I hear you....i am going through the same about my "friend" and her daughter situation...yes.....Its serious.I reported it...but now i'm going in all directions with a whole set of reasons to imagine more and more and adding my own projections and my PTSD to it.......and can't sleep over it....

hugs...Its helping in how you put it...To be aware that when we have PTSD we take something and run with it...like we're gonna write a crime/horror story....

Yeah, I can see myself sliding all over the map with that one, uno. Witnessing children in distress is major scab pickage in my psyche. How ya holding up?

As confusing and painful as it is, I have become convinced it is nature's healing process. Sometimes it has to hurt worse for a while on the road to healing.

Or so I pray...

Arfie- I'm sorry if you already said this, but do you think there is a seasonal component to this? Or anniversary reaction? Time for me has a strong link to symptoms.

I'm sorry you are in this place and hope for you to get some relief soon.

I feel seasonal lethargy or depression, guayaba. I also feel that air quality will effect my sensitivity to light tremendously.

My lightmares are definitely connected to artificial light. The sun, even viewed through the thin atmosphere of Andean altitude or the relentless burn of a desert, does not effect me this way. More and more I believe they are repressed memories attempting to heal. I can never know for certain, but I believe the first set were of a childish habit of hiding in small, dark places. Blinding light meant daddy or one of his agents had found me. Pain in progress.

This set... The blinding demon eyes... Is still emerging. Again, I will never know, but my adult awareness is conjecturing stage lights. For sure I never played Carnegie Hall. Child pornography is consistent with the world I was born in.

Thanks for caring, guayaba. Yes, we have discussed it before, but my own PTSD is a disgustingly repetitive affair. I am deeply grateful to any and all willing to ride the un-merry-go-round with me.

I ask since sometimes things that are triggers for me can have a stronger ability to set me off in certain times of the year. I try not to expect it, but I'm also not totally surprised when it reemerges at specific times.

I think you're right, sometimes this stuff does drag itself out because we have achieved some level of increased ability to work with it. Dreams are very much that way with me. My nightmarish stuff tends to happen after my mind has had a chance to work with it a while (often years).

Either way, even if it does bring you to a better place eventually, where you have to go to get there hurts. I get tempted to wall it all back up; you are probably smart to work with it here.

Arfie,

Are you saying (that for yourself) you are an advocate of Exposure Therapy to habituate to, i.e. become desensitized to triggers?

Some people are strong enough for that. It is useful for some people. (Personally I have to just do cognitive stuff in my own wimpiness,)

If you want to use exposure to light to heal, what about a minor experiment?

Perhaps take a lamp that can handle a high voltage bulb and attach a rheostat onto the cord, and remove the lamp shade. You could then use a timer and start out with it on next to you at fairly low level, for fairly brief time and slowly up the brightness and length of exposure.

Having complete control over the light exposure might be a key, and might separate the light itself from the helplessness the light represented for you as a child.

Just a thought.

We live in the Light Ages, letitbe. Good luck avoiding exposure to artificial light. Ain't gonna happen. Light pollution has officially reached every, single inch of our planet. So much light and so little enlightenment! I often wonder if lights have done any more than lead us all to absolute night blindness. It amazes me what 21st century folks call, "darkness." So many need high intensity flashlights to count their toes during a full moon.

For me, I get plenty of exposure therapy just looking out my window at night, though there is the control aspect. My current technique of using thicker blinds is nearer to agoraphobia than control.

This particular trigger has hounded me my entire adult life. Please, God, reveal the truth behind the demon eyes so I can, at last, lay it to rest. Thy will be done.

Arfie, you are remembering. And remembering is uncomfortable. I remember now my first remembrance beyond what I had already remembered. It was with a counselor/spiritual person. And I saw this big penis coming at me and stuffing in my mouth. "That never happened," I told the therapist. "Are you sure?' she asked me. I was not. I used to worry about psychosis, not now. What I remembered was truth, my reactions were truth. You are not psychtic, you are real, and your memories are real.