Did you fail? Did you disappoint people who needed you, who trusted you? Did you let yourself down? Can't you forgive yourself? Maybe you don't really know, why it hit you so hard? Why the breakdown - others got it worse than you? Why can't you recover, shake off fear and shame? Are you really so weak - are you just a wimp? Can you still look your children in the eyes? Are you at least trying to pull yourself together? (Hard charges.)

As mentioned in the video, standing by a diagnosis when you have no visible sores to show, can be doubly hard. The shame of your weakness can be additionally destructive. You can no longer identify with this new incapacity! And yet, it is there (additional identity crisis). That awful feeling of having failed, not even "deserving" the diagnosis ...

→ Sometimes when you are not visibly wounded or have been on a battlefield - even experts don't realize how very real the internal wounds are, how things can stack up over years - untill breaking point.

This website wants to share with people who are going through this and cannot (yet) find help (manly by sharing experience and knowledge). And I would like to reiterate that in this life there are also "battlefields" that take place outside of an actual war zone. But that doesn't mean they are less destructive. Understand, that it is possible for your soul to end up in a wheelchair too. This is the invisible wheelchair.

I particularly like to point out, that for strong people, the traumatic experience in itself, is often not the worst; rather, that you can no longer get a grip on life afterwards - every day life becomes the killer. The constant "failures", the fact that you can no longer do what you could or wanted to do before, that the road to success seems to have ended, let alone the ability to cope with normal life.

Yet, you don't have to be ashamed of that - unless you want to tell everyone else that they should be ashamed of their invisible wheelchairs. If the others don't need to be ashamed, then neither need you. Try to find professional help if possilble.

Seek God more than ever and read the Psalms King David has a lot to say about PTSD. He suffered from many traumas e.g.: the death of beloved children, public humiliations as boss/king, as well as an officer and finally general on many battlefields of war. Persecuted for years and threatened with death. Partly self-inflicted due to gilt, but also completely innocent. In short - he had to cope with a lot of traumas on different levels.

However, he also knew what to do with it - he prayed his heart out to his God. We must do the same. Yet, don't try to go through this all alone. Find someone you trust, someone who understands you and then open up to that person.

Remember, pride is the constant companion of losers - but keeping your dignity is what matters and you don't lose it by opening up to a trustworthy person.

When you're a strong personality it presumably takes a lot to perish on life's battlefields - nevertheless, it is possible.

Naturally, things come to mind like:

• exposure to extreme violence e.g. rape (men experience that too by the way and far to often)
• abuse on all levels
• mobbying/racism
• Insolvency
• experiencing domestic violence
• a violent burglary
• to lose a child/loved ones
• bad/sudden divorce
• witnessing a city sniper or rampage
• a terrible disease
• and of course fatal accidents

However – depending greatly on the details of any of those events, the duration, your personality and experience in your childhood – you might cope with it surprisingly well. Yet life has a habit of inflicting not just one, not just two, but several such traumas on some people. So, what if your brain suddenly snaps, your soul suddenly suffers shipwreck after all?

If you suffer from PTSD without the experience of war (and you are a strong person), then it needs: A chain of extreme situations in life, the fact that you don't get out on any side as a winner, but instead you are left with bottemless shame and the proverbial last drop - to finally put you over the edge. Yet, especially that “last drop” can be something so “insignificant”, that you cannot allow yourself for it to be the reason you reach your breaking point; for that would be far too embarrassing.

Maybe you are strong because you never had it easy in life. Your childhood was very hard (e.g. because your parents where very rich or very poor...). Many insecurities, shame, mobbing, discrimination, maybe violence (perhaps lots of it). So, you learn how to cope, how to survive and you turn it into success. That’s great, but with such a history you also suffer an emotional limp. Most likely you fought hard to make it to the top, but what if suddenly a negativ chain reaction starts?

→ Let's say you suffered an accident – nothing big – but enough to fall behind in your job, so you over focus on your job again to make it back to the top and suddenly your marriage goes south. Your spouse leaves you, you lose you kids; even if they’re still at home they hate you. Maybe they get into bad habits/drugs etc. Inside you feel like the greatest looser, a total failure. But you pull yourself together, you continue and you make it back. But then, something occurs and you lose your job. You get into serious financial problems – perhaps for many years. You need to move into something much more humble. The inner shame gets bigger. In between, you suffer from verbal violence, maybe neighbors that are extremely unfriendly; family and friends that are unsupportive and judgmental. But you keep on doing what is right, you fight the temptations to fall into unlawful stuff for you are a Christian and you don't want on top of all to disapoint God and betray yourself by making everything worse. Then one of your kids suffers from a serious illness. You cry to God but he keeps quiet.

