My PTSD is different than yours. For me triggers can be places, people, settings, sites, sounds, or odors.
Example: Things like babies breath used to be adorable to me, but after doing CPR on an 18 month old and having it die in my hands. Now the odor of babies breath has different trigger to my senses.
I shoot guns and hunt, but when around cities and I hear gunfire I snap into the: Where is it coming from and where are the threats and how do I take them out..
I know the smell of dead human beings rotting, burning, and decaying flesh. What human blood smells and tastes like misted in the air.
Burning raw oil, tires, and vehicles are all distinct triggers.
Explosions have been come so commonly identifiable to me with out ever seeing them go off; that I can pretty much tell what caused them.
Seeing some one assaulted, belittled, or humiliated sets off a terrible desire to take out the aggressor(s).
So when these triggers hit me with the sites, cents, sounds, odors, or situations. I have to stop and breath deeply assessing the situations immediately and it always boils in my mind
in seconds down to threat or no threat; along with all the ways to take the threat out. That is when I just leave and walk away. I retreat back to my farm and take a walk in the woods or set for hours in the woods watching the wild life. While doing so I relive so many accounts of war and life and death saved, lost, and taken. This does not settle the warrior in me, so then I plot projects that need done or accomplished. I get up and I go to work on those farm projects building fence, building a barn, mowing, digging ditches, building a new home here for myself, tending forestry improvements, cutting firewood and the like to work out my PTSD without harming anyone. And from the on set to the thinking and outlet I talk with God; my lost comrades, and my son I lost in the Army. I usually de-escalate myself in a day or two or three when the project has worn me down from the old injuries and 11 major surgeries I have been through because of my military and civilian service. Then I rest for one to three days time, and to complete my circle of self heeling I dress as Willa to see beauty where I only have seen tragedy and suffering. this completes my healing cycle.
So yes for you Lula going back to work makes perfect sense to me, perfect indeed. Also why I am still alone and lonely to this day.
