Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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to my trip back to where I got PTSD in Uruguay. Last year I stood at the street corner where my car was bombed with me in it, and it was an empowering moment. It really helped with my fearful flashbacks of that blast that shattered my childhood so thoroughly.
I'm truly lucky my best friend is going with me. It's great to have witnesses to healing moments in exposure therapy. It's great that I'll be able to log on to DS PTSD here with you all as my witnesses, too.
Exposure therapy's hard, you know, going back to where trauma happened. But the good part is that, unlike so much of our healing that is introverted, exposure therapy is by definition extroverted, it's a visible moment in the external world as well as healing in the internal world. You really stand on the spot where trauma began.
And I will stand there with the daily strength of your support, my friends. Wow. Counting down the days, with a little anxiety to be sure, but a lot of hope for another healing moment.
I was afraid to do it for so long. Has anybody else gotten some benefit from going back to the place where they were traumatized?
I'm truly lucky my best friend is going with me. It's great to have witnesses to healing moments in exposure therapy. It's great that I'll be able to log on to DS PTSD here with you all as my witnesses, too.
Exposure therapy's hard, you know, going back to where trauma happened. But the good part is that, unlike so much of our healing that is introverted, exposure therapy is by definition extroverted, it's a visible moment in the external world as well as healing in the internal world. You really stand on the spot where trauma began.
And I will stand there with the daily strength of your support, my friends. Wow. Counting down the days, with a little anxiety to be sure, but a lot of hope for another healing moment.
I was afraid to do it for so long. Has anybody else gotten some benefit from going back to the place where they were traumatized?
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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First, I hope everyone is doing well, and continuing to fight that good fight! Keep up the great work on yourselves; I'm rooting for all of you!So, I started doing therapy at the beginning of the year, when I was in my most depressed state, but with my therapist, I made big changes and steps in the right direction. But, over a month ago, she couldn't take my insurance anymore, and I had to stop...
I have not returned to the scene of my traumas since Mom sold that house in 2001--- kinda can't--- but I don't go back there, no. Of course, I didn't go back much *before* my memories resurfaced, LOL! It's rotten weather six months a year, and I remember one July needing a windbreaker--- and yes, I grew up in th eNOrhtern Hemisphere, so that was supposed to be summer!
Keep us updated, okay? I am so excited for you. :-)
Doo, I know! What you said about how much smaller things look when you return is true for me, too. I think that in and of itself was therapeutic for me.
Muji
I think some of your butterflies are flapping in my stomach!!!
Your countdown is a sad one for me, though, because the 25th is the day my daughter goes back to college. I'll miss her so much.
Interesting. While I'm in Uruguay a national memorial day is being held on Aug 30 for those detained under the dictatorship like me. Wow. Validation on a national level for how I got PTSD when I was tortured under the dictatorship.
Talk about your positive validation of exposure therapy.
Another step closer to going on Monday...
I went by the office to say goodbye at the end of the day yesterday. Big mistake. Who knew people could have separation anxiety toward you when they're just coworkers and not family or loved ones? But they were pretty needy, asking me to do them this favor or that one before I left. Geez, I want to tell my coworkers it's ok, I'm just going away for 2 weeks, coworkers!
So here I am doing these little favors on my Saturday before the trip Monday. I'll be glad when I'm finally on the plane and that's it. Though while I'm in South America, there will still be email access from work. I've just got to say no.
As for me and my own private feelings about my trip, an odd thing happened. I felt a twinge in me project forward already to 2 weeks from now.
Since I'm going to my childhood homeland, I always have trouble coming back to the USA, even though I'm grateful for my good job here and the fact that, since I'm US-born, I have citizenship and the right to work here.
It's not that I'm unpatriotic about the USA. But that little kid in me wants to stay in South America, even with all the bad PTSD memories of what happened to me growing up there. Now he's saying so a little before my trip home's even started.
Isn't that weird?
I get nostalgic for my childhood, too. How can we not? It made us who we are, warts and all.
I love my family. Would do anything for them, but sometimes, I just want to run and start over. It's just a fraction of me. But we are complex beings. It's okay to have conflicting feelings.
You are awesome to do this. The more we confront the physical past, the more we can come to terms with the mental.
Every now and then, I do a "drive by" of the old farm. I'm feeling wistful just writing this... So I get it.
Teachers- the neediest of the bunch. Pair that with the red tape of an institution and WHAM. You got caught in red tape.
Put an outgoing autoreply to your emails. Say, "I will be out of the office until (date) and will not be checking my emails. I have faith in you to get by without me and expect not to clean up a mess upon my return." Well, maybe only the first sentence, but the second should go without saying... But we are humans, warts and all, right? ; )
Thanks for validating my nostalgia. It's weird to me now to think I revisit a place of terror from which I escaped as a war refugee and then have nostalgic home feelings of wanting to stay. Man, the human heart is complex, isn't it?
Like how you say you feel when you pass your farm. So I don't feel like such a contradiction.
It is, after all, where little muji learned to play with a soccer ball. On the street until it got run over by a bus and popped. Ha! Then we'd have to play marbles until somebody in the neighborhood got a new soccer ball for their birthday. Then it was time for "FUTBOL" all over again.
Even in a war zone we kids played games. So now I have my suitcase out on my living room floor ready to pack. Muji boy is going home day after tomorrow. It still seems unreal. I'm tearing up a little feeling touched by it, old sentimental fool that I am.
A week from today is the national memorial day for the victims of the dictatorship. People like me, detained and tortured as a teen 3 times and driven into exile. But also for the thousands of disappeared by the dictatorship whose bodies were never found.
I don't mean to be political; I'm not. Just a survivor, like a survivor of the Holocaust in WWII, I guess. Their thoughts about the Nazis are beyond political debating points like mine are about the dictatorship, you know? Not like we're better than anybody. Just seeing things from a different perspective from the inside.
It's all history now, and being there in Uruguay for the Aug30 memorial day for victims of the 1970s dictatorship is part of my exposure therapy. I wonder if some day we won't need to remember any more, we'll be beyond all of this. It's a dream, though probably won't happen in my lifetime. And I know I need to avoid slipping into denial by going back to do my exposure therapy as long as I live.
I hope I'm strong like I was last year when I went to the place where my car was bombed and the to the place where I was tortured. It's like yesterday in my mind, I know, but in the streets it's history now, the lesson to learn again this year.
I hope I'm strong. Thank you for your daily strength, my friends. I'll keep you posted, like I did last year from there.
Graicias.
Let us know how you are and so forth.... and eff the e-mails, seriously, you're in another hemisphere, right? I think once you leave the hemisphere, you're officially Out of Reach:-)
"Witness your own part in history, and embrace that you are here to witness it, whole and giving and strong."
You are truly the poet. I copied that into my offline journal. I'll carry it with me as a compass when I lose my direction when my feelings flood me there and are confused. Thank you!