Another commetn that turned into a post today. Reallynotimportant raised the issue of ptsd and identity in a comment, saying my screen name over-identifies with ptsd, making the ptsd who I am rather than serving as a loose-fitting bundle of descriptions that more or less describe what is going on in my life. I chose the name ptsd guy without much thought. In fact, if I had waited five minutes or a half hour, I would have been traumarama, which I think is kind of funny, instead, but I didn't feel like going and creating a whole new account and so forth. If this blog were my whole identity, I'd be worried about my name...and a whole lot more, but its not. I have put together a pretty regular life, pretty much against all odds. A few people know about the ptsd because I shake badly from it sometimes and they wonder why, but I don't make it a big deal.
Hanging around with what you call normal people instead of people who define their whole lives around their addictions was a big and scary step for me, and the best one I ever took. I don't hang with people who define their lives by what is wrong with them any more and it has made a huge difference. For one thing I stopped being repeatedly re-traumatized, which was sort of a revelation.
One of the tools I picked up in the trauma treatment center I went to was to separate the trauma from me and distinguish between the two. This remains something I have to practice, some days maybe more than others, so I agree with your critique of my chosen name, but the blog is about that part of me and trauma and ptsd have shaped who I am to some extent, so as long as the blog is not all of who I am, its fine I think.
Maybe you are right about it being a 12-step hangover (nice concept) but to me its not all-defining. This blog is where I hope I can work out the parts of me that have been shaped by ptsd. I don't want to say a whole lot more. I don't put all of myself here. I like the anonymity. It allows me a freedom to speak and be spoken to experimentally, without the repercussions of if you knew more about me. Not trying to be mysterious here, but to explain what I put of myself into this blog.
Also, I pretty much hacked on 12 step programs in some of my posts (here, here, and here), but they really did save my life. I am quite ambivalent about them. I was incapable through willpower to quit drinking or using -- I tried that route for five of the most miserable years of my life -- and entering AA, working the steps with fellow addicts and alcoholics is what allowed me to get clean and sober, so I am not really an iconclast about it. It works for what it does, where other stuff fails. I just think that 12 step programs are ill equipped to deal with more than their single purpose. If someone came to me and said they couldn't stop drinking I'd take them to aa -- and probably leave them there:) But it does actually get millions of people sober who were intractably and incurably addicted to alcohol and other drugs. I think it is hard for someone whose willpower works for them to understand what it is like to not have it work. Addicts' willpower utterly fails them and they need something more to get clean. 12 step programs do provide that.
The problem is that when you dry them out, you have a room full of crazy addicts who are ten times as dangerous because they are no longer drugged and think they are the cat's pajamas when they are really incredibly twisted human beings who are fortunate to even be alive. That was not a good situation for me, because I seemed to be able to find the sickest most abusive, manipulative, and insidiously cruel people and choose them for friends.
I think that might be where our ptsd or trauma experiences might be a little different, something I just noticed you mention in another comment (Having a hard time keeping up!). What you have described seems to be a really major once-and-done thing (correct me if I'm wrong here). Mine is a long history of continued traumas, anyone of which might not have been debilitating in itself (but pretty much any of them could have killed me) which combined to make a pretty yukky soup out of my mind and experience. I have a lot less certainty about who I am maybe. I don't know, I am a little uncomfortable making this sort of comparison -- I posted on avoiding the oppression olympics so I don't want to imply that one is better or worse, just different in some ways in our experiences and responses. But at the same time, there is enough going on in common to make for a conversation in which I need to think about things from sometimes new, sometimes different perspectives, something I'm all for.
Anyway, I am being somewhat contradictory but that is how things are, and I guess I'll stick with my ill-chosen name for now. I'll keep what you said in mind though, and if I get around to it or think of a compelling one, maybe I'll change it. Maybe its reallynotimportant:)
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