I really want to know the same thing.

I believe so. Its taken me a long time to find the right therapist and up until then I thought nothing would change for me. Keep trying ((hugs))

Yes, you can recover from PTSD. It is a long process, but one day I woke up and realized that I was remembering the traumas and not reliving them. There is a difference. Remembering our trauma's is validation that it happened and you no longer think you will die from it. It's not in your face and It does not take you down like flash backs in PTSD.

I did a type of therapy with my therapist it's called A.R.T. Accelerated Resolution Therapy. It made a huge difference in my healing. Therapists use it a lot with soldiers returning home with PTSD. I would recommend finding a therapist who is experienced in it. It changed my life...it saved my life. There is hope. Have faith you can recover from PTSD.

What a coincidence--mine were from birth until 17, too. That meant trauma was wired into my brain's development growing up, so there's that.

However, when I worked as a hospital chaplain on a brain surgery unit, I saw how resilient the brain is. It doesn't regenerate with new cells to heal like the rest of the body does. It rewires itself instead. So I saw stroke survivors whose speech center in their brain literally got fried learn to talk all over again, their brain rewiring itself around the dead spot, literally.

It gave me hope to throw myself into meditation and all of the mental exercises my therapist gave me to re-train my brain even now at age 59. There's no time machine to take me back and make my 17 years of trauma un-happen, no. But there's re-wiring going forward from here for sure. Not just mental re-wiring, actual re-wiring of the brain. It takes time, but it's real.

Like cassichase, to do it I got a PTSD specialist for a therapist. We didn't do A.R.T., but we did do PTSD-specific therapy, not just general counseling, and it made a huge difference, the kind A.R.T. did for cassi.

Recovering *from* PTSD implies cure and no, I don't believe so. I am of the camp who believes that the trauma, itself, doesn't cause PTSD so much as the way I process the trauma. The way I process trauma is part of who and what I am. I don't need to cure who or what I am. I'm *just* learning how to be a happier me.

Inside my strictly recovery, I focus on recovering *with* PTSD. I shoot to train my dysfunctional pieces more than cure them. In doing so, I believe I am discovering great strength in myself, just the way I am, warts and all.

But that is me, and I am just a patient.

Gentle support while you find what works for you, Nofil.