Truisms?

One of the strangest parts about being on the other side of the panic attacks, the flashbacks, the incapacitating depressions is the "truisms". Yesterday's post held one of them "take/accept people as they are - not as you want them to be".

Others include: this too will pass; what doesn't kill you will make you stronger; don't make mountains out of molehills; pull up your socks, get over it, and do stuff. These and more may well be true. However, they are only true if we survive.

They are also only true when we aren't being driven by debilitating emotional impulses that are controlling what we do. Most of the time, it is because we are tapping into emotions that come out of the past. If we could only pick the right time to deal with them.

The truism are only real for those who don't have severe trauma in their childhood. Those mountains that we make out of molehills are just put there to help us avoid dealing with what is really wrong. Even when we know that they are molehills, we can never truly be sure that they aren't mountains until we burrough far beneath molehill. And that is always painful. The real problem is that we expend so much energy trying to avoid pain that it is inevitably difficult to keep on going. So, one day we have to dig deep because we can't avoid it any more. Keeping the memories behind the walls uses up too much energy that we need for other things. From experience, I can say that it has to be done - it just isn't easy.

The one truism that doesn't work is "time heals all pain" - it doesn't because the memories just won't let us be until we face the beast in the closet and the monsters under the bed.

I can only say thank whatever, we have tools now to help get to the trauma and the pain - now if we could only persuade "the citizens" that this is all too real.