[yeliab12]

PTSD. I don't need to go to a doctor to have them diagnose me with it. I know with every bone in my body that I have it. It has left this permanent scar on me, thanks to my ex boyfriend.

It's strange because I had gotten into a bad car accident at the end of our relationship and that's when I had this slight epiphany of our relationship. After the accident I had severe PTSD because I wasn't wearing a seat belt and I was ejected while the car was rolling. This is relavant because I've coped and managed my PTSD with my car accident better than my past relationship.

I'm wondering why I'm still dealing with all the triggers and troubles from my past relationship still? We we're only dating for about 11 months. And still, over a year and a half and it's still here. I just feel bad for my boyfriend now. He has been dealing with all of my emotions and insecurities for 1 1/2 years. Not many things trigger the sexual abuse I've encountered, which is good. It's more the emotional abuse I've been struggling with. My ex cheated on me at the end of our relationship and hid things from me and I'm nervous that my boyfriend will do the same. I have HUGE trust issues. I'm also afraid that he's not attracted to me or he doesn't feel the same way about me that I feel about him. I'm so paranoid. I'm unhappy with how I feel and how I treat him. I appreciate him so much for helping me through this. I know if I don't fix this or cope with my PTSD, our relationship won't last much longer.

I just don't want this to get worse. It feels like it's getting worse, honestly.

I don't know what to do. I've tried the same method I used for my car accident, but it's not working. I know I need to talk and explain my situation to feel desensitized, from there I need to figure out how I'm going to get through this. Bah. I really could use some advice and help please.

Thank you for your time, all.

Bailey

[Open Eyes]

((((yeliab))),

I am sorry about the car accident, and the PTSD. Well, first of all you need to think about the fact that even without PTSD a person wonders about trust in a relationship.
We always take a chance when we have any kind of relationship because we can never completely know another person. With PTSD, fears are magnified and can stir up any history where someone has been hurt.

Also, you have been a victim of abuse in a past relationship. I hope that you are getting therapy for this too. When someone has been a victim they can develope "victim mentality" and they may not realize it. Being a victim can produce patterns in the subconscious mind where someone can consider themselves "limited" or "not worthy enough" and even unsure about their ability to be independantly strong. It can lead a victim to "accept" certain kinds of abuse thinking that it is acceptable and that they just need to learn to "accept" it. Somewhere is a thought of "accept people for who they are" and that can be a conflict when it comes to "an abusive" person.

The other thing that can come with "victim mentality" is confusion about how to "protect their boundaries" and sometimes feeling a "powerlessness" that they don't quite know how to work through.

I have "victim mentality" myself and I have had to take the time to "understand" it. I have had it all my life and I developed it from the time I was very young. (But I didn't know it)
I have also been struggling with bad PTSD and I can relate to your fears too. What has helped me is to learn about my own subconscious mind, what I tap onto when I am challenged and how I view myself. What I have been learning about myself is that my subconscious mind is built up around everything I experienced growing up, what messages I got from watching my parents interact with each other, how my siblings interacted with me, and how I learned to be part of that scenario. And there were alot of things that I imprinted from my family members that I never realized.

What really "helps" with PTSD is "knowledge". Taking the time to understand "self" and also taking time to learn about boundaries, and the warning signs that others can give off that can mean they are not healthy to have relationships with. I have learned about the difference between men and women, because there is a difference in how they think and handle challenges, emotions, and understanding others.

When someone has PTSD, they can very easily get caught up in repeatedly thinking about any situations where they were hurt, confused, embarassed, frightened, abandoned, extremely angry, disrespected, abused, but never found a "resolve" to the situation that caused them to feel these emotions so strongly. As a result, there is often a desire to "avoid" anything that can recreate a similar scenario. It is normal to practice "avoidance" to some degree, however when someone has PTSD, they are so sensitive that these feelings are much more magnified.

Now, I could have given you a common "safe" response of "You need to see a therapist for this". But what is even better to know is "how does a therapist really help"? And even more important, "How to spend time with a therapist the right way that will really help".

Well, what you need to understand about therapy is that what really needs to take place is that first you need to feel "safe" with a therapist. The therapist should also understand how people are affected when they have PTSD. And then when you visit with a therapist it will be much like you are opening up your brain, with whatever viruses you have taken on in your life, and you and the therapist will slowly talk about each one, validate that you learned something wrong, and slowly correct it.

A good way to look at it is to compare the brain with a computer, however with the brain, unlike the computer, we have "emotions" that accompany our viruses. If you take on an "open mind" instead of somehow thinking a therapist will "think bad of you" for whatever is there, you can begin a journey of finally "learning" alot about yourself that you simply need to learn how to "correct". I have talked about thinking about this comparison before in my posts. It is what I do for myself, and I have found it "very helpful" in my own gains on PTSD.

What I do is I actually "observe" myself in a way I have never done before. And part of that is "observing my emotional signals" because they let me know that some kind of "virus" might be there that I need to learn about.

