Help Anyone know how to get out of a PTSD rage spiral?

[WearyHSP]

I'm not what anyone would consider an angry person. When I get a post trauma trigger, it causes horrible inner rage. This one is going on more than 24 hours now and I can't make it stop. The problem is that I'm rarely listened to, and frequently shunned (by my family) so that every time I feel unheard, it just makes the PTSD worse. It just keeps repeating.
My brain is burning, I'm breathing heavily, and I'm alone so I have no way to change my focus. I tried walking, watching tv and talking to neighbors. Distractions aren't helping.
I have no one to help me.

 

[Suicidebydeath]

I'm sorry for your suffering. I wish I knew the answer for myself.

 

[WearyHSP]

'm sorry for your suffering. I wish I knew the answer for myself.

I figured it might be an unanswerable question. Still, it was worth a try.
These rage spirals are worse to me than any other PTSD symptom.

I wish we both could find relief! Thanks.

 

[Worndown]

Do you know what the triggers are? Can you find a way to see how these relate to your rage? Understanding the mechanics of this might lead to reducing their effect on you. You seem to have a good understanding of the symptoms and that is a start.

 

[chloramine]

You could try ranting about it here or to someone. I personally don't experience it as rage, but when I've had flashback like things in the past I've basically just written out whatever memory I was stuck in to a friend and that helped. It wasn't fast and having someone talk me through it was significantly better, but that often wasn't possible. It just kinda helped to process it by getting it outside if that makes sense? And then have someone at least acknowledge it. I can't promise I'll respond in a timely manner (or that I'll be in a place to be especially helpful), but you can pm me if you need to vent to an individual. If you feel comfortable writing it out to yourself that's an option too.

Other ideas off the top of my head are listening to songs that have the same feel as what you're experiencing or some form of physical movement like exercise or art- if distractions aren't working then safe forms of expression

 

[WearyHSP]

Do you know what the triggers are? Can you find a way to see how these relate to your rage? Understanding the mechanics of this might lead to reducing their effect on you. You seem to have a good understanding of the symptoms and that is a start.

Hi Worndown,
I appreciate your thoughtful response.

Yes, I'm VERY familiar with my triggers and how they relate to my rage.
I have several triggers but a main one, the one that happened when texting my mother, was that she (or anyone one else in my family) never listened to me. When I was a child, if you had a problem, you WERE the problem. My parents and two older siblings have been ignoring me and silencing and shunning me for my entire life.
For clarification, there was an abuse event that I can't remember when I was 7. In flashbacks I've witnessed myself (at age 7) begging for the perpetrators to "please just kill me." My family was emotionally neglectful, and I was chosen for the role of the loser, outsider, stupid one, crazy person who shouldn't be listened to. So the terrible abuse event was just followed by a lifetime of neglect - being made to be the scapegoat.

This got terribly compounded when I got sick at age 35 but my family and my friends didn't listen to me and didn't believe me. It took 15 years to get a diagnosis - even doctors didn't believe me. The stark reality is that for 15 years there wasn't even one person who asked me how I was and actually listened for even 5 minutes. That breaks my heart. It exacerabated an already bad trigger. To this day, they won't ask me how I am. They don't know about my sysmptoms. I'm disabled with this neuro-imune illness, I've lost all my friends and I'm alone.

I've worked on the PTSD for 35 years and spent all the money I had on it. Nothing has helped.

It would certainly help if I had a loving relationship and felt heard, but that seems impossible at this point. Trauma repeats itself so I had a lifetime of sudden destruction to jobs, homes, relationships and cars... really out of the blue. It's so weird. All I can say is trauma repeats itself and I've taken each destructive moment, and each PTSD bout (some last for years and do terrible lasting damage to my health) and I've studied them all for clues.

Sorry - more than you bargained for. Thanks for allowing me to explain.

You could try ranting about it here or to someone.

Thanks. I wish I had friends who would listen. Unfortunately I've lost all my friends since I became disabled, and they wouldn't listen anyway. The toxic positivity modeled by my family seems to haunt me - mirrored in every surrounding. People only want to hear happy things. Just my existence seems to make people uncomfortable.

Thank you for your kind offer to DM and listen. Since you are here on SS I imagine you have your own troubles - as you say, you can't promise anything. I may try that, if that's okay.

Even therapists whose job is to listen and acknowledge haven't done so for me. It's like my personal existence is Dorothy walking through the poppy field in Oz- the witch's curse makes them fall asleep in the poppies. It's like that - people go brain dead around me and change the subject. the degree to which this occurs is very strange.

Your ideas are thoughtful thank you. I took a creative writing college course just to write memoirs about the mysterious abuse event and the bad family dynamics and the PTSD to help sort it out. But really, I just wanted someone, anyone to hear my stories. I just wanted to be heard! It didn't help other than that I have about 8 essays to leave behind after I ctb to explain what I've been through (that nobody knows about in my family becasue they won't listen.) I have really mixed feelings about leaving the stories for my family. They're pretty harsh. But in these rare rage moments I think, "good! They deserve to know the damage they've inflicted on me."
Once the rage has passed, I'll be back to feeling guilty about leaving the essays behind.

 

[chloramine]

Hi Worndown,
I appreciate your thoughtful response.

Yes, I'm VERY familiar with my triggers and how they relate to my rage.
I have several triggers but a main one, the one that happened when texting my mother, was that she (or anyone one else in my family) never listened to me. When I was a child, if you had a problem, you WERE the problem. My parents and two older siblings have been ignoring me and silencing and shunning me for my entire life.
For clarification, there was an abuse event that I can't remember when I was 7. In flashbacks I've witnessed myself (at age 7) begging for the perpetrators to "please just kill me." My family was emotionally neglectful, and I was chosen for the role of the loser, outsider, stupid one, crazy person who shouldn't be listened to. So the terrible abuse event was just followed by a lifetime of neglect - being made to be the scapegoat.

This got terribly compounded when I got sick at age 35 but my family and my friends didn't listen to me and didn't believe me. It took 15 years to get a diagnosis - even doctors didn't believe me. The stark reality is that for 15 years there wasn't even one person who asked me how I was and actually listened for even 5 minutes. That breaks my heart. It exacerabated an already bad trigger. To this day, they won't ask me how I am. They don't know about my sysmptoms. I'm disabled with this neuro-imune illness, I've lost all my friends and I'm alone.

I've worked on the PTSD for 35 years and spent all the money I had on it. Nothing has helped.

It would certainly help if I had a loving relationship and felt heard, but that seems impossible at this point. Trauma repeats itself so I had a lifetime of sudden destruction to jobs, homes, relationships and cars... really out of the blue. It's so weird. All I can say is trauma repeats itself and I've taken each destructive moment, and each PTSD bout (some last for years and do terrible lasting damage to my health) and I've studied them all for clues.

Sorry - more than you bargained for. Thanks for allowing me to explain.

Thanks. I wish I had friends who would listen. Unfortunately I've lost all my friends since I became disabled, and they wouldn't listen anyway. The toxic positivity modeled by my family seems to haunt me - mirrored in every surrounding. People only want to hear happy things. Just my existence seems to make people uncomfortable.

Thank you for your kind offer to DM and listen. Since you are here on SS I imagine you have your own troubles - as you say, you can't promise anything. I may try that, if that's okay.

Even therapists whose job is to listen and acknowledge haven't done so for me. It's like my personal existence is Dorothy walking through the poppy field in Oz- the witch's curse makes them fall asleep in the poppies. It's like that - people go brain dead around me and change the subject. the degree to which this occurs is very strange.

Your ideas are thoughtful thank you. I took a creative writing college course just to write memoirs about the mysterious abuse event and the bad family dynamics and the PTSD to help sort it out. But really, I just wanted someone, anyone to hear my stories. I just wanted to be heard! It didn't help other than that I have about 8 essays to leave behind after I ctb to explain what I've been through (that nobody knows about in my family becasue they won't listen.) I have really mixed feelings about leaving the stories for my family. They're pretty harsh. But in these rare rage moments I think, "good! They deserve to know the damage they've inflicted on me."
Once the rage has passed, I'll be back to feeling guilty about leaving the essays behind.

