Introduction of who I am.

Hi I'm new to this so sorry if this doesn't make any sense. I am the soul survivor of a triple homicide new years eve of 2013 in Ohio. I watched as my family was being murdered in front of me ...then the intruder came after me and shot me in my left eye and left me for dead. I have ptsd very badly . The family that was murdered was my boyfriend of going on 3 years back then and his 2 children boy 13 girl had just turned 18 in March and getting ready to graduate. I'm a lost soul looking for ways to help myself get through this torture. I have a lot of trigures and anxiety. I have done counseling but I quit after awhile because all she ever had me do was repeat the scenario over and over and over again. I'm looking for ways to keep my mind occupied and learn how to deal with the flash backs and so forth. I am going back to counseling at end of month. Ty

I'm very sorry this happened to you. I hope that this time, counseling will help some.

There is a theory that if a therapist can get the patient to talk about the trauma over and over again that the patient will get to a point where the trauma will no longer have the traumatic affect on them and they can finally move on. Then there is a completely different school of thought were it is felt that this kind of therapy only keeps the trauma in the present and "adds" to the negative affects the patient suffered and instead of talking about it helping, it re-traumatizes the patient.

Personally, with my own trauma that ended up causing me to experience a post traumatic breakdown, the biggest challenge was not so much talking about it, but the way I needed to talk about it that was met with the different ways individuals sought to "dismiss it". It was the legal battle that continued to add to the trauma and trauma damage and how that went on for way too many years. So I would have to say that what helps a patient who experienced a trauma is when a therapist listens to the patient and becomes a witness for the patient so the patient can "slowly" grieve the trauma and finally reach the point where the patient can slowly move on with their life despite the trauma. It has been discovered that when a major traumatic event takes place where a larger number of individuals have been affected they all talk about it and work together at rebuilding whatever was lost and in that case the ability to recover is much better. What takes place is the entire group shares the fact that there was nothing they could do to prevent whatever the devastation was and the entire group finds their way towards accepting rather than "self blaming" and being alone with that self blame. Also, while no one can forget, what does take place is slowly moving forward with rebuilding a life and gradually that rebuilding slowly helps the entire group to live in the now and the progress being made instead of being stuck in the trauma.