(((sinking)))),

I know just what you mean, you did a good job of describing it too. A lot of individuals are challenged the way you have just described struggling, myself included.

When someone develops PTSD, they become very, very sensitive. With that sensitivity comes a lot of fear, frustration, and anger and yet moments of profound sadness too. It's very hard to explain it to others, there is a strong desire to find some way of articulating it though. When someone struggling does make an attempt to articulate it, the last thing they need to have happen is the response of "just deal or don't allow". The other way others respond that IMHO is cruel is "don't get so emotional".

One of the sessions I had with my therapist who really understood "trauma and PTSD and trauma work", was when I was trying to tell him some history and he could see me getting emotional at the same time but also running away from the emotions while I was talking and telling him things. He was very gentle and asked me to stop talking when I was crying and to just sit with that emotion and allow myself to recognize that I was crying.

That is when I began to really feel "safe" with this therapist because HE LET ME FEEL MY EMOTIONS. I had not realized that part of the abuse I suffered in the trauma was being consistently told STOP FEELING BECAUSE IT'S WRONG.

Your using the word "Shattered" is a great word to describe how someone with PTSD really feels. YES, they are emotionally "shattered". It is no wonder the desire to escape this challenge becomes so great, it is no wonder the desire to want to avoid anything in the future that can be emotionally challenging can also be so great too.

Often when a person is abused or neglected or judged for whatever is not perfect or meeting up to some kind of expectation what is threatened is allowing the "child, young adult, family member, friend, spouse, worker, human being" to have their own identity. Often, the worst offenders are the very people, family and parents that are supposed to actually help us develop our own sense of "self" and be ok with who we really are as a human being, are the ones who deny us the most.

Abusers are individuals that try to control others and steal from these others having emotions and a healthy sense of self because Abusers themselves feel the only way they can feel "in control" is by taking from others around them to where these others feel confused and powerless. Abusers also tend to set standards for others around them to make up for whatever they themselves "lack". The problem with abusers is most of the time they don't even know they are abusers. These individuals "avoid" emotions too and without realizing it, they begin to develop ways to "avoid" their own emotions as they begin to believe feeling emotions is a "weakness".

You ask, "but maybe I have to deal with the past?". The answer is "yes", and it's not about reinjuring yourself, it's not about whatever you did not do to better defend yourself, it's not about whatever you did not know or understand when you were hurt either. You need to finally "grieve" whatever is in your past, get permission to do so, and understand that you were often hurt, not because you were bad or deserved it, but because you were exposed to things you simply did not know how to react to.

It is understandable that you see a future right now that you feel would be too painful. When someone is struggling with PTSD, they are "very hurt" and as you have said, feel shattered. What most do is try to "avoid and detach" and even "distract and disassociate" from because they are already hurt and they know they can really struggle and that it can often be debilitating.

The healing process is most definitely a challenge, I can say to you that I am still slowing working on it myself. However, I have learned that when something triggers me to be patient with whatever it might be because sometimes I get triggered and I don't know "why". The healing is in "slowly" identifying, consciously saying "yes that hurt or hurts me" and then slowly working your way towards moving forward even though you have been hurt.

What does slowly develop in the healing is when you begin to realize that you can go forward and manage better then you thought you could. It's a personal healing that is worked on with a therapist who understands you have been hurt, allows you to be afraid, feel, and question and finally "FIND SELF" and be ok WITH SELF. When a person is healing and learning that its ok to have emotions, one of the things they slowly heal from are all the individuals they have come across that failed them when it came to helping them learn to just be "themselves and that it's really ok to do just that". That is what is "shattered" and that is why it's so lonely, and you are not alone with struggling like this either.

I have been accepting that I struggle, I have dealt with so many triggers, I have been dismissed and hurt now so many times I have lost count. I know I am sensitive and what I do is focus on taking it "one day at a time" and if I have a bad day, well, I have a bad day and allow myself to do whatever "I" need to get through it. I have slowly been becoming aware of the things that hurt me, of the lack of qualities in others that have hurt me, but to also look "behind their lacks" too so I can see the whys that I had not understood before. Truth is, there are lots of human beings that have struggled and to the point where they stood still in time and sat and wrote it down. It has been these people that have often helped so many to better understand this thing called life, and how to just be human with a better understanding of how it is "ok" to be human while so many others tend to run from it, often unknowingly.


OE