Does The Hurt Ever Go Away?

[bluecat]

No. I don't believe the hurt ever goes away. We can do all the therapies, do all the stretching beyond our comfort zones, read many books, keep up with studies on genetic changes caused by early trauma and brain plasticity studies........I am still hurt and hurting. ......
......Sorry, I've been having a really tough time. :eek:

Hi Mercy,

I am so sorry about all the pain that life, no not life, evil people have heaped on you. You didn't deserve that and it should never have happened. I tend to agree that the hurt of cPTSD never really goes away, but I believe it does get milder over time as we integrate the memories and find the capacity within us of caring for the hurt child. You have suffered the unimaginable and I wish you all the best, you are incredibly brave and strong.

Take care,
Bluecat

 

[Iam]

I understand the double minded feeling. It always amazes me how I can be up one minute and down the next, the "rollercoaster" that is PTSD. Jade, I know that you are scared to share it all, so am I. We are afraid of remembering all of the details too. When I think of having to remember a trauma as vivdly as possible for EMDR, just thinking about it sends my anxiety rocketing. How much more is inside of me? I want to just rush thru and get it all out right now, but it isn't working that way. Just when I think I am done something else comes up.

I do think Anthony said that the getting it out part could be writing it out here, not necessarily that we have to share with our T's or a friend face to face. That might be easier for you. For me, I do think I need to talk about it with my T. It is so freaking hard to do, I haven't even gotten to that point, my anxiety just hit about a 6 or 7 from a 1 moments ago. I think that the fact that it is so tough is the very reason that I HAVE to do it. My T says that we don't have to go thru every trauma, that working thru one may cover some of the others and so on. I don't know. God, with soooo very many traumas how long is this going to take?

In the meantime though, we are learning coping skills. Skills that will help us navigate the traumas that come up. LIke you Bluecat, I know I am getting better. I actually have hope on some days now! WOW HOPE....it's been a long, long time since I have had that! We can do this, we are doing this. I want to live MY life, not the life all the a*&holes forced on me.

 

[bluecat]

So we have to get all the trauma out in order to start healing. I'm assuming that means every little detail too, every thing that we remember. And if I purposely leave parts out, don't tell the ending, etc. it's not going to really help me, is it?

Hi Jadebear,

I don't know if this is different for PTSD and cPTSD, but for cPTSD, I think its not about the trauma and what exactly happened, but rather about how it affected you. Its YOU who is important here, not the events that led to your PTSD and definitely not your abusers. Your feelings matter and you deserve to be understood and comforted. Someone has to do it. You for yourself if you can or your therapist, a friend or people on the forum, someone has to provide empathy for you so you can feel safer and heal. Thats the way I think about it, not that I am all that good in asking for help or sympathy for myself. So yeah, if you leave out some feelings, because they seem unbearable, they will not heal. If you leave out a detail that is irrelevant to your feelings, it doesn't matter. I don't even know if this is right, but thats my understanding.

 

[Dot Warner]

I have never felt saftey. There is no safe retreat in my mind I can go to. I live with strong flashbacks that just jump me. It is as if I'm retraumatizing or torturing myself. I've done the survivor guilt work for all those many occasions when I lived and other children didn't. I've defused as many triggers as I can identify. ......and so I endure day by ceaseless day. Maybe, it looks better on the outside.

I haven't had a safe place for almost all my life, because I actually have never been safe.
Until 2008, when while working I met a wonderful person who protected me in a dangerous situation and the location was incredibly beautiful...
So that time I was safe and the nature of the place was giving me energy.

In this same moment I am not safe, but the experiences I've made in the last 2 years are helping me.

You have to keep living and you will find it...

I can't imagine the pain and all the emotions you are passing through...
I can only tell you what I tell myself when I really can't hang on anything and have nothing and nobody giving me hope..

I look at the blue sky.. simply... I think that is the same blu sky all over the world, the same, upon every person, every abused and tortured child, every lucky person, every poor, every drug addicted... ... and for a moment I feel grateful for what I am.
I also think about birds... and think "I would like to be a bird and only be worried about finding food and fly..".
Then I remember that birds have predators and they have their problems too, but above all I remeber that, for budhists, human life is so special, like if you take some sand in your hand and you let it fall down on a pin: all the grains are the lives your soul is living in his rebirth cycle and the grains that remain on the pin are the human lives you are having.
It means that human life is a very special event, if you look at it in a wider sight.

Keep strong!!!

 

[Sunrise]

This is an old thread but anyway...
Referring to a post by Anthony
> [DLMURL]https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/threads/does-the-hurt-ever-go-away.216/#post-5824[/DLMURL]
the transcript you were recommending Anthony goes to a link that has changed
and is now: Link Removed

This vet did the 5 day basic TIR training and then helped a lot of his fellow vets without charge.
Quite a story