Obsessing?

I feel a bit like Ahab with Moby **** at the moment, to a point where I question whether what I'm putting myself through right now will be worth the payoff of stabbing at a whale that no one has had any success in killing. I'm sorry, I'm trying to make sense, but my thoughts keep jumping around right now.

Do you ever obsess over something that triggers your PTSD in a bad way?
Like you feel like if you could just rip something apart, and get others to understand why it's so wrong that your life would somehow be better, even though in the short term it tears you apart to have anything to do with it? Like you know it's unhealthy and damaging for you, and it's negatively impacting your life in the now to even expose yourself to something, but you still feel like you have to absorb yourself in it until it's completely destroyed, if only so you can feel peace in the future?

Really? It blanked out a legitimate book title?
Actually, that makes me smile. I'll take it.

I haven't got any advice, but that didn't half make me LOL

Isn't that processing a part of your trauma? Obsessing might not be the healthiest way to do it, but I feel like after so much time doing it comes acceptance. I have spent a lot of time letting memories engulf me and I couldn't have stopped if someone asked me to. But I usually have some kind of catharsis after an episode.

No, there is no catharsis that has come with this as yet. There has been a deeper understanding, which I suppose is a comfort, but the larger social issue that this represents is still very much in place and makes me feel very insecure. I don't have a lot of free time or resources that I could afford to sink into advocacy groups in the area, which would probably be a more practical short term countermeasure for the obsessive phase. I do have plans to blog about my experiences in exploring this topic in the vague hope that maybe someone else will read about it and realize that this remains an issue that they can avoid or address in turn, but it's a painful experience to put myself through it in the short term. So that is the catharsis I anticipate, but I'm starting to recognize just how difficult it makes my life in the now.

Now that I finally feel safe enough to deal with it I can't just let it go, but I also can't allow it to consume me and ruin the measure of peace I have managed to gain in my life either. I'm having a hard time striking that balance at the moment.

This is the never-ending struggle with trauma! I spent many years numbing out and now I have to deal with it, but to deal with it I have to feel. Confronting it can be addictive when you've denied it for a long time. I have to take small pieces and think about them until I'm emotionless. For example, {he was so arrogant, he refused a plea bargain, he pled not guilty, what the hell was he thinking} might be one thing, and my memories about testifying might be another. I try to stay focused and keep it manageable, otherwise my mind is jumping all over the place and my emotions are too. Although I have a million emotions going on when I'm processing because my abuser was my dad.

I think your idea of writing it down, creating a blog, maybe volunteering would help get some of that weight of your shoulders. I volunteered as a child advocate for several years and that was when I was healthiest mentally because I had an outlet for my feelings (mostly anger).

25+ years lost through grief and perpetually asking the question ‘Why Me?’ Blindly handing myself over to professionals and family members to ‘Fix’ me.

So many of us have done this, chased elusive answers to impossible questions. Finally conceding that there are no answers to why, has been the turning point to changing how I choose to live the remainder of my life. The simple fact is that mental illness bought on by trauma, genetics or environment is a lottery…..bad things happen to good people all the time.

For all those lost years I got so caught up in deciphering my feelings and fears, that I forgot to live my life. I believe that this had a great deal to do with my learning to compartmentalise, as opposed to ruminating and churning my grief and loss in my mind for years on end. Not an easy task ...at least it wasn't for me. A dreadfully steep learning curve, with many bumps along the way.

But I have now managed to put my trauma and grief into a pretty little box where it can't hurt me anymore. I know it's there, I know that it is a puzzle that I cant possibly solve and that I can open it anytime, but I resist the urge now as there are millions of other opportunities in life for me to explore.

I no longer need my feelings validated or medicated, I no longer need to know why or allocate blame.....I choose life.