(((((((Oceanwave)))))))) Thanks! I feel healthier finally. I feel like I am finally allowed to be OK and to be happy. I feel like I finally logically understand how my mind saved itself and my sanity through the dissociative state and by making the alters it needed in order to hide stuff from the child I was. I am not "nutsy" because of those parts of me being split away. So now I don't have the deep shame I felt from all of that! That was a ton of shame to carry around all the time. Even as a kid in first grade I remember asking other kids if they had people inside their heads they talked to and they all laughed at me! It was beyond humiliating! I thought everyone was how I was. And I hated myself so much for not being like everyone else.

Now I realize that everyone does what they need to do in order to make it through life - alive. No more shame for me in having DID or PTSD! It just is what it is.

The great part is that now that I am done with the trauma work, now that I have told all those deep secrets that kept me all bound up inside, I am finally FREE to start looking forward. A person has a hard time moving into the future when they are bound in thick chains of past trauma. I know... I tried hard and it doesn't work that way. But now I have a sense of wellness and a sense of hope. I feel like maybe it will be ok now to start thinking about the future. I am still taking it slow because I don't have my freedom legs yet. But I do feel as though I am finally out of the chains.

One of my hopes is to learn the skills I need to manage the PTSD and DID symptoms as they come up in my daily life. Instead of those things deciding my life for me, I get to finally learn how to be incharge of them! It won't be easy because PTSD changes the brain chemicals and I decided to use CBT as my method of dealing with those symptoms. And I am still dissociative at times of stress because that is the way my brain had to survive in the past. But now I can learn the skills to stay present and not allow my brain to just decide what it thinks it needs to do for survival.

I am now free to learn to be the master of my brain rather than it being the master of me!