In the church you used to go, they also judge you more and more – for if you were a good Christian, nothing like that would happen to you. And they are “right” of course, for you have a temper that says it all – or so it seems. You cannot continue to go to the church services. Naturally that means that those slanderous tongues in church about you were right. At first some of the well meaning members of the congregation come to your home to try and help you. But that doesn’t work at all because they just don't get it / or because you are really still to stubborn. You have to tell them not to come back / or they decide not to. Shame distress and anxiety in your heart grow bigger and bigger. You understand that this distress is literally killing you. You try to reduce it, but how? With everything that is going on – the very real existential fears on so many levels - should you start taking calming drawing classes like the brain monkeys tell? Certainly, that’s not for you.

You keep losing meaning in life as you lose vision over your future. Where is the road of your life going? Certainly nowhere good. You are just a big disappointment to everybody around you. The older you get, the more you lose hope, energy and prospect. Midlife crisis/menopause hits you, a very tough period of life for anybody, but for you it’s a killer.

However (if you are incredibly strong), you'll still keep it together somehow - for there are people relaying on you (like your kids/parents/pals/staff) - but then (something happens like) someone close to you dies and suddenly you snap - that was just the proverbial last drop! Now, you totally lose control.

You first enter a state of complete emotional numbness. Everything seems like far away. Then the crippling panic attacks kick in again as you try to get yourself back on track - out of sheer habit. The nights are torture, the nightmares keep you awake. They confront you with bad memories of everything you have endured, your greatest fears, your uncertainty for the future, humiliation, death spirals and an actual increas of physical pain. A feeling of real alienation to the world and the people around you kicks in as you've never experienced before; and you have quite a few rodeos behind you. But this time you can't get back on your feet while months pass by.

Obviously nobody around you, feels like you do, nobody understands you. You are totally alone. You realize you're becoming more and more paranoid. You begin to suspect conspiracies at your neighborhood, among your friends, your family, your workplace, your kids schools, with the authorities and even in the church community. However, you keep it to yourself; because your senses are still telling you, that it can't be quite like that - for, if nothing else, you're really not that important after all. But the more setbacks you suffer, the harder you can keep your strong brain from being undermined with such negative ideas, and let's face it, your increasingly intolerable behavior is forcing even the people who do care about you to "talk behind your back". What else can they do?

Day to day it's getting harder and harder to achieve anything: Everyday life, paperwork, cooking, cleaning, purchasing etc. becomes Mount Everest and you are no longer equipped. Even in normal situations like with your kid at the doctors office – the doctor doesn’t take you seriously any more. Something you are not used to. People used to believe your word, now they hang up on you. Your “temper” is getting worse. Violent outbursts that people around do no longer tolerate because they don't understand. Yet you know, they are not wrong. You cannot control yourself as before. Rage and anger grow in proportion to your despondency and hopelessness – it feels like an inner nuclear incident. You are quite literally imploding and dying in the process.

Those that judged you before, are telling everybody now: “I told you so”, about you. The anxiety, the nightmares and the insomnia you suffer for years, they are getting worse. Headaches, backaches and shortness of breath intensify. The panic attacks win over. You are scared to leave your house.

If the kids stayed with you this long, they have to leave now / you leave, or the worse, they are beeing taken away from you – you just keep failing them! By now you are definitly falling into a bottemless abyss. If you're not sinking into hopeless alcohol abuse, lying under a bridge somewhere, it's probably because you're holding on to the only shred of hope, and that is probably: trying to get your kids back.

You try to avoid other people whenever you can. If possible, you only go to the store at nights, hoping there’s nobody on the streets. Totally irrational fears get into every aspect of your life. You can’t help but wishing for it to end –. The sound of a bullet through you head; that’s all you wanna hear. Another blame, another reason to be ashamed of yourself – you are just a total failure.

You might never have done drugs nor alcohol, but you just need something to make it through the day now. You are very ready to get help – but what can you tell?
“My granny died and now I’m a wreck?”, or “Well my life wasn’t easy and so now I suffer from a Burnout. Sorry.” - There is no way anyone can understand – “You cannot understand it!”

Does any of that sound familiar? Well our stories are as different as are we, yet there are patterns we can relate to.

