Analogy: My Ptsd Feels Like...

[Red Feather]

I do not know what my PTSD feels like. Maybe because I am not even feeling, or registering the information my surroundings are giving me. I am in a black hole and I can not see. I know I exist but my body is cut off from me. I know I have hands but only because when I reach out, I can feel things. I can feel other people and their suffering. I can feel the screaming pain in my heart. I can feel my children. They are close to me. I can feel the wind.

 

[TeddySue]

I know I have hands but only because when I reach out, I can feel things. I can feel other people and their suffering..

What I am reading is how you peek out through the darkness of that black hole, and to me it sounds like hope; hope that there may some time be a ray of sunshine just for you. Sometimes I think the darkness that surrounded me (you could have cut it with a knife) was a shelter where I could hide from the pain. I think I use everything, even all the bad-stuff, as something belonging just to me; and then I find this place and everywhere I look there are others who own a bit of that blackness and numbness, too. All of you are that little hope-of-light that, when put together here, must become a beacon to lead us out into the light. There is safety in numbers of like-damaged people with a single goal: to heal.

Like I have gone for a swim in the ocean on a calm day. The sun is shining the sea is calm, I swim further and further away from the shore and I am at peace, I have escaped all the horror on the land, I am at peace in the calm blue waters.

Can you tell me what is just underneath the "calm blue waters?" I hear you saying that safety in on the shores; what made you leave the shore?

Today my PTSD feels like it has gone:)...will come back when I stop looking for it:whistling:

Is it like a bruise that you have to keep touching to see if it still hurts? And if it is gone, does that mean there is some amount of healing, even for a short time?

 

[Garblefraz]

...being constantly under threat of annihilation. Psyche/self falling apart etc.

I often get this sense of my brain feeling really heavy and on the verge of collapse--like it is about to fall out the back of my skull. Making me tired just thinking about it.

 

[Chincho]

Today it feels like snake wrapped around my body, especially my neck, and squeezing more and more. Soon I won't be able to breathe.

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes a very heavy weight.
A load of bricks.

 

[Srain]

edit

 

[Queen Boudica]

Can you tell me what is just underneath the "calm blue waters?" I hear you saying that safety in on the shores; what made you leave the shore?

Nothing, no thinking, no worrying, no noise, no horrible other people, no fear; no awkwardness, no feeling stupid and ugly and pathetic and useless, no more struggling every day just to be. Just nothing, just quiet and peace. That is what is under the calm blue waters.

The shore is full of people, most of them horrible, most of them who stare and look at me and realise what a freak I am and criticize me and treat me like I am stupid, because that is what I am and they have seen through any possible disguise I can come up with. And I just want to be alone but I can't swim properly and I am not strong enough to do that, so it is safer on the shores because I am not strong enough to swim on my own, I always mess it up.

 

[TeddySue]

and criticize me and treat me like I am stupid, because that is what I am .

I don't know you, and my impression of what I read is not connecting the stupid with you. Anyone who can verbalize how they feel in such descriptive words, in my eyes is not stupid. Most people, when asked, how are you, reply with THE stupid reply of: I'm okay, or fine.

I just wanted to tell you that I understand your words of self-condemnation because I have used them many times in describing myself. It took me 5 years to be able to look in the mirror and NOT say, YOU ARE UGLY AND I HATE YOU! I used those words because I so desperately wanted someone, ANYONE to tell me I was wrong.

I have lost so much, and if I got some of it back, it was never the same as before. I believe I was not clear in how I perceived those lost things in the first place. I believe all along what I got back was exactly what I had lost. After getting back some of those things, I began to look closer to everything in my life; accepting that maybe I didn't see it all in the right perspective.

I wasn't the one that was crazy, it was the ones who betrayed me, who wanted desperately to win. And I think they went to their grave never knowing me or loving me or cherishing their child. In the land of the living, I must shake off that title they gave me, in order for them to feel good about themselves. That title: "You sorry child!"

 

[Tinyflame]

Lizio, you are never stupid. :(

Ptsd to me feels like 'resurrecting' an old object: you start to clean it, look at it, and it's garbage, old, worn and damaged beyond repair, not worth the products to clean it and you throw it out. That's 'me' or ptsd, or 'me with ptsd', who knows.

Or like someone said, I'm sorry, can't recall who, a bunch of boxes. Except I am in the centre, of box after box, and if I was a mouse and chewed the rest of my life I'd still never get out.

 

[TeddySue]

What I'm seeing in these readings is the bad choice to stay "trauma-bonded" to the evil in our past. If it is still speaking to us, words of condemnation, then we are allowing it the power to defeat us.

What I did, that has made a huge difference in my life, is to verbally set myself free from my ancestors, freeing myself up to be me. It's called deliverance.

In verbally renouncing and forgiving all the abuse and neglect in my life, gives me a new outlook on who I am.

I walked away from the abusers, even when they were blood relatives. I renounced ANY soul-ties their abuse had over me. I released my soul to be free.

There are some old habits that still speak to me about how unworthy I am of anything good; so once again I am going to speak the release of what it has on me and forever remember to remind myself of that habit, that it no longer holds sway on my life.

 

[kdblossom]

Like I am still back in 2nd grade waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

My ptsd feels like the girl being told to spin a room full of straw into gold.