Gentle empathy on that frustration, Strength. What I wouldn't give for a cure. Can't I *just* get over ^it^? Where's my willpower?

When I don't know what to do next, I keep on practicing. There is an all-natural gap between acquiring a psychotherapy tool and mastering it, in addition to the ever evolving circumstances of life. I remind myself to be gentle with the process when a psychotic episode doesn't respond as efficiently as I wish ^it^ would.

Gentle support while you find what works for you.

I'd love to know what tools you've learned to use, StrengthofMind, because I never can have too many, myself. It's a trick to keep up with the different ways PTSD can get triggered, and where I am at that moment, and when. I teach community college, and sometimes a flashback will hit me out of nowhere right in the moment when up front in a classroom in front of 25 students I'm trying to lead through a lesson plan I wrote. I project my lesson plan every class up on an overhead screen for my benefit as much as I do it for theirs, so I can find my place again when my PTSD gets triggered and I lose my place.

Suicidal ideations I take as a sign that I'm an intelligent person. Since I teach a split position, one half of which is philosophy, I remember that the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus said "life is engrossed by the absurd. He believed that the absurd - life being void of meaning, or man's inability to know that meaning if it were to exist - was something that man should embrace. He argued that this crisis of self could cause a man to commit "philosophical suicide"; choosing to believe in external sources that give life (what he would describe as false) meaning." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

It makes me feel like I'm in good company to remember great Nobel Prize winning philosophers talk about the suicide struggle. We are not alone. We are not missing some meaning that's out there; meaning is something we make from within ourselves. Like by coming here every day to work on it with others on Daily Strength.

The Spanish philosopher Unamuno wrote a beautiful story "St. Emmanuel, the Good Martyr" about it starring a wonderful priest who struggles with suicide every day, precisely because he was such a good person.
http://www.armandfbaker.com/translations/unamuno/san_manuel_bueno_martir.pdf

I'm not saying that we think about suicide because we're such great people. But we do think about it in part because we are so sensitive, and being so sensitive can be used for good with others. Like giving others support here on Daily Strength. When we give, we get back what we give, too.

This all may seem like bunk to you, and I'll understand. But bunk or not, it works for me. Unamuno's story is available for free in English translation as a pdf you can download at the link above. Maybe that's what you can do next with your suicidal ideations; it's a good read. And if you share your tools, too, they'll be put to good use as well. Much support to you, StrengthofMind.

I am glad to hear that you are pleased with your mental health care providers. That is a very fortunate position to be in! Have you had a chance to talk with either of them about your move toward planning in your suicidal ideation? I am sure there will be additional support they will suggest based on their knowledge of your need. Can you contact them soon?

I'm not sure how all of this works. I'm so glad that people have mental health supporters.
I'm not sure how people follow what is being said or how to start a new thread.
I don't want to step over anyone.
I was here many years ago but it has all changed so much.
That's enough to make my PTSD worse.
I don't feel like I'm living after a traumatic event a few weeks ago
I don't know who I am and the 5 year old child is taking over me, re- living her trauma
I don';t know if this is PTSD, I do know that I can';t carry on like this.
What do I do now.
Sorry if I've jumped in on your conversation.
You may as well all bully me. I deserve it.
Caroline

Caroline40, welcome, glad you're back with us. Yes, a lot has changed. DS was re-designed as a website to update its format so it could be accessed via smart phones and seen on their screens and not just on laptops and desktops computers as originally formatted before 2012 when smartphones became abundant. It's been a big change for us, especially for old timers like me who still use a laptop and not a smartphone to come here to DS PTSD.

It's fine that you posted here, no problem. It you'd like to reintroduce yourself with your own thread, just click the icon for post at the top of the list of threads for DS PTSD and you can start a thread of your own, too.

Saw my psychologist today. He feels this cycle for me will continue. That I won't ever totally master it. My abuse was calculated, brainwashing, extreme and went on intensely for 15 years....day in, day out. He said you don't get over trauma like that but rather learn to live with it. Although I appreciate his candor I have to believe there is a light at the end f the tunnel. That's the only thing that keeps me alive. Hope for better days. With no hope I'd be better off dead.

I agree with you that I would also rather have a realistic understanding of things. And I admire your decision to choose hope! How do you keep yourself focused on the hope?

just thought I would check back to see how you are doing this week?

StrengthOfMind, so sorry to hear that your suicidal thoughts have manifested into plans. Maybe, by now, you're doing better with the help of your wonderful pdoc and therapist. I hope so. Sounds like you have the tools to help you as well, it's just knowing how to use them when you're feeling this way. Well, as I said, hope you're doing better now.
Caroline, it's great to have you back on DS. I've only been a member for about 2 weeks now. I FEEL the support on this wonderful site. BTW, you won't get bullied here and you don't deserve to be bullied either!

