You Know You Have PTSD When...

[sun seeker]

When you are driven to delete what seemed like a perfectly innocuous message when you wrote it, because of an overdeveloped sense of having to do everything perfectly that would make an unsuspecting person's mind spin.

When you should know that, yet keep hoping it will be different this time.

 

[jaccat]

When, walking with the sun behind you, you find yourself watching the ground for shadows of people creeping up on you.

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes & it's your own. :unsure:

 

[Ronin]

When it's the sunny days that get to you.

Shadows, you orient by. Shadows are home. Creepy as hell home at times, but home.
That's one reason you don't play association games. Home ends up with non flattering adjectives.

 

[Anrish]

When people relying on you is fine once but it freaks you out if they do so constantly...

 

[Ronin]

When you're mindful of the difference of relying on, and expecting you to sort their problems for them.

The first is built on trust.
The second is built on exploitation.

And you so don't f*ck with that.
Which is why you have so few people you'd truly call 'friends', and at some places none, but to hell with that, you're your friend, so it's alright.

(Half-responding, half thinking aloud about my life as of late.)

 

[Recovery4Me]

@Cashew simply impressive post !

 

[Whyteferret]

@Cashew
I'm not sure when it becomes exploitation. It does at some point.
I think most of us have wanted someone to give us the "magic pill" to solve our problems or even fix them for us. Especially when it's so confusing, painful, and overwhelming. I don't think it's exploitation to feel that way or even act on it short term. You might not even know that's what you're doing.

It shifts to exploitation when it becomes a long term pattern maybe. Or if you get aggressive with the person for not fixing things...

Like you, just thinking out loud

 

[Ronin]

Yeah I'm not meaning people in need as more people who use needs to take advantage of others. Two different things in my book.

Doing it constantly is ime a different relating pattern. There's needs & there's their expression & there's effect on the receiver and they're whole different playgrounds.

 

[Whyteferret]

@Cashew
Agreed.

 

[expectingbetter]

When you feel like dying because your therapist is leaving for a vacation

 

[Ronin]

When you need to unteach yourself a lot of things you learned when technically asleep, or very near it.

Because not getting enough sleep to people's bullshit doesn't just make you cranky.