mckitterick:

treasach:

treasach:

Hey, I just want everyone to know that what the world is going through is a legitimate trauma. Full on. It fits the “official” definition and everything. This is a traumatic event.

That means that it’s normal and expected to find yourself using coping mechanisms that you thought you were done with, to find yourself numbed out, to be on the verge of constant panic attacks, to be acting impulsively and compulsively, to engage in very old patterns, to have wide swings of every behaviour especially regarding sleep, food, and sex.

The research shows that people in a traumatic situation who most often develop PTSD (which I would say we are all at risk of) or have their existing PTSD/C-PTSD intensified are folks who cannot or believe they cannot do anything about it the trauma event.

So, if you are able, look for a place in all of this where you can feel that you can do something. Harass a company not doing enough for its employees, sign a petition, check in on a neighbour, set alarms to remind yourself to eat (it’s on my own to do list for today), intentionally spend time every day doing straw breathing to shift your sympathetic nervous system response. You don’t have to become some social media hero, or spend all your time improving yourself. But if you can find something that makes you feel like you can do something for yourself that decreases the trauma load on you, it will greatly benefit you going forward.

If anyone has any questions about this, my asks are open, or you can message me. (I cannot do any online therapy, I am happy to share information about trauma itself and any tools that I know)

It is okay to reblog this.

– Registered Clinical Counsellor, with 10+ years specifically working with trauma

As we are coming up soon to the one year anniversary of all of this (today is the first day of Wuhan’s lockdown), I just want to encourage you all to remember that anything you’re struggling with may become heightened in the next few weeks/two months. I know the exact day my household went into isolation/lockdown, and essentially still is, and I am preparing myself for the potential of a very bad week or so then. Your experiences may vary but be aware of the possibility of:

– increased irritability
– poorer sleep
– heightened startle response
– increased vigilance
– inability to concentrate
– nightmares
– muscle tension/overall pain
– dissociation
– increase of any mental health symptoms you may struggle with

The best advice I have for when the time comes is to: remind yourself that it’s a normal response around anniversaries of difficult things; give yourself as much slack as you can around things that aren’t necessities; give yourself as much soothing as possible (blankets, heat, gentle movies/music, whatever helps); keep yourself grounded in the present; remind yourself that it will pass because no feeling lasts forever.

I wanted to make this post so that if some of these responses do happen to you, you’ll know why and thus decrease any panic/worry/spiral you may have about what is happening.

and if you need another excuse to accept this, we’ve had lots more trauma than “just” a deadly pandemic, too, like what’s happening with the Texas power grid, what the USA has been going through since the January 6 insurrection, and what those living in Russia and Myanmar are contending with