I’ve just rebuilt this machine, wasn’t online at all yesterday, and haven’t really read many emails lately. If I’ve read anything on LiveJournal, it’s been a fluke.
The fact that I’ve read two different posts today about child molesters is, therefore, significant. I’m a survivor of child abuse, as I know many of you are. Like some of you, I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
While at Borders last night, I read a few chunks of a new-to-me book.I Can’t Get over It: A Handbook for Trauma Survivors by Aphrodite Matsakis.
Most of the books I found about PTSD in the past were really for those who had been in combat. Since I was really looking because I was married to a ‘Nam vet at the time, that wasn’t a problem. Courage to Heal and similar books’ mentions of PTSD were all the resources available to the rest of us.
I Can’t Get Over It isn’t written for any one particular group of PTSD sufferers. Whether the trauma experienced was in combat, a natural or man-made catastrophe, a single assault as an adult or a child, a long period of abuse as an adult or a child, or multiple traumas, this book is ready to explain PTSD and help the traumatized person understand what happened, the changes in her brain as a result of the trauma, and one of the possible paths to healing (the book doesn’t express things that way, but I’m convinced that there is more than one way, so I have to put it that way). It serves as a guide as the survivors start down that path, should they choose to take it.
It also has a very good cautionary section about how to recognize signs that the reader is going into a dangerous state of shock and must get help, well before any material that should get anywhere near triggering that kind of reaction is introduced.
This is definitely a book worth a place in your library if you or anyone in your circle of loved ones has experienced major trauma.
