"If you have any energy at all for participating in this world, perhaps live now only for those small kindnesses and consolations you can render. Perhaps seek to help those equally burdened by sadness. Confess your own sadness to those in sorrow. Your ability to console may be profound. The texts urge human beings to try to know that they are needed and loved. We all deserve each others gratitude for whatever optimism and joy we can hustle into this strange life by sheer force of personality, even by that most basic contribution, staying alive."
-from Stay, by Jennifer Hecht

This passage has been helpful to me.

Hugs,
Annie

Annie,

That passage says it so well that I cut and pasted it in to my own journal.

Jessica,

Us "old timers" with PTSD (I've been diagnosed about as long as you have) do still get sick of it. Heck, we're the first generation to have it for life. We're in uncharted medical/clinical territory having it so long and having to accept having it so long. There should be a vacation package built in to our contract because it is a full time job and we get sick and tired of being sick and tired 24/7.

Thanks for speaking up as an "old timer." I hope my using that term doesn't offend you. We give a lot of support to people who were just diagnosed or are in the early stages of therapy for it. That in no way means we've got this licked, though, at all. It gets to us just as much, too.

It we can't take a vacation from PTSD, I'm glad at least we can take turns reaching out to each other just to say we should could use a break if anybody had a break to give us. It was my turn last week, as I recall. Thanks for being there for the rest of us as you have done. We can't fix this for you, but we're here for you and you're not alone no matter how long you have had PTSD and no matter how much it still sucks.

Muji

Annie, in that passage I like the idea of being an "optimism and joy hustler" even when this PTSD thing is always trying to ruin my day.

Muji

((Jessica))

I'm sorry you're feeling so down. Annie, thanks for posting that passage.

I wasn't diagnosed with PTSD until about 6 yrs ago, but I know that was part of my issues long before being diagnosed. With each new trauma, the severity of PTSD symptoms intensified. A therapist whom I'd been in counseling with for years finally put the pieces together to obtain a diagnosis that made sense.

I also have some other mental health issues as well as some physical issues .

It was after coming to this site that I feel I've made the most progress in coping with the flashbacks and obtaining tools to alleviate the symptoms somewhat.

I'd most likely been in PTSD mode for several years before that therapist made the diagnosis... 33 years, at least. And amidst those years, other traumatic events occured, building and intensifying the symptoms, until I was nearly catatonic., and suicidal.

I just want to encourage you to keep on keeping on, Jes. It CAN get better.

We 'get it'. And we're here for you..