Something that has been bothering me these past two weeks has been an increased sensitivity to sounds, which sets off my audible-based PTSD triggers. It has resulted in me feeling overall very anxious and unable to fully relax. My sleep has worsened, which has made me feel like I’m more susceptible to these sounds affecting me, creating a loop where I need more sleep to be more resistant to them, but my anxiety is making my sleep worse.

The sounds that affect me relate to cries, shouts and screams. I do not live alone, and in this shared household, often people are making all sorts of sounds. Sometimes they shout to each other because they can’t be bothered to get up and walk to the person to chat, sometimes they make a short yelp “scream” when something surprises them, and laughter can sound like crying.

No one does actually audibly cry. But despite that 99.99% rate of a similar sound through a muffled door is not a cry, 99.99% of the time my brain thinks it is. No matter the logic of the situation, that almost all the sounds that trigger me are not actually worrying, it doesn’t matter. My brain automatically defaults back to that traumatic incident and I freeze in panic. My heart rate shoots up. I start breathing quickly. I stare blankly into the distance. My body freezes. My mind is in a panic as all the memories of that day flood back. Sometimes I cry. Nothing else happens until my brain can work out if the trigger was real or a false alarm.

Of course, it’s a false alarm. It always is. When I’ve worked it out, I unfreeze and come back into my body, now full of emotion and crashing adrenaline. I often feel very sensitive afterwards and if I had a very bad trigger, I am often very tired and will only recover after a night’s sleep.

Headphones do not help. They can actually make things worse as they can further muffle sound, distorting it, and increase false alarms. There have been so many times where I have been simply listening to music, vibing away in a good mood, and then I think I hear a distant sharp yelping crying sound, and I’m triggered.

Blocking sound out entirely, through noise cancellation or earplugs, doesn’t help either. I have a childhood memory of me around nine years old playing alone in the bathtub, and when I lifted my head out of the water I hear my Mum screaming at me. I couldn’t hear as I was underwater at the time and I had not responded when she knocked, telling me it was time to come out and get dressed. With me not responding, she assumed something bad had happened to me, and then got mad at me for worrying her. It’s something that’s stuck with me and I can’t dislodge. I now feel like I have to be able to hear everything, I don’t want to get told off again. Even as an adult and that happening decades ago, I can’t get past it and move on, I can’t cope with the idea something yelling at me for my attention and me being unable to hear them. I have to be able to hear what’s going on around me.

Even when I’m not experiencing triggers, this heightened state that I’m in has resulted in just generally high levels of anxiety. I find myself feeling uneasy for seemingly no reason, and am getting frequent panic attacks. I’m having to rely more and more on listening and watching various ASMR or reiki YouTube videos centred on calming down the body and mind. I’m glad I have these resources available to me, but I wish I could just feel better.

Frustratingly, I did manage to briefly recover from my PTSD. The incident happened in early 2019, and I felt like I had recovered by the end of 2021. But then a similar incident happened in late 2022, and the PTSD came back, now a double whammy with the effects of both events merging together into one.

However, even two weeks ago was a better place for me, and I wish I could get back to just there where I experienced maybe a a few triggers a week, or even a mild one a day. Now, I’m getting quite strong triggers several times a day, which is exhausting, if nothing else, and makes it hard to try different things to feel better as I have little energy to do so. Even things I enjoy quickly make me tired and I have to stop to rest.

I keep telling myself though that I have come out of this before, and this difficult patch is just a patch, not a forever. I just have to get through this, ideally sooner rather than later. I hope next week is more peaceful.