You are welcome. I wasn't able to find a PTSD site that I thought would be helpful to me, however I have not searched in a long time. I don't know if any of the other members here know of one. You may want to ask in the General forum where other members might see your question and have some suggestions.

I will say however that while I have not experienced suicide in my relatives, I did experienced it on a street where I lived. A few houses down from me a fourteen year old took his own life. I did feel not only shocked but I also felt bad that I didn't know this teen was so lonely and lost. I also had a mother of twin girls of lived behind me, a woman being only a year older than me, take her own life. Again, I didn't know she was struggling so much, if only I thought to myself, I had known maybe I could have helped her to not feel so alone.

As I mentioned I also struggle with PTSD, and it really got bad because of the situation I was in where I lost too much and it broke me and I got so bad that I thought that there was no way anyone would understand "why" I was so bad. I began to feel that because of this, I was going to become a burden and everyone around me at the time was really angry at me not being able to "just" pick myself up and take control and be strong like I had so many other times in front of them. So I got so bad that I really wanted to check out of life completely, it was an overwhelming urge and it got very dangerous. I didn't realize that it is what can happen if PTSD is really aggrivated, which is exactly what had been happening to me.

What did help me was that I met someone in PC that knew about this PTSD challenge and that these really strong episodes do happen, but, like all the other awful symptoms, they fade away. He told me that while it is very hard to fight these strong waves of feeling like this, that I could hold on, not listen to it and get past it each time it happens. If it hadn't been for that, I don't really know if I would have made it, I have to say, it sure was strong often overwhelmingly so. I tried to tell my husband and he didn't get that I was serious and sometimes his sentiment was dismissive and even punishing. That made it soooooo dangerous because it made me feel even more of a burden because I could not "just" like he expected me to, to a point where I sat on my bed really bad next to the nightstand that had a loaded gun in it.
That is how much my husband didn't "believe me" because he left that loaded gun within my reach, knowing that I often retreated to our bedroom when I got so bad I could not function. I have to be honest, I almost wanted it there in case it got so bad I just had no fight left in me.

Luckily I had a T that I had been spending time with, the first T that was listening and actually helping instead of the others that were dismissive and misdiagnosing me. I told him about this really difficult challenge and that I honestly didn't know if I was going to make it because no one was hearing me and were being "mean" to me instead. I was able to do this because of that conversation I had with that member here, I knew enough that it was part of the PTSD and that I could fight it, but I needed help, I needed someone else to see the challenge and help me. So this T made it a point to meet with my husband and tell him how serious I was and he had to stop being mean to me for something I could not help and that he had to remove the gun immediately.

It's really hard to understand PTSD, it is such a challenging disorder, and it is very hard when others around you "punish" you because they don't believe how hard it is. I know how lonely it can be and that is why I spend so much time trying to help others not feel so alone, to understand they are actually "not alone" and to not "feed into" the disorder, but to understand it and know that with time you can really gain more control over how it can be crippling and often down right exhausting.

I think for you, yes it is quite a challenge to be able to find a way to look at all these losses and "grieve" and yet be able to separate "your life and your personal value and right to have a life" inspite of these tramatic losses. Human beings tend to easily "identify" themselves to those around them, especially other family members. So with something like this, it is not unusal for someone to wonder if that is their fate as well somehow. It is important to understand that "no" that is not the case, that inspite of losses like this we are each separte from and also designed to thrive "inspite of" being exposed to having losses like this.

I can understand your desire to be able to talk to others that can identify with this kind of challenge, well, that is human nature as well, we are designed to seek strength and purpose from others who know the challenge and find personal strength and will inspite of it.

So, while I don't have the "same" challenge, I have been exposed and even struggled personally and I am no longer in that kind of "troubled state of mind", but I know the challenge first hand. And in that experience I have learned that one can "overcome" the challenge of experiencing that state of mind, that it can be overcome and no, it is not something others don't understand or could never understand, there is help for it, there really is.

I am glad to hear you have found help with this challenge and you are looking forward with "your life" inspite of it. It takes time to overcome it, to see how it has affected you and to just let it out and not think you have to shove it or hide it somehow, because you don't, you "can" address it and mourn it and finally move on.

(((Hugs)))