I have a period of two weeks that I won't see my therapist. At the moment we are mostly working on exposure. This started gradually into photos and sounds. Now it's videos. Every time I think about how debilitated I was and how I can now look at photos and even listen to recordings, I'm astounded. I can genuinely say I'm proud of this much I've done. I'm still not a fan. I still get anxious. I still dislike it. But now I can set aside 10 mins to do my exposure. I tried avoiding looking at photos. I even tried to use my memory to just recall what I would normally look at. It was always much worse in my head than what was on the site. I have learnt that avoidance makes it worse. If I look at what I'm afraid of I can see its not as bad as I remembered. Exposure will guarantee my cure. Desensitising is proven to work. I can be free of this phobia. I can start living again. I must continue to look, breath through the anxiety, retrain my mind to re catagorise something that struck a massive amount of fear through my body for decades.

Anyone trying to get free I hope you stay on the journey. Don't give up when you're on the edge of fear and adrenaline work through it There is so much in life we missed through avoidance. I finally can be excited that my boys are home. I can sleep through the night. I can relax when I used to be so angry all the time.