PTSD as a lived experience
While my C-PTSD is not sourced in military warfare, I would posit that any PTSD lived experience is as warfare going forward.
Triggering events or stimulus result in reactive patterns to try and tame the battle into peaceful existence. Setting up systems of our own, we PTSD carriers want to tame our mental battlefields back into places that we can operate without reactivity… If that can be possible. While I haven’t given up on that being a reality, my current exercise is to observe the triggers and what removes them.
This came to mind, in the spirit of wanting to TAME the violent reactivity of responses in my mind.
Every moment, every stimulus, every event, every new situation, every unknown, every unfamiliar construct, results in Threat Assessment, Mitigation, and Elimination.
For me, there are more minutes than not, that I am engaged in this process. Each of these moments I pass, where the (real or perceived) threat has been satisfactorily assessed, mitigated, or eliminated, are opportunities to look back, observe, reflect, and see how this process can be reproved. Until I reach nirvana, I guess it’s this process as a learned behavioral modification.
Let me know if this helps you.
adarights [at] protonmail [dot] com.
P.D., JAY V SHORE, as Certified ADA Advocate