This is part 1 of a 3 part article on PTSD and Panic Attacks.
Part 2: When the submissive or slave has PTSD or Panic Attacks
Part 3: When the Dominant or Master has PTSD or Panic Attacks

We talked about the symptoms of PTSD in a previous article and Heather Daisy talks about how to care for your submissive in her excellent article What To Do If Your Partner Gets Triggered.

ARE WE ALWAYS AWARE OF PTSD?

We often don’t know our demons until we meet them face to face and look them in their creepy eyes. That makes sense. Before we have anal sex, we won’t be able to tell what anal sex feels like. With PTSD, it’s sometimes not until you have an intense trigger and drop down on the floor, immobilised by traumatic memories. Before that, it is hiding in the forest of our subconscious, looking for the perfect full moon to shine a light on it.

Some people face a traumatic event, like military service, a car accident, rape or childhood abuse; it’s clear and identified, there’s trauma and (hopefully) post-trauma counseling, and they are fully aware of their triggers and the possibility of PTSD reactions.

For others, it’s not so clear-cut, particularly in the case of C-PTSD, and it stays hidden until it’s triggered. For them, it is often difficult to negotiate, or communicate clearly, before shit hits the fan.

WHAT DOES A PANIC ATTACK LOOK LIKE?

A panic attacks feels like you have been blasted with your past memories in one huge confusing “memory dump”. It can easily send someone into a trance state, because the brain just can’t cope with the sudden rush. The present environment can recede or disappear. You don’t see it anymore, your eyes blank out and you’re not responsive to where you physically are. All you can see and feel is the trauma. If you’re lucky, it’s in some kind of safe environment where you can deal with it. But, you could just as easily be in a shop trying to buy a packet of cigarettes when a couple arguing in the queue behind you sets you off.

DEVELOPING COPING MECHANISMS

Coping mechanisms are something like a fire drill. Hopefully when a building catches fire you know how to get out safely.

There are many different coping mechanisms for PTSD panic attacks, and different people are going to find different things to be effective. Thinking about it beforehand is important because when the brain is having difficulty dealing with information, we can draw on our instinct and our pre-imagined “escape plan”.

Here are two examples. The first is to cope with the moment and get through the immediate trauma, the second is to start a journey to reclaim the memories and cope in the longer term.

COPING MECHANISM 1 – THE GOLDEN 30 SECONDS

Hold your breath, and try to find a quiet place to deal with the panic attack. If you can give yourself 30 seconds to find a quiet place, you can avoid unnecessary stress from the public. Generally, people won’t understand your panic attack, and they may react badly to that. If you’re having a panic attack in an undesirable place it’s adding more stress for you.

If you can delay your panic attack when it triggers, and have 30 seconds to find a comfy, quiet place, it will help your mind to process the panic attack. To delay the panic attack, try to hold on to something, like using your full body weight to push on a door or gate. Temporarily distract yourself by focusing on something. It could be staring at your phone, contracting your muscles or clenching your fists. While you are doing that, you have a short period of time to find a place to process your panic.

COPING MECHANISM 2 – RECLAIMING YOUR PAST

When panic attacks happen, it can feel pretty much like you want to jump into the heavy traffic right then and there. i can’t explain how painful it is (and everyone is going to feel it differently), but picture being burnt in hell fire and you’ll get a good idea what some people go through. It feels like forever, and it feels helpless.

Reclaiming the past is to become active in the trance, become the director of your past. If memory is flushing in like a dream, you can control how the dream proceeds. It is not easy, but it’s possible.

This is related to drama therapy. Drama therapy is the intentional use of drama and/or theatre processes to achieve therapeutic goals.

Drama therapy is active and experiential. This approach can provide the context for participants to tell their stories, set goals and solve problems, express feelings, or achieve catharsis. Through drama, the depth and breadth of inner experience can be actively explored and interpersonal relationship skills can be enhanced. Participants can expand their repertoire of dramatic roles to find that their own life roles have been strengthened.”
North American Drama Therapy Association

Some say reclaiming the past is to put a closure to it, but i personally don’t find it that way for me, because no one can really put a closure to their past. Even those who aren’t suffering from PTSD. Every individual is made up of their past, and to put a closure to the past is to put a closure to a part of the individual.

i personally find that reclaiming the past is to draw more connection between the past and the present.

A person without PTSD is someone who is constantly and smoothly digesting their memory, consciously and subconsciously. We get a new job, or something else happens in our life, and we digest it and store it in our memory archives, and later in time we remember that event or feeling.

PTSD panic attack is like a block of memories that didn’t digest in the past, because it was impossible to be digested at that time. For instance, when i was young, i didn’t know how to react to child abuse, and i didn’t know why my world was so terrible, so it didn’t get processed or digested, simply because i didn’t have the knowledge or ability to process what this terrible abusive world means to me.

But, how can we draw connections and digest the past?

Personally, when i have trauma attacks, i force myself to drift from different states of consciousness. So, for example, i have my subconscious blasting me with my past memories, and i let myself feel sadness, anger, or whatever i need to feel. Then i force myself to think of the present. Where am i now? Who am i now? I focus on the life that i am actually living, that isn’t traumatised.

It can be very confusing, because i am in two states of mind, but as i digest the memories and let myself feel all the emotion, and at the same time put a connection of that past emotion to the present, the past and present slowly merge together as one, that becomes me.

The merging of past and present is a method to accept the traumatic event. Rather than pushing it away, it is to look your demon in the eye and say “yes, you used to be very scary, but i accept you and i’m even going to open my arms to hug the demon, even if it is full of spikes and poison”.

HOW DOES DRAMA THERAPY RELATE TO BDSM?

In a way, there’s a kind of similarity to a BDSM scene or session. In Dominance and submission we act as Dom and sub, but it is much more than just acting. It originates and fountains from a deeper sense of self.

Drama therapy is essentially “acting the repressed inner self” and letting our inner self surface and interact with us.

Whether BDSM can help to heal PTSD, or whether it might further complicate it, is something complex to think about, and i will go into it in the following articles in this series.

FURTHER READING

• Pagan BDSM – PTSD Strategies
• Mental Health Forum – C-PTSD and the battle for diagnosis
• Deviance and Desire – PTSD/C-PTSD Archives
• FetLife – PTSD and BDSM
• FetLife – PTSD and Behaviour Modification
• FetLife – PTSD: Survivors, Support and Coping

SOME VIDEOS FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING