TRIGGER WARNING; LOSS OF A LOVED ONE/ASSAULT.

I’ve begun having vivid flashbacks and nightmares in my sleep of a traumatic assault I had when I was overseas over a year ago. I haven’t experienced anxiety attacks like this since the first few months after the event and never to this extent. I think it could be in part due to the recent loss of a close friend/ex who I leant on heavily in the months after. 

I feel so much guilt over that relationship- this is long and personal so I’ll try to contain it in 1 paragraph. I feel it’s relevant to my anxiety, my relief from it and it manifesting again... I knew him for 15 years, he was my first love, my first best friend, my first everything and he knew me better than anyone. We hadn’t always stayed in touch but we kept reconnecting over the years and would lose touch when life, study and love happened. We had reconnected before I went overseas and maintained a friendship, I confided in him while I was overseas and he helped me get through every day that I was there alone. When I came back home I spent some time with him, I remember the first night him wrapping his long arms around me and holding me so tight as we slept like he never wanted to let me go again, I remember him telling me I smelt the same, and it wasn’t anything I was wearing in particular, my skin just smelt like me. He always made me laugh when he exaggerated things like asking me how I got my skin so soft. He told me I was incredible and I could tell he was amazed by me by the way that he looked at me. We spent more time together and he comforted me in a way that helped me so much without me even realising it, he kept me occupied and busy and active and was so intuitive with how I was feeling just by little habits and he knew how to bring them to my attention and calm me down. I remember the night I broke his heart when he told me that he loved me and all I could do was say his name sorrowfully. I had never kept secret that my heart belonged to someone else, someone that I couldn’t be with but I couldn’t let go of. I feel so regretful now for letting something go that was so pure and so meaningful for something that was unknown but I couldn’t control where my heart was being pulled. We still stayed in contact for a while but things felt tense and I think I made it that way because I became withdrawn and built up such a wall that he had worked so hard to tear down with trust but I didn’t know how else to protect us both. I never wanted to hurt him and now he’s gone.

Now I just feel lost, I was so independent before all of this and now I can’t even recognise the signs of my anxiety creeping up on me and control them. 

I do yoga regularly, I have a good job and keep fairly active and busy. I seem very put together on the outside and really have trouble opening up to people. I’m reading a book called “The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma”. All these things seem to help throughout the day but the moment I close my eyes to sleep everything starts racing around and if I manage to fall asleep I have the most intense and upsetting dreams that usually wake me up at some silly hour like 3 or 4am. Anxiety really doesn’t give a damn if you have to get up for work the next morning. 

I wrote this as a note on my phone and wasn’t sure I should post this but who knows, maybe I need to get this out into the universe. I guess part of me writing this long spiel was just to express it somewhere and I didn’t know where else, I have no one that I’m comfortable talking about these feelings to.. except a bunch of internet strangers who might understand and be able to offer ways that help them in the form of activities, books, podcasts or anything really. I’m not really interested in medication but I’m open to supplements/herbal treatments that are backed by research.