Why exagerrated response?
I now have sensitivity to every day things that never used to bother me. Going to a party. Walking in the park. Going shopping. Visiting

Does the brain say "STOP? I can't process this". Surprise trauma lurks around every corner and i do my damnedest to stay away from any Where do the startling and frightening events go if they can't get processed by the mind? The popular vernacular they get "buried" like an "average" horror (like an unexpected death). This is the communally, socially acceptable way.

For chronic PTSD sufferers, it scatters like shards of glass right at that time of the incident but sometimes even years later can cause a breakdown alot due to the the constant struggle to appear normal!! By the time i had my breakdown (i think they call it a "Major Depressive Episode" now) i felt an immediate inability to affect the changes which my life would go through. (tears). makes some everyday things seem like a horrible threat or some surreal, distorted perception of a threat. Whatever.

Why such low self-esteem?
Meaning - "why don't i like myself; I must be a schlep", all the way to "i wish i were dead" and everything else in between. Everyone suffers from it. Who among us has not contemplated ending it? But the constant nagging negativity (which major depressives deal with) of depression can turns to bitterness and resignation, regrets and self-loathing and mind-numbing melancholy. Everything is seen in the light of failure. None of this "don't forget, you were a "....." and did "......". That's all wonderful, truly but why do i still feel like a slug crawling to safety.

Why dissociation and flashbacks?
Dissociation does not mean "psychotic break". I think of it as a mind on "pause". Something has been said which has triggered a memory of a traumatic event which was never properly processed (and still isn't) and so requires a comfortable response: deliberate separation of mind/body. A spit if you will, while the mind works to avoid what is happening physically by mentally "leaving the physical scene". I try very hard not to do this when my grandchildren are around so the won't think Nana is a kookoo. My daughter slaps me across the face (metaphorically!) and my partner keeps asking me where - London, Kitchener, Toronto. i am whenever i "go away". Sometimes i'm as far away as Vancouver!!

Why flashbacks
Dissociation is usually triggered by an event happening in the present and where becoming lost in the past seems the preferred option. Different from dissociation, where confusion sets in and a dreamy, fractured sense of something having gone, flachbacks can suck me right back to the scene of the crime in no time at all! The smells, the colour of the wall, the light of the t.v. - vivid play by play of the trauma. The lens through which a chronic PTSDer sees all of this is fear and dread. flashback - repeating the traumatic event over and over where i feel i'm there, i sense i am there, i can usually see where i am. It seems like a lengthy and prolonged state of being. For me it has also manifested hostile anger, depression, loss of self-esteem and eventually an attraction to self-harm (a common response to guilt/shame). i usually end up in a fetal position, possibly weeping, head-spinning, thoughts racing and afraid of losing my mind. I "think" about 'breathing-in, breathing out' and 'self-care', having a bath nd going for a walk but that's all pretty hard to do when you're mentally paralyzed.

It seems awfully unfair that, not only do PTSDers have to experience the trauma, they have to relive it over and over. If only perpetrators of crime understood the life-long negative effect any abuse has on the victims.