Let me share a short true story quickly: for I showed this text to a woman that did suffer for over 4 decades from the worse. But now she made it out of the valley of the shadows of death and I wanted her opinion on this text. She was deeply touched and then said, how glad she is, that at least she never lost her children. - Unbelievable, I was stunned! For it could not have been more untrue! This woman lost her only son - when he was 3 years old he drowned. The remaining girls she had she lost temporarily, because she got homeless! But she fought day and night as hard as she could to get them back. Then, she lost two of her girls (over years) to drugs and occult stuff. So this woman - apart from experiencing many other terrible things, violence on so many levels, discrimination and humiliation - she also lost her children more than once. Yet she just told me, how glad she was it never happened to her? When I confronted her with the truth, she was deeply shaken. She just blended out the worse part of her life. But she took comfort, for God has given her, her daughters back at the end (that's why I dared to confront). Yet she needed to learn all her life to only focus on the good in order to survive. So, I'm just telling you. The battlefields of life are very real and very cruel. And help or even just compassion are seldom shared with the strong types – for they are not always friendly or showing gratefulness to every futile effort or advice and they are certainly not sweet people. They could not afford to be.

If that echoes with you, let me tell you – you are not alone with your incredible pain. There are many other people suffering just like you do. Especially if you are the strong type, it probably took you a long time to get this deep into despair. And if you are a man, then the tendency of denial is even bigger than for most women. Please, stop pretending – or are you a coward? You need to face the giants in your life or they will win. And you need to accept that you need help – and that you need to totally commit to God. Yet understand, that even though God did let this happen, he was and is never far from you. He does hear you and he obviously (obviously from an outside perspective) is helping you. He loves you - yes he does! And he is not to week to do more, but his plans are often bigger than our first understanding. I could say more about this, but it's not the right place for it now. Just trust (me and all the others who survived this hell with the help of Jesus) he is going to use all that "shit" eventually as fertilizer for your life, so it will bring more fruit than you can imagine. And if you have kids - one day they will be very proud of you - and rightly so!

I say you need to accept help, but I understand first hand, that it can be very difficult to find someone that "understands". However, you also need to understand that nobody can give you what you need now. Don't put that burden unto others! Let them free. You need God and you need to humble yourself whether if you like it or not.

But if you want to win in life; if you are a Christian - despite the fact that you are probably angry/disapointed at God (can’t understand him) - you still would love to be a real man / a real woman of the Lord, someone that makes a difference in this life; well, let me tell you, if that is your aspiration, you’ve just come to the right place inside. A humble crushed spirit is not the end - it is the begining of something wonderful.

Jes 66,2 “(So) declares the Lord. ‘These are the ones I look on with favour: those who are humble, contrite and broken in spirit, and who tremble at my word.”

Jak 4,10 “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

1Petr 3,8 “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.”

1Petr 5,5 “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.”

People who never suffered in life are often the most hard-hearted and proud. They cannot equally sympathize with someone that doesn’t have it as straight as they do in life. Maybe you were just the same? I have met with many that used to judge for example the unemployed the "lazy people" – until they suffered the same.

God cannot use the judgmental, the hard-hearted, the proud. There far to many in churches like that already. But if you are willing with your experience, to let go of yourself and of your own understanding of justice and your ideas of what God should be doing, and you submit completely to your God, then you will experience more joy and success than you can dream of. God can use you now more than before. But you need patience. And you need help.

God has not intended for people to be alone, but what that means for your life, only God can tell you. Let him show you step by step where you need to go.

By starting to:

• Let go of your anger by going on your knees before God and cry your heart out – perhaps until you fall asleep in the arms of the Lord.
• Read the Psalms read the New Testament. Listen to good solid sermons day and night – like Timothy Keller (just to give one example of solid teaching)
• Listen more than anything to messages about the Love and Grace of Jesus for you and for the people around you.
• Let Jesus heal your badly wounded soul by confessing the Word out loud. Let him uplift your spirit and your head up high. Let Him restore His idea of your success in life.
• And go out and help others with the help and love of God.

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This website is aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at strong personalities who - for one reason or another - have reached breaking point.

It can be difficult for the more intellectual Christian to find answers when they are in despair. Most of the people around me (great people!) wondered most of all how someone like me would ever need help. All they usually said was, "I'm not worried about you, you'll find a way, you're so strong and resourceful." They ment well, but they definitely had no answers to address my questions or pain. I hope that this page will be found by others like me; so that they too can help themselves through their difficult times by finding answers - with the help of God.

"May God Christ strengthen you and give you the answers you need to make it out of the pit and back to the top, using all your current pain and manure in life as fertilizer for an even more

fruitful Christian legacy."

PS: Anyone needing professional, clinical support/advice or immediate help should contact a local doctor, professional organization, professional website, or support group nearby.