I know most internet people are ready to offer psychological advice at the drop of a hat, but this is really a question for a therapist because every situation is different and we don’t know your struggles even close to enough to speculate.
This doesn’t seem like something to rush into, personally.
Don’t visit alone. Go with someone. Being alone would lead you to over-think and having someone to talk would take your mind off it.
I saw something where they took an old WWII vet, with psychologists and others, to a city that he had fought in that gave him PTSD nightmares for decades. He was scared to go back, but when he did, his PTSD went away because he saw how changed everything was and you couldn’t tell that the war had happened. That allowed him to recognize that the danger was gone and over.
that’s very different from revisiting a place that something bad happened just because, though. This was 40 years later in a city that was rubble when he last saw it.
I traveled to the city where I was born recently. Its the first time I’ve been there in twenty years that I haven’t felt anxiety making the trip. The reason is simple. My parents died last year and now that I know I’m not going to run into them I’m fine.
What do you hope to gain from visiting?
Idk, I feel like I want to just “face my fears”, like just go, “process” the memory, to make my brain realize the event is over, get some good food, make some good memories so that the traumatic experience isn’t the first thing I recall whenever that place gets mentioned.
Like its just there’s something in my brain that urges me to go for some reason. But I also remember those emotions that day, the fear. So its a conflicting decision to make.
Its complicated, hard to explain.
It kind of sounds like a form of exposure therapy.
I’ve done it, I didn’t like it, can’t say whether it did me any good. But your trauma is different from mine, so don’t take this as even a faint endorsement.
I don’t have any direct experience with that, and I can’t say if it’s a good or bad idea—but I’d say if you’re going to do it, it can’t hurt to do it with some friends and try to create some positive new experiences to overwrite the traumatic ones.
I think it wouldn’t be a good idea to go back to china
I mean I was just brainstorming. Politically, yea bad idea. But I was hoping for enough “cons” about this concept of “returning to scene of trauma” so I can dissuade myself from doing it, because idk why I just can’t stop thinking about that day when I had that fight with my brother and I ran off, and alone in that city. I used Baidu maps and it doesn’t exactly show everything, because some streets are too narrow to get filmed into the streetview.
I was thinking like maybe retrace places I’ve been to, perhaps it could be therapudic. But yea this international border thing is too much of a hassle, so I feel like the potential benefits isn’t really worth it. Idk.
Be sure to eat a fistful of shrooms first
How to get arrested 101 (it’s not a drug-friendly location btw)
I was just fuckin around, dont try that, lol
No, really.
There are just some things in your life, that you have to really work on overcoming and distancing. I remember the first time I moved, I remembered taking some time out of my day to go back to visit my old home, that I lived in for so many years until moving. That old home contained numerous memories but a lot of negativity that built up in it. I really broke down that day and had to leave. I ended up moving back in soon after and then again years later after my second move-out.
I’m on my third move-out and I wouldn’t want to try it again, also it helps because I’m a 1,622 miles, 4 states away from it.
