Yeah, I've had a pretty impossible time trying to find therapy, also. Where I live, there aren't any private trauma therapists specializing in military (much less combat) in a 5hour radius. The ones who do are hooked up either with the VA or VetCenters. Several dozen advertise that they do... But on phone (or in person) interviews, come to find they don't. They either have 2-3 military clients (out of hundreds, or thousands over the years), or all their military & prior service clients also have CSA (childhood sexual abuse) &/or DID, & they're of the school that in order to have combat PTSD there has to have been childhood abuse priming that (untrue) / childhood trauma is their real focus. :banghead: That doesn't help me.
It's a huge, incredible waste of time, because the paradigms are soooo completely different. As an example, end up spending an entire session explaining that I am not afraid of crowds. I am not afraid of people hurting me in those crowds. My hypervig comes from an entirely different place. Come back the next session, and they still haven't "gotten" that. Meanwhile, pop over with a few vets, or cops, or anyone else whose hypervig comes from that very different place and phew! Yeah. Everyone gets it. No explanation needed, and here are 40 different ways to work around that, and start dealing with it, and, and, and.
If you live in an area like mine? Try not to get discouraged. There are trauma therapists who specialize in combat PTSD, or in related areas that translate well. Related areas does mean having to explain a lot of very basic military-mentality things, a lot... Which can be frustrating, but the skills they can teach are still spot on and really do help instead of making things worse.
It would be nice if things were easy. Shrug. Just the way life works sometimes, that it ain't easy.
