Wounded-Healing
New Here
Hello. I am 56 and about to dive headlong into deep waters and am as nervous about it as my PTSD will let me be. That was a joke, hope you got it. It is so engrained to suppress my emotions because of the PTSD that my being aware of heightened anxiety is significant in and of itself!
Anyway. I know everyone here has experienced severe trauma, so I won't go into my own sad story. I'll sum up by saying that I had fifteen years of selective amnesia, I had almost no memories of my home life before I was fifteen years of age. At that point most of my memories were intact. Fifteen was when I met Jesus and, the next day, the young man I would later marry. Between the two of them, I was able to cope with continuing trauma without suppressing it.
Then, when I was 37 something extremely traumatic happened and I had a massive nervous breakdown which opened up all fifteen years at one time. Surround sound and technicolor. I was completely and utterly devastated. I'll draw the curtain there and just say that, through six years of counseling, I came to such a place of freedom that I am now thankful for the breakdown.
Flash forward twenty years. Through a job change and a big move that changed our lives enormously, my mental health started becoming unstable. My anxiety went up, I started having severe insomnia, and went into a depression. Back on meds and back to counseling. We have had many severe crises in the last three years that we have weathered, and my therapist and I have agreed that things have calmed own enough to start EMDR next week on Tuesday.
I am tired of chronic anxiety and chronic hyper-arousal and chronic insomnia. I am tired of always evaluating seats in restaurants and choosing the one that is the safest and gives me the best view to watch for threats. I am tired of nightmares set in my childhood home. You know the drill. So, as much as I DO NOT want any other memories to pop-up ... REALLY do not want that to happen ... I trust my therapist and she and my doctor both advise this strongly, so I'm going to do it.
Possibly with some fear and trembling, but I'm going to do it because its the pragmatic thing to do. I will have to make an hour drive home after each session, and I'm a little troubled by that sea, but maybe that will be a good thing.
Anyway. I know everyone here has experienced severe trauma, so I won't go into my own sad story. I'll sum up by saying that I had fifteen years of selective amnesia, I had almost no memories of my home life before I was fifteen years of age. At that point most of my memories were intact. Fifteen was when I met Jesus and, the next day, the young man I would later marry. Between the two of them, I was able to cope with continuing trauma without suppressing it.
Then, when I was 37 something extremely traumatic happened and I had a massive nervous breakdown which opened up all fifteen years at one time. Surround sound and technicolor. I was completely and utterly devastated. I'll draw the curtain there and just say that, through six years of counseling, I came to such a place of freedom that I am now thankful for the breakdown.
Flash forward twenty years. Through a job change and a big move that changed our lives enormously, my mental health started becoming unstable. My anxiety went up, I started having severe insomnia, and went into a depression. Back on meds and back to counseling. We have had many severe crises in the last three years that we have weathered, and my therapist and I have agreed that things have calmed own enough to start EMDR next week on Tuesday.
I am tired of chronic anxiety and chronic hyper-arousal and chronic insomnia. I am tired of always evaluating seats in restaurants and choosing the one that is the safest and gives me the best view to watch for threats. I am tired of nightmares set in my childhood home. You know the drill. So, as much as I DO NOT want any other memories to pop-up ... REALLY do not want that to happen ... I trust my therapist and she and my doctor both advise this strongly, so I'm going to do it.
Possibly with some fear and trembling, but I'm going to do it because its the pragmatic thing to do. I will have to make an hour drive home after each session, and I'm a little troubled by that sea, but maybe that will be a good thing.
