Just when I thought I knew it all…Is this what it feels like to be normal?

Prior to the occurrence of a traumatic event or events, there are generally certain basics assumptions that guide your life. You probably believe that the world is kind, that there is meaning to your life, and that things make sense. You believe that you are good and worthy of having good things happen to you. Then trauma strikes. You’re vulnerable and your world is no longer safe and secure. Furthermore, you can’t make sense of what is left over. The meaning of life that was present just a short time before is gone. Life is no longer fair and just.

from The PTSD Workbook: Simple, Effective Techniques for Overcoming Traumatic Stress Symptoms

Um, WOW! Is that what I’m missing? There are people out there who believe life is fair????!!!! Um, my definition is probably different than what that means. I take everything way too literal. Anyhow, what if you never had the good life? Or if you can’t remember it? What then? I’m flawed for life! (dramatic? nope).

Hmm, it makes a lot of sense. It sort of goes back to what I posted about faith in my last entry. If security is foreign to you, how do you develop faith? I’m just thinking out loud.

I don’t have PTSD according to the DSM but I do have almost all of the symptoms (I don’t experience hallucinations).

You make a great effort to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma, or to avoid activities, places, or people that would cause you to remember the trauma. (check – avoid human interaction).

You feel detached or participation or estranged from others. (no shit!)

Your ability to feel emotions is restricted, as is your range of emotions. (ditto)

You have a sense of a foreshortened future – you can’t see ahead into a far-off future (e.g., you don’t expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span).**************

**Funny I have felt this sense I was at least 10 years old (and still do today). I have never heard or seen it as a symptom of anything. Weird. The marriage and kids are not for me…especially kids but those are just examples of what most people see in a future.

I’m freaked out. Anyhow, maybe this book about PTSD will be helpful to someone else experiencing these symptoms. I’m not going to delve into this book now since I own it (via paperbackkswap.com). I have three books from the library that I have to read. I was bored last night and this was the closet book to me so I just read the first chapter.

I should rename this blog “passages” because that is all I’m posting these days.