OK! I address this to "just me here" I ask you WHY this is all BS? Acceptance is, IMHO ,necessary. Adjustment is needed in order to exist in some kind of peace. Mourning the loss of a self is natural and needed in order to move on. And no, we do not get better. We learn how to live with this and still have a life.
Until I managed to accomplish all these things(some better than others) I was living a very miserable life. My life now is not perfect, no ones is, but at least I've been able to grasp what PTSD is, what it has done and is doing to me and this has made it easier to manage a condition that will not go away.
IMHO, fighting this and denying it only makes us worse and suffer more than we need to. In this case I truly believe the old adage "Knowledge is power". So any knowledge we have abouut PTSD should give us some form of power over managing ouselves.
So how can all this be BS? I ask you, explain your reasoning, please
you can manage yourself- I grant you that. But unless you are the source of the negative things that happen to you, you have done nothing.
Simple reasoning- this is incurable.
Even if it was, there is no way to be assured you won't get yourself in another situation later on that puts you right back in the hole. There is nothing you can do to stay out of it, there is nothing you can do to get out of it.
Ever hear someone say that a futile act was like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic? I have been at this twenty years, probably should have started 35 years ago. But why? Stuff still happens, to me or someone near me or to a total stranger, doesn't matter. The stuff keeps coming. I am tired of worrying about deck chairs and have turned my attention to the icebergs. The ever present, unstoppable icebergs.
Greive the former self if you want, if it helps. I have. it didn't.
Accept things that happened as just being occurences, not good or bad, just things that happened that are neutral unless we place a determination on them. Tried that. Guess what? Physical injury is a bad thing, I don't determine that and neither do you.
Learn to accept the past and quit trying to get a closure, an explanation, an understanding of what happened and why if that helps. I tried that too, it doesn't. I still want to know why people have done the things they have done, I still wish I could have seen it coming and I still watch carefully for a repeat.
Frankly we just don't get better, and every time I have thought it was a possibility I have been setting myself up for the next storm.
Eastern thought? Self soothing? Miatry? Mindfulness? All of it, the whole spectrum. Nothing works as well as keeping a job in front of me, a tool in my hand and a good challenge in my mind. And just plain accepting that all the rest of it is BS, it's all just distraction, it's all just a way to divert attention from the fact that bad things happen to good people and there aint no way to stop it. I would rather distract myself with a pile of firewood or an oil change or a row to hoe. The rest of it is BS.