I have been reading people for as long as I can remember. It started when I was very small watching my parents and the other adults in my life for signs that the situation was about to get out of control. Every little gesture, change of volume in their voices and the look in their eyes told me a story that it was time to make myself scarce quickly. Now I am the person who sits in the corner with his back against wall watching other people and how they react for basically the same reason I am trying to keep myself safe. In the world of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder this is called being hyper vigilant and it is as common as air.

At some time in the persons life something really bad was either experienced or witnessed so now the brain is on high alert to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So you constantly take mental notes of the enviroment that your are in, watching people for any sudden changes and your body stays rock hard getting ready to either react or to run. Day in and day out your preparing for the worst but instead of getting better with time it continues to get more and more out of control. Too many people turn to alcohol or street drugs just to be able to relax by sending their brain into a different direction. A portion of the PTSD population deal with flashbacks and nightmares so severe that they will not leave their homes as they are terrified of the possibilities that might exist outside their locked doors. Unfortunately some people with severe demons from the past will end up taking their own lives just to escape the live nightmare. The majority of people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder also carry the diagnoses of a form of Anxiety Disorder and Depression as they tend to go hand in hand.

I use to check the obituary’s in the paper where I grew up on a very regular basis waiting for a certain name to appear as I believed when the person was no longer on this planet then my PTSD would simply disappear. The day finally came and there she was in the obituaries but instead of my flashbacks and nightmares surrounding this person disappearing they actually became a lot worse for a time. I use to think if the person was gone then I was safe but the reality of the situation is I am a thirty something year old man who weighs in at a solid two hundred pounds so this person seized to be a physical threat a long time ago. The part that causes so much anguish in my head is not the actual event but what the event represented which is a total loss of control where I was completely vulnerable. So now I constantly read people to ensure that I am never caught off guard and always ready to respond to make sure a similar emotional event does not repeat. A number of people have told me that I need to trust other people more easily but the problem is the adults in my life who were responsible for my welfare as a child failed to do so. At a very young age I learned how to read others and blend into the environment without attracting the wrong kind of attention and this limited the number of really bad confrontations but it also set the groundwork for Borderline Personality Disorder.

I have gone to work on my head over the last couple of years trying to pick up items that have fallen off the shelf and organize everything else. When it comes to the area where the PTSD originates I can not go near it on my own for every time I try I end up in a place mentally that is responsible for more then one suicide attempt. I hope one day I will meet a therapist who will help me justify this area and make sure I do not get lost in the past.

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