Page 487 - TWOPTSD

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it. These are the brave, fearless, honorable, survivors I believe Courtenay is writing this book for.
Because of my own experience with childhood abuses, I suffer from PTSD. I didn’t know or understand it or even what was happening to me until I was well into my 30’s. I now know my own personal symptoms when I have been triggered, but for most of my life, I was just unable to fathom “what was wrong with me.” The level of shame and lack of confidence was unbearable. It kept me from fulfilling my dreams of a career in acting that I dreamed of, and the children I wanted to have. Luckily I found the help I needed and was treated with brilliant techniques like Neural Linguistic Programming and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy.
In 2004 I found a spiritual practice that suited me and put a shiny button on my carefully woven cloak of recovery. It taught me that I was one in all of creation with gifts no one else can give and that I have a divine purpose to fulfill here in my lifetime. There was nothing “wrong with me.” In other words, I matter...no matter what came before.