How do you make somewhere "safe" again once its been "contaminated"?

[SirBoobAlot]

On Tuesday I walked into the woman who verbally assaulted me when I was 13 - eight years ago. The assault was a major trigger for my BPD, and still causes me a lot of issues (possible PTSD).

She was walking towards me in the busy high street, in the direction I had just come from. I freaked out, started having visual hallucinations, was unable to go back the way I had just come (as she had just walked that way) or go any further up the road as that's where she had been. I ended up sat on the side step of a large shop, on a side road, hyperventilating and really not holding it together until my wonderful friend came (literally) running to me.

I've had to double my medication dose to get through the last few days. But now my big problem is that this happened near some of the shops I need to go to most often. Just being in town earlier was a huge stresser for me, even being down the other end of it.

How do I make it feel safe again?

I'm so angry that eight years on this witch is still having so much power over me. I'm in therapy, and trying to work through it. Please don't judge me for what I'm struggling with in the long term.

I don't know what you're struggling with in the long term, Sir, but I think I recognise those feelings.
And I'm sceptical about methods of 'managing' these things, because those memories/flashbacks are there with you, IYSWIM. If you have to avoid that place for a bit, avoid it. It might be that you'll get so pissed off with the inconvenience that you'll go back there just to get on with your life and then be overtaken by a whole other onrush of feelings/flashbacks that'll be more like anger/sadness/outrage - or a surprising teeth gnashing urge to howl with furious laughter at the injustice of the whole thing.
Take it a second at a time, though; don't imagine today that you'll have predictable feelings about a place tomorrow because she was there.
Just try and own what it is that you are feeling and accept that it's valid.

I don't know if that's any help, but I hope it puts some kind of alternative perspective on this that might be useful.

Thanks Paris - I'm sorry you know how I feel. x

I've never heard anyone talk about this before! I have the same kind of thing- made the thread about it ages ago, because my parents were insisting I go through this particular area and obviously I was resisting it as much as I could. I also really didn't want it because I'd have to bring flowers to my piano teacher- well, I didn't want him and this area linked by any means, piano was a safe place! In the end I didn't have to go.
They're very much of the thought that you should just face up to it, not put so much weight on this and not indulge these feelings much more than you can help. I certainly see their point....but I feel low enough as it is most days. If I go there, it'll put me in a bad frame of mind for the whole day, and I'll come back to my room and feel like my room is alien and linked. Recently I did go there (had to run an errand) and it wasn't as bad as I thought, but wasn't therapeutic by any means. I took a different, much longer way back (and I would have taken it to start with but my mum would have had no patience for that), by my old best friend's house- and now that feels a bit funny too. It's hard. But at least my area is mostly suburban- your situation sounds awful. There's a lot of sense in what my parents say, but it's much easier said than done.