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.
I know I'm half nuts wanting to go back every year to the country where I grew up in a war and dictatorship and got PTSD.
http://rt.com/in-motion/260805-march-dictatorship-victims-uruguay/
But like the swallows that fly from South America to Capistrano in California every year, I seem to want to do it for some reason every year, too. This year I was thinking I'd save the money. Really, it was that flights were 20% higher this year than last year. Then tonight, I found a ticket that was marked down 30% and BOOM, I bought it. Like I said, nuts.
The place has really come around since I left. Democracy has returned and PTSD is more openly talked about than here.
https://www.democracy-international.org/uruguay-champion-direct-democracy
I think that's why I always want to go home. My family's not there (which is good, since they were abusive and another way I got PTSD), so I don't know what it is. It's hard, as I always pass by the street corner where my car was hit by a bomb with me in it. Then some friends of mine and I decided to go bowling one Saturday only to find the bowling alley had been blown up by a bomb, too.
http://blogs.montevideo.com.uy/blognoticia_8531_1.html
Yeah, nuts. But the last couple of times it was actually exposure therapy for me to see how everything has changed. I guess it's like how US soldiers go back to Vietnam or something. I'm even thinking about retiring there. Like I said, nuts.
Pray for me. I am only a community college professor and don't have much money, so I hope I'm really investing in PTSD healing and not fooling myself. it wouldn't be the first time if I did. I'm going from July 22-Aug 11, so I have plenty of time to have my head examined. :-)
http://rt.com/in-motion/260805-march-dictatorship-victims-uruguay/
But like the swallows that fly from South America to Capistrano in California every year, I seem to want to do it for some reason every year, too. This year I was thinking I'd save the money. Really, it was that flights were 20% higher this year than last year. Then tonight, I found a ticket that was marked down 30% and BOOM, I bought it. Like I said, nuts.
The place has really come around since I left. Democracy has returned and PTSD is more openly talked about than here.
https://www.democracy-international.org/uruguay-champion-direct-democracy
I think that's why I always want to go home. My family's not there (which is good, since they were abusive and another way I got PTSD), so I don't know what it is. It's hard, as I always pass by the street corner where my car was hit by a bomb with me in it. Then some friends of mine and I decided to go bowling one Saturday only to find the bowling alley had been blown up by a bomb, too.
http://blogs.montevideo.com.uy/blognoticia_8531_1.html
Yeah, nuts. But the last couple of times it was actually exposure therapy for me to see how everything has changed. I guess it's like how US soldiers go back to Vietnam or something. I'm even thinking about retiring there. Like I said, nuts.
Pray for me. I am only a community college professor and don't have much money, so I hope I'm really investing in PTSD healing and not fooling myself. it wouldn't be the first time if I did. I'm going from July 22-Aug 11, so I have plenty of time to have my head examined. :-)
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Hey all, i know its been quite awhile since i posted on here. Its been a summer all right. Its been something else........... You know how they say not to open the can of worms? Well a few months ago i decided to find out what my due date would have been for my first baby, the one conceived by r***. My baby would have been due on March 4th of 2006. They would be 20 years old. I was R**** on June...
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
I hope its a wonderful trip for you. Xoxo
i don't think you are too nuts. where i live currently is rather central to a lot of my history. i've decided i don't want to move again even though i have no guarantee i will be able to stay here. is that sorta like wanting to retire in your childhood home? it seems human nature is always drawn to the places we felt home no matter how messed up they were/are with a sense of hope as well as a sense of dread.
My guess: just like life where you are now ... there might be some tense moments, but you'll enjoy the heck out of the ride :-)
I hope it's a great ride, and that the tense moments are few.
If you can, try to believe your inner guide that says you're ready to push forward, rather than the part of you that is panicking in the middle of the night. I say that, though, with empty, b/c panic attacks are indeed powerful! But b/c good things are happening, maybe your wise intuition is getting stronger and is telling you that you can take this on, despite the challenges.
I think it's wonderful that you're going back, and I hope this trip brings you new insights and healing. Hugs~
Why do we visit graves? To assure ourselves we are alive, and the dead are dead, and that the grass grows back where it was once disturbed. Grief-healing, perhaps?
I don't know why this was my thought.
You have my prayers and thoughts:-) Healing to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u2U2Am_bWQ
Safe travel mi amigo
Jewells
You wrote "I think that's why I always want to go home"... There's a special place in your heart for home and I think we all feel like that about a place that we can call home
I hope you can feel peace on your trip... Big hug...xo
I was molested in Uruguay along with 5 other elementary school kids by a military adviser who took advantage of lawlessness and military power during the war to abuse us. In 2009 on my visit back to Uruguay from the USA I found out that the military adviser, a member of the US military, came back to the US. When he abused more kids here in the USA he got caught, arrested, a fair trial, sentenced, and sent to prison in the US. There other inmates (who hate pedophiles in a special way, I hear) shanked him and killed him there.
I would never have known that story of what had happened to him if I hadn't gone back to Uruguay to hear it from the other kids, now grownups, there. For my whole life my parents, especially my mother, blamed me and said I was "gay" and then beat me in homophobic rages. Fortunately, rather than make me into a homophobe like my mom, that false idea led me to get to know actual gay people and care about how people like my mom persecuted them. There were kind to me in turn, a community of kindness. What a blessing.
What healed me was finding out in 2009 in Uruguay that the pedophile was tried and convicted in a fair court in the USA. That validated the fact that no, he was a criminal, and I was a child. I didn't need for him to be killed for me to heal, but that is what that life leads to. What helped me was that the other kids, grownups now, talked about it in 2009 and gave me closure I never expected.
About the house where abuse took place, I will be passing by that house again in 2 months on my visit to Uruguay. My house of horrors is such an innocent looking house now. The new owners took off all the bars on all of the windows, bars put on to keep me from escaping out my bedroom window when the beatings began. It's a regular house now, not a prison of abuse. Seeing that is closure, too.
Another closure experience is not about domestic abuse, but surviving combat. I usually pass by the street corner where my car bombing happened with me in the car. It's a normal, busy street corner in a peaceful city now, and oddly that gives me peace, I don't know why. I feel empowered somehow, somehow strong, when I stand there again and overcome my fear of that spot.
I don't recommend this to other people. I'm obviously unsure about it. It may have served its purpose and be an expensive case of chasing what's already served its purpose.
It just kind of happened to me. I got a surprise invitation to teach a seminar at a university there just at the same time my college in the USA laid me off years ago. That was the college before the one where I've had my current job for 4 years now. I needed the money so I sucked it up, went back down there, taught the seminar, and got surprised by these personal closure experiences. I don't know if it's supposed to work that way, or how it's supposed to work. It just happened for me that way.
Fingers crossed.