What is the cause of your ptsd? What triggers it now? (If you don’t mind my asking).

Thank you for sharing that, I never knew. Wow. I could not imagine what an experience like that is like.

I think it is interesting how among people with ptsd, the triggers are different for everyone. The triggers are as diverse as the experiences that caused the trauma.

For me it is cold breakfast cereal, milk, granola bars, the sight of police officers, crime in the news, showers, the colors green and maroon, school busses, caps and gowns, and big office desks trigger it. I guess some of these would seem more obvious than others.

I cannot eat cold breakfast cereal, granola bars or milk without thinking of breakfast time at the detention center. Every day before breakfast we had to line up to be yelled at, taunted and degraded by the staff and told where we were to sit in the cafeteria.

The sight of police officers and crime in the news causes lots of anger and irritation to spark in me, even if I was fine before seeing police or crime in the headlines. I hate police officers very much. I feel threatened by their mere presence. They are not friends- they are enemies to all; they’re paid to arrest people, and they’ll arrest anyone and everyone, not just the bank robber or car thief.

Every time I shower I think of the detention center because we showered one at a time, and the shower period would take hours. We had to wait in our cells until a staff guard came and pounded on our locked door to call each of us to shower. Usually this would shock me awake because I slept immediately whenever I was put in my cell because it was my only escape. Once called to shower, we were screamed at by the guards constantly because we had about 10 minutes each. One time the shower drains were clogged, and about a foot of cold, brown water filled the shower area. It was so disgusting.

Green and Maroon were the color of the uniforms. I never wear plain green or maroon shirts anymore, ever. Green used to be one of my favorite colors.

School buses and graduations remind me that I was expelled and banned from graduation.

One of the worst is office desks, though, because they remind me of all the occasions throughout the entire experience where I was sitting in someone’s office. The first desk was the principle’s desk, where I was seated until the police came. Later I sat before probation officers’ desks, counselors’ desks, investigators’ desks, social workers’ desks. Whenever I am near a large desk in an office now, I get really vivid flashbacks and I feel as if the person behind the desk is reviewing my probation orders or something. I feel I am in trouble.