Numbness is part of It.

When I went exploring the reason behind episodes of dissociation, I triggered flashbacks to an event I always had awareness of, that I had seen a young friend begin to die and walked her to the college nurse, but in flashback for the first time I realised that I had had very strong emotions of horror and sorrow aw It happened. I had been slamming along being very gentle as she sang her last song to the Sep5ember sky over campus, but inside I was racing and forcing down shrieks and wails and all kinds of emotional expressions I suppressed for the sake of my friend and because my culture despises histrionics.

Later I accumulated more trauma. When we are walking about traumatised we are less able to deal effectively with life and trauma snowballs on us. I recall constant numbness to all sensation and feeling as the very worst symptom I had. I begged my overmedicating doc to give me Naltrexone, the opiate blocker, so I could feel again. Numbness, being up in our head with or thoughts, split from our bodies hich have our life force and our joy of living, is probably the root of our suicide rate. We lose four Americans an hour to suicide. One of the four is a military veteran. Yet ptsd and trauma in general remain stigmatized, belittled and misunderstood. Trauma contradicts our most basic superstitions about a God who punishes the bad and protects the good and obedient. It all comes tumbling down. It feels good to feel again. Even when It hurts. Remember that the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality.