What if you don’t know what is wrong with you.  I first noticed that there was something different about me when I was a teenager.  I listened to my friends talk about crushes, school, and family I felt totally out of the loop.  I was fascinated by their perspective but my concerns and worries didn’t match theirs in the least.  I talked to my parents and they told my I was like every other teenager exaggerating my angst and over sensitive.  But I listened to my friends I felt nothing like them.  Symptoms of things to come first showed up and I felt so dizzy in class I excused myself to the restroom and nearly passed out.  The following year I did pass out in class.  Off to the doctor I went. I was given an iron supplement and told that it was just being a teenager.  I believed them and let it go.  I married and started having children and the problems got worse.  Again I asked my doctor, they ran a few test and declared you are nursing or pregnant and that is your problem.  I started calling the phenomena my shadow warrior.  Knock me down when I least expected it.  After our last child was born I passed out driving.  Fortunately, I was alone in the car on a dirt road and got banged up and wrecked our van.  This time I told the doctor, “I’m not a teenager, pregnant or nursing, why do I past out all the time?”  This time they ran everything from MRI’s to fasting test to every blood test they could imagine and the insurance would cover.  All the test came back with in the normal range.  I gave up on doctors.  I got worse, much, much worse.  I didn’t know what was wrong with me and neither did the doctors.

I was desperate and I believe in prayer.  So I prayed often, desperately, nothing.  I was reading scriptures and came across a pattern for learning things.  Study about what I need to know.  Pray for guidance.  Study some more.  Pick up a book next to the one I was looking for that had a better answer.    Come up with a solution and pray and ask if I am right.  I started making progress.  When I started this process I could be up 20 minutes a day.  Not much of a life.  I felt more dead than alive. I learned about making simple changes.  I chose seven because that was how many times Elisha told Naaman to bathe in the river Jordan.  (2 Kings 5)  Seven things that I need to alter I chose three physical, two emotional, and two spiritual.  I started slowly changing my life.  When I finally did get into counseling, I was working full time, going to school, and raising teenagers.  Not too shabby for not knowing what was wrong with me.  I was able to get a counselor and we started out with marriage counseling.  Within a few sessions my therapist realized that no progress could be made until I was brought up to what he called “Fighting weight.”  At that time only PTSD was given since CPTSD wasn’t even talked about yet.  I was the last to know how I behaved fit with being an abused child.  Only I had no memories of events that could be “bad” enough.  I had a lot to learn.

I continued using prayer, studying, and faith as part of my healing process.  My counselor gave me new books to read, movies to watch, articles to read, I had homework.  Lots and lots of new stuff to learn.  I was also blessed with a therapist that believed we each heal and grow in our own way at our own pace and pushing me didn’t help.  I needed to do the work.  He called himself a coach and I was the one down on the field working hard to figure out what I needed to do to heal from the hidden wounds.  That shadow warrior was the PTSD symptoms sapping me of all my energy.  I learned the mind-body connection for healing.  I kept learning and working and growing.

If you are a person that you feel you don’t know what is wrong with you, and this blog and other articles seem to resonate with you.  Keep studying. Try different things that work and eliminate the ones that don’t.  Let your own experiences be your guide.  If meditation works, great, if it doesn’t try something else.  Routines work for you great, use them.  If you feel suffocated by these routines, they are the wrong ones for you.  I read tons of stuff and some worked for me, some totally didn’t work at all.  Some things were my choice.  I chose not to use medication.  I know people that feel their whole lives changed when they used certain medications.  Healing is not a one size fits all adventure.  Try out different things.  Find out what works for you.  Self soothing is also an individual adventure.  I do recommend several things.  No comparisons.  Your hurt is your hurt and is not made better because someone else was hurt more.  Treat yourself with kindness…you had enough abuse don’t be your own worse abuser.  Study different areas.  I have a resource page that has a few of the books I read.  Recently I posted a huge list of books that didn’t list many of the ones I read. Follow blogs that appeal to you and resonate with your challenges.  Stop reading the ones that pull you down and you feel worse afterwards.  (Toxic people abound on the internet, chose wisely.)  Believe in yourself.  The most powerful thing I learned in counseling it was not my fault that I was shoved in a hole but it is my responsibility to get myself out.  Use coaching from a therapist, books, blogs, articles, videos and the huge amount of information available.  Study it out in your mind.  If you believe in prayer, use it.  I now remember why I am like I am; my childhood was a mess.  Doesn’t matter because I can change my life and make it a life I never dreamed possible.

Decide where you want to go and start in that direction.