June is recognized as PTSD Awareness Month and June 27th,National PTSD Awareness Day. I am grateful that there is recognition to help raise awareness, but I truly hope that someday they change the name to Post Traumatic Stress. I no longer feel we have a “disorder”, diabetes is just diabetes, cancer is cancer, heart disease is heart disease. I feel that calling Post Traumatic Stress a “disorder” is another form of blame and shame…just my two cents.
I have learned that trauma and abuse leave an impact that for most intents and purposes, is never seen. It leaves the survivors with “invisible wounds” that make healing much harder. The pain and suffering tends to be ignored and without support it takes longer to make peace with the hurts and losses.
I struggle with a few of those “invisible wounds”, Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury, results of the physical and sexual abuse I experienced. I keep quiet about my inner struggles in my daily life but, in the advocacy realm, I have to say more, I want to end the demons of dissociation and the physical pain I deal with as a result of my childhood abuse. They impact my life everyday. I am not complaining, trust me, I know it’s in the past and I would love to just forget about it and move on with my life. But how does one forget about it and just move on when the child abuse I experienced keeps on calling my number? My dear friend Sherry calls child abuse, “the gift that keeps on giving.” Many of us have used dark humor to cope, my brothers and I did this all the time when we joked about the beatings inflicted upon us as children. It helped us to persevere with something we could never understand.
“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone..” Rose Kennedy
For the full post please visit: http://www.mskinnermusic.com/home/trauma-abuse-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/
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