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[Imic]

I have Complex post traumatic stress disorder, stemming from verbal child abuse as a 5/6 year old courtesy of a specific Teacher who shall go unnamed. I have lost most, if not all memories of that time period, though my memories of the times before it and after it are more present. I don’t know exactly what happened beyond snippets from my Parents and others who were in that class, but it lead to me becoming extremely uncomfortable around a wide spectrum of things and topics which includes arguments, disagreements, People singing, dancing, or in general being particularly outgoing, and a few others that are harder to pin don, which I will summarize as Drama. I spent most of my Childhood ducking out of rooms in which there were movies playing, or where People were arguing, I found myself instinctively skipping parts of books, and becoming a more diplomatic and unintrusive person to the point of becoming a bit of a doormat so as to avoid antagonizing others. When I went to the Cinema, I sent most of the experience watching from the exit. I ended up playing Video Games because Video Games don’t need Characters or Drama.

I’m currently undergoing therapy, which has been very helpful with isolating a lot of problems, but I just want to look for some advice from the Bay, because I want to desensitize myself to Drama in TV and Movies and Books, which will hopefully work to desensitize myself to real Drama, though I doubt there’s much that will make it all go away short of a lobotomy. Would anyone here have any advice, or ideas, or... anything?

I’ll probably delete this Eventually.

[Iduno]

It also matters what kind of therapy you're going to. It's very popular right now to push cognitive-behavioral therapy to everyone, no matter what the issue is. As with all "One-size-fits-all" solutions, it's dumb as hell to use that way. For trauma disorders, you don't really want to delve into your problem, or focus on it in any way. You just end up with more trauma to deal with.

Trying to desensitize yourself may work. I'd recommend things like cartoons or puppets, because you recognize that they aren't real people (similar to video games).

Medication of some form is usually good, too. It's not perfect, but it makes it tougher for the trauma to keep you from being you.

[Doomblade187]

What seems "least real" for people varies strongly - key to this is identifying what context you are least emotionally connected to the work. Also, you should definitely let your therapist know if you will be working on desensitizing yourself - they may have feedback or advice.

[ChairmanPoo]

Handstands help a lot too

[Doomblade187]

Handstands help a lot too

... Tell me more.

[ChairmanPoo]

They increase blood flow to the brain, therefore relieving the symptoms of ptsd

[Imic]

They increase blood flow to the brain, therefore relieving the symptoms of ptsd

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wot

[nenjin]

Is it the feeling that this drama somehow relates to you or involves you or is about you?

Or is it just the general empathetic connection to what's going on around you whether it involves you or not?

I mean, very few people truly enjoy drama as it's happening right next to them. Most people's desire is to avoid those situations or get away from them when they start happening.

I guess I have two examples of where I feel like this is true in my life.

As a kid there were a few parts of movies I couldn't stand to watch. The end of Superman 2 I believe where a chick gets converted by a machine into a robot monster, and MOST of the "The Light Years", an animated sci-fi film. Sort of the same story there actually: people being captured by monsters and getting turned in to monsters.

It took me many years to be able to explore concepts I felt uncomfortable with, because I have a really active imagination and these things would play on that mightily. I'd be pulled in to the thinking of it whether I wanted to be or not. I don't know how I *solved* it per se; I consume a lot of media now that younger me would have shied away from. I think by being exposed to things of a lesser dramatic caliber, it eventually allowed me to tolerate things which were more likely to make me uncomfortable. Like being exposed to a low level flu so you become more resistant to the full thing. I guess they call that aversion therapy, exposing yourself to things that make you uncomfortable by degrees until they normalize.

The other example I have would be this: slamming doors. As a kid I remember my parents fighting and a lot of door slamming, and later on in life door slamming became a sign to me that things were not ok. And in our modern life it often is that, a passive aggressive way for someone to say "I'm unhappy!" To this day whenever I hear a door slam hard, I have an instinctive, uncontrollable reaction to it. I experience an intense hot flash and my whole body just kind of seizes up for a split second in response to the sound, usually when I don't know it's coming. I've never figured this one out, it's just how my brain is hard wired to perceive the sound of an door unexpectedly slamming, is to go immediately to "oh no people are fighting and unhappy and god I hope it doesn't involve me!" All that a slamming door implies about what's going on gets compressed into a split nanosecond of bodily panic and mental lockup.

I imagine this is an evolution from feeling personally responsible or involved in whatever caused the door slamming, to just having a quick negative reaction to it that I get over as soon as my brain asserts that I'm not 7 anymore and my parents aren't fighting.

So yeah. I don't have any actual advice for you other than "learn to ride the feeling out." Hard to do in social or public situations but that's why you practice in private. Ride the feelings out and do the mental exercises like "relax your body" and "it's not about you" and "this too shall pass" and "other people's messed up energy is not my energy." Once you ride out that initial surge of emotions, you can start looking at the thing you're dealing with that's making you uncomfortable more analytically, dispassionately even.

It's kind of the tact I remember taking with a friend who was scared to watch horror movies as a kid. I got him to withstanding that initial fearful reaction to flee and avoid, and once he'd crested that wave, I'd talk about how silly and absurd a lot of horror actually is and get him to laugh and change the feelings he'd associate with horror movies. As an adult he still doesn't really like them, but he understands why now and can deal with it if he has to.

It takes time and effort and consistency to change the things about us that formed before we were conscious of them.

[Imic]

It doesn’t usually require personal connection, though the conditions for it to spring up are inconsistent. Sometimes it won’t show up, but mostly it will. I’ve managed to avoid conflict centered on myself for most of my life, but the problem is that any kind of conflict has the potential to set it off. This isn’t the normal level of conflict aversion exhibited by most People, I became well known as The Guy who leaves constantly when watching movies/tv, and somehow manages to never antagonize anyone like his life depends on it.

