Hello everyone.
It's so nice to meet people who understand the mindset and the strangeness that is PTSD. I recently completed my first sexual assault support group and it was wonderful to see that what made me feel alone and crazy was symptomatic and shared by my fellow survivors.
I'm searching for a community and friends who understand. Was misdiagnosed my whole life until recently, when an astute doctor heard my stories of unresolved child abuse and molestation (and a much more recent entrapment and sexual assault) and told me I've had PTSD since I was 5 years old, it was compounded by a chaotic home/ abusive parent, and I was re-traumatized as an adult after escaping and surviving.
In one sense this is clarity and my thought patterns growing up now are more understandable, but I'm still grieving for the childhood I didn't have and trying to find out how to parent myself and do the whole self-care bit. It's a process and I'm trying, but this is like climbing up a steep and gravelly hill: sometimes there's process and sometimes it's a painful slide back down. Finding a group made me more hopeful that getting better is possible!
It's so nice to meet people who understand the mindset and the strangeness that is PTSD. I recently completed my first sexual assault support group and it was wonderful to see that what made me feel alone and crazy was symptomatic and shared by my fellow survivors.
I'm searching for a community and friends who understand. Was misdiagnosed my whole life until recently, when an astute doctor heard my stories of unresolved child abuse and molestation (and a much more recent entrapment and sexual assault) and told me I've had PTSD since I was 5 years old, it was compounded by a chaotic home/ abusive parent, and I was re-traumatized as an adult after escaping and surviving.
In one sense this is clarity and my thought patterns growing up now are more understandable, but I'm still grieving for the childhood I didn't have and trying to find out how to parent myself and do the whole self-care bit. It's a process and I'm trying, but this is like climbing up a steep and gravelly hill: sometimes there's process and sometimes it's a painful slide back down. Finding a group made me more hopeful that getting better is possible!
