Just quickly ranting becuase I feel like it

How many others out there know what it feels like to physically feel a memory from long ago? To feel the tremors from a mortar or rocket round, to hear over and over the song of the bulluts over your head, or even worse, to feel those people raping me....3 different sets of people over 10 years?

How bad is it for others who experience these sensations while doing normal things like work or playing with your kids. It's so frustrating to be at work and have to fight for reality....to realize that I am in my office, not in Iraq or in a child molesters fucking bed.

WTF??? This shit has to go away soon or I don't know what I will do.

Challenging Beliefs and NOT wanting to go to bed!!!

Sometimes I think I have a difficult time with trying to figure out if what's going on in my brain is controllable or not. I mean, if I can't control it then I should just accept it and move one...deal with it ike a big boy I guess. But what if it's just a Stuckpoint that is still unresolved/not yet addressed?

It's 2am and I am playing catch-up on too many fucking things right now. I should go to bed since I need to be up in 5 hours. However, I am afraid to sleep tonight, even with a full dose of Lorazepam! Some of the dreams I have been having are catastrophic to my beliefs that I am getting better...yet I do believe still that I am getting better and that the Doc is helping me. It's just that the shit in my head is so horrible to me, and when I sleep and let it take over....it's 100000x's worse.

A recurring dream I have is a bastardizing of real memories/people. There I am, watching the building getting hit my incoming and just KNOWING that people I JUST talked with are now dead. That sucks in a dream, as in real life, no matter what! However, the other part of this shitty reoccuring dream is that there is another person, from the childhood trauma in my life. They are laughing at me and tell me: "That should be you dying over there, not the other guys!" In the dream she uses the names, but I am omitting them here.The Anniversary of this horrible thing for which I blamed myself (still do/starting to again) is coming up in less than two weeks...matter of fact, it's on a day that I would normally attend group. I haven't been going to group becuase of a job change...but I think I need to go that day for sure!!!!!

My therapy schedule has been changed...which I think is a great thing. However, I only had a few days between the last session and the new one. I did the listening part two times, but haven't had time to do ANY writing (although I guess if I can blog, I have time. lol). What I am supposed to work on are a bunch of stuckpoints using the Challenging Beliefs Worksheets or ABC Worksheets. I jotted some stuff down, but really don't have them down. ...Now I am going to have to leave work a little earlier than planned in order to get at least the three that Doc wanted done. However, how do I pick which three?
If someone reading this doesn't know, a stuckpoint is a belief (hard-coded, ground-in) in something, usually negative about yourself or a situation. The worksheets are actually very helpful in AT LEAST realizing that there is a different way to think about things.

So...over the last few weeks, the imaginal sessions got really rough, disgusting, and a lot more detail than I thought I was going to give the Doc (that's a ton of fucking trust right there!!!). However, the roughness of it all...and my fucking stupid ass living in my head...a LOT of shit has come out and I have been really...REALLY...fucked up!!!
1) I recalled that a few years ago, I had a full blown and thought out plan to end my life. It was providence or dumb luck that my wife's schedule didn't work out the way I planned...so I put it off and it never happened.
   - How is that I forgot about this? During that time of my life I KNOW, even know, that I hated everything and was fucking miserable!!!!
2) I hate, HATE, myself for the CST shit. Even though I know I didn't cause it, I know I had no control over what they did or made me do...it still sucks becuase I think of myself as someone who wold protect anyone getting hurt and as someone who just wouldn't do a lot of those things.
3) I just don't know WHO I AM. I already wrote about this..so not gonna re-hash it here. It's just really weighing on me. The point I made to the Doc the other day was: what if I figure out who I am and with that realize that I am not the married with kids guy...maybe I'm a truck driving loaner???

So, the Doc and I discussed these things and many others in great detail. From that came my homework:
1) listen to the latest recording everynight (except the night on the day of the therapy session)
2) Work on the stuckpoints using the worksheets I mentioned above.

The stuckpoints the doc worked up for me to focus on:
1) I am broken and will never get better
2) I will become my [parent who was BPD, suicidal]
3) I'm going to pull something else up (like the forgetting about the planned suicide)
4) I deserve to be punished/If anyone deserves to be punished, it's me
5) I should feel different
6) I should be able to control my emotions and thoughts
7)  I am losing all sense of me
8) Who am I...who do I want to be
9) I'm NOT who I thought I was. I'm a hypocrite. I thought abot suicide. I didn't protect!

Yeah....those are the ones I gotta work on now. I am sure that I could come up with 20 more...but maybe these 9 are enough for now. What additionally sucks is that 1, 2, and 4 were all stuckpoints that I worked on with the Iraq specific trauma!

