I choose Full time. I work a high stress job where you need to think quick and come up with accurate answers to problems. PTSD does not help in this field in fact it has become harder to think clearly. It is also hard to keep my mind on 1 thing when I need to give 110%. So I take frequent walks to clear my head of everything else. Sometimes I wish I could stay home and take care of the kids but I know I could not do it as well as my wife does.

:wall: I feel exactly the same way you do, Piglet...I am supposed to be a full-time teacher, have been teaching at this school for three years, and thought I had a good relationship with my boss. Despite my filing all the proper paperwork and getting TDI for my days off, my principal won't get off of my back for working a reduced schedule. We have no union at my school and she's stressing me out so much I have the added anxiety of trying to go to work and hope she will just leave me alone to teach. I love my kids and don't want to abandon them by going on a full-time leave, but I'm going completely nuts. It doesn't help to hear other teachers talking behind my back about my using this as an excuse for a vacation. I live in Hawaii and everyone is in their own little bubble. Even the most educated people here don't know where the middle east is on a map, much less Lebanon...I feell SOOOOO alone!

I have no idea what you've gone through that brought on the PTSD, but I was stuck in Lebanon this past summer and lost friends there and came very close to dying myself. It took them weeks to get us out of there ?(I'm a U.S. citizen) and I still keep waking up every night hearing the planes and bombs. I know it's in my head but that just makes me feel crazier once I calm myself down. I am seeing a psychologist and a psychiatrist (who wants to do nothing but shove pills down my throat.) It's slowly helping...at least I can sleep most of the night now with a ton of meds.

once again an interesting concept. i have found that full time work made PTSD less managable but if i am doing something i absolutely love then it is less of a problem. however i have never felt i thrived when i went over three days a week.
now i am a full time single parent and there is no way i can hold a job and parent without being too stressed and getting more symptomatic. I consider parenting to be a job . when my child was in school i was able to think about part time again but it was still stressful. i now home educate and it works for us seamlessly most of the time.

As many of you know from my recent posts, my wife suffers from PTSD. Until she went into therapy a few years ago, her anger made it very hard for her to hold a full time job in the long term, although we didn't know it was related to PTSD at that time. She would start a job by impressing the employer with her skills etc. but after a couple of years, her anger would escalate to the point where she'd lose her job.

However, since she found a good therapist, she has gotten a good job and is still doing very well after more than two years with them. We're both hoping that she'll stay in this job for several more years.

I'm sure that everyone is different, but for my wife the cognitive behavioral therapy made a huge difference for her on the job. She learned to analyze situations much less emotionally, instead of instantly snapping at anyone who said something she didn't care for.

I'm probably rambling here, but my point is that I think the right therapy can help some people to hold a full time job, if that's what they want to do.

+ 1 vote for self employmeny here.

There is currently no way i can reside in full time or even part time work with a company ~ tried and tested. I have 3 seperate "forms" of paid work , and each is my own creation and upkeep :)
(removalist , landlord and DIY mechanic) Keeps me busy for the time being.

I work full time for an equipment company and I deal with 20 salesmen pretty much on a daily basis. That's enough to send anyone's stress level soaring some days. LOL We use nextels and I've thrown mine across my office a few times.

I do know that if I didn't have something to keep me busy I'd be in a whole lot worse shape than I am now.

I agree with you! I'm a stay at home mom now & it's much easier for me to deal with my 2 y/o than when I struggled to work for the government for 14 years. My life is stressful at times & there's temper tantrums but, nothing a quick little "the itsy bitsy spider" song or popsicle can't cure. You can't exactly do this with adults & expect it to work lol!

6 months to a year in any full time job before I have a knock down drag out fight with my boss.

So yeah, it's my biggest problem.

I work full-time as a teacher. If I wasn't on medication I think this would be a good deal more challenging! It is much easier now that I can identify and name my feelings and reactions, so I feel less out of control and crazy. I still have plenty of difficult days at work, but it is manageable. For a while I worked two jobs and went to school (pre-diagnosis!) and that was a recipe for disaster. Now that I am taking better care of myself I find I work much better. Duh!

I've been on disablity since I was 18 and can't seem to work because my PTSD affects me in severe ways around people that the one time I tried to help out a friend who owned a book store I curled up in a ball and started crying from just staring at the cash machine.

I consider myself self employed, but my wife says otherwise. I used to run my own publishing company for comics and art, which ran for 5 years before I had a major collapse and ended up in major debt, which has been finally cleared up, and have been told by my doctor that he wants me to stay away publishing anymore. So now I just run a couple of websites for writing and forums for gay youth and I review anime/manga online. I also write lengthy novels that I'm considering publishing, but everyone thinks that would be a bad idea and no one thinks that I could handle the presure of publishing... Even if it is another publishing company in charge of the hard parts*sighs* After a 3 year break from working on anything other then writing I finally want to get back to hosting lectures at conventions, which I also did for a number of years, but again am told I won't be able to handle it and it is driving me crazy and it is beginning to make me feel even more like a failure so I guess I'll forever be an insane disablied writer/artist holding on to dreams that would never happen. *sighs*

jaa ne

Kat