In my own recovery, I treat those fucking intrusive thoughts like a stand-alone symptom. *Them* psychic assholes can rain on any parade. No ground sacred. . . As long as I am spinning with intrusive thoughts, the whole world is a battleground of insane threat. No place is safe. If a place is desirable, it is better off without The Toxic Mother. It takes ALLOT of force to get myself out of bed, much less active in life.

Treating those fucking intrusive thoughts like a stand-alone symptom helped me find allot of therapy exercises to cope with it. The psychic assholes still routinely shit on me, but the treasure trove of wants and desires buried in the dung-heaps were worth the rescue mission. I'm getting better at protecting those treasures through the shit storms.

I think I might be lost in metaphor again, so it's okay if you didn't understand a word of that. Mostly wanted to empathize and offer support.

Getting back on topic. . . There are quite allot of exercises for managing intrusive thoughts. It's worth a surf.

I'm in a similar place bigmack so I hope we can both get through this and get back on the rails. Nothing worked for me today but just triggered me further. Just seemed to be the meltdown I had to have. I hope your experience is better.
Keep strong.

Thanks for your replies. I don't understand why this happens. I do several positive things and I try to do the next right thing every day like I've heard so many people talk about. UGH! !!!!

Frustrated with "frozen"? Me, too, Mack.

So I found out about PTSD therapist Pete Walker when I came here to DS PTSD and I read his website regularly to understand what's going on with me. His article online about the "four f's" of PTSD really help me, and "frozen" is one of them.
http://pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm

According to him, our frustration is medically justified, because of all 4 of the f's of PTSD (fight, flight, fawn, freeze), "frozen" is the hardest to get out of. It's a brain thing, not a mind thing. The science of it is that "the freeze response is on a continuum that ends with the collapse response (the extreme abandonment of consciousness seen in prey animals about to be killed)."

Ever heard the phrase "scared to death?" It's not a heart attack thing, it's a brain thing, a "frozen" thing physically in the brain, "releasing the internal opioids that the animal brain is programmed to release when danger is so great that death seems immanent"

I see my psychiatrist, not just a therapist, about this once a month because I got PTSD as a missionary kid in a foreign country "scared to death" over and over for years in a war zone. Hence the "again" part of your thread's title today resonates with me, too. Over and over, again and again, frozen, frozen, frozen.

The "internal opioids" above were released in my brain over and over as my brain itself developed. It's the way my adult brain is now. So my psychiatrist has prescribed Prazosin for me to give me a chance with my nightmares and with my "frozen" brain response.

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), your body may release too much adrenaline. Adrenaline is a hormone that can make you feel stressed and have nightmares. Prazosin blocks some of the effects of adrenaline released in your body. This may help reduce the nightmares and sleep problems you have with PTSD."
https://www.drugs.com/answers/why-is-prazosin-not-being-used-more-often-for-304260.html

So "frozen" brain turns out not to be a mind problem for talk therapy alone. It's a brain chemistry issue, which is why I see a psychiatrist about it monthly like I did last Tuesday. I had some extra Prazosin capsules left so I didn't renew my Prazosin prescription until yesterday, but I never went without a night's dose. I
feel lucky about because it's processed by the liver, not the kidneys, and I have kidney disease. It's helped me a lot, so that's why I'm posting these links I'm using for myself.

Thanks for your reply. I don't have an appointment with my psychiatrist for some time yet. It's very hard to get an appointment with her. I use the VA for all medical and psychological care. I've been thinking of trying to get in to see her. I'm feeling a little better now. I started playing music from u tube. I started with John Prines song Hello In There and moved to bluegrass gospel. For me Hello In There is a powerful song ,I think it's because it's about getting out of myself. The bluegrass gospel tells me there is help and hope.