Hello Jade
welcome Hope you stick around till the healing can begin
Itmay be hard but it is well worth the effort
Beatle

Jade, there are no expectations from you in this regard. Your mind will let you know when to get things out, because they will be becoming too much for you to any longer cope. That is the point where you need to get things out before PTSD controls you totally to do irrational things. Read, read and read Jade, and things will come together for you.

Anthony, I can understand your saying to read,read, and read but does there ever come a point when reading could in fact become more of a hinder than a help? Don't get me wrong reading is one of the few things that I can do and still find some enjoyment. Also is there a difference between addicted and dependent?

Jade, yes... reading can become too much, for example why I posted Reading Forum Increases Symptoms! so that members and readers know that they must balance out their exposure here, and in fact to any information in regard to trauma and healing. Too much at once can be a bad thing. This is the same reason why a counsellor has appointments a week or two apart, so the brain is allowed time to process, get depressed, get anxious, come out of it and recover before hitting things again. Reading here will be a trigger, no doubt about it. Reading here will cause anxiety, especially reading information specific to your trauma, or that raises traumatic memories. Opening pandoras box is a decision you must make, and if you choose to open it, there is no going back until your through it.

Addicted and dependent? One in the same. If you look within the dictionary actually, addicted is used in dependent, quote: dependent - addicted to a drug.

There are three main categories, being use, abuse and dependence.

Use: To take or consume; partake of: She rarely used alcohol.
Abuse: To use wrongly or improperly; misuse: abuse alcohol; abuse a privilege.
Dependence: A compulsive or chronic need; an addiction: an alcohol dependence.

From the dictionary definitions above, you can clearly see the difference, and being dependence uses addiction as its equivalent meaning.

Yes Jade it does make total sense. My significant other has PTSD and his past has made it worse, and I'm not talking about his past in Nam, but his past girlfriend is keeping his only daughter away from him, and she has her reasons, because at that point in his life he was drinking heavily and shooting guns over her head and arrows and it just wasn't at all a good situation.

So, on top of his PTSD of Nam, he also has other things that add to it and it's almost impossible to even get him out of bed to go out the door. I'm at my wits end.

I recieved a referral for a psychiatrist today from my sons councelor at school. I know to get the ball rolling that I have to make the phone call but why does it have to be so damn hard? My primary doctor wants a full psychiatric evaluation and the crisis worker that I met with wants me to transition off the paxil to another SSRI. That scares the hell out of me because of the withdrawl symptoms. Even if I only miss one dose the effects are bad enough that I would swear that I was dying.

After reading some of the posts I wonder if my own problem is actually significant enough to bother anyone else with. I guess I have to look at it now as it is a fact that I have PTSD ,no matter how significant or insignificant I feel my trauma was.

Jade, correct. PTSD is PTSD, regardless how you got it. The end result is the same, hence why this community focuses on PTSD itself, and not specifically to how we each got it. It is the PTSD that controls us, not the past trauma. Yes, we must heal our past trauma because it feeds PTSD, but present and future stress feeds PTSD also, hence why learning how to control PTSD, heal past trauma, and learn effective techniques to ensure your healing current trauma and stress as you go, which makes living with PTSD much more plausible as such.

Hey Jade, Welcome. I know now that I have had PTSD for about 20 yrs. I've been treated for it about 10 yrs ago but I'm just now accepting the fact that it controls my life. It's really hard. Just don't minimize everything like I did. Your gonna feel pain for quite awhile. You may not win the war now but it will certainly help with the future battles. You are in the right place. Lots of Luck.

About three weeks ago when my husband came home from work he had the look in his eyes that there was something that he wanted to tell me and he knew that I wasn't going to like it. He told me that his daughter wanted to meet him. This child is 15 months younger than our oldest child. She was concieved from an extamarital drunken night. I have a hard time accepting this. Needless to say I went off the deep end. Ended up at the doctors office who sent me to the E>R to meet with a mental health crisis worker. The crisis worker and the attending psychiatrist came up with the PTSD diagnosis. Just to let you know over the past 10 years I have been diagnosed with almost every anxiety disorder out there. I just want it to all end. If I had my choice I wish there was a way to erase the memory of the past and start to rebuild off the present.

Yep, well... the bad new is, is that there is no way to erase our memories, only learn to accept them and move them to exactly that, memories, not present continuous thoughts.