I suppose I have something quite opposite. I feel I have become addicted to internet use. Having periods of time when I felt I could not bear the thought of one on one social discourse, yet paradoxically, longing to have some type of human interaction.

Having this desire to communicate led me to use chat rooms in the beginning which was early in the nineties. Then as the internet grew I found a disgusting proliferation of very sick minds, bent on disrupting most discussions. I left that form of communication and just simply surfed the internet reading as much as I could on PTSD. Also coupled with that reams of material on anxiety and depression, various other disorders such as co-dependency, obsessive/compulsive disorder and deluded/dillusional aspects of persons who were abused.

I was attempting to find where I fit, my feeling was that I was a square peg and there was nothing but round holes... I wasn't an abuser but abused. So I read up on the tactics of the bully. I recognized my plight as having a problem with narcissists, as my first abuser, my sister was one when I was just a toddler. Dealing with the memories of being burned and cut. Then recognized the other aspects of my next perpetraitor, her husband. His coercive use of fear and shame when I was the ages seven through seventeen.

Finding a comfortable place was tenuous at best. Keeping up my boundaries and finding some balance was a strain at times. Locating a source of materials and websites kept me from shelling out another huge sum of money and time spent in psychiatrists offices. Funny how they never shared vital information regarding my wellness, yet there it was on the internet. I felt as if I had been abused all over again.

The internet is not the end all be all by no means. If one suffers from PTSD or C-PTSD for goodness sake do seek professional help immediately. But for me it was a key to much information and many people who helped me along the way far better than any of the doctors I had seen. The place where I live is notoriously behind the times in it's care and methods. It's rather shocking to know how poorly they have dealt with PTSD individuals.

So, I'm internet addicted, have withdrawal when I can't log on and fret mightily when periodically bumped off. It has kept me from tending to my garden and it has become overgrown with weeds, it has lured me into a false sense of commraderie with a community of people all over the world and has replaced real friendships and social settings. Now after ten years of web crawling I'm coming out of this delusional thinking. I'm going outside more, have joined two different groups of people who will get me out of the house day or night. I'm making an effort to get back into the interaction of social settings and shoving my fears aside. Love, map9