Pain, sleeplessness, and triggers
Fair warning to all: this post may be trigger-y for some.
It started with the pain.
My hands and wrists have been aching more with the weather being the way it is right now. That is to say there's a lot of rain trying to move across the valley and it can't due to the insane amount of black-top and as a result the humidity is up and the barometric pressure is shifting in a way that results in me hurting more.
So when I tried to go to bed this evening... Sleep didn't happen. I ended up just laying in bed until just before 2.
I decided to watch one of the movies that we borrowed.
Make no mistake, I had no idea how the film was going to go. I had borrowed it because it sounded interesting and I figured it'd help my brain focus on something for a bit and then I could crawl into bed and attempt sleep again.
The movie I borrowed? The Call.
It's not that it's a bad movie, per-say. It's incredibly well done. Halle Berry really dove into her part and it showed.
The premise of the film is that the main character works in the LA 911 call center.
If you've never had to call 911, you are lucky.
I've had to call them. Once, and only once. And it was so surreal to me that I still have no idea how I managed to stay so calm*.
The movie triggered my panic about 3/4 of the way through.
I made it to the end of the film, took some time to take some deep breaths, and then shut everything down and crawled into bed and attempted sleep.
Didn't work.
Panic was still pumping through my system at a rate that ensured being wired for several hours still.
And my wrists are still aching.
So I'm here now typing, listening to some chill-out tunes, have a glass of water to sip, and I took one of my emergency med doses.
The trigger moment was something in the movie that was benign, too. It may well have just been the timing of things, or it may have been that the film in general was the trigger and it didn't set off immediate panic and instead set off the slow-build of panic that eventually hit me.
The crap thing is that none of the people I usually see online during late-night/early-morning hours are around. If they were, I'd have asked them to just talk to me, tell me about the games they were playing or the music they were listening to. Anything. Something. Some semblance of normality.
I'm trying to find something calm to focus on. Trying.
The emergency med will help, no doubt. I've got my reference image files up, so I can browse all the nature ones that I have stockpiled for helping me with scene creation in my work. All those really nice photos of white sand beaches and gorgeous forests and rivers and so on.
And when the emergency med kicks in, I'll wait another 15 minutes and then go attempt to get a nap.
Because eff this anxiety and panic and PTSD.
So... Yeah. The Call might be trigger-y for some folks--myself included.
*=see also shock.
It started with the pain.
My hands and wrists have been aching more with the weather being the way it is right now. That is to say there's a lot of rain trying to move across the valley and it can't due to the insane amount of black-top and as a result the humidity is up and the barometric pressure is shifting in a way that results in me hurting more.
So when I tried to go to bed this evening... Sleep didn't happen. I ended up just laying in bed until just before 2.
I decided to watch one of the movies that we borrowed.
Make no mistake, I had no idea how the film was going to go. I had borrowed it because it sounded interesting and I figured it'd help my brain focus on something for a bit and then I could crawl into bed and attempt sleep again.
The movie I borrowed? The Call.
It's not that it's a bad movie, per-say. It's incredibly well done. Halle Berry really dove into her part and it showed.
The premise of the film is that the main character works in the LA 911 call center.
If you've never had to call 911, you are lucky.
I've had to call them. Once, and only once. And it was so surreal to me that I still have no idea how I managed to stay so calm*.
The movie triggered my panic about 3/4 of the way through.
I made it to the end of the film, took some time to take some deep breaths, and then shut everything down and crawled into bed and attempted sleep.
Didn't work.
Panic was still pumping through my system at a rate that ensured being wired for several hours still.
And my wrists are still aching.
So I'm here now typing, listening to some chill-out tunes, have a glass of water to sip, and I took one of my emergency med doses.
The trigger moment was something in the movie that was benign, too. It may well have just been the timing of things, or it may have been that the film in general was the trigger and it didn't set off immediate panic and instead set off the slow-build of panic that eventually hit me.
The crap thing is that none of the people I usually see online during late-night/early-morning hours are around. If they were, I'd have asked them to just talk to me, tell me about the games they were playing or the music they were listening to. Anything. Something. Some semblance of normality.
I'm trying to find something calm to focus on. Trying.
The emergency med will help, no doubt. I've got my reference image files up, so I can browse all the nature ones that I have stockpiled for helping me with scene creation in my work. All those really nice photos of white sand beaches and gorgeous forests and rivers and so on.
And when the emergency med kicks in, I'll wait another 15 minutes and then go attempt to get a nap.
Because eff this anxiety and panic and PTSD.
So... Yeah. The Call might be trigger-y for some folks--myself included.
*=see also shock.