You Know You Have PTSD When...

[Beans]

you know you have complex trauma when even other ptsd sufferers cannot fathom what it means that you've never felt safe/connected/attached to others and have spent most of your life dissociated and in your head or hovering right above your body. sigh.

 

[The Albatross]

Hmmm. Would refute: "even other ptsd sufferers cannot fathom what it means that you've never felt safe/connected/attached to others" cuz that's not true or factual. Take a look at Disco Dancing Queen just for one for example. She has totally gone through this and has made some solid progresses.

 

[Beans]

Hmmm. Would refute: "even other ptsd sufferers cannot fathom what it means that you've never[/...

I know there are some on here. DDQ is the main person I read here cause her journey is so similar to mine (and I'd bookmarked most of the threads that used to be on the complex subforum cause they really speak to my experience.) I'm talking about more irl at ptsd groups. l'll have to go to a complex ptsd group or find something more catered if I want to find pple who get it.

 

[Ronin]

When you're on training yourself to forget several years of your life. Because remembering is clearly not a good idea, and hey, if I made myself remember, I can try the other way around. The gone people are actually useful; they won't remind you by their presence you lived.

Maybe. Hopefully. Insert that clause of '... universe always finds /some/ way to clue me in and f*ck me up.'
& When that's sadness lifting; I have control over something in my life. Such as forgetting that life.

 

[Anrish]

When you need a time out even from kind people.

 

[DharmaGirl]

When you just laughed with a friend about forgetting what you were going to say, then forgetting what you were going to say next.

 

[Ronin]

When you're happy about shades of kindness that don't hurt, but you still don't know how to stop quadruple thinking everything you're about to say or not. Yo, there? This shit isn't complicated.

& When ^ is why you miss going to places people drank. People talking, all sorts of nonsense, and moving past it. Hello the wrong way in the wrong time not having consequences.
& When you need to remind yourself you miss things that are parts of cultures, around the edges of those cultures, or just random kind & human things instead of whatever bad idea shit in your life you're missing at the moment, like alcohol.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

When going to bed before 3am is going to bed early.

When you have multiple nightmares all night long.

 

[ladee]

when you have a very unique filing system called, lay it down anywhere..... and y'all know how this story ends.

 

[Friday]

Bitch mode activated? Mouth zipped.... From long past experience.

When the difference between 'I regret the things I don't say, far more than those I do," is old drinking buddies with "If they're being used as a weapon, they aren't words."

 

[Lionheart]

when you become unpredictable, (and possibly even dangerous), with deeply held rage spewing out of your pores,

.....anger seems like such a small thing compared to rage.

 

[Ronin]

When rage would be you predictable. You have thousand and ten mental rules & trained-in walls where rage doesn't go. It's things that spill all around without purpose that mess you up.

... Maybe that's a goal list. Repurpose f*cking sadness. Bring clarity to confusion. Use mental fog as a physical, so camouflage. For what remains to be seen.