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Oh Abstract, you have all of my pained, and painful, empathy. Your post touched me somewhere deep and raw - somewhere I've been wallowing and stuck myself a lot lately. The harsh separateness of my world from what feels like everyone else's is the silent lurking mood plummetter that is only...

Brat, the below is a very very brief response which in no way does justice to the complexity of this topic or my thoughts on it, largely because this is a confronting topic for me right now, but one for which I believe I can make some broad observations. Your right to live, or otherwise, is...

Agree with all points above. In addition, I think that therapy is having a positive impact when I become more resilient to stress and acute life crises, am more aware and proactive in managing triggers and stressors, am better able to identify and utilise learned tools and strategies during...

At the risk of seeming a little simplistic, I think that the primary reason that PTSD is still widely associated with military personnel/combat is down to tradition and history. PTSD was first named and applied to identify and diagnose the post-traumatic symptoms of veterans returning from war...

Really, in spite of my frequent protestations to the contrary, I was quite ok about living alone, and would not have welcomed anxiety into my house at all, even had I known it was coming. This past week, it has apparently decided it's happy here, and has converted its status from occasional...

Oh Ayesha, I want to implore you, with utmost gentleness but greatest sincerity, to be compassionate with yourself about this, because whatever guilt and blame and self-loathing and responsibility you carry are not yours to bear, and just because those who deserve to bear them don't and won't...

Very relevant, and emotive stuff for me at the moment. I've recently started working on inner child imagery stuf in therapy, after years of stubborn, self-conscious resistance on principle... So this is another twist on bonkers, but we've been working on identifying multiple, inner...

My childhood taught me to be an observant and good judge of character, and to value the basics in life, such as survival, safety and basic contentment. The material desires and concerns that seem to motivate so many people mean absolutely nothing to me, perhaps even to my own detriment at...

I've learned the hard way, many times over, that for where I'm at right now, it's often not helpful to label my days, or my state of wellbeing, or anything else about my journey, more than is absolutely necessary. My internal saboteur is still very active and often comes along to undermine my...

Absolutely awesomely fantastic! The week mark is a super milestone, and every extra time you do it, you're building the routine, building the positive associations, and getting more and more of the good feelings afterwards! You've just given me the final nudge I need to get me out the door to...

To the extent that it's possible, I've eliminated those friends who can't get over the eggshell dance. I have enough difficulty coping with my own shame, stigma and lack of self acceptance without those factors being reflected back to me in the behaviour of others, so those who haven't overcome...

I am really really glad to hear she was in that right place Hashi, that can be as critical as anything. Your session sounds important and intense and I imagine the processing of it all has just begun. Hope you're taking gentle care of yourself in preparation for your next big challenge step of...

Oh I love you guys... thank you so so much. Abstract, your suggestions are gold and are exactly the things I do try. Things that are easy to eat, non-messy and suitable for leftovers, such as sandwiches, are almost always my choice if I have one. Those who know me, and care, and try to...

Thanks Abstract, you're right, and to be honest, other than the couple of interactions I eluded to above, things have been a bit more casual and hence safer between us lately. She actually has quite a high level of awareness, it seems, into the impact of her own issues on others and is careful...

Thesedays, I am almost entirely unable to eat in public. This is much much worse than it used to be and is probably the most stable of my eating difficulties. I just... can't, and don't even want to try, and am oddly almost completely untempted by food when other people are around, even when I...

Oh Bubzilla, I'm afraid that my 1st and all subsequent reactions (after an admittedly very brief look through the ad and website) are no no no!! Please know these are just the reactions of a very suspicious and cynical mind, but this screams "scam" to me. The ad is unprofessional (including...

More support coming from this corner of the world Hashi. I think in some ways you and I are in similar places right now. I too have had something of a long break away from trauma work for most of this year, simply because I was just too unwell and too unstable for what turned out to be months...

I have a lot of very raw feelings and fears about this issue right now too, and probably not a lot of ability to articulate about them for now, which might be a good thing. Essentially, I agree with what others have said, all of it. I think Hashi is spot on that the qualities that attract...

Absolutely! For me, it's more a matter of helping me come back to waking reality in a grounded state, as I tend to wake from nightmares a lot of the time and having some sort of familiar noise to penetrate into my consciousness straight away - a noise that is totally unrelated to anything from...

Yes, I've done my share of crying at the gym, which is another reason I prefer to go when there are few others there. It's pretty upsetting and stressful, but I do understand that there is valid reasons for it, both physiological and psychological, and somehow they often feel like some of the...

Thumbs up from another runner, and someone who has worked hard to learn to associate my body's extreme physiological arousal with good things, and not bad or dangerous ones. When I first started at the gym, just the sensation of my heartrate increasing was triggering for me. It's taken a long...

That's the other point I wanted to make. I absolutely totally agree that healing and recovery are about far far more than trauma processing and what's going on in our heads. Recovery is a holistic process, and it maddens and saddens me that so many treatment programmes and individual treatment...

Had my first session yesterday, and it was very very difficult. Will write more later, just dropping a note here to remind me to come back. I have barely stopped crying since. It's tough...

I am an absolute 100% convert to the belief that physical fitness and exercise are as beneficial to psychological health as they are to physical health, and they tap into absolutely everything from self esteem to the ability to integrate memories and form new neural pathways. Thesedays, current...

Hashi, I frequently do longer sessions, for all of the reasons you outlined. Personally I love them and take advantage of the opportunity whenever my therapist is able to schedule it. He is also a big believer in scheduling longer sessions for trauma processing, so we were very much on the...