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50 years of psychotherapy have yet to rid me of this sensation. at 71, the sensation is stronger than ever. the piece that psychotherapy helped with tremendously is the "hostile." in my childhood trauma, the physical world hostility was tangibly real, to the point where i felt hostility...

hello clement. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here but glad you are here. i don't believe i care to rate the intelligence of my ptsd symptoms, but this is a common symptom in my own recovery circles. i have it in spades. in addition to the attraction to dysfunctional...

in my case, the disabilities are plural, starting with delayed development, hearing and speech disabilities and escalating into the long term joys of child sex trafficking. then we get to the transient disabilities of flu, headaches and getting fired from a job. i view my disabilities, both...

what my father evangelized on depended on ? ? ? which brand of beer he was drinking? who knows what. he often used religion/philosophy to justify his "education." i s'pose i am grateful i never had to fit in with any sunday school crowd for very long at a time, but the cognitive distortions...

these days i only hear "narc" talk in reference to ex'es and other people worth hating on. i can't remember the last time i heard it in reference to stool pigeons.

hello rhuby. welcome to the forum. when i started my recovery from child sex trafficking in the early 70's, a "narc" was a stool pigeon who was working with the police and combat ptsd was still being called, "shell shock." the names and definitions have all changed, but the consistency which...

empathy, saffron. my father did similarwise with all 11 of his children, both male and female. the cultural distinction between love and sex is confusing enough without parents acting like sex partners more than loving parents. my own father called his rendition of this, "sex education." he...

sounds to me like you are well on your way to doing exactly that, chai. finding new beliefs to replace the dysfunctional nonsense helps to fill in the holes left by discarding the dysfunctional beliefs. careful not to throw out proverbial babies with the bathwater. not even my criminally...

talking and/or writing about them as they arose helped me a great deal. the memories are still there and ugly as sin, but the open honesty has reduced them to stains on the sidewalk. they no longer have the power to derail my day.

hello applecandy. welcome to the forum. flashbacks can, indeed, be a problem. they come in many flavors. what kind are you having? what are you doing about them?

i started psychotherapy in earnest during my tour of duty in the u.s. army. 1973-76. combat ptsd had another 20 years to go of being called, "shell shock." none of the current psych specialties had formed yet. i'm sure glad i didn't wait for the specialists to finish their potty training before...

it is tragically common for infants and children to be traumatized severely enough to alter brain development. the good news is that healing happens at all ages. i hope it happens to you.

hello ethereal. welcome to the forum. a recurring --perhaps even dominant-- theme of my recovery has been remediating the many habits which worked for helping me survive childhood but are thoroughly counterproductive in my adult life. "daydreaming" in a sandbox full of bullies is a whole...

this is a critical focus in my own social anxiety management. understanding this concept and acting on it are entirely different things. i have understood the concept for most of my adult life, but i still feel the urges to cry as hard as i did when playground bullies stuffed little me in the...

i won't testify to validity, but one of my most recurring trauma responses is that anything worth thinking is worth overthinking. should i have bought the blue instead of the red? is that old grackle in the tree over there conspiring against me? should i turn left, right or stay straight...

dissociating after nightmares is normal for me, as is the mixing of characters and events during nightmares and the phobic reactions to people, places and things which remind me of the nightmare. to the best of my knowledge, why one person develops ptsd and another doesn't remains a medical...

i was raised in what i call, "the schism of the isms." the cliffs surrounding my proverbial schism are comprised of everything from paganism to atheism to christianism to whateverism. during my childhood at the bottom of that schism, the rock showers falling from those towering monoliths often...

welcome back, riverdog. congratulations on finding your way back. may the precedent grow into a healing path. what do i say? mostly, i am listening.