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 morning meditations are not settling today. I tell myself that is okay. Meditations are not iron disciplines. They are an inventory and meshing of the day's flow. The flow is chaotic today. Prepare for chaos???
As the 4 generation family dramas continue their evolutions, I find myself reviewing my psychotherapy tool box. It feels like a day to have that tool box clean and ready for action. As always, the first task is brushing off the dust accumulation from the constant flurry of name/theory changes. Been sneezing like a dusty dog this morning, but feel compelled to keep up the dusty inventory.
The 4 main bodies of psychotherapy from which the tools were acquired:
1) 1972 - present -Suicidal Ideation.
2) 1974 - ???? -Trauma Induced Amnesia (Highly resisted by me. I held that being able to forget it was a good thing. Therapy began in earnest c.1989)
3) 1979 - present -Manic Depression/Bipolar
4) 2010 - present -Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
My professional therapy has been piecemeal, at best. The Veteran's Administration has been my most consistent source of pro therapy, but even there I tend to treat professionals like reference books. The goal is to get them back on the shelf as quickly as possible. My personal favorite of the therapy resources are the workshops. At present, I have no personal pro number in my toolbox.
Alanon, and its many partner groups, have been my therapy main-stay for most of my recovery years. At the moment, my Alanon network is extremely weak. Since I left my beloved Ecuador Alanon network (2008), I have been finding the US Alanon ... ??? ... Comparatively lacking? My comparison demon at work again??? Still, a great strength of the Alanon network is that I know I will be welcome at any time after any excuse. Snubs allowed. We are all Toxic People...
The on-line support groups are still the newcomers in my therapy tool box. I am still not all the way sure I have fully integrated them into my tool box. Are they a therapy tool or just another social board??? How can I tell???
Just reviewing. Thoughts and reality checks welcome.
The good news is that I have been getting adequate time for self-care sprinkled into the family drama weave. Think I'll go chase some chickens.
As the 4 generation family dramas continue their evolutions, I find myself reviewing my psychotherapy tool box. It feels like a day to have that tool box clean and ready for action. As always, the first task is brushing off the dust accumulation from the constant flurry of name/theory changes. Been sneezing like a dusty dog this morning, but feel compelled to keep up the dusty inventory.
The 4 main bodies of psychotherapy from which the tools were acquired:
1) 1972 - present -Suicidal Ideation.
2) 1974 - ???? -Trauma Induced Amnesia (Highly resisted by me. I held that being able to forget it was a good thing. Therapy began in earnest c.1989)
3) 1979 - present -Manic Depression/Bipolar
4) 2010 - present -Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
My professional therapy has been piecemeal, at best. The Veteran's Administration has been my most consistent source of pro therapy, but even there I tend to treat professionals like reference books. The goal is to get them back on the shelf as quickly as possible. My personal favorite of the therapy resources are the workshops. At present, I have no personal pro number in my toolbox.
Alanon, and its many partner groups, have been my therapy main-stay for most of my recovery years. At the moment, my Alanon network is extremely weak. Since I left my beloved Ecuador Alanon network (2008), I have been finding the US Alanon ... ??? ... Comparatively lacking? My comparison demon at work again??? Still, a great strength of the Alanon network is that I know I will be welcome at any time after any excuse. Snubs allowed. We are all Toxic People...
The on-line support groups are still the newcomers in my therapy tool box. I am still not all the way sure I have fully integrated them into my tool box. Are they a therapy tool or just another social board??? How can I tell???
Just reviewing. Thoughts and reality checks welcome.
The good news is that I have been getting adequate time for self-care sprinkled into the family drama weave. Think I'll go chase some chickens.
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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...
Everybody has days-weeks-months of that sense of being in over their heads, rolling down the hill, pick a metaphor. For myself, I am locked in Negativity Mode since my cat passed, and am chasing my own tail at this point.
Supportive vibes,
leo
1) 1976-1985 Escape from torture in S America, college in the US, then first symptoms PTSD that get in the way of functioning, 1st attempt at counseling unsuccessful.
2) 1985-1995 Best of times/worst of times Dictatorship falls in S America (yay!) but opening his prisons reveals abuse was worse than thought (like when Allies found Hitler's concentration camps when won WWII). On a visit there I collapse, just overwhelmed by the facts, get emergency psych attention. That gets me first effective counseling.
3) 1995-2000 Get PTSD diagnosis and counseling targeted for it for 1st time. Big progress.
2000-2007 Best of times/worst of times. Divorce and hospitallzation for it. Emerge beginning hospital chaplaincy work.
4) 2007-2010 Luck into PTSD supertherapist. First time receive counseling specifically for torture I survived in 1970s. Big progress.
5) 2011-present Setback/set forward. Physical health crashes with advanced kidney disease. Reorganize life, career, move to work and live next to hospital. Join DS PTSD for support.
It's good to write it out and look at it, because building up "Daily Strength" is such a day by day, incremental process. You can look at a physical wound heal after surgery, have the stitches taken out, see the scar fade. With mental wellness progress is less visible. But we need the "inventory," as you say, all the more.
For me the social board aspect of DS PTSD is integral to the therapy of it. Isolation kills when you have PTSD. I know my recovery with PTSD from my health crash of 2011 is directly linked to the fact that I came here to get support.
Talk about your chaos, that 2011 crash I had was epic Book of Job biblical-type chaos for me. I couldn't believe it happened. Just when I peaked in my counseling with the best therapist ever! With me giving back at the height of my hospital chaplaincy career! What was God/karma/the universe doing???
Now sense of it had been made again, with a lot of work here that has translated into work in the face to face world at my new job. A lot of work learning to live with kidney disease and without PTSD meds I used to be able to take but can't now because of kidney failure.
DS PTSD literally had to take their place. So yes, this is social here, of course, but it's medicine for me. In my case the only medicine I have now, after having enjoyed the best pharmaceutical medications for years I can't take any more. Its results are all the more remarkable to me because of that.
Your daily presence and sharing here is part of that medicine, arfie. Thanks for that. Hope your day with your chaos goes well today.
Ok, let me try... not sure where to start. Nope, not sure there has been any healing. I just stick to the amnesia path and don't deviate. Well, that is not helpful. This would be why I came to nothing when I tried to list my toolbox, why it seems to be empty with just a hint of dog hair and horse hair in it.
My beloved and I have had a very peaceful day. For an unmedicated beeper (BP) in manic phase, that might even qualify as a miracle. The BP dx has been challenged since the PTSD dx, but I still muchly benefit from the tools I learned from Manic Depressive/Bipolar resources to want to disregard that source. At the very least, my own PTSD is a journey of extremes, as is bipolar.
No news from any of the other family threads. Feeling safe believing that no news is good news. Live and let live...
Still no eggs. Think the chickens are defective??? Had 'em 3 whole days!!!
lol, chickens won't lay in the winter unless you keep them under lights. They need 12 hours of light (usually) or more to lay.
hugs!
The peace in the homestead continues. So far... Hoping to keep the steps very small and manageable. Reading "The Prophet" this morning.
"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. ~Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)"
Thanks for the support.