It was 2007 when my neighbor's dog caused so much damage to pretty much everything I worked so hard for and loved. After tending to so many injuries for about five months non stop with so many sad endings I broke down into post traumatic shock, only I did not know what that was. I had been in constant hypervigilance, was having night terrors, and while my neighbors had admitted their system was broken, the father even telling me and my husband to just shoot the dog, their tone changed as soon as they spoke to their insurance company. I did not have the money I had needed to really get the right help from veterinarians. It is very expensive to have veterinarians come out, often even more expensive that human doctors too.

Anyway, I was completely overwhelmed and just could not process it and desperately needed grief counseling, rest, and to get away from it all. I basically collapsed and was just so physically and mentally exhausted I wanted to end. I ended up in a psych ward and that was the wrong place for me to go, it only traumatized me even more. Plus I was basically abandoned there and my family was angry with me, did not even visit me and as I may have mentioned, my older sister came in and basically yelled at me and she would not let my parents come visit me, they would never have let me stay there.

The psychiatrist felt I should not be so upset with "just" losing horses and ponies, he is from India and had a heavy accent and totally missed all the red flags for "trauma patient". I was there for too long, and spent Thanksgiving with strangers that were very disturbed, one believing he was Jesus Christ and following me around telling me if I let him touch me, he could take my pain away. Well, the last thing that should take place with a trauma patient is to put them someplace where they don't feel "safe" and only is further traumatized and treated like it is "their fault". When I get triggered now, I re-experience that psychward and I experience the ptsd chills, they wake me up every night too.

I had to literally "beg" my older sister to help me get out of that place, that should not have taken place either. Every therapist and a psychiatrist has said that was the wrong place for me to go. I finally got diagnosed with PTSD by a psychiatrist. I did not understand PTSD or even how much worse it would get, I thought it was a very deep grief, as that is how I felt, so much so that I was overwhelmed. I kept thinking it would pass, but it did not, instead it got worse. I had to stop seeing the pyschiatrist as we got so behind financially, could not afford health insurance and things were just bad. I had thought I would figure it out and heal by myself, well, as I mentioned I progressed from having post traumatic stress to full blown PTSD. One of the big problems was that I live where all the trauma took place, I was still addressing injured animals, so that also kept making it worse. Plus, my neighbors continued to be intrusive and disrespectful, which again only aggrivated it.

I did not get help until "after" I literally blew up and broke again. However, I ended up with a therapist who was supposed to be a trauma specialist and he ended up being a recovering heroine addict, going through a bad divorce, and that was so not good for the PTSD. Also, the attorney I had obtained to help me with sueing my neighbors began to get worse and worse declining into dementia. It got so bad I became seriously suicidal, and trapped with this mentally declining lawyer that had once been very successful, so much so that every single lawyer I called to try to get away from him knew him and would not help me.

It would not be until 2011 that I finally found a therapist that really understood PTSD and actually was a "good" therapist. I was in such bad shape, yet still had to run my farm and my small business. That was hard as hell and my family was still very angry with me "yet again" for struggling so much. I was falling into a very dangerous state of mind, but had met a vet here at PC that explained that to me and I learned to manage that alone by myself. Then, I finally told my new therapist just how bad I was, I had not done that for fear I would end up in that awful psych ward again. Luckily this therapist did the right thing and called my husband and explained to him what should have been explained so much earlier to him.

I finally began to have the "right kind of therapy". That did not change the fact that I still had a lawyer that was failing mentally. However, I stepped back from that and instead focused on the PTSD with help. I had also found PC that year too, and began to learn more about PTSD.

The problem with that is that my family somehow thought that just because I was getting therapy, I should "just" suddenly be able to "get with it and be ok". While my husband was told that I was in serious condition and to be more supportive, no one else had that reality given to them, so that always continued to challenge me.

I had other traumas along the way and each time it really aggrivated the PTSD. My therapist could bearly keep up with it all, I do give him credit for keeping me somewhat stable so I could at least function to some degree. There were things taking place that I never talked about here at PC either.

I had been deposed by the opposing attorney that represented the insurance company for my neighbor. My own Lawyer was so bad in that deposition that he took out time and began to talk all about himself, how he was not a bad Jew, his career, who he knew in the Law field too. That deposition ended with me being stuck in a flashback and there I was in a room with my lawyer who was embarassing the hell out of me and the opposing lawyer that was being nice to me because that is how they play it. I could not believe it when I read about how this does take place in a deposition, how I was being warned "not" to fall for the way the opposing attorney plays particularly nice so they can hopefully trip you up for "their" benefit. I do not recommend doing this while being severely challenged with PTSD. I should have never been alone in that situation get stuck in a flashback with no help and trying to get out of it on my own, and I don't even remember how I managed to drive myself home.