Yeah being neglected and ignored like that is a form of child abuse as well. Therapists reacting that way seems strange. I know there are not great ones out there, but listening and acknowledging is a pretty low bar to clear. I don't know how many you've tried but that may be worth trying again? It sounds like you've been really unlucky and have been treated unfairly on multiple counts and it's just been compounding into this ball of awful for years. The offer to talk remains open if you decide to

 

[Worndown]

You have walked the rough road.
We are a digital group that can listen and maybe help a little. Are there any in-person groups in your area? Having conversations directly with people can give much better reinforcement and support. If family and therapists are not helpful, this might be a viable plan C.

 

[Tmbass]

I don't understand exactly your pain and anger, I imagine it's different to mine, but having anger problems is definitely tough and most times non explainable. Other than the generic advice all the websites and therapists will give I have nothing to say but for me listening and playing along to my favourite music calms me a bit. I hope you can find something calm to hold onto, you've suffered far too long.

 

[WearyHSP]

We are a digital group that can listen and maybe help a little. Are there any in-person groups in your area? Having conversations directly with people can give much better reinforcement and support. If family and therapists are not helpful, this might be a viable plan C.

I truly have tried to find a group. Most recently I found a trauma group for women on zoom but the few times I shared, the faciliator was dumbstruck and had no response, in stark contrast to everyone else. Even in an trauma group, my stuff was way too weird for everyone and I felt like the outsider, as always.
It wasn't a professionally facilitated group though.

When I was assaulted in my home in 2007 (because trauma repeats itself) I searched for a group. I thought that would be easier to find for something obvious in comparison to my unrecalled childhood trauma with only flashbacks and PTSD bouts that seem unrelatable to most everyone I've ever shared it with. That's a harder group to find, that's for sure. But I found nothing. AND the people in my life reacted with such cruelty, that I had to assume it mirrored my original trauma event... and then my family blamed me, shamed me? Having a victim in their midst made them uncomfortable. You know, "blame the victim" but I was 7. back to 2007, I couldn't hide my black and blue eyes, closed shut. People reacted really badly to me just walking in the door, just existing. It fits exactly with how my family treats me. The shunning was really eye opening - no pun intended.

So it seems to be a paradigm created from the original trauma that repeats itself, no matter how much work I do, people seem to react to me in that same way, as if I'm PigPen (from the Snoopy cartoons) and they can just "see" the abuse around me, Like PigPen's dirt, and react to it. I don't know. I can only make guesses. What I know but can't explain is when I look for help from an authority (Dr, therapist etc) somehow they fit into my parental abuse pattern in some way.

I'm almost 60 and in the 35 years I've tried (not lying, probably 100 healing modalities), I've only recently met one person who, like me, had missing memories for most of her life and just began recovering them a few years ago in her early 50s. My stuff is still just flashes and feelings. Anyway, am I repeating myself? It's been really hard to find people who can relate - even therapists, and the repeat patterns seem to almost always insinuate with every attempt to find a cure.

It's hard being sick, old, alone and poor with PTSD that gets worse rather than better. Not a lot of options. Ctb being one the best options.

I really appreciate your kind response. Everyone's been kind which I deeply appreciate since kindness has been rare in my life.


FOR EVERYONE
Just reporting that my rage-spiral seems to have calmed down. The bad news is that I forgot to renew my apartment lease on time. Because I'm disabled, I get a housing voucher subsidy, and because of my mess-up (I have an untreatable nuerological disease so yeah, I forget things), it's not applied to my July rent. And, of course it's a 3-day holiday. (the rent online has been changed to more than I make in a month, so I can't pay it on time.)
Because I've had so many struggles getting housing with service reps who were worse than incompetent, they were malicious, my rage has now returned to despair. I've learned the worst can always happen to me. I'm always the outlier, in the worse way possible.

Chances are that on Tuesday, I can go to the office, sign the lease and the Housing Authority will pay their portion.

But, in the moment I have little faith. so, not the best way to manage a rage-spiral, but that's what did it for now. Now I'm back to despair.
I'm not sure when my mom will text me ever again... (my mom's text triggered the PTSD rage) but hey, I've had a lifetime of the same dynamic that never changes regardless of how well I explain myself to her. She doesn't want to understand, and I'll continue screaming into the void.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone, I can't tell you how supported I felt by your responses, and that's been such a rare commodity in my life.