I Am On My Way

[maset22]

As I sink in the cognitive processing therapy, I feel lousy, I can't stop, but the thought of remembering is upsetting at least. As anyone gotten better with this? Where am I headed? Just questions. Someone please feedback.

[maset22]

Well Jerrbilly, I think that knowing your week points, makes you stronger. One day you will be able to talk about your situation, not just for talking; But either to help someone, or to get some input. so for now my brother, hang in there, and one day you will be stronger.

[carlie]

I pretty much told VA they could shove CPT

up their wa-zoo

instead of shoving my stressors in my face and down my throat.

For me, I have just taught myself not to carry a gun most places

and not walk the alley ways late at night with weapons in hopes

someone will give me a rough time.

I have learned to - not react to alot of situations, hastily.

jmho,

carlie

[maset22]

Hey Carlie, I understand, for myself I have lock up the permits to buy weapons. That just make me feel more unsecured, naked and with out protection for myself and family. I have my appointment tomorrow, haven't done the assignment, yet I feel the stress just thinking about doing the assignment. I will do it and see were it leads. thanks to all that are accompanying me on this journey

[Wings]

x

x

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IMO, You need not ever recount or re-tell the "stories" in therapy. Get your service-connection first, then use therapy to mitigate the damages to your world. In other words, if a man loses his leg, he does not grow a new one --but learns to walk again with modifications. Likewise, with PTSD. I use therapy for emotional support for my present fubar existence. Hang in there. ~Wings

[pigdriver]

Hey maset22,

Been there and done that. 6 weeks of CPT, was hard for me to do the assignments also, on the last day the lead shrink told me I have "some real issues". Imagine that!! All I can tell you is yes it may help you identify triggers but it also brought a lot of things out of the deep dark parts of my brain that I had suppressed for a very long time and really don't want to think about or even deal with. Carlie once told me talking to another human being about stressors is not the same as discussing some news article, I couldn't do it. All I kept hearing is "what you were trained and conditioned for and experienced in the military life remains in the military life, you aren't in the Marine Corps anymore"!! That is very easy for someone to state if they have never experienced what we have been through. So what do I do? I take my little white "do not kill" pills and all of the other meds and stay away from people and hope the RO fairy delivers some good news soon. Hang in there, there is a lot of help for you here on the site, keep posting and your fellow veterans will always be here for you. Welcome Home!!!

[free_spirit_etc]

Maset,

So how did it go? (If you want to talk about it, of course).

I think any kind of mental treatment can be hard sometimes because the treatERs think they know more than the treatEEs - which is often not the case. The know a lot more about treatment modalities - but YOU are the best expert of what is working for YOU (as well as HOW that is working.)

There is a difference between the "ugh, I gotta go through this, but once I am through this - the "this" will be different. And the "UGH! I can NOT go there!" (at least in this way at this time).

You are the best person to know which ugh it is.

I never went through this specific kind of therapy. I tried doing some rotor rooter stuff - but it didn't work well. Not that I wouldn't do it - just the "stuff" that needed to come up would not cooperate. Sometimes I would even get a tiny bit of a memory - but that thing blocked itself right off before I could touch it.

It wasn't ready. Or probably more appropriately, it knew that *I* wasn't ready - so it just zipped off somewhere else to hide. There are all kinds of escape routes in there. They actually are miraculous things that create themselves to keep the mind from snapping and going into melt down. ("Hmmm... we will just stick this over here, out of the way). But those escape routes make it hard to actually "dig" something out.

I also never dealt with any military issues (as I was not in the military). And I never saw a paid professional. Oh...I went to counseling a few times, but didn't want to spend the rest of my life talking about why I felt so bad every week. I wanted to actually heal. And I didn't want to talk about it. In fact, I didn't want to even know about it if I didn't have to. Fortunately, I didn't have to. I was eventually able to release a lot of stuff "content free" (i.e. without really getting into the details of what "it" was - even with myself.)

I did have a friend that practiced NLP that worked with me a lot. I will always be grateful to him. I liked NLP - because I could zip through lots of stuff and release it - without having to take it out and polish it up and look at it under a microscope and talk about it again and again and again.

I couldn't handle everything that way - just some of it. But I counted anything I could handle that way a blessing.

But it still took a long time - and there were still plenty of ughs along the way - BOTH kinds.

So it is kind of like the Serenity Prayer - The serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can are the easy parts. It is that dang "wisdom to know the difference" that is so damn hard.

Free