I think it makes sense that you care about that detail. It bothers me as well since my PTSD was caused by someone who knew me extremely well. For myself, I found that part of my trauma to be the most traumatizing. Someone who I thought I knew and I thought well of them, I trusted them, loved them, cared for them, and someone I thought cared for me too, that someone shattered my perception of who they were and broke my trust and harmed me. It took me about 6-9months to get over that. About half of my therapy was centered around that fact. It still disturbs me when I think about it. I think that it would disturb even those who didn't have a similar experience.

That is a very sad detail in an even sadder event, muji. Sad enough that I am mystified how you can miss the rationale behind feeling that sadness. No, we can't expect ourselves to take on the worries of the world, but we can't expect ourselves to be impervious to them, either. Some are gonna leak through even the toughest of defenses. I does believe I am qualified to spurt exes on that score.

Gentle support while you work through the sadness, muji. It hits my personal-none-of-my-business radar as a valid sadness. Why ask why? I vote you give yourself permission to grieve.

Healing hopes for all. No exceptions.

Muji, it has made me not only very sad but I am now having small bouts of paranoia. The last few days before it I was having problems being caught up iin all the negative going on in the world, this tipped it so I have been having to avoid the internet and live television.

Thoughts are with you friend

Hugs Muji.
As others the familiarity of the shooter to the victims' is a deeper hurt. I see blurbs of this when I open my computer and then navigate to where I need to go. It also happen to hit on what I am studying.
It's not irrrational, but should sadden us as members of the human race. Also being a past minister to those in the ER you know most go to social service based clinic because that is their only affordable option.
Those that attack are not considering that they are harming innocent as well, since those options are also help to problems in high risk populations.
I can see how you connected to the co-employees in a service that requires more compassion, as your work in the hospital did.
Gentle hugs ,
J.

I had this for therapy yesterday, along with some tissues.... it just brings up that same sense of not-safe-world for me, and that sense I'm the lunatic if this is what the "norm" is becoming. In grieving over the events, I really end up grieving over what a scared kid I was (and am!). And it reminds me, at least, that what people say is "normal" can hide such awfulness... *sigh*

Big purring hugs, Muji. Make sure you extra-self-care this weekend, okay?

I think you do know why you are grieving Muji. Think back....how many times when you were hurt it was personal? Someone who was out to hurt you specifically...it was personal. These shootings were personal.

Allow yourself to grieve because it's likely you are grieving your own past and not the lost of lives of these people in CA.

I went through this when the children were killed at the elementary school in CT a few years ago. It tore me apart. I sobbed for days. Some of it was for those children but the bulk of those tears was for myself and my own traumatic past. I grieved for those days following the shooting. I grieved for myself even though I didn't know that at the time.

No fear is irrational even if it is old fear. And caring about others is not irrational either. Just my opinion. :-)

Thanks, everybody, I think you're right. The detail that the shooters knew their victims does hit me in my PTSD trust issues for good reason, as I was abused by those who should have been trustworthy.

Hugs muji

Huge hug for you Muji and all of my American friends... I think grieving for the horrors that are going on in the world shows our humanity and compassion..... Our ability to empathize.... I wish we could all feel this for everyone in the world no matter colour, creed or choices.... What a different world it would be... Another hug and a blessing...xo

Amen, SunCloud.

Be the change you most want to see in the world. ~Ghandi

I AM SO TIRED OF KILLING I DONT KNOW WHY PEOPLE MUST KILL NO MATTER WHAT I CAN NOT TAKE SOMEONES LIFE NO MATTER WHAT THY KILLED MY DAUGHTER WHEN SHE WAS NINE AND WE COUGHT THE KILLERS I COULD NOT TAKE THERE LIFE I COULDNT LET THEM GO THREW THE DEATH PENITY THY GOT LIFE IN PRISON AND THY HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT THY DID EVERY DAY AND OTHER INMATES DONT LIKE CHILDREN KILLER

Hugs muji and to all....the buiding where this happened, the people who worked there, taking care of those, all ages, developmental disabilities, other disabilities, people in wheelchairs...I can't wrap my mind around it...I grieve too...tears just fall. I want to know why, I need to understand "something". I just checked tv, they found on an electronic device the female attacker made a statement of support on the internet to ISIS just before the attack, took it down, but they found it...the Evil SOB group that has no connection to Humanity, just EVIL!! I guess I don't want to really understand how anyone could do this to people they knew..,very, very sad...More Hugs and Prayers.

For my own mental health and safety.... I don't watch the news... when it pops up on Facebook... or other Social Media... I scroll past it... I cannot afford to read and know about this insane sick and twisted world we live in... I pray for all... and will continue to pray... but I won't read about it... and if someone starts a conversation about it I change the subject! That is what's working for me right now! Blessings!
MJ

(((Hugs Muji)) It sounds like it triggered you

Yes, it triggered me. I realized, as I already posted, that the fact that the shooters knew their victims hit me in my own situation in that, like a lot of us, those who abused me should have been trustworthy.

Then, as cheesecake noted, the facility attacked was a place for caring for people with disabilities. It reminded me of when I was a hospital chaplain for a year in 2002-2003 on a hospital unit for people with advanced Alzheimer's. It was a very hard year, the hardest specialty I ever worked with, even harder than the ER or even when I worked in cardiology and neurosurgery later on. But I bonded with my boss on that unit so strongly that we are friends to this day. She's a hospital chaplaincy professor now, and just sent me a book of Advent meditations she wrote for this Christmas season.

So imagining an attack on people who work with disabled folks and the attacker being one of the people who did that work, well, it was just a new mind-bender for me. I work hard at being calm in the face of all of this terrorism so I can remember that the terrorism I survived as a kid did end, that terrorism to be forever but it's not. It was awful in Uruguay when I was a kid, with bombings of places I went to, of my own car, and shootings of people I knew.

I want to feel the pain of terror attacks but also offer the hope I've learned to embrace since then. As a kid terrorism seemed to be forever, but that's the lie of fear, as no terrorism is. This time, though, the San Bernadino shootings got past my ability to process as I've been doing.

Talking about it here really helped. I was unnerved and felt vulnerable to my PTSD despair. I can only speak for my own PTSD despair experiences, but I can't flirt with my PTSD despair any more. I can't treat it as a fetish or play with it or feel sorry for myself for long with it or get fascinated with staring at it and examining the evolution of its design like some new sophisticated strain of killer virus. My own history is that PTSD despair has taken 4 relationships, 2 marriages, 2 careers, 1 home, and has put me in the hospital 3 times, doing everything short of leaving me stone cold dead. I no longer find it curious or interesting, I now just have a healthy respect for it. My PTSD despair will take me down and strip me so bare that I can't function. At all.

Yet I had a challenging day ahead to face at work, with wrapping up classes before finals, students depending on me for help with their final papers in my office hours, and a serious meeting with administrators at the end of the day. Didn't want to go in raw, despairing, and PTSD triggered to class and office and the meeting, but that's the way it looked like it was going to be.

Posting here and getting your replies, though, did change that. It gave me a start in processing this yet again, like I've been able to process these attacks in the past. They're coming so fast that it's hard to do, so I appreciate all of your help in getting me going. That's all I need, to be given a start taking that first step away from PTSD despair. I want to hope so badly, I'm committed to hope, so if I can make that first step toward hope, I'm not going to let myself fall back.

The result is that I had a good day. I was able to keep my nerves in check, and be calm teaching, meeting with students in my office, and then, what really proved it, in that serious meeting at the end of my school day.

Thank you all, truly, prayers to you all for peace in return, with gratitude.