“My symptoms don’t match my reality.”
A mantra I developed to help me snap out of the cycle of intrusive thoughts, feelings and memories PTSD likes to thrust upon me.
Ideations of suicide and pain, anxiety and depression are not my reality.
They are but symptoms of a child’s mind that fears what they represent and children fear what they haven’t survived.
But……
I have survived
The attempts
The pain
The anxiety
The depression
And so the survivor tells the child.
“Your symptoms do not match your reality.”
And a child exhales…..
