This week after many sessions and tests, I was finally diagnosed with PTSD when I thought I had a Severe Anxiety Disorder, but my past is pretty murky.

The primary source of my trauma comes from my brother, who when he was 15-16 got heavily into drugs, alcohol and Death Metal. Really his whole demeanor changed, he became a racist and believed by the police to be responsible for burning a Swastika on a black family's roof. He also became a serial rapist, as during that year my father went on deployment to Korea for the entire year. I was 8 years old, and didn't remember this until I was 18, but I was assaulted continually over the year. Though most of the time the way in which he abused me was through manipulation and tricks, he would make deals with me such as playing a game with me if I were to do things to him. Being a child I had no idea, but I also had no idea that he was also assaulting my sister and mom and I even suspect my other brother was subject to abuse as well but my family keeps lots of secrets.

My dad had a stroke during that same year (he didn't know until later) and when he came back he was a lot angrier and ended up running the family into bankruptcy through a secret multi-national prostitution addiction, which he still is in denial about. They both are in denial about it all.

I'm not sure what to do with these things, I don't think obsessing about it cognitively is going to help as it isn't an issue in the Pre-Frontal Cortex, but I feel like the real fear that I have is that the same proclivity and capacity for destruction and suffering lives in me as well. Am I a man of secrets, a man of fury and abuse? Is there something in me that I don't know, or have never been aware of which could trigger given the right scenario?

Sometimes I feel as if I could just sense the suffering of the whole world. As if I could just picture myself in the gas chamber along with the Jews hacking and gurgling on the gas secreted from the shower heads, or I can feel the suffering due to the millions of children who die every year. The emotional weight of humanity is impossible to bear, but I feel like from a neurophysiological perspective I can think about others as if it were myself, which of course triggers my trauma greatly.

I'm glad that I know now, but it does make you feel like damaged goods. I'm a pretty high functioning person who has had success academically and professionally, but I wonder what I would have been like had this not all happened to me. Will I not be able to achieve what I otherwise would have because of this battle that I must face? I won't say that these cognitions are true or factual, but it is hard for me to see how so many people fail and not accept the fact that not everyone's journey has a happy ending. I'm an incredibly ambitious person who longs to make a significant difference in the world, but I wonder if I am strong enough or if I ever will be able to carry that kind of weight.

It seems I have a lot of questions, and I have an extremely overactive mind to ruminate on it all, but I should probably just put it away for now.