People with PTSD have been taught harsh lessons about the illusion of safety. Many of us learn these lessons later in life; tragically, some of us learn quite early.

Being born from abusive, neglectful parents who themselves were abused and suffered other traumas, I never learned about the fairy-tale of "safety": my mother actively disabused the belief out of me; my father was too damaged himself to relate it to me. As such it never occurred to me to think of safety as "real", just like someone who was never told about the tooth fairy wouldn't understand the idea.

The problem occurs when not only does everyone else believe in safety, but that belief is critical to the mental health of the person. My very existence disproves this idea, and I naturally react to the world as if safety doesn't exist. To those who fervently believe in the religion of safety, my behavior is active blasphemy - frightening in its promise, and enraging in its implied (yet completely unintentional) insult.

So of course they're going to hate me! In the Church of Safety, I am the anti-christ, a living embodiment of rejection in what they believe. I'm not consciouly doing anything to these people; I'm just behaving as the world has proven itself to be - and how "healthy" people refuse to believe it is.

The "distortion" attributed to PTSD isn't really an actual distortion - it's simply the realization that safety doesn't exist. If anything, the belief is the unhealthy distortion - except society is so founded on this belief, that the collapse that would ensue upon mass rejection would be worse than the damage of belief. Except to sufferers of PTSD, of course - but society has chosen to sacrifice us instead of facing the truth.

The thing is, I have no idea how to fake it. I didn't think anyone actually took it seriously until adolescence, and it didn't occur to me that that was the reason people hated me until now. I have no idea how to even *pretend* to believe in safety; I don't fully understand the concept. So I have no idea how to "fit in" with people who believe. I'll never be "perceived" to be normal because my disbelief in safety affects my very way of thinking. How am I supposed to operate in a society that beliefs as a matter of course something that I don't understand and can prove to be untrue?

P.S. This might invalidate my other thread in this subforum. Feel free to delete it.