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i earnestly believe i am only as sick as my secrets. letting the truth out of jail doesn't mean that damned parolee is going to wander far enough for my taste, but at least i don't have to tend its daily needs any more. or am i lost in metaphor again? congrats on finding the courage to open...

the further i heal, the more okay i am with not knowing why. insert zen proverb here. "^it^ is what ^it^ is whether i understand ^it^ or not."

the study which helped me through that wicked dichotomy was on how to look back without staring. there is much to learn from where i have been, but life is a forward progression. it be a question of balance.

i have not read the book, but the title is a tidy synopsis of my 50 years of psychotherapy. 1) the ptsd tool box my psychotherapy started decades before the ptsd theories coalesced into a formal diagnosis. a huge part of that piecemeal therapy was "the psychotherapy toolbox" which helped me...

launching from a platform of full trauma induced amnesia, i don't really trust my memories of how bad theP pains of the initial traumas were. for sure, finding the courage to allow myself to remember was a trauma i remember all too well. far worse than any of the memories i have reclaimed of the...

on the receiving end, continual efforts to *fix* me leave me feeling hopelessly defective. being broke is not the same thing as being broken. on the giving end, it is exceedingly difficult to know when i am actually helping and when i am paving roads to hell with my good intentions. i often...

my current answer for questions along this life are, "if i knew wtf i needed, i wouldn't need support." i guess the strongest way friends make me feel supported is by taking me the way i am, even when i can't confidently say just what it is that i am. stay true to you, my friend.

hello metric. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here. i am loving the term, "mid-trigger breakup." it describes a long running phenom which has plagued my 45 year marriage. if either one of us liked lawyers, i have zero doubt we'd be long divorced by now. as...

hello arcadius. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here. i am an army veteran and have received the bulk of my psychotherapy through the va. i have also experienced the transition from living abroad to returning stateside you speak of. i have no experience...

it most certainly does in my case. i carry it a step further to maintain a peer support network to diversify the benefits. i think of the pros on my therapy network as reference books which never leave the library. they are chock full of good information, but the social distances are too great...

i have actually had the experience of field triage with duct tape. i do not recommend it.

another yup. i analogize it to the discomfort to be expected after ripping a dirty, duct tape bandage from a long and deeply infected wound. cleansing alone is a booger bear. however. . . in my case, the gain was/is well worth the pain. serenity rocks. healing happens. i hope it happens to you.

empathy, flower. "transference" was a huge issue for me during my early psychotherapy. nearly anybody who took the time to look me in the eye and care was likely to become a subject of fixation for me. it didn't seem rational at the time, but at 71 with my golden hindsight it seems fully...

i get leery every time i hear the "in love" rhetoric. i've heard a few too many romantics chiming, "i love him/her, but i am not in love any more." these, of course, are the folks who change lovers and spouses quicker than fashionistas change hair color. dunno if that applies here, or not, but...

empathy, punky. this season i am thinking of my depression as a sneaky deak that is always slithering around the least loved pieces of my life, waiting to cover me in its slithery slime. i can't seem to ignore those least loved pieces out of existence, so? ? ? sigh. . . onward through the fog.

hello sky. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here. free expression welcome. compassion available. welcome aboard. listening. . .

i indulge in that wish often, but mostly figure the list of possible mistakes is so infinite that i would probably just find different mistakes to achieve the same results. well said. i second that emotion. i am in my second parenting career and letting go is never easy.

i seek the balance between the extremes. when either partner is focused on either extreme, i back off and sing along with the beatles. "let it be, let it be, let it be. there will be an answer. let it be." when i am able to simply let it be, the answers have a way of coming from the most...

hello vantageous. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here. my husband and i went through allot of conflict which sounds like what you describe here. we have lived apart several times in our 45 years together. i solidly believe those were the most important...

i don't drink enough to get the classic dramatic hangovers, but this describes my hangovers. it's enough to diminish my own attraction to alcohol. a little nip helps me sleep better when i am stressed, but that's about all i can handle and seldom two consecutive nights.

i will second @Friday 's notion of calling a moratorium on major decision making until your meds, etc., have stabilized. i am not sure i would have celebrated my 45th anniversary without the hiatuses i have taken to live alone while i focused on my healing journey. it eased the difficulties my...

this is the first time i've thought of it as, "incomplete self-defense response," but it fits well enough to call it, "normal for me." if i ever gave the phenom a name, i think i filed it under, "the healing process." my psyche and physics dealt however they could with whatever was available.

my suicide attempts have all sprung from catatonic dissociation where i'm not sure by brain was even working, but i've done this allot with expectations. when i am 18, i will _____. when i am 21 i can ______. when i am 30 i will ______. in my case, i believe i was attempting to run to the...

hello interstellar. welcome to the forum. a post such as this one can help me deal with those flashbacks and insomnia. in my own case, the flashbacks and insomnia are running buddies. they are not the same, but addressing one of them typically addresses the other. sharing about ^it^ within my...

empathy to all, punky. this morning my routine was disrupted by sleeping in an extra hour and a half. i had to wake up the house before my coffee and meditation routine. i nearly went ballistic at having to decipher sleepy grumbles while i was still sleep grumbling myself. grump the lump to the...