Well, here is what I am figuring out. What you have shared in a different thread is a picture of what your childhood was like. You were ok with your mother, but you were very "afraid" of your father. You were just a child so you had to figure out how to handle that because "you" could not change your environment, "you" were powerless to do that and had no idea how to even talk about this deep fear, most children don't.

A child that grows up in an environment that "frightens them" and even has to deal with a parent that scares them has to learn how to live "in spite of". That is where the "thinking, or what might be described as over thinking" comes from.

I think that one of the reasons why you ended up doing the kinds of jobs where you functioned well in "chaos" has a lot to do with how you developed a way to "focus" and even "accomplish" in chaos as a child. It's almost like, I need to do something like this because this is what I "know" and can function in, it's familiar to me, I can detach from what seems so horrific, maybe even life threatening, and zone that out and handle the patient with a tramatic injury.

Also, it's quite possible, that you did know something was wrong with your father. He represented a "problem" that you did want to figure out, even though you were frightened of him. I think as you matured and became an adult, you were able to have more of a relationship with him and could even understand more about his "weakness" that long ago you had feared so much. You were finally "brave enough" to approach him and learn more about this man that has so frightened you in your past.

I don't think you had PTSD before, however, you did have a lot of trama that you did survive, you proved to be able to be strong and capable in many ways. I think that what broke you is that you finally found a way to have some kind of relationship with your father, that was important to you on a deeper level than you consciously realize. But when he decided to take his own life, that is what REALLY broke you and you developed the PTSD. That experience hit you VERY hard and in a way it frightened you very deeply as you had been so frightened as just a child, and what is so similar is that like that child you can't change it, you were powerless to do so.

What is important to understand about human beings Tracy is that we are designed to figure out how to "thrive/survive" in spite of. We begin this at a very young age, even before we have "life experience" so we can understand what these challenges or things we are seeing in our environment that frightens us really means. It's not unusual for a child to be drawn to something that can be scary, even toxic simply because it's familiar to them. We are designed to figure out our own unique "self soothing" methods so children can begin to practice all kinds of little things that keep them "calm".
This actually can include avoidance, disassociation and there are a lot of different things a child who has to learn how to live in a stressful environment can begin doing.

Part of the DBT, can prove to be helpful in that one of the things that tends to suffer is the language area. Many have said that at first they struggled with it, some have said that they had to take it a few times before it began to make more sense to them. I think it can be difficult because with trauma often the one thing that there is a desire to do is not "change" certain things simply because there is a desire to remember in hopes to sort through and figure out how to "fix" somehow.

I think that what leomama was saying where she feels you might benefit from CBT first is that for some people "talk" therapy gives them a chance to slowly set out the "story" to a therapist so that they can get all the pieces out there to sort through. However, I have met some people that found DBT more helpful, it really depends on the person.

I am hoping that my post to you is helpful in that I can see your puzzle that goes back to where you first had to develop ways to cope because you did have something that frightened you and you had to figure out how to thrive in spite of it. But also, how you finally were able to have a relationship with something that has so frightened you so long ago. What he ended up doing was very traumatic, and for you Tracey, there is so much involved with that and VERY hard to find a way to articulate. Your father did play an important role in your life and was always a part of you.