Page 238 - Total War on PTSD

faced with the real possibility of death, due to causes outside of our control, that we will eventually experience PTSD. Because we have experienced a situation, some of us many situations, where we really questioned whether our lives would continue, we become hyper-vigilant to every other aspect of our lives that we can control. Along with our hyper-vigilance, we become extremely reluctant to place our well-being into the hands of another individual, whether it is a doctor, nurse, counselor, or spouse. We become the ultimate control freak, and we make no apologies about it.
Car accidents, traffic jams, crowds, car engines backfires, suspicious looking people; folks with PTSD are usually triggered by all these events and more. So many things can occur during an everyday trip to the office that can affect our moods to the extent that the first person we run into gets a handful of negative emotions they have no idea how to respond to.
Unfortunately, the usual response is rejection. We find it hard to find a job, heck, it’s almost impossible to get in the car and drive to the office, much less deal with all the stimuli we receive while on the way. The problem is, the world does not stop and wait for us to simply get better. It is up to us to find a way to heal and rejoin the world.
My paternal grandmother was handicapped, due to Rheumatoid Arthritis, and walked on crutches and could not grasp anything with her hands. She did not suffer from this affliction her entire life, but she did through mine. I don’t remember ever seeing her without her crutches. She was given a life ending diagnosis back in 1960 and given six months to a year to live. She died in 1984. Living on borrowed time, and overcoming it, was part of my father’s life experience. So, there was no way he was going to let me just give up. When I was discharged from the hospital, I went to one of the local Los Angeles Universities and enrolled in a Master’s degree program, and earned a Master of Social Work, with a concentration in mental health, and during my time in school, learned about PTSD and its treatment, and essentially treated myself.
Understand that earning that degree was not easy. I had to do the first year from the hospital. After I was initially discharged, I developed another pressure sore, an issue
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