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Will I ever be the same again.

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Thank you for having the courage to write this post. This is something that I have been dealing with for some time now, wanted to be the me from before. From your post and the responses I am more clear that this is impossible. I kept reading the responses to determine if anyone would say you can be who you were. But nope, the closest to that was one post spoke about the essence of you were still being there. Very hard pill to swallow.
 
Hi @Moniq

If you are searching, please explain further. However, it seems you may have missed the point.

No one gets to go back. No one gets to turn the clock back. And that goes for everyone. I know you know this, but please bear with me while i try & articulate what i mean.

Perfectly normal & healthy people who have only known a blessed life, also feel the same, all be it to a different degree.

No one in there 20's can go back to who they were as a teenager, any more than someone in their 30's is able to go back to who they were in their 20's & so on. But they are still themselves.

The difference is that they get to adjust & deal with this change slowly & over time through the natural process of aging. Which is much gentler. But grieve they do & in many, many small moments along the way.

For us however, there is normally a distinctive before & after. With little time or ability to adjust, making this process of change much more brutal & harsh. Just don't confuse the before & after of having trauma symptoms being a before & after of you. The symptoms are so extreme & so demanding that you are temporarily unable to access or see the real you, either in it's entirety or if at all. The real you is still there & waiting for you to pick back up right from where you left off.

We all have to grieve our former selves. And i'm sure this is a process that will continue throughout the entirety of our lives, as we continue to change & as it does with everyone alive & living. I also found myself having to grieve & let go of the me that would've been. That could've been. And what should've been. This for me was the bitter pill to swallow. And although it was just a figment of my imagination & never actually existed, the grief & letting go was as intense as it has ever been for anyone who had once actually lived.

However, the you that you remember. For instance if you remember that you used to laugh a lot or see the world a certain way or were able to do certain things well & enjoyed them. The things that made you, you, regardless of the version, are still there & waiting for you.

Statistically speaking, it is known that most PTSD sufferers will end their recovery journey at survivor status, rather than continuing on to flourish as their true selves once again. And there are many reasons for this, most of which have everything to do with human nature itself, rather than having anything really to do with trauma & PTSD, at all.

For me this point in the journey felt like i was no longer sick enough to be able to belong appropriately with the still sick world, but also not well enough to appropriately belong in the world of the healthy. I had worked incredibly hard to lessen my symptoms to a point that their interference into my life & me were minimal & i had come to accept who i was & all that i had experienced & who i had became & that i would never truly fit in again, if i ever really did in the first place. The only problem with this comfortable level of misery, & as incredibly tempting as it is to stay there, is that it wasn't truly me or the life i was meant to live.

The temptation here is to confuse the end of needing to deal with PTSD for the end of recovering. I found that dealing with PTSD itself, while it maybe the biggest & hardest part, is just one of the steps required in order to fully overcome & recover & heal from serious trauma.

This saddens me that so many choose not to continue. Not because it happens, but rather because it doesn't have to.

I hope you choose to go beyond comfort. I hope you choose not to settle. It is what i hope for, for everyone suffering. And yes, it is truly worth it.❤
 
this too shall pass. If you want it, you can get it, keep working and wanting and the getting comes. No one could have convinced me of that, in fact I had to convince myself, but it happens whether I can convince you or not. Just don't stop working and wanting.
I have more good days than I used to and that is a big get, sometimes the bad days are worse because of it I have to admit, but if I had given up I wouldn't have the better days or the worse days and it was worth the work to have them BOTH, believ it or not.
 
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