When i was younger i made my dad mad (i don’t remember how) and he grabbed the cuff of my shirt pulled me up a wall and made it so i couldn’t breath. during this he yelled at me for something bad i did. Now i have problems when people reaching out to my neck like my brother went to do something and he reached out to my neck and i went way more defensive then i ever have. I instantly when to fighting and i don’t know why. Another day me and my mom got into a argument and my dad stepped up to be arm out pointing at me so i grabbed his hand twisted it and pined it to his back. I yelled to never step up to me like that again and i pushed him away. Both times i hade a flashback to when i was pushed up the wall and choked.
2 Likes
Hey @anonymous6,
That experience you had with your dad is more than likely to have some effects on you, especially if you feel like it still affects you. A situation of violence and fear like this one can hold the potential to be traumatic. The way you reacted in those other situations sounds like it was automatic, and even surprising for you, but it really makes sense when we know what happened to you before. I’m so sorry that happened, friend. You didn’t deserve to be treated that way.
For what it’s worth, I had similar reactions of panic whenever I witnessed violence and sometimes when I was in small/confined spaces. It’s related to the fact that I grew up in an environment where violence was present, and I was sometimes locked in a closet. For example I remember clearly, later in life, a time spent with some friends and we played hide and seek. They thought it would be fun to lock me in a small room in which I was hidden, which made me have an extreme reaction of yelling, crying and banging at the door. I felt bad for reacting that way, because I didn’t recognize myself and totally lost it. It took me some years to understand my reaction. Other people can’t guess what’s triggering or not but we, at best, can learn to understand ourselves and our reactions more and more.
Is it PTSD? That, only a doctor could tell you and establish a diagnosis that would help you. It clearly sounds like a traumatic reaction though, and definitely something you could try to learn to understand, at your own pace. In any case, I hope you know that this doesn’t make you weird. It only shows that maybe there are things you still need to process today, so you can heal from what happened. 
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.