Strength Not Weakness

GoogTube ^ | 17SEP2016 | Winston, a British South African in China since FEB06

[Jack Hydrazine]

Text from the video:

Those who experience extraordinary hardships are extraordinary people...

If you've been through a traumatic experience, you've got something that others don't, you've experienced something most people around you have not, you can count yourself lucky.

Because when faced with a similar situation again, you will know how to react, you're prepared, whilst the others around you panic and or break down, you can Steele yourself and calmly deal with that situation. It's not a pity ticket, it's a badge of pride!

Don't look for sympathy, count yourself lucky to have lived through the hard times, wear a silent grin on your face and stand up to every challenge! Your past experiences will have your back, they're your wingmen, your safety net and your hidden strength!

[PrairieLady2]

Nice attempt at encouragement but for a few small matters. Traumas can be too big for a person to cope with. There can be permanent lasting breakeage to where they CAN’T move far from the moment, Where even simple odd things instantly move that person right back to the initial trauma. That move back to that bad moment might last an instant, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and possibly even years. It’s agony, and has nothing to do with self pity. It has much to do with chemistry changes and rerouted circuitry in the brain and body in an attempt to cope with and survive something life threatening and huge.

Everything one felt, saw, heard, smelled, comes flooding back in full glory as though no time ever passed at all. A person can get caught in the grip of it, and get stuck there for however long it takes to pass. In between, people do their best to survive simple every day life, sometimes terrified that a trigger will surface and send them spiraling back into that abyss that can keep them trapped like an animal in a cage with no way out.

This is the world of PTSD.

Biochemical changes during extreme and/ or ongoing trauma is very real and not well understood. It has a nothing to do with self pitty any more than the side effects of a chemical like a medicine does.

For those who are able to move on somewhat, who find coping mechanisms which allow them some measure of normalcy between the bad moments...sometimes these are able to be of assistance. But even this one can’t count on being able to do so , because despite the best intentions, that biochemical can kick in there rendering all good intentions, moot.

Otherwise, yes. You are correct. But don’t underestimate the extremes. They exist.