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.
My therapy network is 43 years deep. Child prostitution in the Happy Days Era, incest, etc., etc. My beaten wolf hackles still rise with menacing growls at being called, "A Victim." Let me demonstrate victimhood for you. . . Move it through the joys of being a 70's era female Army veteran and engineer-wanna be and. . . Asking for help is not a well developed part of my nature. By nature I am a pack animal. By nurture, I know better than to ask The Cunninghams for help.
But I am learning. I have studied enough to have a 43 year deep therapy network. The first decade plus of that therapy was dedicated to nothing more than learning to trust the adolescent novelty of the Psychiatric Sciences, and my extreme trust issues but. . . Still, standing on a street corner with a pathetic sign on my chest remains quite beyond me. I would rather crawl into a sewer and pull the manhole cover over my head. Done it before. I have more than Googled clues of what lives there. Googled it with my real-time goggles. I am more trusting of the ecosystem in the sewers than the ecosystem of an Ivy League Medical Park. I have the patience of a wounded predator in deciding who to ask for help. Random chasing of prey is a waste of energy and physical resource. Only a well-fed domestic predator can afford to waste that much resource.
At present, I think my next call for help needs to be the booming Adult Protective Network. My beaten wolf hackles are thinning and laced with grey. My aging bones are sending ever louder signals when I go up against predators half my age and twice my size. My middle aged offspring talk to me with confrontation quotes from Dump the Toxic People chat rooms in between demands from the Entitlement Train.
Sorting. . . Gentle -very gentle- support needed.
But I am learning. I have studied enough to have a 43 year deep therapy network. The first decade plus of that therapy was dedicated to nothing more than learning to trust the adolescent novelty of the Psychiatric Sciences, and my extreme trust issues but. . . Still, standing on a street corner with a pathetic sign on my chest remains quite beyond me. I would rather crawl into a sewer and pull the manhole cover over my head. Done it before. I have more than Googled clues of what lives there. Googled it with my real-time goggles. I am more trusting of the ecosystem in the sewers than the ecosystem of an Ivy League Medical Park. I have the patience of a wounded predator in deciding who to ask for help. Random chasing of prey is a waste of energy and physical resource. Only a well-fed domestic predator can afford to waste that much resource.
At present, I think my next call for help needs to be the booming Adult Protective Network. My beaten wolf hackles are thinning and laced with grey. My aging bones are sending ever louder signals when I go up against predators half my age and twice my size. My middle aged offspring talk to me with confrontation quotes from Dump the Toxic People chat rooms in between demands from the Entitlement Train.
Sorting. . . Gentle -very gentle- support needed.
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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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My day...today...misplaced my debit card...didn't realize it until I got to the register after shopping to a full cart. Used a different debit card and pulled apart everything looking for missing debit card before I left parking lot. Got home, dropped keys. So now I have a missing debit card, missing keys. A full cartload to unload and put away. I got everything put away.Dumped purse for a...
I think it's a great idea to find some outside support. Finding the right person isn't fun ... but it's worth it. I have a lot of experience with it. I've had multiple therapists for both of my kids. What my experience taught me is that the people with more and fancier degrees are probably better at attending university than they are at relating to and helping people. In the end, the kids were each much happier with the highly experienced and down to earth MSW/CSWs that they ended up staying with.
When I decided I must deal with the incest in my own past, I called the RAINN hotline and was immediately put in touch with a free therapist at my local Victim's Assistance Services. That was great for a while, but eventually I had to find someone new. Meeting with potential new therapists felt like having a gynecological exam with a stranger, over and over. As with the kids, the person I ended up staying with is an MSW with many years of experience in the trenches of social services and private practice under her belt. And she's not greedy like so many of them around here, either.
I know you have a lot of experience yourself, but I'm going to say this anyway: there are some really great, humane, experienced and down to earth people out there. You may not feel comfortable with the first one or two that you meet, but God willing you will find just the right support. I think this will be a good move on your part.
Victim:
1. One who is harmed or killed by another, especially by someone committing a criminal or unlawful act: a victim of a mugging.
2. A living creature slain and offered as a sacrifice during a religious rite.
3. One who is harmed by or made to suffer under a circumstance or condition: victims of war; victims of an epidemic; victims of poverty.
4. A person who is tricked, swindled, or taken advantage of: the victim of a cruel hoax.
I looked it up after somebody called me "quite the perfect victim, eh ?" in response to my story.
But there's denotations and connotations to words, right ?*
Do you notice how the dictionary definition includes NONE of the extreme, negative baggage that most of us associate with the word ?? We tend to hear "victim," and start beating ourselves up, don't we ?
For the first 46 years of my life, I _never_ felt like a victim, no matter what happened to me. I think that was connotations talking.
Now ... when I focus on the denotations of the word ... I absolutely am a victim.
Aren't most of us ? Maybe ALL of us ?
The question, as always, is how we put our lives back together in spite of it.
I wish you all the luck in the world on your current journey, Arfie.
As always.
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* Connotation refers to the wide array of positive and negative associations that most words naturally carry with them, whereas denotation is the precise, literal definition of a word that might be found in a dictionary.
Will sort the cultured options in a more civilized moment.
Small steps, big faith and lots of prayer. Love calls?
Still it is not safe for me to return home. The double barrel gang blamers are still in residence and. . . Not in the mood to go over that again. My beloved told me that they had made arrangements to be out by Thursday. Details unimportant to my strictly personals just now. Now it has been delayed until the weekend. An achingly familiar cycle. . .
"And we go round and round and round in the circle game." ~Joni Mitchell
Not holding my breath on when I can return to my beloved, but. . . Adventuring that direction. There sure are allot of wildflowers between here and the Boom State, aka Texas. I want to be in the neighborhood when it is safe to return. God, please guard the health of my beloved during this stressful business. The doctors have predicted that his heart will be the next vital organ to give out and he is not far from it. Stress not good. . .
In 2007, though, the person I admitted my torture to was a VA doctor who reassured me I wasn't less of a man because I wet myself in the second round of torture. To admit that I had been put in the humiliating position of being made a victim didn't bring me dishonor in the context of conversation with him. It got me the help he had given many proud survivors of combat before me.
I understand resisting the victim label tooth and nail because you were raised in the school of hard knocks like me. But school's out for us now, and we deserve some help if we need it. So reach out and ask for it if you need to, arfie.
And safe travels.