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 was on a 2 day streak of being motivated and productive. Today, I slept nearly the entire day and pushed off my responsibilities.
Again I find myself back in the hole. This pit of "why do this, it doesn't matter. Nothing I'm doing matters." Which in a spiritual sense, feels true. Whether I'm here or not, the world still spins regardless of my decision to be here.
I'm constantly contemplating every goal I've made for myself and wondering what the point of it all is anymore. Today I find myself reflecting on how I even got here in the first place.
I'm 26 this year. I've struggled with self harm, addiction, eating disorders and SI since I was 13. I overcame a lot. I graduated college in 2017. I worked 2-3 jobs at a time to pay off debt. I reapplied to grad school this year and started in august. I've competed in 4 bodybuilding shows which used to be a huge dream of mine. So now what? I sit here looking at my "accomplishments" and realizing that while I physically discontinued self destructive behaviors, my mental state remains the same.
Everything looks so good on the outside so no one suspects how deeply fucked my mental state is. I tell everyone I'm fine. Because I don't think there's an answer to this anymore. I think I'll constantly contemplate ending my life because every reason for a purpose to live always dissolves.
The only person who's seen my true colors is the man I've been with for the last 3 years. I feel awful for what I've put him through. Granted we both contributed to the chaos, but my trauma ignited the biggest fires. The guilt and shame I feel for the way I've treated him makes it hard for me to forgive myself. I feel I can never become the person I hoped to be because of what I've done and who I've been. I don't know how to come up out of this.
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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...
Fast forward half a century and my mental health still requires continual management, but I have learned to love life and embrace all of the experiences which made who and what I am today. Not too much of who and what I am today is what I dreamed as a desperate child, but? ? ? Parts of it are beyond what I dared to dream. Most days I STILL don't know how to come up out of this, but I am better able to trust that I will. Small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
But that is me and every case is unique. . .
Steadying support while you sort your own case. You are not alone.
How have you managed to find hope and purpose?
I gave up on the quest to find hope, purpose and easy explanations for "Why?". That particular quest was feeding my control freakitis on levels I still have no words to describe. Instead, with much support from my therapy network, I work on building the trust that God has a plan my puny brain and limited vision cannot begin to comprehend so that I could shift my focus to *just* staying in the here and now, taking my best guesses with what life sends me to work with. When I can resist the delusion of trying to control what is beyond my control, I find hope and purpose all around me in places it never occurred to me to look while I was busy working the imaginary control panel.
I have and still gain allot of mileage from the inner child theories. On the days where my self esteem are lower than a septic tank, I often take some time to do some "play therapy" with my inner child and assure her she didn't *deserve* to be sold into situations that were far beyond her childish comprehension.
For what it's worth
"Play Therapy" was radical pop psychology when I was introduced to it in the 70's. It is now one of the more respected treatment plans among child psychologists. As the foster mother to my 3 heavily traumatized grandchildren, I swear by it. It pays to get playful. I have zero respect for The Young At Heart theories, but I swear by the benefits of viewing life with the eyes of a child. After decades of psychotherapy, my inner child is my most trusted window for that view. I am increasingly grateful I rescued her from the abject desperation she was born into.
That was just for openers, it was the first battle of the 6 year civil war, the last 2 of which were fought most in my neighborhood. The rebel headquarters was 4 blocks from my house.
Instead of collecting baseball cards like kids in the USA, we kids on my block collected spent bullets after gun battles. We dug them out of the walls of homes on our block and out of trees in their yards. Then we traded them like kids in the US traded baseball cards. The bigger caliber bullets were worth more, the less caliber bullets were worth less, etc.
After getting through all of that so young, you'd think it would be all smooth sailiing after that. But no, of course, I had PTSD wired into my young brain. Ups and downs come with PTSD, so I had to buckle up for the ride.
Guess otherwise life would have been boring, huh?