Waking up to post-traumatic stress

Subject: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: Willie-O
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 10:07 AM

....or maybe it's just plain old shock. Did you wake with a start like I did? It all comes rushing back...something Kim C said yesterday was that she wanted to go back to sleep and have it all go away.

There's been non-stop media coverage the past 24 hours now. The most literally non-stop coverage I have ever heard.

I got home from work at almost 2 a.m. and my daughter was still online. I told her it was time she was in bed. She just said, "o.k., I'm just finishing something here, don't read over my shoulder" like she always does. Later I found out she was chatting with a friend who had 2 relatives missing in the WTC. Verbally, though, she's very subdued.

I'm worried about her, of course. And my son who's 11 came to my bedroom before he went to school and asked me a bunch of questions about what happened--just the facts kind of thing. I had to keep telling him, "we don't know, " and that in any such events there is a lot of wrong information circulating out there. He just wants to know the real truth, and it is hard to get at right now.

And we're in Canada, 500 miles from New York. And people are stunned here. (My wife is American; my kids are Canadian but can take American citizenship if they want to) I've heard the good news from those of you who are in Manhattan and DC...Larry, Sinsull et al--but geezis, how the hell are ya?

Wherever you are.

Bill
can't focus on anything...

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: Peg
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 10:10 AM

I know what you mean.

I have to go teach two classes of college students today. I have no idea what to say or do. Taking them to a bar and drinking heavily comes to mind but they are underage.

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 10:12 AM

Yes. Please see the thread at Jon's Annexe about self-care in stress and the need to support the adrenal system.

THIS should take you there.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 10:13 AM

I'm supposed to be teaching Sensation and Perception this evening. I'm trying to think of other examples of things to be sensed and perceived... but I think the entire class is going to be about The Events, as yesterday is being called. I'm going to try to call it our 9-11 call (date/phone number) - as someone else already posted, great call.

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: Amos
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 11:29 AM

Every generation gets one, huh?

"Where were you when they fired on Sumter, Grandpa?" "Where were you when they sank the Maine, Grandpa?" "Where were you when they raided Pearl, Grandpa?" "Where were you when they shot John Kennedy, Grandpa?" "Where were you when they bombed New York, Grandpa?"

Sweet mother of all souls -- what do we have to learn, to outgrow this shit? What!!?

A.

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 11:44 AM

TO STOP JUDGING ONE ANOTHER.

~S~

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: annamill
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 12:17 PM

What amazes me is the normal going on about business. Yesterday as I was wandering around NY trying to find a way home, I got hungry (it hit me all at once, I was starving) I went into a Mc Donalds (I never eat there) and there were lines... people laughing, talking about game scores, etc. Here and there a comment about the disaster. Amazing. Here I am today in Sea Bright at the store ( no work for me today) and the plummer just came in, smiling, telling me he had a slight cold and where is the leak. Not a word. Amazing. People just going about their business.

But then again, I didn't say a word either, but I'm filled with pain. Aren't human beings amazing creatures?

I wish I could "go to sleep and wake up and it had never happened" too.

I had friends there and I still don't know if they are alive or dead.

Love, Annamill

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 12:27 PM

I woke up wishing I had been able to cry yesterday. I was home alone all day so that was hard. I think it was best I waited until I had a good thing to provoke the tears. Sort of a good thing. Maybe if I share it it will help spomeone else start the right kind of healing tears.

It was that before I woke up all the way, the TV told me there was a special team of searchers forming up to go to NYC. The good people of Oklahoma City were asking to do it all, all over again. All the misery of looking for life and finding mostly death. Why? "To repay the people who helped US," they said. "And because we KNOW HOW TO DO IT like no one else in the US."

My first thought was, no, spare them that... and then the sheer loving and instinctive nature of the response they had made hit me... like a ton of debris. THAT is how human beings REALLY are. And that made the tears-- all the hurt and care and wonderfulness of people just being people... that made it safe to cry, with a big loopy grin on my face, all the tears I could not let out yesterday.

What does it for you?

~Susan

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 12:35 PM

Annamill, I know what you mean. My daughter came home and cried about how her bosses made them make collections phone calls, yesterday. One bank they collect for called and said do not call any of our customers and one other company said do not call the 212 area code, BUT they were to call everywhere else in the country.

She was angry, embarrassed and abused by the people she called, who were in complete disbelief that her employer was carrying on "business as usual." If she didn't have house payments, she would have walked out.

We cried a lot, together, with lots of hugs. My tears still flow, all the sadness.

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: Willie-O
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 12:52 PM

At the call centre I work at (DSL net tech support) I expected a lot of calls last night from people who couldn't get on to CNN and other sites due to server overload. Didn't get a one like that. It was slow, in fact, even though one of our other centres was closed because of being next to the US Consulate in Toronto. They're letting us take time off if we have any emergency issues.

Nobody on the phones said anything about NYC, they just wanted to get their High Speed working.

What does it for me...

I keep thinking about 300 firefighters and 78 cops who almost all died because they were going into the building to help while everyone else got out.

That's a huge disaster there, those folks alone. Of course, they were doing their jobs, courageously and under physically extremely difficult circumstances. No one knew the building was about to collapse, but that doesn't alter their heroism.

I heard six of them were found alive this morning--possibly the last survivors coming out.

May they all be remembered with love and pride. And the same from the OK City search and rescue folks.

Bill

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 01:23 PM

Yes, Bill.

~S~

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 07:42 PM

So many people are wandering around, looking at one another and saying - I thought it was all a dream, that we'd wake up and it would be there again and nothing would have happened'. People think it will reappear as if by magic, like a cartoon. It's terrible seeing them.

And now, my own 35 storey building in Central London is on Amber alert (risk of incidents, extra security), as we were so kindly pointed out by a Daily paper that we are a tall, government owned building..... teeming with civil servants and important records.... thanks guys!!

LTS

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: Peg
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 09:10 PM

I too am shocked that as I walk around not everyone around me looks like a freaking zombie; which is how i feel right now.

On campus, right in the financial district (classes were cancelled yesterday) students were laughing and playing hacky sack and flirting as usual...I had my two classes write for twenty minutes about a moment when something changed; half of them wrote about yesterday. They read their pieces aloud; some of them cried and could not finish (even the boys which surprised me). I told them I was not sure I was going to be an effective teacher in the way I want to be, at least for a while; but I would try, and be there for them if they needed to talk.

Subject: RE: Waking up to post-traumatic stress
From: BH
Date: 13 Sep 01 - 08:32 PM

In response to WIllie-0. That, perhaps , is the sadness of the separation we get from computers and e mail No sense of humanity.

I, for one, don't give a damn of the minor tribulations of life ---computer speed, TV reception, traffic jams,etc; when you see what can happen in this sad world.

We seem to be getting less connected with humanity here and the people who don't seem that sophisticated communicate with each other we see the results now----=The World Trade Center.

I do hope that Allah was waiting breathlessly for the "martyrs"----though I suspect after they turned to dust they never knew the bad joke was on them