Your welcome skeksi, it took me a lot to post in this forum, to really talk about this aspect of PTSD and that I DO experience it. It has taken me several months to even begin to truely understand PTSD and I come here to PC alot to read and learn and post. Outside PC, none of my family members truely understand how much I am struggling. I try to put myself in their shoes and in all honesty, if I didn't experience this PTSD first hand, I don't truely know if I would understand how challenging it really is. In my last session with my therapist I looked at him right in his eyes and told him, well, you read about it, study it, and try to treat it, but you never have personally felt it or experienced it, so in that alone you don't truely know the struggle. I told him that had I come in with a severly burned hand, somewhere in his life if he experienced the pain of being burned, he could imagine how severe my injury might feel. But what I am experiencing in my brain, he hasn't personally felt, so in reality he may not truely understand the depth of the pain that I feel with this disorder.

skeksi, but you, on the other hand know personally what I mean about this strange darkness that brings in SI. This thread is good because it allows some of us to discuss it and that it truely is a deep struggle. I wasn't sure wether to post my personal struggle with this here, but I know that because someone discussed it with me privately and it helped me be able to also talk about it in a way that I had not been able to before, really helped me somehow know I wasn't alone. We were able to discuss it in a way where we could say it to each other, in a knowing kind of way that we knew it was there, dangerous but somehow we could get through it, but it wasn't easy. And because of that discussion, it made me realize that yes, it is a symptom of PTSD and it isn't really discussed all that much openly. But it has to be included with all the other symptoms, these strange circle of emotions that are so very troubling, and can be very exhausting all by itself, PTSD. And just like all the other symptoms, as I mentioned here, it is obviously misunderstood, not truely understood and recognized by my husband, and I guess therapist, because my therapist has yet to talk to my husband, I know this because the gun is still in the night stand next to our bed. And I know skeksi, if you were in a position where you could take away that danger next to my bed, you would, because you know I have times where I seriously struggle.

I honestly have yet to meet anyone who suffers from PTSD like me that isn't a nice person, and one thing I know is that everyone I have met with this is EXTREMELY honest and sincere, and none of us WANT to have this, choose to struggle and are trying to simply gain attention for anything other than HELP and guidance and support. So, yes skeksi it is a symptom, just like wanting to isolate, feeling depressed, having extreme anxiety that brings on exhaustion, having trouble sleeping, not being sure of how we will react so we don't like to go out as much, we do look for some kind of rescue person in some way, we have days of clarity and can somehow entertain goals, then we can have days of feeling a sense of loss and instablility, and then days of some kind of disappointment we cant really identify properly, oh and that quick temper where we can get very angry and snippy because we get triggered somehow and yes, there is an anger that is present just beneath the surface. We don't like anything sudden, especially noises or a sudden distrubance like a door closing telling us someone is home and no, we didn't get much accomplished today, and what little we did accomplish, will probably go un-noticed.

But there have been members here that are gaining and maybe ahead and I have met them, they are very supportive, if only my therapist could have that same understanding.

All I know is that the brain is capable of healing in many ways. I am paying close attention to the flashbacks and memories and ALL the symptoms and how they come.
As I am doing that, I am working on consciously working through each symptom, trying NOT to allow myself to fall into the symptoms, but instead, work through them.
I feel it is very important to have a safe place to go to when I struggle, right now I don't truely have that, not the way I should, it should be a place where I will NOT be disturbed, I can have quiet and be allowed to take time out to rest and self sooth.

Well, another long post of mine, well, it is another effort to work on it, support others with postive thoughts, say yes me too, and this symtom is very difficult, but if we learn to hang on, it does pass.

Open Eyes