This is not quite the answer you are looking for, but it is one I pray for everyday. I wish, pray and hope that the witch of an HR lady at my old employer feels the pain that I have felt from PTSD. How it has changed my life, how I cannot hold a job, how I lost all my friends, had my confidence and self-esteem stripped from me and how I feel the pain everyday. The pain of knowing the only way you will have any quality of life is to drug yourself with high powered meds everyday, but knowing that small little bit of life is a huge struggle to get it everyday. I want her to know what it is to struggle everyday and lose more days than you win. I live with her mistakes everyday.

yes, I would like people to know that it is possible to move forward from being a victim, to being a survivor, and then a thriver. It takes work to move on, but it can be done.

I would want them to understand that even though we all share similar symptoms, ptsd is very personalized, based on our past traumas.

Meaning that each one of us is going to behave and react differently to situations, depending on our past history of abuse.

My point would be... That we are people too. We have hurt, we try to move on, we relapse and sink, we struggle, we fight, we climb and we fall. But we are still people, living, breathing, hurting, healing, beautiful people.

The one specific thing?

It's not a choice. I didn't choose to be traumatized, I didn't choose to have PTSD. But I am choosing to do all I can to heal.

We are not as likely to go out and shoot a bunch of people at a mall as we are likely to withdraw into our homes and become shut ins out of anxiety. There is a media fed misconception about the majority of us.

Listen, don't judge.
For many here that was part of the on-validation received. When we were hurt, it was rationalized, minimized, marginalized and criticized, all with the blame to turned on us as the reason it happened.
I applaud your interest to help a fiend, but your self care and preservation is of value too.

If you (the 'others') don't know what to say to "us" (and you probably don't LOL !) ....

Just say ... "Oh, I'm SO sorry !"

Never really falls flat ;-)

Thank you everyone! :)

To be humble in their ignorance... The brain is very complex... With understanding can come compassion

Healing happens.