((((sixgunner))))

I am sorry that you are experiencing PTSD after all these years. While I am not a vet, I had the same thing happen to me. I had something happen that was tramatic and it brought forward alot of things in flashbacks etc that I never realized affected me so profoundly, and I had really thought that I had made peace with many of my troubling experiences in my past as well. So this really came to a huge surprise to me.

I discussed this with my therapist and he told me that this can and often does happen with many who present with PTSD years and years after the original tramas occured. He told me that there was a huge convention to commerorate many vets where they all got together and even got to see pictures and footage of the war they fought in. Many of these vets were older and 30 and 40 years had passed since they had been involved with their service. Many men had gone on with their lives, had careers and families and had managed well too. After attending the even many of these men started experiencing full blown PTSD and started complaining and were very confused as to why it was happening so many years after their service.

So yes, this can happen and it can be very troubling. For some reason the brain can be in some kind of situation where suddenly the very troubling memories and experiences can be jogged and can draw out tramas that for years the brain found ways of surpressing.

Yes, I am sure that you never forgot your experiences in nam however you still managed to continue to surpress a lot of how it effected you emotionally. Yes, this is very troubling and confusing when you are suddenly presented with this.

One of the biggest things that helped me was to learn that this does happen and understand that what it means is I am going to have to slowly learn how to deal with the raw emotional memories and visions that somehow my brain storred and shut off to protect me so I could continue to thrive and survive.

Try to allow yourself to not feel that you are being punished or should be frightened by it. It is important that you allow yourself to deal with it and not feed into it. And that can be a challenge because yes, your brain is presenting a lot of emotions now that are troubling. If you can learn to slow down and simply allow the emotions to come forward and then deal with them gradually as they do, it will be much easier for you to work through. It is very important that during this time of working through this that you establish some safe places where you can retreat and rest and calm yourself quietly and feel safe.

If you are in a situation where you have a spouce and family member around you, I strongly reccommend that they meet with your therapist and learn HOW TO SUPPORT YOU and ALLOW YOU TO FEEL SAFE while you work through this. I cannot say enough that once that was finally established with me, I could take off my focus of feeling ashamed or frightened my husband simply would not understand and turn my attention to what I needed to do, focus on it and work through it.

I can say that when I was in a very bad spot and extremely crippled and confused, yes, I felt that I could never get others to understand that what I was dealing with was real and very difficult. I went way too long in an environment that was very unsupportive and it made it much more difficult for me to calm down and try to understand what was happening to me.

There is often a desire to isolate when in the throws of PTSD. This is because while we experience it and do not understand it, we become very aware that we are very vulnerable and can be triggered into a flashback or emotional memory that is very diffcult to experience, let alone explain to others.

dolphin is so right, you MUST remember above all else to BE KIND TO YOURSELF and do not allow yourself to feed into feeling you are a failure in anyway because you are experiencing troubling things that you don't quite understand yet.

I am glad that you found PC where you can come and talk to others that can relate to what you experience and help to support you and calm you down. To let you know you are not alone and be here to offer you kindness and encouragement in allowing yourself to work through it slowly.

It is important that you work with a therapist that can help you through this process of understanding it and learning methods in how to self sooth and calm yourself down when you experience some unwanted floods of anxiety that can frighten you and even make you feel lost too. And yes, sometimes you are going to get really angry and frustrated too, that is normal and it will lighten up as you continue to work through it. Any thing that you experience that you don't understand, yes talk with your therapist and you can also come here and just ask anything at all and we will do our best to share what we have learned ourselves.

Welcome to PC.
(((Hugs ))))
Open Eyes