There is great liberation in speaking my truth without having to even think twice about it. I can talk openly about PTSD with NO fear or shame. And I also don't have to worry about the other person getting uncomfortable, because everyone in the forum is dealing with PTSD. We're all in there because we're dealing with PTSD either directly or indirectly, so there's no skirting around it.
With PTSD, it is what it is.
But now what I'm finding is that when I switch back and forth between the PTSD Forum and Facebook, I am all too aware of how I am now living in two completely different worlds. One world accepts me absolutely unconditionally, and I can speak a dark truth without fear or offending or overwhelming anyone. And the other world is a world where I tuck myself down into a box of silence, fear, and shame of who I essentially have become, and I don't like it.
I don't want to live in two different worlds, but I don't know how to be who I am outside of the unconditional paradigm created by the PTSD forum world.
I have created a new blog. It's a blog of the journal that contains the Exposure Therapy process guided by the PTSD Forum. On the PTSD Forum they're called "trauma diaries," and they are openly posted. . . .the good, the bad, and (especially) the ugly! They're not intended to be "diaries" in the way that we normally think of diaries, but they are a diary of sorts. So I am posting my journey of this exposure therapy process in the forum, and secretly in my new blog. But I am feeling like there is a complete division between my two worlds that keeps me boxed up within myself in one of them.
For all of my life I have felt like I am less than everyone around me, because I have intuitively known that I wasn't "supposed" to share the stories of my life. But now that I have found a world where it's not only OK to share these stories, I am learning that the NOT sharing of the stories is, in part, what continues to fuel and feed the PTSD!
My silence is your comfort!
It's funny how I remember this phrase from a feminist artist's work, but I can't even remember her name. . . .oh, well. The point is that I remember it because it's absolutely relevant to my life! And I am having to look at my life and the real world I live in from a whole new perspective, and I am going to have to make some very hard decisions about the people who are within my world. Because I'm not willing to die a slow and painful death in order to modulate other people's emotional responses anymore.
I have honestly reached a place of critical mass with this issue, so either people are going to love and accept me as I am, or they can no longer be a part of my life.
Every day I interact with people (face to face and online) who share all about their life. . . their new jobs, the wonderful stories about their children, the new cars, or whatever their life is about, (and I love hearing these stories). But what's in my life every single day is a struggle for personal integrity and a fight for the will to survive. That's what's real for me. So the things that I find exciting are about whatever new I'm learning about PTSD. . . .what new therapies I'm trying. . . .what new books I've discovered. . . .what wonderful insights I've made. These are the facts about MY life that are relevant to me! But I don't feel like I can share these truths without causing other people discomfort (or worse!).
"Just because YOU don't understand PTSD, doesn't mean there's something wrong with me."
My new mantra. . . .and I mean it, because I'm going to die, literally, if I have to hold all of this crap inside. And now that I really understand what I'm dealing with, I'm just not willing to shield and protect the people around me. If my world is ever going to be secure and stable, it will only happen if I am secure and stable, not by trying to control my external world to indirectly create that security and stability for me.
Why could I not see this before?!