Later I am going to add my worksheets for the above. I think I am also going to add copies (scanned pics?) of my original impact and trauma statements (with names redacted worse than the federal government intel. The thought is that: 1) maybe one day someone might actually read this shit and it might help them, and 2) it would allow me to get rid of the hard copies that I carry EVERYDAY/EVERYWHERE.

OK...I think I am going to go face my fear of sleep and go to bed. Had a porno on for the last 30 minutes...maybe that will help my dreams be at least FUN?????

What I have versus what I want?

WARNING  Somewhat disgusting sexually graphic!!!  WARNING
So I have issues with combat related shit as well as sex. I have been shot at, mortared, rocketed, raped, forced upon others, and just generally taught many things that a person should never, NEVER, fucking learn as a child, and some even as an adult.

I get amped up at certain noises, certain images, certain places, certain crowds, ...just life I guess. The CPT helped me to really come out of my shell with people...at least in my mind. I have been able to say some things that NEEDED to be said to some of the people I love (if I really know what it means to love???). However, I am NOT able to say things to others that I love or care about, especially close friends.
Then there is the fact that I have a hard...difficult...time being honest with myself. From one minute to the next I am constantly having to put myself in check. My Doc says that I show signs of "Borderline-Personality-Disorder," ...although I am "not my mother!

However, there are thoughts, and maybe some actions, that I have that I later wonder: "Who the fuck was that???" I know I have already written a little about this, but it weighs so damn heavy on my mind that I just can't seem to get past it: apparently lying to myself for 25+ years, losing my identity, questioning every past and current decision, questioning and over-examining every last relationship. Who else but a crazy bastard would do this???

My actual point here, and it goes along with being confused about who I am, is the "what I want" question. There are some definite conflicts in my mind about what is appropriate to want, OK to want, NOT OK to want, and just FUCKING STUPID to want. I think that until I find ME, I am going to continue to be in conflict...to look back on things I said or did and say to myself: "Who the FUCK was that guy???" Until I come to some understanding with my own mind, I am going to continue to have to deal with unwanted desires and thoughts (NO, nothing illegal or hurtful to anyone....except the assholes who have fucked with me).

For instance, I can remember some of the worst digusting physical feelings from my childhood experiences (no one really wants to know those things!!!)...yet I want, and DO think about crazy sex all day. I LOVE Porn and woman...and even get turned on (SERIOUSLY) by certain groupsex ideas. I was forced to clean up "messes" after sex when I was a kid. WTF????? I hate Iraq, and I hate the shit that happened there. Yet, there are days that I would LOVE, give my left nut, beg and plead, to be able to go back. To put that battle-rattle back on and to chamber a round in my M-16 (much better for longer-range targets than the M-4, in my book) and take up watch or clear a house or even escort the trucks that empty the shitters.

So apparently, my fantasies and desires and wants can, and often do, conflict drastically with the traumas in my life. It would be so nice to just be a "normal" person....to be able to just have whatever kind of sex my wife wants and not be such a pervert with her (except for the things she likes)...to NOT dream and think about going back to Iraq...to NOT long for the feel of the heat or the ride in the truck out the wire.
I hope, wonder, and pray that getting through this PE therapy, as well as practicing the Mindfullness and CPT tools will help me to center myself on normalcy and not on freakish things. Otherwise, I should just move to a town like San Fran and take up with the freaks there...see how twisted I am????? Or maybe hop a flight to Baghdad and see what happens there???? NO...I have to BELIEVE that things will get better. The alternative is crappy, at best!!!!!!!

Pushing Up (Away???)

Seems like I have an undeniable knack for pissing people off and pushing them away. I think it is just that the most recent round of therapy, the Prolonged Exposure dealing with the CSTA, has been so damn painful and strong.

After the LONG CPT therapy dealing with the primary and a secondary incident from Iraq, I really started to feel good about myself, for the first time in years. However,  that didn't last that long as the Doc moved me pretty quickly into addressing the CSTA. Her reasoning was sound: the CSTAwas so deep, old, and strong, that it affected everything else, AS WELL AS making me more prone to PTSD with subsequent traumas, such as those in Iraq.

I don't recall what all I wrote in my previous post, so I hope I am not just re-hashing, but there are a ton of things bothering me and the fact that I really don't know, or feel like, the REAL me...is scary. Sometimes it's as if someone else is talking or making the movements.
The other part of that is that I sometimes feel as though my life is fake. That I would be better off on my own because people like me don't have strong families, or happy families. Sometimes I HONESTLY just want to be on my own, or to at least start over. Although I love my wife and kids tremendously, sometimes it's as if I "just know" I will be better if I leave...if I am on my own. It's as if by leaving, I would be erasing 100% of my past...which I know is a bullshit cop-out...but it still feels that way and weighs heavy on my mind A LOT.