yes.
The picture in my photo's of self isolation is really a memory of hiding in the attic, hoping not to be found at around 4 yrs old.

Guess I blew it responding to the recent percentage post. I thought the numbers demon was long behind me, but it goes to show you never can tell...

Nah, every one has their obstacles, I don't do blue rooms.

I feared the dark. It forced me to be back inside with the scary things.

I am not ready for exposure therapy. It's been discussed, but pdoc and therapist agree not yet.

Of course, my mom was briefly a rigger and lives with me so I guess I did do some involuntary exposure therapy....

I trigger off certain music so 1980s oldies stations are NOT heard in this house. If hubby wants to groove on his high school faves, he does it with his iPod....

I see a lot that upsets me or makes me anxious and antsy just b/c of the emotional intensity but I try to remember that I am doing the same to others with my threads, and maybe I can contribute... I dunno.

I think exposure therapy is brave. I'm not there yet.

I failed at it going physically to Uruguay to my combat zones and had to be medicated and leave for psychiatric help back in the US.

Then last summer after years of prep with my therapist, I did it and it healed me in ways I had hoped for and more.

It was 40 years later, but now I get why Vietnam vets still go back. I don't recommend doing it lightly, though. I needed the prep, the therapist, and the daily support here with DS PTSD folk via internet to do it.

Mujica, does your trip to Uruguay qualify as exposure therapy? My own exposure therapy has been very gradual over the course of years. A little at a time. Starting with a HS poetry reading (lots of light metaphors), night sporting events or hanging out in parking lots to get past my own light trigger would have put me back in the psych ward.

Your trip to Uruguay was quite brave. Has it had long term benefit? Sometimes those mini setbacks strengthen me in the long run.

Wow, I've also developed my own exposure therapy. Because it's my idea and on my terms, it works pretty well.

And yes, I also avoid threads that I think might trigger me. Sometimes, I won't even click the thread, due to the title. I have read and responded to a few, that were a little tough, but I did it.

Religion is a huge one for me. But, I sat the other night and watched a show on HBO called Questioning Darwin. I didnt foam at the mouth or anything. Didnt like it much, but that wasn't the point.

No matter how small a victory, I always give myself credit.

Yes, for me it did. I went to the corner where that car bombing I refer to so often happened. That was my initiation by fire at age 9 into 6 more years of the same in my hometown.

Standing at that corner in July 2013 was fantastic, because I finally saw the bigger picture. All the businesses around that corner, the trees that have grown up around it. My hellish moment of fire seemed smaller for the first time. It put it in perspective.

I also went across town to where, 6 years later on what seemed like a safe suburban street, a solder made me kneel on the pavement. He played Russian roulette with his sidearm at my temple while he interrogated by friends. I was 15, and so terrified at the click of the the trigger and the clank of the hammer of the pistol right by my ear at my temple that I wet myself in terror.

Now there's a school there, and this past summer children played and laughed where I nearly died. Life has gone on, and I was ready to embrace that fact and not resent it or feel my ordeal was ignored. It was healing to me. Life can go on, and I can die peaceful and happy now in a way I didn't know before.

Of course, I did this after years for therapy prep starting back in 2007. I was gun shy this past summer about the fact that I'd failed when I tried it the first time years before It was too soon, and I relived the trauma back then instead of healing from it that first time I tried exposure therapy.

Yes, it has lasted. I'd say it made today's 15 minutes of happiness possible. It's made me commit to the next 10 years of work before retirement. Now I want not only to return to Uruguay again, but to retire there, and die there resting in peace where once there was war. In my diary I call my little plan My Personal Revenge, after the song by Jackson Browne based on the Latin American poem by Tomas Borge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4NwJLHeYeM

Thanks for asking, arfie. My daily connection to DS PTSD while I did this exposure therapy was key. I'm glad I was on here for a year in preparation before going--that was important prep, too.

I think you make perfect sense. Working at it at your own pace is a good idea. Challenging yourself a bit at a time.

I do my own exposure therapy and since i started it, i broke being homebound by agoraphobia, can stop panic attacks most of the time from getting it into full one, less sensitive on light, less sensitive on sounds, can watch tv and so on.

There are two prayers which works for me most of the time and one imagery when im too exausted physically and mentally.

Started it maybe 3y ago, before starting a lot of research, reading, change in thought pattern and other things.

Started with radical idea, start exposure to break or lessen affects caused by ptsd or let ptsd to take over me and be lost.

Still working on it. No doing better without efforts and making some necessary changes in habits, thinking, living way and so on, depends from person to person.

All of us can find way out and get better, and there is hope and there is better.