I don't know what it was that ended up in the wrong place, Patricia. Nor do I remember a word of what I wrote yesterday. This PsychCentral software just eats messages if you're not really careful. When you submit the page, sometimes it times out before the next page opens, and then you get a "page expired" notification, which means you've lost everything......unless you had your wits about you and you can hit "select all" and "copy" before the darn thing times out. Obviously, I wasn't witty enough, yesterday. It only happens to me here, so I'm blaming the site.

I think PTSD-inspired people get to be eccentric. We face the world with a wry sense of being different, and I think we pick up quirky ways of doing things. In the end, it's easier to be different on those unpredictable occasions (e.g. when getting through a minor trigger), if you're already different all of the time, in the first place. There are many benefits to being PTSD. It's really hard to notice them, though, if you're getting loud versions of the negative aspects of being PTSD. I think PTSD people become very empathetic. That's a good thing, for everybody.

It does feel weird for me to only just have figured out that I fully dissociate. Or, at least, I used to. I can't promise it won't ever happen again, but I know that it is now possible that it may never happen again. And if it does, I'll have much better coping strategies in place than I could ever have managed before I understood what happens to me.

An ego state is really a very inspired form of consciousness. It served a very noble and adaptive purpose, at its inception. It can become a maladaptive entity, though. And, in order to "discontinue" that ego state, one must first put oneself in a position of observation. One must build a cognitive scaffold, from which clear observation can finally be obtained. Then comes the "Eureka!" moment.

Lar