Friends A Word Unknown

[Loner]

Oh, yea, that makes sense. I guess I was sorta thinking of myself, with no friends or family or social interaction, just isolating completely.

In that case, I think, maybe your therapist's advice isn't very good. I don't think its good to LOOK for close friends, I think those types of bonds develop naturally over time if they develop at all.

 

[Tinyflame]

I'm not sure how, or what I feel about this. I don't have any problem socializing and such, or dating, but trust, that's a different matter.

However, as Alby said above in different words, if one considers ptsd as being (too) much for another to have to handle, but the ptsd cannot be seperated from one's self, it's hard to reconcile it can or will be acceptable to another, nor should (I, in my case) want to burden anyone else with it.

Also, if even family have been untrustworthy or violent or what have you, and they (technically) should be whom you can trust more, or conversely expect ('hope'?) that they 'would' or 'could' or would want to love you more than a stranger or friend, and they don't, it leaves me wary of what will happen with others, as just me here said about finding out in the long run.

So I'm not sure if it exists, or 'how'. Perhaps it is dependent on the person/ people.

It's hard to know if people are honest, or if they care at all. Or under what conditions they expect. You can only ask them to be honest, and hope for the best. Or give what you yourself need, I always think.

So I agree with what's been said above, I try not to have expectations, because they can be disappointed, and that can lead to resentment or self-blame. And you can't really blame the other person, because the ptsd is unacceptable to them, or too heavy a burden. But you can't blame yourself, either, because having ptsd isn't your choice.

 

[Helliepig]

It's funny, before I knew I had PTSD I really needed people. I first went into therapy because of a relationship break up because I thought I ndeed him just to survive. I had "love addiction". I look back at that now and shudder how I saw the world.... I did therapy and thought I knew what I was doing and chose a man to marry who was a cruel narcisstic abandoning bully - recreating all the traumas of my childhood I didn't even know I had. Sometimes a little therapy is a dangerous thing...

Anyhow that triggered my dormant PTSD (not that I was that ok before but we're talking relative) and since then people and friends and the whole subject has become really complicated. I just never feel right with anyone, never feel any connection, and can't imagine anyone wanting me. Only recently have I remembered a small child desperately desperately lonely and afraid but knowing everyone around her was cruel and unloving, and concluding she was lost and terrible. I have a sense of how much her "stuff" is projected onto people around me, and that I can't figure out the present until I've healed her a bit more... my big question - if you've never had healthy attachment and real trust, can you truly heal from that?? I hope you can. I so much yearn to find a home but I learnt you can't find that in someone else.. you have to, somehow find it in yourself then you can take people as they are without it hurting or frightening you so much. I think.

 

[Rainbow_Habitué]

Only recently have I remembered a small child desperately desperately lonely and afraid but knowing everyone around her was cruel and unloving, and concluding she was lost and terrible. I have a sense of how much her "stuff" is projected onto people around me, and that I can't figure out the present until I've healed her a bit more... my big question - if you've never had healthy attachment and real trust, can you truly heal from that?? I hope you can.

I think you can. I like the idea of "Post Traumatic Stress Injury" better because it carries a picture of healing along with it. You break your leg, you find a way to heal, you burn yourself, you find a way to heal, somebody or something shakes your world to the very core (or screws it up even before you have one), you find a way to heal that too.

But I am fragile until I've healed fully and could be re-injured easily right now, so I have to be careful, but loneliness is like an infection too, we're social, we need social interactions so it's hard to say where 'no pain, no gain' ends and re-injury begins for any particular person at any point in time.