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 watched a TED Talk today that said loneliness does as much damage to your health as chronic cigarette smoking. I love TEDtalks, but I also hate them because they want to motivate competent capable people to get their shit in gear, grab life by the horns and do great things. I am not a capable person. I'm physically and emotionally disabled.We rarely talk about life from the valley, you know? We celebrate the mountain top. We expect ourselves to constantly be making progress towards the mountain top, if we can't manage to stay there all of the time. Well - not only am I not making progress towards the mountain top, I don't even know where the mountain is.
Yesterday my counselor and I agreed that my most prominent PTSD symptom is detachment from others. I often feel like I am intruding on other people's lives, like I don't belong in relationships, in families, in aggregates of smiling people. I think I've perfected jealous voyeurism. The question, of course is, how does one conquer loneliness when extending outwards puts us in danger of being hurt by rejection.
For me, maybe because of PTSD, maybe because of some other peculiarity of my inward workings, maybe neither of these I don't know - the question for me is not only "How do I make sure I can be safe when I am close to someone else?" but more so, "How do I be with someone I cannot touch?" I'm not being metaphysical when I say this: I see myself as living on a different plane of experience. I feel like I speak a language no one understands.
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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...
Trauma Survival is a language that has no words. And people wnat words. Words put on limits and boundaries. Emotions, however, aren't as tidy.
Much support. I myself find that life is a valley-mountain cycle, and I really get resentful when people decide that not iving atop the mountain is "weak" or means I'm not "fulfilled' as a person. Maybe b/c of my own childhood stuff, maybe not, but point is: Supportive vibes to you.
Social anxiety is so common.... I have it as well ... I have found that baby steps are the only way I can manage the anxiety... I do small things for myself now and if I don't want to do them I don't and I don't beat myself up for that anymore.... I have a quieter life then most perhaps but I find a peace in that....
What I found to be most helpful initially getting out was to do things that didn't require a lot of social interaction like shopping or going to a movie as then you were concentrating on something other then being social however you were still around people..... I am most comfortable one on one or with just a couple of people and so that's what I do
Perhaps this is my mountaintop ..... Maybe it isn't the same for everyone and accepting that might be a gift to you
The Anxiety Board on here is very good and might be a help for you as well
Another hug and a blessing....xo
Thanks all for support.
XF
I, personally, don't doubt that my chronic loneliness is more damaging than my chronic cig smoking. I also have no doubt that that the isolation habits born of my PTSD are the primary source of my loneliness. My modus operandus (M.O.) is to reject before I can be rejected. Maybe not the same thing as your therapist was discussing, but it sure resonated. . . Apologies if I am mistaken again. Little things sure can make big diffs and aren't too easy to see in typeface.
Continued support while you sort through your own unique dynamics, XF.
My health as crashing, my kidneys damaged so I couldn't take PTSD meds, and I got laid off at my job. My fiancee and I lived in a house together. She decided I was too unhealthy and unemployed to marry after all, so she left me and sold the house out from under me.
I got a new job and tried to work at it hard without PTSD meds, but at it in the first year I was approached at work 5 years ago by a boss who suggested I wasn't healthy enough any more to do my job. The hits just kept on coming.
Now I got tenure at this job 5 years later, and I went to HR and declared my PTSD diagnosis so I would have ADA law protection. I haven't had a date in 5 years and probably won't, and I spend a lot of time alone. But I am self supporting, and hoping to make it to early retirement without going on disability. That may not be TED talk material, but for me comparing apples to apples--comparing me now to to 5 years ago--it's like winning an Oscar or a Nobel Prize.
I know it doesn't look that way to others, but that's the kind of comparing that works for me. Much support to you.
(It's sort of like going to a talk about taking care of your car. They tell you about putting gas and oil in and checking your tire pressure. While that's true, if you've got a problem with your car, it could also be a couple hundred other things that have gone wrong or need attended to.)
thats actually a great explanation of TED and the limitation of their perspective.
mujica- thanks for helping me reframe success.
XF