Very very normal Evie... to say the least. It is one of the attributes that helps a physician know if PTSD is present actually, because the person will always have their back to a wall, door generally in view incase someone walks through it, or opens it, windows in view so there are no surprises. Anxiety.... |
07-02-2007, 10:55 PM
|  | | | Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: charles town, wv (usa)
Posts: 1,288
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i can definately understand this for a lot of reasons (soldiers, etc.) i have a little trouble understanding why it affects me. my husband thinks it is funny that i want to sit certain places in resturants, church, etc. |
08-02-2007, 12:09 AM
| | Administrative Editor PTSD | | Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 7,443
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It is a combination of control, our exaggerated startle response, and needing to see everything to control anxiety levels. |
08-02-2007, 08:16 AM
| | | | Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Texas, USA
Posts: 45
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Boy, it's nice to know this is a common symptom. Even when anxiety levels are low, I have to face the door, and I have to be able to see everything going on around me to make sure that nothing takes me by surprise. At work, while digging or weeding, I am almost constantly looking up to see where any people are and watch their movement patterns, making sure they aren't coming near me. I can't tell if there is any anxiety involved in the constant landscape-perusals, but they have to happen, or I get grouchy. Gotta see, gotta be ready, gotta have an escape route. |
08-02-2007, 08:52 AM
| | Administrative Editor PTSD | | Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 7,443
| |
Exposure therapy helps move past this Eagle, being you intentionally go and sit yourself in the middle of restaurants, you get anxious, but afterwards you look at the facts, being "nothing bad happened to me sitting in the middle, having my back exposed, not seeing windows and doors, it was all in my head." | | Thread Tools | | | | Display Modes |  Linear Mode | 
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