Hi beauflow,

I understand your questioning your diagnosis. At least be glad that you are being diagnosed properly and that you can receive help. For a long time I didn't have that and because there is more studieing being done about PTSD there is more therapy and as was pointed out in the article you placed here, proof that something does occur in the brains of children who were abused.

I have read different things about PTSD and even posted www.giftfromwithin.org here as it is another form of information about PTSD that members can look at. But, I hadn't quite understood it the way your article explains it. I have to say that when I read it last night I again was somewhat disturbed and began thinking back again to how I struggled in school and other areas of my life.

What was said about the desire to minimize our experiences growing up would be true for me also. I think that as we grow up and suffer abuse we don't truely understand what it really means to our brains, what is really happening as a result of our environments. And because we don't truely experience what it means to grow up any other way we try to adjust to our home environment and often think that we need to do our best just to
do whatever we need to do within that family without adding more disturbance. That is why many children who are abused do not report the abuse and somehow we all know that, there is this blind loyalty to our family unit and so we just suffer in secret, trying to minimize the reality of how different kinds of abuse are truely effecting us. As your saying in your post, others got worse than you, I could say that too about my brother.
My brother was so poorly treated, punished for having what I now believe to be ADHD.
I grew up in a time when nothing was known about that and these children were often severely punished because they were just considered unrulely children. My brother was even told by a teacher not to bother trying to learn and that he would not amount to anything in his life and that truely upset him and made him worse. All the anger that festered inside of him would build and blow and often me, being the youngest suffered for it and I did run and hide and I was very confused, half feeling sorry for him and half extremely afraid of him.

I always felt like I was behind in school, I never felt I could ever catch up. I always just felt behind in so many ways, never truely felt that I was intelligent or truely worthy somehow. To be honest there is a part of me today that still feels that way and now that I am truely dealing with really bad PTSD symptoms due to this incident that damaged so much, I am literally flooded with something that I truely am having a hard time understanding. I did many things in my life, but I have to say that I was also in an abusive marriage and had other things happen to me in my life that just extended damage from my childhood. And all that time I was constantly told to forgive, forget, that was yesterday, why do you bring up the past, you must forget etc. I had grown into an adult that was constantly ruminating about how to solve abuse and understand it, put it in its place and figure out why it happened and how to avoid it somehow. I had always felt like I could not control my own brain from trying to find some kind of resolve and understanding. My brain was always on a search and I didn't realize that it was not normal. There was always a deep hidden undertone in me that told me that I wasn't smart enough, worthy enough but that I was capable of being resourseful inspite of all of those issues.

Now I am learning about what I do have and it is confusing because I struggle with days of clarity, other days of exhaustion, and days of extreme anxiety that I don't understand. I am slowly learning that all the time I had thought I had coped, I was nursing PTSD. And I am told how intelligent I am and that one truely sets me back because all my life I truely never felt that way and I get really sad because I wonder what it might have been like to grow up normally and be able to utilize my so called intelligence and truely flourish and just enjoy what I had.

I honestly don't have the answers yet and I am trying very hard to understand it and find ways to try to heal or overcome it somehow. What I do know is that I am truely not alone and there are many people my age, older, and even now that struggle with it to some degree, only they are not aware of it. I have always been very outspoken about somehow teaching parents how to present the best nurturing for their children that will help them grow up without having damage from bad imprinting. Children truely have to get more respect as now it is often just assumed that children just adapt to families where parents struggle with thier own issues. Children do adapt, but they don't adapt in very healthy ways and I think it is truely sad.

Open Eyes