The part of our brain that carries emotions is "not intelligent" and "doesn't have language". Our brains are set up to take in information and as we do so, we learn to attach "emotions" to this information and "storr it". Not all of what we take into our brains as messages gets storred in a place where we have language. Often we can have places where we can storr simply "images" that may have some "strong emotions" as well, but has no language.

When we sleep at night, our brains begin to go to work on finding ways to "storr" the information we take in during the day. Not everything we take in gets storred, hense we do not always remember each and every day minute by minute. What our brains do is take in the events, together with the emotions and pictures, works on putting together a story and then storrs the story in our memory. We experience rem sleep where the information we take in from our eyesight puts together the pictures of the images that goes with the events we experienced or learned during the day as well.

We are not always able to put together the whole story and put it away with solutions though. So what can happen is we can simply storr images with emotions in an area that doesn't really have a story or language, but just has images. Or it can be images attached to strong emotions.

Basically our brains slowly build up information where we start building whatever ways we learn to "react" to whatever we experience during the day. This takes place from the time we are born and all through our childhoods, and all of our lives. So alot of "who we are" comes from "what we have lived and our environment" while growing up. And many people learn along the way "what we should not tell others" from our families and relatives and even friends we make along the way. We also "learn" whatever our families believe as "good behavior and bad behavior, and even what to be ashamed of". All human beings depend on their parents and family for love, that we are capable, and we "can" be good and achieve. Our families tell us our value in many ways, by touch, facial expressions, and verbal interactions.

So, when we sit with a therapist, we begin to "review" whatever we have taken in that is what we know up until the present. And often we can have "negetive" emotions that we do not "understand" and it gets to a point where we struggle to function, and sleep and be ok to go through our days with a sense of balance, and feeling ok to do so.

But, when someone has PTSD, a trama or tramas affected their brain, there is a pathology to it. So these people get very confused and genuinely struggle with their emotions as well as being able to sleep normally and experience "regular" every day processing of information. And people who are experiencing PTSD can all agree on how "very sensitive" they are and how "anxious" and "tired" they are because of it.
They also can all talk about the frustration, and how much difficulty they have concentrating and interacting every day.

But, by finally sitting with a therapist and "talking" what happens is the person struggling begins to slowly put "language" to how they struggle. As they do this, they are also often challenged with alot of "emotions" too, so everytime they do make the effort to put "language" there, they can become "very tired". And not all the language flows along in a slow mathodical way either. Often the person stuggling can become anxious and can leave out "some pieces of the story". And that is simply because that is the confusing way they storred that event or events.

So, "therapy" is all about spending time with a professional and working on putting whatever we have about ourselves that we struggle with into "language". Every time we do that, get validated and talk about "what it means and how to put it all together with a resolve" we slowly "make gains" on "learning about ourselves and whatever we may not understand or know how to "fix". We learn to "observe" ourselves and understand that our "emotional" reactions "mean something" and once we find our way to understanding "where this comes from and why" we can begin to slowly and finally find "solutions" that can finally give us much needed relief.

I know this is a rather long post but you have a question that "many have" so I am sharing with you and others. There "is" a differnce between the car accident and what you are challenged with regarding your relationship now, trusting, and the relationship you experienced that was abusive. This time you need to dig deeper and finally understand what it was in the "abusive" relationship that hurt you, what you did not see coming, how it affected your perception. Also you need to know what you have from your past that may also affect "how you trust, relate, and view yourself and others" that you may need to "understand better" than you do now. Ofcourse you don't want these fearful feelings to get worse, the only way to fix that is "therapy" with the goals and openness I talk about in this post. It is "ok" to get help so you "don't get worse".

Open Eyes

[yeliab12]

Yes, I just started getting help for the abuse. I realized that I really can't hold it in and try to ignore it because that's what made matters worse for me.

Now that you mention that, the "victim mentality" I definitely have my subconcious patterns. I just always thought those were my triggers for the PTSD. I've just learned to accept it and I thought that's just how I was. This is definitely an eye opener.

Thank you so much, this has really made me want to focus on what triggers my victim mentality and figure out how many subconscious patterns I have.

[Open Eyes]

"I've just learned to accept it and I thought that's just how I was" quote yeliab

You know what? I thought this too, I thought that many of the things I have felt or ways I responded was just "how I am as a person". I really never realized how much of who I am is a result of how I adapted to "abuse". I also felt that when I experienced bad things, I got over it, it was something I survived and moved on from.
I never realized how much it hurt my perception on things.

A lot of people are extremely uncomfortable discussing any sexual abuse they suffered. They feel that somehow they are at fault and that it is better to just hide it, lock it away and not talk about it. And they don't want anyone to know how they struggle to trust being able to be intimate, better left unsaid, too hard to explain, easier to pretend somehow.

Getting up the courage to finally talk about it is the beginning of finally understanding the damage and the beginning to healing.

Open Eyes