Re: Ptsd and Adhd

[Anonymous]

I suffer from hypersensitivity to sound – I’m sure that this was one of the reasons I quit a very high paying job as a professional accountant because we had been moved to a new open office with cubicle arrangements where the desks faced out in a kind of square – every noise and drawer closing was amplified within the square. I would always work late and now I realize that this was because I was so distracted during the day that I couldn’t get my work done, and I really enjoyed the peace and quiet when everyone else left for the day. Had I known that I have ADD, I could have asked for accommodations, like having my own separate cubicle, being allowed to work longer or different hours than others, etc.

I can’t sleep because any noise in the house or outside will wake me up, so I use industrial strength ear plugs. When I need to focus in a noisy environment, I use them as well (like exam writing). I can also use music with headphones (classical music, but played loud to keep me from hearing other sounds).

I have to have the TV on when we eat at home because I can’t stand the sound of others eating – corn on the cob or chips being eaten can drive me around the bend. And when I’m waiting for a DVD to start (we don’t have tv reception), I can’t stand it if you start to eat before there’s sound.

One day I was seeing my therapist, and there was a loud high-pitched sound in the room. I have tinnitus, so I told him that this sounded exactly like what I hear in my head every day and that it was really driving me crazy. He made me sit there and fully experience the sound, what it physically sounded like, what my resistance to it was like, where in my body I felt the resistance, etc. And he asked me to heighten that emotional response to it as much as I could and just sit with it, without trying to change anything. It was hard but not impossible. I was really pissed when at one point he said “would you like me to turn it off?” – it was some kind of electrical control for the radiator heating system. But it taught me that I can just live through the experience – I don’t have to like it but I don’t have to run away from it either. Very useful.

My PTSD incident was driving to Florida in the early ’80s with two friends. It was late at night, my friend was driving and I was sleeping in the front passenger seat. He became captivated by a light off to the other side of the highway (divided by a grass median). I woke up, and as we came closer, it looked like a freight train derailing, there were lots of sparks but it was so dark we couldn’t see what it was. Eventually we could see that it was a tractor trailer, and that it was out of control. I told my friend to stop and pull over, but he was captivated and wanted to keep going closer. At one point I said STOP AND PULL OVER OR I AM GETTING OUT OF THE CAR RIGHT NOW! The transport truck came across the median, within 100 feet of us and crossed over the shoulder on our side of the highway and drove into a field where it eventually stopped. There was a passenger vehicle underneath it that it had been dragging, and that’s why all the sparks and why the truck was out of control.

I am embarassed and feel guilty that we did not go into the field to see if we could help. I was worried about an explosion, and I also figured that there were plenty of transport drivers around and that the driver would have called for help. So I took over the wheel (my car) and we drove on. At the next major truck stop (near the exit for Savannah, Georgia), we stopped and played video games until after midnight. We never talked about it again, and I never sought treatment. But it’s as clear as day when I think about it, and how petrified I was because my friend was going to drive us right into the path of the truck.

To this day, I am an extremely nervous passenger in a car and prefer to drive whenever I can.

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