It was recommended that I begin to see a therapist to help me learn to deal with living with a chronic uncurable illness: MS. So I have been seeing this gal for several months now and mostly talking about how my life changed because of a severe exacerbation that hit me in April 2007.

Well at the last session I was upset from issues that arose from realizing the alcoholic tendencies of the man I was dating after reading a post of his here on NeuroTalk. This lead me into explaining to the therapist why I am so bothered by this. My father was an alcoholic and the meanest SOB I ever have known.

I started to tell her about all these things that happened when I was 5/6/7 years old. Memories of things like my father pointing a shot gun in my face and actually pulling the trigger. He poured boiling water on my mother. Just a mirage of things. And that was the FIRST time in my life that anyone had ever mentioned PTSD to me!!

I know I have spent a lifetime trying to deal with all of these memories. I have done some of the oddest things. When I was only 17 and still in high school a friend and I decided to take a summer vacation. My destination was the house we lived in where all of these "bad" memories occurred. I did not tell my parents I was going there. To this day I am shocked by the fact that I was able to drive to the town and locate the house without any directions given to me by anyone. I was only 7 when we moved away from there!! I not only found the house, I was able to locate a park, a motel and a building my father used for his business just by following my memories!! I took pictures of everything and still have them.

I have been in therapy on so many different occasions throughout my lifetime and on more than one occasion thought I had gotten "over" these memories. Then I learned how to "throw them in the trash" about 4 years ago and thought that is where they were going to stay. Well I was wrong.
My father passed away in 2005. He would never discuss these memories with me. He never apologized for the things he did to me. I don't think he ever saw anything wrong in what he did.

Well when I had to confront my bf, everything welled up inside of me again. So here I was in therapy just babbling on about all of this and my therapist says, "You have PTSD. We will need to explore this further next month." I walked out of there literally shell shocked. I knew I suffered from severe chronic depression for most of my life but never had PTSD been mentioned.

So I called my mother up. I moved away from my family 25 years ago and have never returned to my home state of Colorado because of my father and my memories. For the first time my mom was willing to talk to me about these issues and confirm that what I remembered was "true". We have had a lot of dialogue about these times. Turns out my father was also not the "upstanding" citizen that his friends and employees were making him out to be at his funeral. See I hadn't spoken to my father in 6 years when I got the call that he was dying and wanted to see me. I had to take a loan out on my car title to get there...I arrived 10 minutes before he died. My mom said he was hanging on till I got there with my children, my son being the only grandson.

During the times that I have felt strong against these memories I have always said that "I am who I am inspite of or because of what I went through as a child." When I have not been strong I have literally felt myself going to this dark place in my mind that is very difficult to come out of. I suffer from panic attacks and nervousness. I don't want to go to that dark place by talking too much about it in therapy so I am now "panicking" about my next session which is next week. Yikes!!

I apologize for the length of this post. If you braved it, thank you. If you have any suggestions for me...I would be most appreciative. I found myself literally screaming at my father the other day while I was driving and things "came up" in my mind. I really don't want to have all this happening but it seems I have no choice.