Trauma once, healing once

The first trauma is like a rupture, like a membrane of some sort–a protective barrier of some sort–has been penetrated.  Every trauma after that aggregates around it, but the same techniques–principally dissociation and continuous activity–which work to manage one trauma will work for all of them.  As I have said, I suspect many soldiers ENTER the military with PTSD.  It is one place where their hypervigilence and emotional disconnection become virtues.

You cannot retraumatize someone who has already been traumatized.  You can merely push them farther into their defenses.

But what I am realizing is that you only need to undergo the process of healing once as well.  Once you know the way out, you cannot be trapped again.

Healing is a very odd thing.  You must have the intrepidity to enter an unknown land alone.  No one can go with you, at least no one who has not traveled that exact road themselves, which is very few people.  Most traumas go unhealed.  Healing is not returning to a place previously known.  It is not a reset.  It is a transformation.  That is the only way forward.  You have to sacrifice everything you are to become who you are meant to be. It takes balls.

But God fucking dammit I am going to do it.  I am doing it.  Soon I will be able to say I have done it.

You cannot imagine what a sunrise or sunset looks like to a newly freed captive.