TRIGGER WARNING TO PSYCH SURVIVORS

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(I'm not a psych survivor and that's not where my experiences come from, but that's the group I can quickly name that will cover most of the people who will have PTSD flashbacks from my post.)

Have you ever known someone whose words are more than just words? Like, if they tell you to do something, there's an invisible force pushing you into doing it? If they disagree with you, the way they say it, they're hitting you hard over and over again and forcing you to believe what they do? And after hearing it long enough, their voice started talking to you inside your own head, saying things you know are totally false?

How do you fight that?

There are triggers for me everywhere. Some of them are hidden and I really have to look for them. I also have to force myself to keep it together in the company of people. Convince the people around me that whatever the trigger is, isn't affecting me. I use that mental toughness in the public eye.

It takes such a toll on me, that I end up under eating.

Thank you for the input.

I've not had the experience of people's words being more than words, but I have had PTSD before. When I was a child I used to have flashbacks of a car accident I was in. Then I had a related recurring nightmare that lasted for years. It just subsided after that. I do however still, have some fears related to the experience.

Edit - I forgot to address the triggers part. There was a place in the house that would trigger my flashbacks. And there was a way, that if everything was perfect I could get really freaked out and have to go mess it up. It was very scary.

Is having someone else's voice in your head considered to be a disordered form of thinking?

I can hear my ex in my head a lot. Usually he is pointing out where my perspective is skewed, or asking me "what's really good." It seems his voice will never leave my head because he influenced me strongly. He opened me up to the idea that words CAN be more than just words, that we use them to describe the essential 'ness' of things.. I feel both blessed and burdened by his voice, because his input about life was so valuable to me, but at the same time, I behaved like a total ass in that situation and left him without saying goodbye or giving him a what for.

It's not so much that I know his criticism is false, more like.. his realism and insight was striking, painful. It's like in Clockwork Orange where Alex's eyes are held open and he is forced to watch gruesome videos over and over again.. except the videos I watched were of myself, paraded before my eyes in my own presence, a thinly veiled display of my obvious obliviousness. Ehh.. it's like I'm grateful to have that input but sincerely shocked by it, and I have not really recovered functionality after that relationship. It was a level of eyes-open I was not ready for at the time.

So.. how to deal with this? Take criticism as something you can use, I guess. Realize that people's criticism is a view from the outside, not the only view, but one of them, and it might contain a nugget of truth even if it hurts. I don't know..