Are you are judging them without giving them a chance to help you #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife

To protect and serve should include yourself

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 23, 2020

The only way I could understand what PTSD was doing to my Vietnam veteran husband, was because I knew what surviving trauma had done to me.

I am a ten time survivor of traumatic events that could have taken my life just living as a civilian. Most of the time, someone like you responded to rescue me. Knowing what surviving did to me, it is also easy to understand what responding to people like me...did to you.

I had nightmares, flashbacks, mood swings, paranoia and questioned everything I believed. I understood the need to hide what I was going through, so that no one would feel sorry for me, or judge me as being damaged.

On the flip side, my family understood that they needed to show me that no matter what, they loved me and they were there for me, no matter what I had to say, and they wanted to help me through it.

They did not give up on me. One of the reasons why I was not about to give up on my husband, or anyone else. It is also the reason why I am writing this now. You need to stop giving up on yourself!

If you are dealing with PTSD, then you need to stop looking at yourself as a victim. You are a survivor of all of it. Within the first 30 days after "it" happened, your mind was fighting it off.

In all of the times I faced the "afterwards" there was only one time, it followed me, but did not control me. That is because I fought back, helping my mind by arming it with talking about it. When I needed a professional to talk to, I went.

I also trusted God and stopped questioning why I survived. It became a matter of what I could do afterwards...for the rest of my days on earth.

In The Shelter of Your Arms is a song that has been healing for me during hard emotional times...like right now. No matter what I am up against, I know this is the work I was sent to do and the glory goes to Jesus because He loved me enough to show me the way to help those who have my heart. This is for anyone who is going through painful times. It is OK to feel pain, no matter who you are, but take the shelter of His arms until your pain in gone and you smile again. So now I sing a song for You beyond the tears that came because I know, if I share this with those I am supposed to reach, they may know that others go through the same dark times, even if they believe, as I do, that nothing is beyond Your love. RISE AND START AGAIN

It is OK to hurt to feel pain, to cry and to lose yourself for a time. Survivors never walk away the same way they walked into it. Everyone changes to a certain extent, but you control the way you change and how much you change from one point to the next.

You would think that I would not need help from anyone considering how long I have been doing this work, but everyone I know, also needs help from time to time or they would not be able to be there to help anyone else. Besides, if I needed help but refused to ask for it, how could I ever tell someone else to ask when they needed it? I couldn't.

If you think that it is hopeless for you, then it will be, but if you imagine what is possible, you will find it and rise again!

Back in 2002 I finished writing my first book and last year I did an interview with a friend for his radio show. No matter what we went through, keep in mind that we have been married since 1984 because while we did not understand what the other survived, we understood how to lean on each other to heal!

This is part of the interview of us talking about my book FOR THE LOVE OF JACK and what it was like living with PTSD when no one was talking about it.
Want to know if you have what it takes to fight this battle? Listen to what I was willing to do and know that you can do the same and defeat it! #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife

If you are afraid of being judged by those around you, notice that you are judging them without giving them a chance to help you #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife