PTSD – Here we go again!

Well, once again, it’s been awhile. I’ve been trying, for months, to get a money-making blog started but haven’t been successful. I still believe it’s possible, but I’m beginning to think I’m not the person to do it. All of the experts say you need to have a particular niche but there are so many things that interest me, none of which I want to occupy all my time.

I love cooking although I don’t do much since my son has grown and gone. I had the idea of doing something about “Gramma’s Table” (yes, it’s misspelled deliberately) or “Momma’s-Kitchen” but admittedly, I lose interest in both of them quickly.  I’m interested in weight loss, not from the standpoint of dieting but from the perspective of eating disorders – how a person’s psychological makeup affects their eating habits, particularly overeating and obesity. With that one though, I feel like I have to be ready to take on the weight loss for myself and I’m not ready for that yet. Overweight is still part of my comfort zone and I’m not ready to venture into the world of svelt as yet!

This blog is the only one I’ve been able to keep up at all and since my writing is generally about anything that comes to mind, I wonder whether there are others who really care about what’s on my mind! I’m laughing as I say that to myself. It’s taken me years to get to the point where I’m better at living my own life and not caring what other people think! Why should others give a hoot about what I’m thinking?? (Laughing again!) After years of trying to please everyone else, I decided to give in to the comfort of simply saying whatever I feel, right here, more like a journal. And if others get some good out of it, that’s wonderful and I’m really glad. For me, I simply need to get it out!

I’m writing a book about my experiences with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, hopefully for publication down the road. Those of you who’ve read this blog (and I did write regularly for awhile), know about some of the issues I dealt with and many of you have your own situations with PTSD. I’ve given a lot of thought to the book and my reasoning behind writing and sharing such personal things and exposing myself to the rest of the world.

Maybe I’m doing it for the same reasons I started this blog in the beginning. The diagnosis of PTSD gave me some answers to long standing questions about my own behavior and helped me discover that I wasn’t really going off the deep end. Since then, I’ve gotten better at controlling the behavior that has baffled me for years and pretty much drives me a lot closer to the deep end than I’d like to be!

With the realization that I do have some measure of control, and I have the capacity and capability of gaining more control over it, I think about others who may be where I was a few years ago. It was a very scary place to be. And while PTSD has gained a lot of attention since Vietnam (even more with Iraq), it is still often associated with only combat soldiers. I’d like to bring attention to the disorder in general since there are a lot of people, men and women, who are faced with the symptoms of PTSD every day, some of them like I was, totally unaware of what’s happening to them and not knowing there are avenues to a better life! Even now, not a single day passes without some issue popping up and triggering some little bit of garbage, sometimes a LOT of garbage. The difference for me was in learning new methods of getting beyond the trash.

So…I ramble…back to the book.

I’m detailing the situations that triggered a major PTSD episode after nearly 30 years of relative peace and quiet, thinking I’d finally put the past behind me only to have it rear its ugly head. From there, I’m sharing some of my therapy sessions, my reactions to the initial diagnosis, the recognition of symptoms in earlier experiences as a child and into adulthood, some of the subsequent treatment I’ve received and other treatments currently available and  my own research into the topic in general.

I have four chapters completed in rough draft form and it’s going to be a long haul. I have to turn off the editor in my brain to get the information out on paper, and the more difficult part is in attempting to “access” the emotional files in my brain without going into some level of PTSD in the process. I find it much easier to simply leave emotion out of it and talk on a more clinical basis. But clinical information is available in so many websites; I think the emotional information is what will prompt people to not only read the book but to realize there’s hope in the end. You know…kind of like “if I can surmount the horrendous issues from so many years ago”, the reader knows it’s possible for them as well. It’s definitely a challenge for me but one I think will be worth it in the end.

So, once again, with renewed hope and more determination, I’ll be writing about the PTSD thing, but more so about the book and my experiences as I go along. And if people care about and read about what I think, great! If not, I really do understand!

Comments are most appreciated and suggestions are welcome.

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