Spacegoat

Seen this in a narcissistic abuse group, wow. Check & mate to nearly all including some physical.



I haven't developed arthritis yet but that's about all out of these. I was definitely suffering PTSD.

Wholesome

Something that helped me was reading a book called Buddhas Brain. In it the author suggests doing a meditation where you picture yourself in a really safe place filled surrounded by white light and once you feel really good and safe you allow yourself to go through the traumatic memory. By holding both thoughts at the same time you can heal the trauma. He gives all the neuroscience behind why it works.... fascinating book.

I did it and it really did work for me. I was reliving the trauma of some abuse from my ex husband and also from witnessing the death of my nephew.

Check it out if you think it could help you

Spacegoat

The process sounds a bit similar to what a friend was telling me before, about associating and dissociating yourself with these memories. Certainly I was listening, but try doing that with nowhere to live! Initially when I came here that was my goal. I had been drinking a bit (a lot) but I had a nice big bag of weed and said friend was imploring me not to drink but to smoke if necessary and to use my alone time to do what she had suggested and to write out my feelings. She also give me an acoustic guitar for company (sound of her I know). So that sounded like a plan to me, I'm not a complete ignorant and I was doing it. Moreso the meditation and writing out my feelings, I felt I was making good progress right from the off (I was in an awful state, the particular previous clusterfcuk was a long one and all encompassing for me). The only problem then was that little miss piggy here and her suspicious mind was all over me like the bad rash I already have all over me for the past 15 years, which itself is related to stress.

In that I had to hide my weed here first and foremost, fair enough I have been doing that most of my life anyway I just couldn't leave my equipment about or any loose tobacco and skins etc. Nor could I leave my coat down, or my box, or my stash I had to hide them well each and every time I used them (which was often). Annoying, but no big deal. I used to wait patiently for her to go to work and I would be down straight away making a tidy place for myself, getting my notepad out and skinning up. It was intense work that I was doing but I was enjoying it. She started to get sneaky then! Heading off to work but coming back an hour later to catch me in the act. Just to berate me, lay down her laws and make me feel like a kid again, and also paranoid about her from that point on. By this stage, weed or no weed my focus had shifted and she was all up in my headspace (her only goal). I found myself drifting around the town then just to be able to have a smoke in peace, thats's an assault on the sense's too so it wasn't long until I found myself in the pubs. I got stuck in them then for a year. I digress.

Would you say you are cured from it now Zen? Have you healed or are you still in the process, this is what I was wondering to myself when I posted it the other day. So far as this list of symptoms go, certainly I have made leaps and bounds one way or another. I'm still not fully recovered. I think the vicissitudes of my very existence here is a testament to that fact. However, I have been fighting this battle for a long time now and for the most part alone. In some sense at least I feel that I am winning it. Drinking of course, my first and only solution at the beginning- while I was convinced it was providing me with relief from these symptoms for a few hours every day- that is definitely not the solution and maybe exacerbated a few of them in some ways and certainly brought on a slew of problems of it's own. I'm not going to be able to drink the PTSD thing away I have learned, so I have committed to that much at least. I'l bookmark the book you suggested to me for another time and place, although I have several boxes of books stored here and there and for the same purpose. Cheers

Wholesome

I would say that I'm healed from it now Strat I rarely think about it and if I do it doesn't hurt like it used to. I also never have flashbacks. But I wasn't trying to overcome childhood trauma. I was an adult when these things happened to me....I think childhood stuff is more difficult.

Best of luck to you my friend. I sincerely hope that you can heal your hurts.

Spacegoat

Thank's Zenji