Thanks ((HD)), I can relate to only being able to handle a little at a time as you have described when it comes to your effort to try to visit stores to Christmas shop.

This year it was a huge effort just to get myself out to at least try as I mentioned. It's hard when one has a presence with them who's entire body language is "hurry up" and tends to wander off in that he has ADHD and can lose attention and yet get hyper active and impatient. It's much harder to manage the PTSD symptoms when having a presence that likes to have things happen quickly.

I did learn some things in just sitting down and venting in this thread. However, seeing things or identifying things doesn't mean I have yet figured out how to not react, some of which happens before I have a chance to make any kind of conscious choice.

In a lot of ways it's like playing that game 52 pickup only in my subconscious mind. Anyone remember playing that game? That's the way our minds work and navigate. Even our technology works that way "remembers matches" and when someone wants something the computer gives you all the matches.

When the therapist that helped me the most sat and listened to me, he got to see how I can talk about something and then how so many other things came out that connected to what I was trying to talk to him about. What that showed him was here OE has done something that turned out to be a huge positive, then here is how that got destroyed. How this happened to me again and again and again, and one day he sat back and said to me, "you have so much trauma in your history, I can't believe you kept being so resilient over and over again so many times". The other thing he told me what he was observing in me was how what I was doing was often misdiagnosed as bipolar, when it's not and is instead a patient that has experienced a lot of trauma that must see a specialist that understands trauma and doing trauma therapy. I definitely store a lot of my history with vivid pictures, and they come in so many flashes it can be hard to try to articulate them all. It's like playing 52 pick up with all picture cards with lots of happy faces then faces with anger then faces with lots of hurt and pain.

Does anyone else experience what I am describing? I dream this way too and what I dream is extremely vivid with a lot of detail where I actually think the dream is real. It never ceases to amaze me how the brain literally does this all on it's own without the conscious mind directing it. I used to experience that when I drew and painted pictures too. Yet, I don't hallucinate or see ghosts or people that are not there or hear voices etc. none of that.