I’ve tried using mental exercises in the past, and though they haven’t worked for me so far, I feel like I should try them again, since I might have been resisting them out of stubbornness. Thanks.

[delphonso]

First off, good on you taking the reigns and handling your struggles. A therapist is a great source of feedback and advice. Like the others, I'd recommend talking to them about desensitizing.

Aside from that, I'd go the digestible route. Dig out a cartoon from your past and give it a nostalgic watch. Almost all kids sgows have mild drama - disagreements based in misunderstandings. If these don't bother you, due to their absurdity, that's a good sensation to focus on. Move up the 'maturity' scale until the drama gets real enough to bother you. Then you know your limit at least. Lots of self-reflection and inspection might at least help you recognize the flags that bother you, then you can start digesting those.

Also, no idea if that headstand thing is real, but headstands are pretty fun either way.

[hector13]

ChairmanPoo is a doctor. At least claims to be.

But he’s also a haemotologist, so maybe he just likes the idea that someone has all their blood pooling in their head, ‘cause he’s some weird night creature.

As fer desensitisation, you can do it slowly, as everyone seems to be suggesting, also known as systematic desesnitsation, or you can go the flooding route, and just put yourself in the most dramatic situation you possibly can.

My favourite example of flooding is when two psychologists treating a teenage girl who was scared of travelling in a car bundled her I nto the back of a car and drove around until she stopped screaming.

At least that’s the way I was told it went down...

Anyway, the idea is to learn how to deal with the emotions and such that come up when you are, for lack of a better term, triggered. You’re not going to learn how to do that by avoiding it.

Perhaps putting yourself in a situation you can easily remove yourself from (watching a dramatic movie) but that you force yourself through just to understand the sensations you get from it (how you feel emotionally and physically) and that drama occurring isn’t a terrible thing for you.

Someone suggested chatting to your therapist before doing it though, and that’s probably a good idea seeing as they are expert and have a better handle of your specific situation than some randos on B12 telling you how they think it is.

[scourge728]

I have no real advice to give you, but I want to hear if things get better for you, so I'm going to post here and also say: I hope things get better for you

[pisskop]

wanna read this when I have time.

[Sanctume]

I'm a software dev by profession.  But I've managed as an administrator for 8+ years in a group home for adults with mental disabilities (levels 1 to 3 as regulated by California Title 22) 

Drama as you describe it seems like it will fit in the Behavior Management that I use to documents "incidents" with my "clients".   

I google "ABC Behavior Management"

A = antecedent is the event that triggers the behavior. 
B = behavior or the "drama" in this case. 
C = consequence is the result of A leading to B and how it is handled, or coped. 

The idea is to document these in a calendar to see how frequent the issue is. 

And, as "avoiding" the many social events in your case to avoid the drama. 
It can help you then assign degrees to the drama over time, instead of complete avoidance. 

Consequences also can be from the reaction of the "fight or flight" from stress produces when experiencing the drama unfold. 
With it documented, you are in "safer" environment to quantify of judge it, as well as consider other healthier options or coping mechanisms. 

==

Anyway, I've also used the same process in dealing with some of my early childhood experiences. 
The ABC process can be applied to thinking back on those also. 
A = I think back on when I got spanked and hit with a leather belt because I failed on class in school; or did some stupid thing kids do but got spanked for it. 
B = My behavior to, not just feel angry about it, but brood and be in a bad mood all day that affects how I interact in the present with my wife and kids. 
C = I'm just a shitty person to my own family out of the blue. 

My results / solutions / conclusions:
I came up with a mantra: "I am ok just as I am.  I am an adult, and choose what I want in my life.  The past can no longer hurt me.  I am ok. I choose to be ok."

The process can lead to a spiral of self-pity, yet at the same time, I have the power all along to choose not to be in the shit hole and do something more worthwhile in my finite resources: time and energy. 

Parenting is not taught, it is learned, and influenced by the behaviors from where and how I was raised.  I can read, I can search for opinions, or studies by those who are interested in this topic.  And I can choose what will work for my own parenting skills or methods. 

At the same time, my resentment of the past is merely an acknowledgement that it happened to me.  But it no longer affects me because I am choosing it will not decide for me moving forward for the rest of my life.  "I have the right to feel this way, because this is how I feel.  And I am tired of feeling this now, so I am choosing to feel something better than this.  I choose to do something productive because I feel good about it" 

[Imic]

I’ve been doing a lot of analyzing, and a lot of thinking. I’ve found what bit of ‘drama’ acts as the trigger: People antagonising other People, and a number of things my Six-Year-Old mind associated with Antagonising People: Including but not limited to Being very outgoing, attracting lots of attention, failiure or inadequacy, particularly when others are involved, letting others down, and in general pissing them off for one reason or another. There’s also a bunch of baggage relating to school-based-learning that I discovered entirely by accident, which is much, much stronger, but it’s a bit late do be working on that.
Thank you for that Sanctume. My problem is a bit different, and finding coping mechanisms has been difficult with no remaining memories or conscious thoughts to draw from beyond pain, discomfort, and lots of conflicting emotions. It looks like solid methodology, and I might take a deeper look into it.

Many thanks to everyone else, I took in a lot of the information, and discussed a lot of it with my Therapist, and more than a small amount of it was very helpful. Not the headstand bit, though. That didn’t end well. There’s still a great big Stain on the floor after that, and we think it soaked into the timbers. 3/10.