. Childhood abuse clouds my already sparse memory.
Large swaths of time are absent, my memories are distorted and sequentially hard to decipher.
Traumatic memories (triggers) on the other hand are clear, vivid, and powerful.
We all slow down on the interstate to see the grizzly accident, watch the nightly news dominated by sensational crimes and tragedies, while the mundane or normal parts of life go unnoticed.
The traumatic incidents we endure are stored in a special space, we label them implicit memories.
These memories are offline or not reachable consciously, stored in the right amygdala.
So trauma or implicit memory has an abstract quality, PTSD fear is a reaction to a perceived lethal threat.
I know my triggers are more benign than dangerous.
I still do not trust people, avoid crowds and carry an enormous amount of worry.
That’s powerful for what I consider a benign symptom.
. “Still, some people are high in one and low in the other, and there are traits that are related to happiness but not to meaning, and vice versa.
Here are four differences.
Health, feeling good, and making money are all related to happiness but have little or no relationship to meaning.
The more people report thinking about the past and the future, the more meaning they say they have in their lives—and the less happy they are.
Finding your life to be relatively easy is related to more happiness; finding your life to be difficult is related to less happiness and, though it is a small effect, more meaning. Do you consider your life a struggle? You’re likely to be less happy but more likely to see your life as more meaningful. Are you under stress? More meaning and less happiness. What about worrying? Again, more meaning and less happiness. These findings mesh with a study we’ll discuss in more detail later, in which those who reported the greatest amount of meaning in their jobs included social workers and members of the clergy—difficult jobs that don’t make much money and that involve dealing with complicated and stressful situations.
The researchers asked, without any elaboration, this simple question: “Are you a giver or a taker?” The effects are small here, but there is a pattern: Givers have more meaning in their lives; takers have less. Takers have more happiness; givers have less.” . .
We loathe how we feel about ourselves, unworthy, flawed, outcasts!
All the hard work to improve and act normal still finds us more isolated and buried in traumatic thoughts.
After a decade of intense healing, PTSD still haunts my being.
PTSD has changed over the years, gone is the fight or flight mechanism firing, gone is the intense fear, replaced by thoughts, hate, resentment, and depression.
Where others see attachments as beneficial, I see the chance for betrayal, this perceived danger is powerful inside my brain.
All therapeutic endeavors and meditation have helped me improve, healing is impossible in my opinion.
Show me serious childhood abuse being healed completely. Show me a happy, free-flowing life after serious childhood abuse. Show me more than a few isolated successes.
How do you heal completely? I see a sea of suffering and pain instead.
It is a fear that revs up my nervous system and makes suffering a part of every thought, life is worse than miserable.
PTSD people will understand the last sentence, and normal people will have no clue what I meant.
I guess our dreams were shattered in childhood, and our ability to trust pretty much destroyed.
I fear certain things more than death, always have.
Of course, I envision a peaceful death, not being burnt alive or tortured.
Do you have these thoughts, my normal friends never do.
What is the craziest thing a friend has commented on your PTSD behavior?
Do you feel broken?
I walk zombie-like around people, feeling vulnerable, exposed, fearful, and anxious.
Is that PTSD or just my personality after childhood?