WORKING TO DOUSE THE FIRES OF PTSD

As PTSD creates mental bouts of smoky confusion

Working to heal from PTDS

Is like fighting through flash fires—

Which are felt but not seen

Throughout most of my life
I had no clue as to when my responses had sung to the tune of PTDS 

All I knew was that I'd followed a limited path
Based in whatever had seemed to bolster a sense of peaceful safety

With no clue that PTDS
Had squelched my sense of adventure
The limitations of my scope began to expand when I became a mom
And to my good fortune, I stumbled upon the path of self awareness

Over time, this path guided me through smokescreens

Which kept my sense of clarity
In terms of reality
In the dark

Thank goodness, I'm not as vulnerable
To succumbing to hot spots of pain

Following bouts of undeserved guilt
As I'd once been

Today, I am more practiced at sensing when PTSD

Is bearing down on me
Having come to understand the adverse effects of PTSD upon me
My instincts sense when the PTSD of another is sweeping onto center stage

And with that knowledge in my mind

I am newly empowered to differentiate between those times when

It makes sense to step forward and offer to help solve a dispute vs when
To exit stage left and wait in the wings for hot winds of war to wind down

The fact that instinct signals my senses
To consciously step out of the direct line of fire
Is a welcome change in that my psyche

Has less reason to suffer the indignities of undeserved guilt trips

As clarity, in terms of reality, blows explosions of confusion away—
Uncalled for judgments, which had once inflamed my sense of inner peace —
Are spontaneously doused
By one of the strongest firefighters around

Today, rather than directing my mind to work to exhaustion
Dousing the flames of another’s distress
I've consciously grown flame retardant by concentrating my energies
Upon developing inner strengths—which are amassed, one by one

And as a flame-retardant firefighter
Who resists catching fire
Or flinging fire back

I've come to value this inner strength, most of all:

I've come to value insight into my basic survival instincts
Survival instincts signal me as to when it's best to run into a burning building vs
When to seek out exit signs, steering me away from unhealthy smokescreens
Which might cause my connection to intelligence to choke, today

Though Mother Nature created my persona

To protect my vulnerabilities when I was a child

I appreciate having developed a strong affinity for personal growth
For this reason:

My newfound sense of clarity
Bans smoke screens of confusion
Which had once led me, naively and thus blindly astray ...
Straight toward another person's angry line of fire

As I work to know my traits, through and through

Misdirected, unprovoked barbs, flinging undeserved guilt trips
Are rarely empowered
To pierce my heart with pain

If you ask me to differentiate between toughness and strength

I’d reply:

Whereas toughness points to pretense, cloaking a person's vulnerabilities

Strength pinpoints the classic nature of human vulnerabilities, existing within us all