Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
FACT:
I experienced at least 14 years of ritualized incest and community "free love"
FEELING:
How I feel about that fact thunders like the drops of water in Niagra Falls. Those collective drops have inspired the greatest speeches I have ever regretted. THEY have created a 30,000 page journal I cannot even read and a trail of random scribbles and sketches long since reduced to compost.. THEY have spawned my most socially unacceptable songs and poems.
I am beginning to believe I should build an awareness of where my facts leave off and my feelings begin. Not easy for someone trying to heal massive "trauma induced amnesia." (1974 name for it)
I experienced at least 14 years of ritualized incest and community "free love"
FEELING:
How I feel about that fact thunders like the drops of water in Niagra Falls. Those collective drops have inspired the greatest speeches I have ever regretted. THEY have created a 30,000 page journal I cannot even read and a trail of random scribbles and sketches long since reduced to compost.. THEY have spawned my most socially unacceptable songs and poems.
I am beginning to believe I should build an awareness of where my facts leave off and my feelings begin. Not easy for someone trying to heal massive "trauma induced amnesia." (1974 name for it)
"I also tend to believe that without all the effort, these things tend to get worse, so ... even treading water is a net gain."
Man, does that describe me. I tend to crash with PTSD once a decade and get hospitalized for a few days, to come out and start over. 10 years of feeling good's worth it, so if that's the drill so be it.
BUT this last time (it's been once a decade for 3 decades, so it was literally the third strike and I was out) it was different. Forgive me if I repeat my story, but the docs found kidney disease from taking meds since 1995. I was in a psychiatric clinical trial and waived my right to sue to be part of an experiment in increased dosage levels, so that's how it happened.
So this time I had to come out of the hospital, get another job, and "reset" and get back in recovery without the assit of ativan, seroquel, any antidepressants, any of my old famiiar meds.
Deal with flashbacks, panic attacks, triggers, nightmares, insomnia with no meds while doing a new job search and then establishing a good track record with a new boss. And no meds to fall back on. None. Damn kidneys. What an irony--for my physical health I had to risk my mental health. Not cosmically fair.
So I cam HERE. Wow, has it ever helped. You don't know how much of a relief it's been for me to find that you and your wisdom and the daily strength of my peers here could substitute for the meds I've relied on since 1995 and had to go off of all of a sudden for my health. I didn't want to; I was Mr. Meds Compliant for my docs. But I had to wager that it could work. And it has.
Gratitude!