10 rounds with PTSD

Spent the last 10 days wrestling with what shot my PTSD into over drive.  Sleepless nights, anxiety, isolation, fear, raging anger, too sick to exercise, stuffing emotions with food.  Finally figured it out, I am freaking mad over having to wear a mask.  I stay away from people.  I never applied for a job that…

Living in fear

Living is fear is not new to me.  My counselor pointed out I lived a fear based life.  My childhood revolved around jumping through ever changing hoops to avoid some punishment.  Then there were the weirdness of some punishments I preferred.  If I complained about eating a meal with bell pepper in it, I would…

Taking back Joy

Not sure how to start this post.  I looked up my original wording and the connotation is totally different from what I meant.  I’ll try starting at the beginning. Caution – deep difficult subject. My mother raised me in a fear based living system.  Everything I did was geared to avoid being hit or berated. …

Barriers to sharing

Hectic week but I am forging forward with the lists of best practice principles on Blueknot…https://www.blueknot.org.au/Workers-Practitioners/For-Health-Professionals/Resources-for-Health-Professionals/Best-Practice-Guidelines One of the difficult things about counseling is sharing an ugly past.  They point out that diminishing, discounting, and ignoring what happened are all part of the issues centered on sharing past events.  Blueknot points out several parts of…

All emotions

I lived without emotions for quite a while.  I would file them under the ‘do not disturb box.’  I did this for a good reason.  Growing up in a home where being ’emotional’ was like the worse thing you could do, I stifled my emotions more and more.  Did not help growing up being a…

Relief

Facing my fears sometimes reduces them to miniature.  Other times with the help of a knowledgeable person I am able to make realistic choices that fit into my life.  I am given another new challenge that is listed as wait and see.  I am learning to be very comfortable with wait and see. Patience is…

Don’t tell me why

I get articles about PTSD and depression…Every so often one of the articles tells me how I feel and why.  Don’t just don’t.  This particular article was about depression and stated why I feel depressed.  The article did share one of the causes of depression but it is not my cause for depression.  Over years…

Tunnel Vision

I am about to get on my soapbox and rant…..if you are not interested in reading a rant….please, tune in tomorrow when I am feeling a bit more reasonable. I am frustrated and discouraged by some counselors, lay people, acquaintances, webpages, memes, and others not specifically mentioned that try to over simplify Complex PTSD.  It…

Fear – Friend or Foe

I am fascinated that the last item on Pavelka’s toolbox is understanding fear.  My counselor spent many, many sessions on this one subject.  He explained to me that I lived a fear based life.  I made decisions not on what I wanted but what I was afraid would happen if I didn’t take a certain…