I feel you need to be a bit easier on yourself. When learning new skills it takes time before you are able to apply them to your own situation. You are doing the best you can at this time. No one wants to have flashbacks and uncomfortable memories. Give yourself a bit of a break and tell yourself you are doing well.

It also helps to put those new skills in to play daily so it becomes second nature. That way when you need them, you automatically reach for them. There is no quick fix to this stuff....it takes time, lots of time. It is hard at times but you can do it.

You can do this, just keep identifying triggers, and working through them using the techniques you have learned. You will get there.

Best of luck

Everything has gone missing. Hope, skills, communication. My kids were home for a week and it became clear they no longer need me or care. Their need for me helped keep me alive. I also have debilitating back pain. It keeps me in bed most days, keeps me from exercising so I have put on a LOT of weight not matter how careful I am with my diet. I take benzos and ambien so my pain Dr. cannot prescribe opioids. Anything less does not help. My psych doc feels that the benzos and ambien are part of my life for the long haul. What do you do to address the pain? What do our veterans do? If they face my same fate I feel for them. I just don't know what to do. It certainly makes me not want to live. Sorry for the rant.

It got my attention that you wrote: "My abuse was calculated, brainwashing, extreme and went on intensely for 15 years....day in, day out. He said you don't get over trauma like that but rather learn to live with it." Sorry this is long, but that sentence is to blame because I totally relate to it, even if mine was for 3 years less than yours. You asked "What do you do to address the pain? What do our veterans do?" OK, here goes.

In one of my replies above I brought up a Spanish philosopher whose words help me because I grew up in the Spanish speaking country of Uruguay, under its military dictatorship from 1973-1985. From Wikipedia:
"In 1973, amid increasing economic and political turmoil, the armed forces, asked by the President Juan María Bordaberry, closed the Congress and established a civilian-military regime."

I was an innocent who was arrested three times under the regime. The last time I was tortured. It got my attention that you went through brainwashing for 15 years, because that was longer than me. My brainwashing was constant for just 12 years, but it did involve censorship of movies, tv, radio, books, concerts, churches, everything. We were forbidden to gather in groups of more than 3 in public. My parents went crazy under the pressure and became violent in the home to each other and us their kids, and the son of a military adviser molested me twice. The last time I was arrested it was because I was standing on my suburban street with my friends on a summer Sunday afternoon. We forgot to count; there were 4 of us 1 more than was allowed. For that I was tortured badly.

I started therapy in 1985 and I wrote my doctoral dissertation on that period in 1988 to try to start to understand it and undo the brainwashing I went through during that time. Understanding the society out there that tried to brainwash me helped me with my fear of what was "out there."

As far as understanding what was instilled in me by that brainwashing, when I came here and found others with "Complex" PTSD, what they call our kind that takes place over long periods and is chronic, not curable, they pointed me to Pete Walker's website to learn more about it. http://pete-walker.com/fAQsComplexPTSD.html

I go there several times a week just to keep steady as to living with the kind of trauma I carry with me. I envy those who say trauma made them lose hope. I wish I knew what that loss felt like because it would mean I knew what hope felt like in the first place. I was raised as a person who never had hope to begin with. If you ever speak to people with PTSD who escaped, say, North Korea, they'll confirm my lifelong task of living on after surviving a dictatorship's brainwashing and abuse. It is no picnic.

Of all of the psychiatrists out there, the one I trust the most is Dr. Viktor Frankl, since he wasn't just knowledgeable from books but from experience. He was captured by Hitler and sent to a concentration camp during the Holocaust, so his psychiatric skills were put to the test. Save one, all of the members of his family were killed by Hitler, so after his release from the death camps he wrote "Man's Search for Meaning," describing what he called "logotherapy" as a way to go on after surviving abuse and brainwashing.

It's what we do here when we write our posts on DS PTSD, and it helped him live to the age of 92, so again, my idea that there's something to it isn't from books, but from his real life example that impressed me more. He helps me with what you mention from your therapist above when you say, "he said you don't get over trauma like that but rather learn to live with it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl

Trigger Warning

I've thought about suicide constantly since a military officer who tortured me finished doing his number on me and made me kneel down, put his pistol to my head, and pulled the trigger twice. At the first clicking sound, simultaneously I peed my pants in a gush of adrenaline panic and urine, the gun jammed both times, and that maniac officer burst into hysterical laughter.

