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I'm actually doing a little better but it's a marathon for sure. I am learning that daily bodily needs: sleep, healthy food and exercise are critical. I also started doing a feelings check at regular intervals so that I can maybe catch something brewing before I have massive PTSD meltdown. Still...

This was my diagnosis too and I feel just as you describe - learning basic life skills for the first time with the worst PTSD ever. I too miss the mental numbness of dissociation into parts. Have your PTSD symptoms improved at all or just at a constant level?

After a year of being off work, and very intensive trauma therapy, I have managed to integrate all of the split off sides of my personality. So I am whole supposedly. I hold all of my memories, I know it happened to me. I know all of the feelings are mine. I no longer feel like "we", no longer...

I dissociate and have body memories too but... putting on my clinical hat here, vaginal neuropathic pain syndromes are real and often occur after trauma to the pelvis - childbirth is most common but certainly other scenarios are possible. It can be dulled with medications used for nerve pain...

I have a similar upbringing: physical neglect, emotional abuse from the parents and sexual abuse and assault from a few different predatory types in the neighborhood. So I get where you are coming from. I think with folks like us, relationships are our biggest trigger because it was within...

This is me 100%. I have no idea what to do. None of the anger management stuff helps. I've talked about it in therapy forever and its just not better. Maybe more frequent but not better. I also have trouble tolerating joy. I think I just have trouble tolerating any intense emotion, positive or...

You haven't mentioned this yet, but what is your relationship with your psychiatrist and do they know you want to start processing your trauma on your own while free living in the community? If you've had psychotic episodes while attempting to work on this in the past, you may need to have a...

I think the big unspoken issue here is alcohol. Clearly this guy has an alcohol problem. He was probably blackout drunk and doesn't remember groping you and doesn't really believe it. His wife and your husband are acting the way most enablers of alcoholics do. I've been that partner and I know...

I think that this is what is happening. A different memory started coming back in nightmares and my therapist and I were working on it but then he went on paternity leave and I got stuck with this new one in its place. My stress levels went through the roof and I didn't do the best job of...

I'm sorry you are having such a tough time. I have also had trouble with neighbors and I agree it can be very triggering. I still avoid my neighbor as much as I can but one thing I did in therapy that helped was to really comb through how my neighbor was actually very different from the neighbor...

Can you email your primary care doc and tell him that your twice daily steroid isn't working? Seems like most practices these days have a portal where you can message someone. As a steroid dependent asthmatic, the doctor will know that you need to be stepped up ASAP. If you have ever been...

This. I hadn't made that connection before. So true. Thanks @Friday you have helped me move to a place of better mental clarity. Just need to let my stress levels tick down a few notches. Yep.

I met someone while I was serving overseas last year. We were each other's best support during a truly horrible situation: the operational environment under COVID conditions. We came back together, adopted a couple of bomb-sniffer dogs we served with and started to make a real relationship. I...

Does anyone else have this? Now that I am no longer dissociating trauma memories. I have one that is a fragment really that is accompanied by absolute terror and it has started playing on a loop several times a day, like a song that gets stuck in your head. I will be sitting and doing something...

The less I dissociate, the more symptomatic I am. I've gone from being a functioning ( well at work anyway) person to having full-blown crippling PTSD. According to my therapist it will get better. I hope so. I think the one thing that has been hardest has been learning to say "I" when I would...

I just found out that I can take a year of leave without pay for educational reasons so I think I'm going to do that. Now just need to find something to study.

Slept great when I was full on dissociative, now that I'm not, I can't sleep more than an hour or two at a time. Misery!

This is what I am afraid of too. Having to retire early or go out on disability. No one I have spoken to has a positive story about how accommodations for PTSD in the workplace end up. I'm still too angry to be discouraged but I am getting there. Hope you are doing ok post "retirement" and...

Maybe ask your neurologist for an ambulatory EEG to rule out the seizure angle? I don't know what meds you are on for depression but some can lower the seizure threshold.

My kids are young adults now but I was also triggered by them during their childhood and also dissociated and did things that I didn't remember and definitely regret. For me it wasn't so much getting angry and hitting but I would irrationally decide that we were under attack, at risk of imminent...

In spite of having chronic PTSD I have always been able to work at a high level. Work has often been my only connection to the outside world and the scaffolding that I hung my life on. Last year I made a bad decision to go work in a war zone to pay for my impending divorce and came back last...

So has anyone had experience training a SD yourself? I just adopted a newly retired explosive detection K9. She is 7 years old and we served together overseas. She is my best support now that we are finally back home. I had her approved as an ESA in my apartment after a long hard process that...

Not an ashram, I was working there for a few years and did it with my yoga teacher. We also had a pranayama practitioner come to our office once week as part of a wellness campaign and everybody, both Indians and Westerners, really liked it. I think as a stand alone practice it definitely...

I agree. When it comes to money I would definitely rather give it away than fight about it. Can't bear conflict at all.

I like pranayama too. I did it when I was living in India. Not sure why it's not as popular as yoga and mindfulness.