((((Big Mama))),

You are at the part of PTSD and therapy where you are beginning to "review" your personal history during the day and through dreams at night. You are also trying to understand what PTSD is as well as what it means to you and your life/who you are.

This "is" a challenging time for all who struggle with PTSD. It can be very time consuming and emotionally tiring too. It can even feel like you are out to sea by yourself hanging onto a small life preserver and wonder how on earth you got there.

Well, you have to make it a point to set aside a big part of yourself that "observes" this process. A part of yourself that stays willing to just observe and learn and also be there to remind you to be patient and caring of yourself as you slowly work through this strange thing called PTSD.

What you are finally doing is you are looking at your own personal history and beginning a journey on finally understanding what it means and that you are finally going to sort through it all, and "grow" now.

When someone has PTSD, they become "very sensative" and can be triggered by their interactions with others. These triggers can bring forward some events you had in your past that made you feel unsafe and very uncomfortable, and you didn't know what to do about it. So as these events begin to surface you will also again feel the emotions that you experienced that are attached to these events. This will also occur in your dreams as well, but you need to understand that as you talk about them, putting these events into words as well as expressing the emotions, you are also going to slowly be able to lesson the power of the emotions and confusion and even frustration and anger that also takes place.

It is important that you learn how to self sooth and recognize when your anxiety levels rise and develope ways to consciously help yourself calm down and learn how to stop the cortizol build up that often accompanies these uncomfortable triggers.

What I learned about PTSD is that because I was so "sensitive" often I could get triggered and just "pop out" a reaction and the only thing I could do is work on it "after" it popped out. I also would experience sudden anxiety or anger with these pop up responses.

What is happening is you are beginning to expell some pockets of "tramatic experiences" that you storred in your brain because at the time you did not have any way of addressing or instantly extinguishing or resolving the tramas.

This is not anything anyone could imagine could happen, so it is confusing and often unsettling and scarey. You "can" slowly learn to understand that this is part of PTSD and as you slowly address these pockets, you "gain" more control over them. AND, you do not have to "feed into them" either. You "can" learn to pay attention and slowly calm yourself down inspite of them, it does take time and is work for a while.

Allow yourself space to "observe" and understand that as challenging as this is, you can finally work through them and begin to feel more settled with yourself and your challenging history.

((((Hugs)))
Open Eyes