Now that my PTSD/ depression is getting under control I have no idea who I am and I'm panicking

[frogthroat]

Hello all. The last year had been really hard and it was really hard to accept I had let my trauma define me as a person. I also let my alcoholism define me as well. Parts of me I thought were me were actually leftover baggage.
I recently have been able to monitor and control my depression better with the help of medication besides ongoing therapy. I know as a kid I romanticized depression. Sad characters were the characters I related to. I created sad characters and stories about abuse and death. It's all I've been obsessed with my whole life.
Now that I'm coming out of that bubble I literally don't know who I am and it's exhausting. I'm panicking and I feel incredibly insecure and vulnerable.
If you went through this what did you do while you got through it to keep calm? I feel like I'm a totally different person than I thought I was and it's really freaking me out.
It's like a ghost has left my body. It sounds dramatic but I feel like a blank slate.

 

[Friday]

If you went through this what did you do while you got through it to keep calm?

I asked myself “How do we make this fun?”

Which sounds simple, but when you don’t know what IS fun, anymore? Cha. Bit of an adventure, that. Still, my own particular brand of hedonism was a core component in rebuilding my life. What’s fun? How can we make this fun? Do something fun, at least once, every single day. Just for the sake of it being fun -in addition to the attempt to make everything in my life as fun as it could be- as well as learning what it was that I enjoyed in and of itself.

 

[EveHarrington]

Just ride it out.

Your body/mind are freaking out because it’s a foreign state of being. Your system is fighting against it because the dysfunction is safe in that it’s familiar.

Your system just needs to learn that the new normal is a-o-k.

Don’t fight against it.

Use your soothing skills to calm yourself down as your system adjusts.

It will take some time, but you WILL be ok.

 

[Candleflames]

I felt like therapy broke me down into the components that made up me at first. I didn't feel like a whole person for a long time, just pieces and fragments of roles to play. I would fit myself into what I thought each role should be like as if I was mimicking the stereotype of ____. I asked a lot of hard questions like, "Who am I" and "What does it mean to be a fully fledged person anyways?" It was scary, lonely, confusing, and I felt empty and blank. Every look I gave or smile I made was a facade.

So I took a step back and looked at developmental psychology and the stage of life in which my trauma started. I looked at what a child of that age might do in their stage of growth and did that. Like a child would I took some classes that could be fun to learn what I might like. It gave me a sense of accomplishment and growth which is exactly what I needed. As I progressed in each activity I "grew up" in a sense and my choices in classes and topics to learn did too. In time I redid my adolescence and early adulthood.

All of that took time and I couldn't have done it without the support I had, including therapy twice a week. One thing I did come to accept is that we are all works in progress and who we are today is different than who we will be in ten years. Each day adds to who we are. So once you figure out who you are now, know that that is just your new starting point.

Keep trying, keep breathing and best of luck!