Bees Are Awesome
Silver Member
I have been a visitor on this forum for about 5 months and really just recently decided to participate by, at first, just liking posts and then really recently responding to some. In doing this, I noticed that a lot of people know some of others' stories. I am horribly shy, awkward, private, and hate to draw attention to myself. For this reason people find me hard to get to know. Maybe by posting my own introduction it will make it just the littlest bit easier to open up more.
I am an alcoholic/addict in recovery since April 2011, but my sobriety date is 07/08/12. As I put more sober time behind me, I slowly started remembering pieces of my past which included abuse by my parents and a caretaker as well as several rapes and sexual assaults in my 20s. I was diagnosed with PTSD within the past two years. I am very hypervigilant and have social phobia and OCD. I have flashbacks and nightmares and dissociate some. I tend to isolate. I do very little outside of my home besides go to therapy and doc appointments and a couple of AA meetings a week. I have a husband and two toddler boys who are the best thing that ever happened to me. My husband is supportive to a point, for instance he does all of the shopping, but gets entirely fed up with my irritability and inability to be consistent in showing affection.
I go to therapy twice a week and have been working on processing a few of the traumas a little bit at a time. The rest of the time my T tries to help me manage my anxiety, stay sober, and learn how to be a wife and mother. Sometimes I feel like it is hopeless to try and "rejoin society" and do things on my own. I feel like I'm a failure for not being able to go to the grocery store or take my kids to the library. I mean, can't "everyone else" do 'normal stuff' like that? I am thankful, though, for a great family and group of friends who know me well enough to be able to deal with my oddities. Somehow they manage to have patience even when I am at my worst.
I am glad that I came across this forum when I looked for more info on PTSD. There seems to be a lot of great people involved in the forum. Reading that others think the way I do and have the same behaviors makes me feel a little less alone in the world. I look forward to getting to know others here a little better.
I am an alcoholic/addict in recovery since April 2011, but my sobriety date is 07/08/12. As I put more sober time behind me, I slowly started remembering pieces of my past which included abuse by my parents and a caretaker as well as several rapes and sexual assaults in my 20s. I was diagnosed with PTSD within the past two years. I am very hypervigilant and have social phobia and OCD. I have flashbacks and nightmares and dissociate some. I tend to isolate. I do very little outside of my home besides go to therapy and doc appointments and a couple of AA meetings a week. I have a husband and two toddler boys who are the best thing that ever happened to me. My husband is supportive to a point, for instance he does all of the shopping, but gets entirely fed up with my irritability and inability to be consistent in showing affection.
I go to therapy twice a week and have been working on processing a few of the traumas a little bit at a time. The rest of the time my T tries to help me manage my anxiety, stay sober, and learn how to be a wife and mother. Sometimes I feel like it is hopeless to try and "rejoin society" and do things on my own. I feel like I'm a failure for not being able to go to the grocery store or take my kids to the library. I mean, can't "everyone else" do 'normal stuff' like that? I am thankful, though, for a great family and group of friends who know me well enough to be able to deal with my oddities. Somehow they manage to have patience even when I am at my worst.
I am glad that I came across this forum when I looked for more info on PTSD. There seems to be a lot of great people involved in the forum. Reading that others think the way I do and have the same behaviors makes me feel a little less alone in the world. I look forward to getting to know others here a little better.
