I'm sorry that you are going through this, and for all that you have endured during your life.
I can relate, for what it's worth. I experienced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse from toddler age to my early twenties, then had a decade worth of severe emotional abuse, and when that ended, it was a series of rapes and serious physical abuse. I won't say how many times or perpetrators were involved. As of a year ago, I am finally not experiencing abuse for the first time in my life. My flashbacks reach a threshold on some days where I snap into a tonic state; eyes glued shut, talk or move whatsoever, convulse, soak in sweat, time compresses into seconds. It's really excruciating (on many levels) and is apparently a measure of the intensity of my symptoms. I have been told, and read, that full TI is extremely rare. People with even mild TI symptom sets are extremely pharmacologically-resistant. No medication has helped. And I wear a medical bracelet that warns people not to move/touch me, and not to call an ambulance (but to call my fiance instead). I also get the 'new flashback' thing, I still have new ones popping up, must have been repressed. And I got a NEW new one where I was playing with my loved one and my brain interpreted it as trauma. Butts.
I have no qualms about (gently) implying the severity of my PTSD, nor should you.
I have felt the same way, like, how the hell am I still living after everything? Damn.
The most helpful thing thus far was just accepting that this is something that I'm probably stuck with, and taking inventory of everything that I love, care about. Reasons that it's good to not give up. Being thankful that I survived all of that abuse and can still be of value to others, that kind of thing.
You are valuable.
The pain will end, but the life experiences in between the hell are the reasons we carry on.
I can relate, for what it's worth. I experienced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse from toddler age to my early twenties, then had a decade worth of severe emotional abuse, and when that ended, it was a series of rapes and serious physical abuse. I won't say how many times or perpetrators were involved. As of a year ago, I am finally not experiencing abuse for the first time in my life. My flashbacks reach a threshold on some days where I snap into a tonic state; eyes glued shut, talk or move whatsoever, convulse, soak in sweat, time compresses into seconds. It's really excruciating (on many levels) and is apparently a measure of the intensity of my symptoms. I have been told, and read, that full TI is extremely rare. People with even mild TI symptom sets are extremely pharmacologically-resistant. No medication has helped. And I wear a medical bracelet that warns people not to move/touch me, and not to call an ambulance (but to call my fiance instead). I also get the 'new flashback' thing, I still have new ones popping up, must have been repressed. And I got a NEW new one where I was playing with my loved one and my brain interpreted it as trauma. Butts.
I have no qualms about (gently) implying the severity of my PTSD, nor should you.
I have felt the same way, like, how the hell am I still living after everything? Damn.
The most helpful thing thus far was just accepting that this is something that I'm probably stuck with, and taking inventory of everything that I love, care about. Reasons that it's good to not give up. Being thankful that I survived all of that abuse and can still be of value to others, that kind of thing.
You are valuable.
The pain will end, but the life experiences in between the hell are the reasons we carry on.
