I touched on "language" in my post to you gman and I have noticed so many that struggle with PTSD truely struggle with "language". If you spend enough time really taking time to read something written by someone with PTSD you can actually see alot in their use of "language" often there will be missing words, sometimes the posts will be a tad bit hard to follow, and things can be left out and you have to try to fill in the blanks. Some people who have PTSD hardly say anything at all as well. They can sit with a therapist who wants them to talk, and they just don't know what to say, how to even begin to express themselves. And I can think of someone who is trying to understand why her T might not be happy with so little language.

Sigh, for me personally, I became a victim at a very early age, around 2, at least that is what I remember, but I do have a flashback that is very upsetting and I know I am somewhere younger than that. How on earth does that happen I wonder, it is the bad one I don't know how to fix to be honest.

I happened to see Dr. Phil tonite and he was talking to some of the parents, one parent who's child is only six and saw his teacher get shot and managed to run past the shooter and survive by escaping. And he is wondering if the bad man will come for him. He doesn't understand the boundaries of where it happened, and that it is over and the bad man is gone. And Dr. Phil told his parents to keep talking to him, keep listening to him and don't whisper to him, that is scarey, so talk normal. And he talked about the signs to watch out for, how the child can want to isolate and be quiet, can become depressed, not want to go to school, and how to be careful because children can easily begin to blame themselves. Children around age six don't know how to think about things like adults do.

It made me realize things about myself and how it was for me as a child, and he is right, I did isolate and I had no real language or way of telling my parents what my brother was doing to me.

One day when my husband heard what happened to me, he got so angry with me, he asked me "why didn't you tell, you should have told and fought back". And I had to really think about that. I did tell him that I was just a small child and didn't understand and that wasn't good enough for him. I should have still told.

I finally realized that I really didn't have the language to tell about something like that. I really thought of my brother as the bad guy alot and I was sooo afraid of him, and I knew he would get so angry that he could really hurt me, I knew his anger was really bad. His anger was not nomal anger, it was "destructive".

I really never expected to have PTSD, never realized it could happen and that I would relive my childhood and every single time I was abuse, "it was alot".

Gman, that is why it is sooo hard for your wife, because she didn't have the language, it just wasn't there. They talk about how hard it is for the adult mind to understand the child mind, yes that is so true because the child was hurt, blamed themself somehow, and there was NO REAL LANGUAGE, not like Niki has now. So what comes forward really does have to have the language put to it. So much struggle, but no language that should have been there for the child from a parent, and so the child had their own language or stuffed it all away somehow.

When someone is a victim, they can go a long time without the language they need. And they can feel so guilty about that. And because it isn't really there, they don't want to talk about it. I didn't want to talk to my therapist about what happened to me as a child. I chose to use an example from PC, to get his opinion on the challenge of CSA. He began the language for me. I didn't know how to do that myself. And that is why so many don't want to talk about CSA.

Yes, I had a lot of anger tucked away in me and it did come out. And I did struggle with the language, it was odd.

Any child that was neglected or abused will feel challenged with language and not truely realize it. So if we are challenged as an adult, we can struggle with the language we need to resolve things we just didn't understand when we were young.

So, gman, remember that when your wife stuggles and gets mad and throughs things your way in her anger. It is her attempt to try to put language to some very deep pain.
It is a big challenge.

If you think about this trajedy going on now in Conn, even adults struggle to put language to it.
So, victims struggle, even adult victims struggle.

Open Eyes