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RE: Living with A Mental Illness-A First Person Perspective
This is a great post, for so many reasons.
Mental illness, even PTSD, is hard to talk about. I've had someone close to me struggle with that. And even though it was bought on by completely different circumstances, I can vouch for how intrusive it can be - waking nightmares, vivid reinterpretation of normal events as profoundly threatening, constant hypervigilance etc.
And even though I haven't served, I've seen the marks that war can leave on a person in my and my wife's relatives.
So I appreciate that this is tough.
Anyway, keep up the great writing.
I think one of the things that bothers me the most is that people feel like they can't express how their experiences have affected them. As a soldier its easy because society gives you a free pass, but PTSD doesn't discriminate and so many people are affected by it in so many ways. You can get from being assaulted or threatened, but you can also get it from stopping to help a victim of a car crash, or having a friend commit suicide or pretty much anything.