my trauma that doesn't seem "trauma enough"
*A Little backstory*
i am from greece and last year in our country on January there was a big demonstration regarding the name Macedonia being given to another country (you may have heard of it but it really doesnt matter). The point is that in this demonstration there were many people who love greece (patriots?) but also many people with nazist and facist beliefs. It was Sunday so me and my friends decided to meet at a park, far away from the demonstration in order to not be involved at all with it, and take a break from studying. When it got dark, 20-25 people with scarves on their faces, holding bats (and some even having police equipment stolen from earlier at the demonstration such as helmets and police shields) came near the park and started to beat a boy from pakistan threatening him to leave the country. Me and my friends noticed that they were racists but we were only for teenegers with beverages that were listening to music so we ignored them because we got very scared. After beating the boy, the team came at the bench that we were sitting and demanded to know where we were from. We told them we are greek, they demanded from one of my friends to give them his phone and when he asked why they started beating him in front of me very aggresively. my other friend tried to intervene so they started to beat him aggresively too. I jumped back, froze almost paralysed and watched the whole thing anable to move or do anything for about 5 minutes. After that they left and we called our parents to take my friends to the hospital. We stayed at the hospital for 4 hours and the result for my friends was broken facial bones and many many bruises.
After that incident i started to have mild but for me paralysing panic attacks any time a group of people that i didnt know came close to me and also my sleeping routine became much worse, there were a lot of nights that i coudnt sleep because i was thinking of the event.
*end of backstory*
As i said before, some of them had stolen police equipment (riot police of course) and the result was that every time a saw riot police for sometime i had those panic attacks
The thing is that this year as a student i started to get into politics and go to demonstrations to demand things such as free education, better educational conditions etc. In those demonstrations riot police does things such as throw chemicals at students , beat them chase them etch so the first time i went to the demonstration i was very scared and sometimes i got the panic attacks again, but after some months passed ( 3-4) i got more and more used to it and i built trust and felt safety with my fellow classmates and friends at the street.
But at one demonstration things became really extreme. the riot police chased as for a really long time and some polie officers came with motocicles and crushed on the demonstrators (the students), hurting many of them and also chasing and beating many of them. I was lucky and didnt witness much of this because i was at the front and this happend at the back of the demonstration but after my best friend that was there shared with me the details because he had witnessed it and cried in front of me because of it, i felt a lot of terror and pain and my panic attacks became denser for a while. the incident that haunted me from that demonstration is that after it had ended and we the students went to the subway station in order to live, riot police chased us to the station and started beating us without a reason and also threw flashbangs and chemicals inside the station. I was almost next to the police at that moment and didnt get hurt out of pure luck and that is what scared me the most, the luck factor, that i was so lucky that the girl next to me was beaten till her head was cracked and i left without a scratch, that i was so lucky that they caught the boy behind me and not me.
i dont want to get criticised about my personal beliefs, its just that due to those events and that every time i see an officer i get a panic attack or if not that my heart beats a lot faster and my feet tremble, and every time i hear a noice like a flashbang i get scared. i dont know if its trauma enough but its lefting me behind on my beliefs because i cant go to demonstrations anymore with the courage and bravery and even the happiness that my other classmates go and its making me feel like im a coward..
sorry for my english its not my mother tongue and thanks to any person who read my story i hope you are all getting better <3
@moonclaw89 Any trauma is "trauma enough". You shouldn't feel bad or guilty for having an emotional reaction to triggering events. All trauma is unique to every individual, and not all of us deal with it in the same way. For me, panic attacks, high adrenaline, sometimes confusion and crying are normal responses for me when I'm faced with a triggering situation. Reaching out for help is a great way to help develop new coping mechanisms to deal with this moving forward. I can't say that your reactions will go away, but over time you may learn to better cope with these situations. This is a horrible thing to happen, and I'm sorry for you had to experience this. I hope you find what works best for you to work through this. Remember, you are not alone. I hope you have a good support group, or at least hope you will find one you are comfortable with.
@moonclaw89 this sounds like a lot of trauma. a question of wether something like trauma is enough is always yes. this story puts mine to shame. I had 5 years and 6 months of mental abuse to sum up my story. your story made me think my story was small.
