Lived Experience Forum

[Burnt]

How do you feel when you smell smoke? (Not cigarettes..) 

Mixed emotions? 

A freight? 

Myself; I at first have a shiver down my spine. Untill I smell the sweer hardwood tang that comes from a fire place or camp fire. 

I have been loving sitting around a camp fire. 

But when I smell a more potent smoke, say someone is burning rubber. I have flash backs and nightmares that night. 

My worst experience with smoke so far is seeing it in a distance- someone must have been doing a large burn off.

How are you with smoke? 

How are you feeling now we are heading into the many anniversaries?

[AZZ]

Great question @Burnt .
That's so interesting that once you've determined the origin of the smoke you can categorise it, and react accordingly. Really nice that you can still enjoy a campfire, they're lovely aren't they. 

I wonder if that's the same for others or if it's all smoke that's triggering.

[TideisTurning]

@AZZ is right, that certainly is an incredible ability to be able to distinguish the kind of fire from the smell alone @Burnt! I imagine it's quite helpful often as the smell of campfire smoke may not be as much of a trigger as it otherwise could be. It makes perfect sense that the other smell, which I imagine is closer to the smell in your experience of the fires, would trigger those reactions for you. How do you distinguish in those cases to know the source of the smell is different then what your subconcious is maybe expecting? Is there another way aside from picking up on subtle differences in the smell?

[Shazi55]

Oh @Burnt I know right! 

In my mind I call it THE BIG SMOKE and instantly go into my big fire plan in my head...

Sometimes it takes me a moment to get a true assessment of what I'm actually dealing with

That hypervidulance is something I have always lived with on many levels

I've learnt over the years to come to terms with it by simply being prepared ahead of time and learning as much as I can about keeping myself safe 

[Burnt]

The big smoke is a perfect name for it. Today hot and windy weather where  I am , was a bit scary. If I had of smelt any smoke I would have panicked.  I need to pack a goto bag again but can’t gather the mental strength to do so. Ah , smoke.