New member

[ATHAK]

Hi. I'm feeling sluggish but this year of lots of symptoms. I want to go on with life and realize that I have just begun to seek help. Also only direct responses seem to be all I can work with as I'm new to this site. I could tell you and what I know now, to be a huge community,
MY SYMPTOMS:
Isolate. Depression. Watch tv all day. When triggered, I shut down to something like 50% movement.
Anxiety bouts about personal safety.
Scared extremely about getting in intimate relationships.
Good thing; my pet cat is awesome.
I am an artist who doesn't create much causing me to feel useless.
I have education and love people but don't connect much.
Need a buddy or what they used to call a pen pal.
Just sharing that I'm suffering a lot now brings on tears.
I will not live angry, but need to help and be helped with compassion.

[Three Roses]

Hello and welcome! We can be a little shy at times. So many of us have learned to have our guard up 24/7. I hope you can have patience with us, sometimes it takes a while to get responses - it's not a "chat" format.

I'm glad you know yourself well enough to know exactly what you need - in this community you will find many kindred souls. You're not alone.  Thanks for joining!

[Kizzie]

Hi and a very warm welcome to OOTS ATHAK     Reaching out here is a great first step in recovery.   

Hopefully you will find some good support,  encouragement and compassion here.  You can see by my tag line I value compassion, not just for others but for myself as well.  The former was easier to learn, the latter much more difficult.  So many of us learned to beat ourselves up we don't know how to be caring of ourselves at first.  I found that a good place to start when I was having trouble even getting out of bed was just accepting that and trying to understand it was because I had been psychologically traumatized.  I also went to therapy and kept posting at OOTF then here. 

We're dragging around a ton of trauma we need to work through so no wonder we can't get out of bed or watch TV all day.   What adds to that is beating ourselves up, it makes things worse, adds stress to what is already an boat load. I found that once I stopped doing that I had a bit more energy, then some more ...  and on it has gone over the past three years of recovery.   

So, keep on posting, it can help!