@Shelbyville Thank you so much for your reply given how overwhelmed you are lately. I experience the exact same flooding then my heart feels like it’s in my throat and slowly my windpipe is squeezing until I feel I can’t breathe. Sometimes it is so suffocating I feel like this is it, I’m going to die. Strange how at that moment I want it to ease and have a will to live but when the sleep paralysis and flashbacks happen I desperately want to disappear forever. The technique of fading out or greying out the memory of the trauma is something I will try because it is still so vivid.

Thanks to your advice I’m leaning on more people now. I know I can’t go through this alone any longer. I do want to beat this. Reading your experience with medication no longer makes it sound daunting.

I want to say this thread created by you has kept me going. Reading you fight and persevere through years inspired me to keep that little hope.

I haven’t ever commented on your situations because I thought who would want to hear from someone as messed up as me. I want to say I really hope you realise you don’t stay upset for long and you don’t give up.  You deserve someone who wants you and makes you feel special because the most precious gift is time. Invest that time in someone who takes time to reply even when they have so much going on, when someone checks on your wellbeing without you asking. Time and attention are gifts that are priceless. You have given so much of your time back to people like me and you are appreciated and loved for it and that’s why I don’t take it for granted. You deserve to find that person who gives you time too, the one who wants to be in your company and makes you feel special. The right people will want us and love us even if we are broken, and we will not want them we will push them away thinking how can they see something in the real us what is wrong with them. We will chase after the ones who don’t want us to validate our distorted view of us being crazy and unlovable.

Time is so precious.

@Tim I read your reply, touched beyond words by your kindness. At this moment I want you to grieve, my condolences and deep felt sympathy for your loss of your dog Rupert. Hope you meet again in heaven.

@All Thank you so much for giving me your time to respond, listening without judgement and helping me without entitlement.  I will never be able to repay it in person. So the best I can do is fight if not for me but for all those who cared enough to push me to keep hope and helped at a very dark time in my life. I will be forever indebted.