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Confusion

Hello all,

I've found myself in another strange situation, but then most about life is confusing to me right now, and I'm not sure if I have the stamina to deal with it right now. Once again life's little problems have created a storm within my mind. It's one that I've learned to understand but it's also a hard feeling to deal with. What set this off is probably what most would call a normal life. On Wednesday, I finally got up the nerve to go to the place where I wanted to work and talked to someone. They told me to turn in an application on line and to come see them when it was completed. I did as instructed and had an interview the next day where I was told that pending a background check, I'd be hired.

That night, I got a call from the corporate HR where they said they wanted to move with my application and to wait a couple of days before I looked for other work. I found that to be  a pretty positive statement and at last like my wife, I began to believe that this job was in the bag. Then yesterday, I get an email from the recruitment office saying that they'd decided to choose someone else. So in three days, I've been told three completely different things and I can't find out which one is correct until Monday.

Needless to say, this sent my emotions onto high gear as my wife tried to talk me down. She believes that it's simply one department within the company not communicating with another, but I've become a pretty pessimistic person over the last few months and can't believe that something good will come from this. I think I fear rejection and disappointment more than anything and so I refuse to believe something good will happen until it does, just to protect myself from those two things. So this weekend, my minds protection mode has once again kicked into high gear, leaving me a bit of a basket case. I know it's just life, and that I just haven't yet become strong enough since my more recent tragedy to deal with it, but I'm getting closer every day.

On the upside, I did see my therapist during all of this. She described her treatment plan to me that will include EMDR therapy for my complex PTSD. We have to have a couple more sessions first to understand what all needs to be worked on or rather, what traumas in my life are creating my symptoms all the way back to childhood. I'll be learning techniques for calming along the way and was told that I need to be really gentle to myself in the weeks before these treatments because they're described as emotionally hard and she told me I'll need all the mental strength that I can muster when we start them.

I look forward to those treatments so that I can begin to soothe my mind that's apparently been dealing with PTSD since early childhood. I look forward to the calmer me emerging. One that can face life's little problems without freaking out. A person who simply finds strength in peace. Perhaps these treatments are the road map to the peace that I seek. I'm not sure. Only time will tell, I guess.

Hello all,

Just wanted to introduce myself and tell you a little about me. I was first diagnosed with PTSD by a councilor that came by my house after a rather traumatic experience. I was referred for an intake into a group of therapists, and when I went the diagnosis was confirmed as well as the fact that some of my symptoms are because of current trauma and things that happened in my childhood. As A child, I was physically abused by my stepfather until high school. There was also mental abuse form my mother. So many other things happened through my life. The loss of two wives, one to cancer and one because of alcoholism. Losing touch with my children and then reuniting with them twelve years later.

My father had a history of mental health issues stemming from world war two that was largely kept hidden from myself and my siblings. Eventually, we found out about it when my mother divorced him. I was devastated when this divorce occurred and it was also the first time we saw our fathers mental illness which I believe was eventually diagnosed as PTSD. He did get better and I never lost faith in him.

This is just a part of what I've been dealing with pretty much my whole life. The situation that landed me in therapy happened last April when my stepson died by suicide, and then a couple of months later when I had a huge blowout with my brother who was also a partner in our business. We dissolved the business and all of a sudden I became unemployed. Then in the same week, both of our vehicles died.

To be honest my first thought when I got my diagnosis was relief because I honestly couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. At least I discovered that my ailment is treatable and to be honest, I'm looking forward to this. Once I thought about and researched my diagnosis a bit, I realized that this condition had been affecting my life since childhood, and through remembering, I could see the symptoms of this throughout my entire life, which in turn made it much harder to function and yet because it began so long ago, I thought these feelings and symptoms were normal, or rather just the way I developed emotionally.

My current symptoms are mostly fear which can turn into anger. A feeling of worthlessness and a fear of connecting with other people. I don't get flashbacks of the recent trauma, but my mind has suddenly been filled with intense memories of the past. Things that I'd buried so well that I completely forgot about them. In fact just the other night when I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, I had a kind of vision or wide awake dream. While in this, I remembered some very disturbing things that I won't write about here for fear of triggering another. But the thing that got me most was I could feel the emotions of that time and they were the same as I'm feeling now. Fear, and a kind of constant aggression. I was always an edgy and jumpy kid. Now I think I know why.

I come here in the hopes of finding understanding as I begin what I believe is going to be EMDR therapy. I'll be having another session this Thursday so I guess I'll know more then but they did mention it in the last session.

Thanks for reading,

Chuck