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A wonderful post. I liken my encapsulated feeling parts from the PTSD to my experience with a really strong medications that I was on (several and in such high doses that regulars doctors freaked when I read them and the amounts I was on...two high doses of AD's--welbutrin and paxil, ambien at night, 3 one mg. xanax, depakote--highest dose dr had heard of). I found out later that I was misdiagnosed, and even if I weren't the doses were way too high for any one person.

At first, after they kicked in, it was the cat's meow. I dulled so much of the hurt and ugly that was in the forefront of my journey then.

After a while I was mostly numb all the time (much like first using dissociation, then using it all the time as escape).

One day (and this is another example of the hand that guides me), for an unknown reason I didn't take any of the meds...none. I didn't the next, or the next. The fourth day...OH MY GOSH! The grass was greener, the birds sang loudly. It seems that *everything* in my life had been dulled...not just the bad. See, the bad was dulled, but the good was as well. When I open myself up, not only the bad comes through, but the wonderful does as well.

Much like the medications, dissociation and separation has had the same affect with me. It dulls "me", who I am. It was my drug...my maintenance...preset and very necessary as a child. Again, like the meds, it had its good purpose for a while, then when I was coming round on my own it was still being used almost daily.

I chose to a degree to take the bad with the good because the payoff in the moment was worth it to me. The bad wasn't nearly so bad as it was when I first went on the meds, though. The depression and panic was much lessened.

I later found out that I had clearly not been myself when on the meds. My mother kept saying, "God rescued you." I said, "No, because I didn't have enough feeling to know anything was wrong...I couldn't and didn't pray for myself." She replied with, "Maybe he was answering the prayers of your mother...knowing that you didn't have that insight that you were in trouble and had given yourself to him when you were 11 years old. He took care of His and my child when she couldn't see for herself."

Um, yeah... I can tell you it had to be that because I didn't do *any* of the coming off all those meds on my own. I had not one sign of withdrawal, excepting to lose the massive water weight I'd gained due to too many meds. The p'doc said that it was a miracle indeed...I should've been in the hospital with convulsions coming off all those meds and in those doses, cold turkey and not stepping down. He flat-out told me that he didn't believe I didn't have withdrawal. Well, I didn't. I didn't even know that one could experience bad affects coming off those drugs. I thought withdrawal only came from hardcore drugs, abuse, etc. (told you I was ignorant to these things...lol).

That was NINE years ago. I was kept OK through that time and in my medicated state and ignorance, and brought to a safe place...without my own assistance. That's an example of the hand that guides my life...the hand I've felt and seen many times. Yes, I have faith.

KD