I remember it so clearly. My former spouse had always travelled for work, gone for a week at a time, but after we had kids...something changed.
He had travelled for work again to the West Coast, and I slept with a hammer beside me in the bed. I was terrified that someone was going to break into our home, come up the stairs and harm me or my children.
A few short years later, I would be diagnosed with C-PTSD - the kind that happens only after prolonged exposure to multiple traumas that sandwich together and mess up your entire brain.
All of a sudden, the hypervigilance made sense. When you carry trauma, your brain has a very hard time distinguishing between normal situations and circumstances, and those where you are actually in harms way.
Hypervigilance is defined as (per WebMD) the elevated state of constantly assessing potential threats around you.
Sleeping with a hammer next to the bed became common place for me for a few years, and not until I did the deeper work to recover from C-PTSD did I understand why hypervigilance, specifically at nighttime, was such a big part of my ptsd profile.
PTSDers are (typically, not always or in everyones case) on edge. We are looking for threats and potential danger, and we want to ensure that we are the ones in control. When you have suffered a trauma wherein you were very much not in control, you look for the things that you can control or you dissociate completely.
The hammer was my control.
When I learned about BsafeKC, I was excited for those who have PTSD and hypervigilance to have a better and more accessible alternative to personal safety, because it isn't exactly practical to carry around a hammer with you (nor is it safe...).
While we cannot control all situations at hand, we can control how we approach them and how we keep ourselves safe. Having a sense of control in unpredictable situations where there could be a threat of danger, lowers your cortisol and adrenaline, and allows you to be more present, have a clearer mind and not be so reactive to the situation at hand. BsafeKC provides a practical tool for PTSDers to have control over the threat of potential danger.
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Thank you Shannon for sharing your experience with us. Please check out her website at www.moyerandco.com.