it doesn't grant one any insights at all that are independent from the person you are/would have been without it.
Look at our abusers. Many of them have been traumatised themselves and developed mental health issues - even PTSD - due to that. But they didn't derive any deeper insights, quite the contrary. .
I'd agree with that. I think open and honest
suffering can lead to deeper humanity, growth and insights, (not just from PTSD but from anything). Having PTSD itself, in the absence of facing it and working through it, doesn't give you anything but pain - developing more and more defences to try and avoid what someone once termed "legitimate pain" - and often pain for others as a result - AKA abusers.
It's the path you choose through it , the humility and willingness to think the unthinkable about yourself and life in order to heal... maybe the insights come from there.
Mr Bill, I don't know much about the subject you're discussing, but my T once said that things along this line, ( I don't know what to call them other than fetishes as a collective term for urges of this nature and you say this doesn't apply to what you feel, so i have no other term to use other than "things of this line" sorry, no offence meant ) can be connected to very early life trauma and/or sometimes even birth trauma. I believe there has been research about it but I'm afraid that's all I know.... just thought I'd mention that it is something developmental/abuse psychologists and therapists are aware of (or some of them at least).
The content of your art - making someone look at something that would normally make them look away - could it be that you are making them do what was done to you??? Forced to have feelings and look at things you didn't want to look at?? A bit like someone might tell overly scary stories to their children to master their own terror by " harmless, good intentioned" frightening of little defenceless ones. A way of communicating your trauma or pain?? dunno - was just a thought.