Can't say as I've ever had a flashback. I'm not sure what they're like. Do you actually see the abusive situation going on, as if going back in time, or is it just the same feelings happening now that happened then?
Some of my PTSD could very possibly go back to my childhood in the fact that somehow I learned to keep my mouth shut. It didn't do me any good to say what was going on or how I felt. Then I jumped from the frying pan into the fire when I married to get out of the house. The creature I married was 10,000 times worse that the old crone that made my life miserable.
Turns out he's scizophrenic but I didn't know it at the time. I didn't even know about mental illness except the word "crazy". He was very controlling and very abusive to me and then to our children. When my oldest boy now was three, I kicked the creature out of the house, but the abuse to us didn't stop for some time. Did I say this was 35 yrs ago and his wife is still badmouthing me??
In the last couple of weeks, I heard that this creature's present wife told my youngest son that the creature is scizophrenic because *I* am scizophrenic and that I made him that way. She claims that I am to blame, too, for my daughter's Borderline Personality Disorder.
Well, I'm NOT scizophrenic and to have the illness, there needs to be another in the family. It's familial. The creature and I are not relatives, thank God!! As far as I know, the only mental illness in my family is Depression/Anxiety.
So now... I'm remembering some of the abuses perpetrated upon me and my daughter by her sperm donor. I feel the rage and the helplesness I felt back then. Is that a flashback? I can remember details but I'm not "seeing" it happen again.
Here's a question for some you who are in the profession of psychology. It's a very vivid memory I have. At about the age of five, my daughter confided in me that at night she could see the "specter" of her dad standing in the doorway of her bedroom giving her an evil glare so that she wouldn't pee the bed. She had very few accidents as I was potty training her and I don't recall the creature ever giving her a bad time about them but I can't swear to it because he did so much without me knowing it. Would her "hallucinating" be part of her Borderline at that young age, or was it terror on her part? She wouldn't call out to me when she had these because she was afraid to see me "walk through him" as I went into her bedroom. Or was he really there??
Most of his abusiveness to me was to make me think I had said something I hadn't or that I had done something I hadn't. He would ask me what I had just said when I hadn't opened my mouth. He would tell me I had no right to say or feel things and if I insisted, I'd get a backhand across the mouth.
He controlled me beyond measure. He would know when I would go somewhere because he could tell the car was moved, even if I left something on the ground to tell me where to place the tires. He would check the odometer or he would find me wherever I had gone, not to mention that he would call several times a day to check on me. Now I know why he called; to make sure I was home so he could meet his various and sundry girlfriends he had on the side. I didn't know this, however, until after I divorced him.
Ok... I can't deal with this anymore at this point. I'm going to jump out of my skin if I don't do something!
If anyone has overcome their PTSD or if they have found a way to successfully get it under control, would you please let me know?? AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
__________________
Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
|