I begged my lawyer to get my deposition completed, he was getting so bad that every attempt the opposing side made, he literally forgot, did not inform me, and even had one on the schedule that I did not know about and ended up with a failure to appear.
It is "not" a situation where I could call the opposing side to see if he was indeed messing up either. Even though I sat across from my lawyer in tears, literally begging him to see to it that it got done as I really needed to get that out of the way so I could focus on my therapy, he literally stood up, told me he did me a big favor by listening to me, that normally he gets $800 an hour, but yet he still forgot scheduled depositions. I still don't know how many to this day.

Also, he had told me and my husband that he had the case to a point that all we were waiting for was a court date. That was not the truth, he never closed the pleadings and there could be no court date set. He was getting so bad he was kind of delusional. All along he also told me that the opposing side could "still" try to finish deposing me, which of course was not good for the PTSD. At this point my brain literally was shutting down and disassociating not wanting to remember and talk about the details of all the damages. I could not even look at all my files either, still, it is a mess on the floor in this room where I am typing this. There is so much there and I want to clean it up, but the PTSD shuts me down. No one understands that, my therapist does, but not any of my family.

Because I live where so much trauma took place I get triggered all the time too. I have a very hard time with staying in the "now", something I could not explain to my family either, something I could not understand myself. When it comes to "avoiding reminders" and PTSD, it isn't a "conscious" decision. It goes very deep and challenges a person to where the person is "very confused" about "why" they can't seem to like they used to. I have to say that I am basically spilt where there is OE that loves her farm and loves her ponies and who she was and what she did, but at the same time there is the PTSD OE that is constantly triggered by this farm she loves and being around these ponies and in the ring and the barn where some very sad traumatizing things took place.
Also the fact that I do see my neighbors pretty much every day as they drive through my farm on a right of way, a shared right of way to their home. I have to admit, I get triggered every time I happen to see or hear them and they do live right next to where my ponies and horses and barns are.

Oh, there is so much more I could write here. I have a whole other challenge with my elderly parents and how my sister has taken that over and how unhealthy that has been for me at the same time.

So, "healing" and a time line for that is not something I can tell another person by using myself as an example. A lot depends on an individuals history, and how much support that person has. For myself, I have a lot of dysfunction taking place around me that impeded my ability to actually "heal" at a faster rate.

However, what I have come to understand is how PTSD does challenge a person, that a person gets triggered, that it can be a trigger that is experienced deep in the subconscious mind, that it is very confusing and yes even scarey. That it takes time for whatever is triggering the person to find a way to form "language" to where it comes out verbally, along with a lot of emotion, emotions that have been surpressed often for a very long time too. That "yes" this is "exhausting" and a very difficult thing to explain to others, difficult for the person struggling to themselves understand it.

I can say that it is a big challenge to do this healing and at the same time find a way to function as one "used to be able to do". I cannot say enough that "patience" with self is very important. It is also "very" important to have a therapist that also understands this challenge that a person struggling can feel "safe" with as typically the person struggling has lost the ability to "trust" and really fears being "judged badly" and sadly that has already been the case with the person struggling.

People who struggle with complex PTSD are very vulnerable because the majority if not all of these people have experienced having their boundaries invaded and struggle with a great deal of guilt that they did not manage to better protect themselves. These individuals are now "very" sensitive and often "can" react with anger, rage, or try to run away or simply stand and freeze and go numb too. It can be very hard to sleep and because the brain does try to figure out how to resolve whatever it is sorting through, often sufferers are afraid to sleep.

However, as the person works on slowly addressing whatever there is that has hurt them in their past and however little help they had to comfort them with whatever it was, the person will "slowly" begin to feel a sense of "relief". It really "is" a heightened sense of self awareness that ONLY a true professional or others that also experience it can validate and understand too.

How this forum "can" help is that you can use it to vent, or ask questions, or talk about the challenging symptoms you are experiencing so you are "not alone" and have a place to actually have the support from others that can relate to how you are struggling.

Another way it "can" help is that often when someone struggling supports others, they can get away from their "own" challenges and yet at the same time they are supporting others, they are also reminding themselves to be understanding and patient with themselves. It is the way the brain is "learning" to practice "good self care" as the brain does learn by actually "doing". What you are doing is that in your past you unknowingly learned how to be a "victim", so now you need to learn how to be a "survivor" and finally learn better ways to protect yourself instead of being a victim. That does take time and patience. How long that takes depends on each person's history.