I've gotten so depressed I've considered suicide and have been hospitalized for it 3 times. Once was when I was on a visit to the USA in the 70s and out of that dictatorship, only to get better in the hospital yet be sent right back "home" to it by my mentally ill parents. Why I didn't commit suicide out of the fear of knowing I'd gotten well only to go back into the dictatorship and my family's madness I'll never know. Another time was when I got divorced in 2000, and the last time was in 2011, when I lost my job and had to move across half the country alone to a new one. I collapsed when I got there and met my new boss; that was who drove me to the hospital.

I don't share all of this just to support you, though I sure do hope it might. I share it also, like everything I write here, for my own continuing recovery using Dr. Frankl's "logotherapy." It's the only thing that keeps me going with chronic PTSD that's hardwired into me with such continuous brainwashing and torture. I haven't cured my suicidal ideations, but I have postponed fulfilling them now for 45 years. My mentally ill dad put a hunting shotgun under my bed in my bedroom where he beat me often, so suicide was a real option with the gun for it supplied by my own abuser and always at hand.

I guess the reasons why I've postponed suicide for 45 years so far are mixed, some positive and some negative. On the plus side, there are things in the world I haven't seen yet, some simple things like cities to travel to, concerts to be at, stuff like that. On the negative side, whenever I think of offing myself I think of that military officer who finished off torturing me by putting that gun to my head and pulling the trigger, then laughing at how it made me pee myself.

I don't want to give that guy or anybody like him the satisfaction of finishing what he started. In that case preventing my own suicide isn't about hope, it's about hatred, and hating that guy so much I'd stay alive just to spite him and his kind. People like him don't deserve to have people like me kill ourselves over the likes of him.

Heck, in my opinion they deserve the death penalty or prison, at the very least. I'm glad to say that that son of a military officer who molested me in the fog of war did get caught later and was stabbed by an inmate in prison, a fellow inmate who hated pedophiles. He had it coming. As for the dictator Bordaberry whose name I cited above, he was put in prison and died there, too. Good riddance to him, too.

I can't give you a speech about hope because I don't really live off of that. I can't speechify about forgiveness, either. I don't get romance, either, which is why I'm single and childless at age 59. I'm not even an expert on the therapy tools others speak of here, though I'll always be grateful for the VA doc who was good enough to see me, a civilian war veteran (my car was bombed in Uruguay when I was 9), during the evening after work to help me with therapy for the car bombing and torture I survived. Bless him.

Lacking hope, forgiveness, love, and a lot of civilized things I live instead off of a self-concocted combination of other things I can understand better, just given my own experience. So far I've found they keep me going. Coming here for Dr. Frankl's "logotherapy" is one of them. Frankl said that just putting our stories and feelings into words helps, even if they're from brainwashing and don't make sense. I'm just doing like he said because I'm 59 and he made it to 92. I'm postponing suicide as long as I can--45 years so far. To make it to 92 like Dr. Frankl did would take me another 33 years, so I have most of those years behind me now. I'm on the downhill side and coasting to the finish line now, I figure.

I have found that I can be kind to myself and to others even without hope, forgiveness, love, and all of that civilized stuff I didn't learn being educated under dictatorship and its state terror for 12 years, having to write the dictator's slogan at the top of every sheet of paper I turned in to my teachers every day in school. I prove to myself I can be kind without hope, forgiveness, or love by being kind to folks here when I get the chance to do so even without intimate first hand knowledge of hope, forgiveness, and love to back it up with. I fake it until I make it, and so far I've made it for 45 years.

I do not joke with you when I say that it's a tentative effort every day for which I need daily strength. Since I was abused weekly for years in the same bedroom where the suicide gun was made available to me for that every time, there's no way suicide would be anything but my constant companion. As much as is possible, I've tried to become used it its companionship, since I can't cut it out of where it's wired into my brain.

In no way does a ditty make a difference, but songs like this one by Leonard Cohen remind me that, though my life and yours may be too extreme for a lot of folks to hear, we're not alone. Great songs like "Darkness" by Cohen are audio proof others hear it and left their words about it, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWBTEngjktA

I'm so sorry for how you feel. I've gained a lot of weight (my last weight was 337lbs), I walk on a cane from back pain and can't take painkillers (not even aspirin) or most psych meds because taking Seroquel for nightmares helped give me permanent kidney damage. This Daily Strength thing is truly all I've got. It's kept me going so far, and if other people didn't keep coming here to keep the ball rolling, I'd be up the creek without a paddle without it. So for my own selfish reasons, I want you to keep coming back, too, just knowing you're not alone, for what it's worth. You deserve to know you're not alone.