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I agree BadMemories, sorting out what personality disorders (PDs) are all about and then using the tools from Out of the FOG really helped me to notice if/when I was fawning and instead try to be more authentic about what I think/feel.

So far the only problem has been with PD FOO -- they do not like it when you don't feed their need and don't behave as you once did do they lol? 

Tks for getting this thread going BadMemories!

I know you're dealing with CPTSD, but there's a great online forum for Social Anxiety that you may want to have a look at, even if just to get some more info on it.   It's called Social Anxiety Support (SAS) and you can find it here - http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum/. 

Social anxiety is one of the five main symptoms of CPTSD so you may find it helpful. I've been a member for about 6 months and have gotten a lot out it.  (I post in the +40 group as I can't relate to a lot of the anxieties younger member have about dating, etc.)   

Fellow freezer here too (now I'm singing FreezeFrame in my head - it will take forever to get rid of this ear worm lol), but I totally agree - onward!  Any small success is good.

Tks BadMemories for getting this thread and the other defense reaction threads going 

[Emotion Overload]

Hi Emotion Overload and welcome to OOTS! 

I agree with GT, the little successes add up so kudos on trying to get on top of the chaos - at the same time, be kind and patient with yourself, wrestling with CPTSD takes a lot of energy.  Earlier this year CPTSD "brought me to my knees" too -- that's such a good description of how it felt.   My list of getting back on top of things was quite short for a while - get out of bed, brush teeth, wash face, get dressed and make bed.  That was it and if I managed that I was content.  Little by little as I began to feel better I added small goals and now I'm back to functioning fairly well. Mind you it was not without help - like you I changed meds (which made a huge difference after about a month on it and a few unsuccessful tries with other med),  and got some therapy.  If you have a chance perhaps you can post in the Intro section and tell us a bit more about your struggle with CPTSD.

Hey Globetrotter - Wish there was a plan and that it involved going faster too    I just read something (I must learn to bookmark these gems - will see if I can find it) that CPTSD requires a lot of energy and going slow is highly recommended and maybe even necessary as we dig into all that "residual goo" from childhood.  The article talked about getting a lot of rest and destressing wherever possible. According to Walker (and the clinical articles I've read) it seems that a lot of recovering from CPTSD involves integrating the developmentally arrested parts of our psyche and it's a process that takes time.  Personally I'd like to crack open the vault and let the goo flow where it may, but maybe that would be too much emotionally speaking.  He lists a number of developmental arrests in CPTSD in his book (p. 22) and it's not short:

Self-acceptance
Clear sense of identity
Self-compassion
Self-protection
Capacity to develop comfort from relationships
Ability to relax
Capacity for self-expression
Self-esteem
Self-confidence

Ticks to all for me  - grrrrrrr!

That's great that you've order the book AnneGirl.  It's so comprehensive and compassionate, and really it's the only one available right now that's written for us, the rest are for therapists and researchers. 

I added Walker's description of the symptoms of CPTSD in my first post in this thread so that we will have less clinical terms to use when we talk about our experiences.   

For anyone that missed it here is Walker's web site:http://www.pete-walker.com/

Hi AnneGirl - It's really difficult when you don't have your partner's support.  I attend a face to face support group so that I can talk openly with real live people about what I'm experiencing.  No-one there tells me to just get over it as they get it. 

Is there maybe a group in your area you could attend? - I don't know if you're in or near a city centre but it's something to think about and maybe look into.  Being a member of these online forums is a big step out of isolation, building in some face-to-face support is another. It helps us to keep going when we have support and encouragement. That feeling you're having of wanting to talk to other people is an important one, don't push it down.  That's the part of you that needs and deserves attention speaking to you.

[Relational psychotherapy]

Sorry AnneGirl - here's an explanation about the two types of therapy I mentioned:

Relational psychotherapy - By facilitating a safe and positive relationship in the security of the therapeutic environment, the client is armed with a stronger sense of self and confidence. The primary goal of this technique is to empower the client with the skills necessary to recognize and create productive and healthy relationships. The therapist strives to address any and all past and present relationship traumas or impressions that have served to create discord in the present life circumstances of the client.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - CBT is based on the idea that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviors, not external things, like people, situations, and events.  The benefit of this fact is that we can change the way we think to feel / act better even if the situation does not change. When people are in distress, their perspective is often inaccurate and their thoughts may be unrealistic. CBT helps people identify their distressing thoughts and evaluate how realistic the thoughts are. Then they learn to change their distorted thinking. When they think more realistically, they feel better. In contrast to other forms of psychotherapy, cognitive therapy is usually more focused on the present, more time-limited, and more problem-solving oriented.

So early this year I tanked.  I was drinking all day (never drank before mainly because my F was an alcoholic), depressed (that I was used to but this time it was bad) and having huge panic attacks (never had them that bad before). I had been quite independent, responsible and all of a sudden I couldn't get out of bed some days.  I had to reach out for help. 

Looking back I realize a part of me said "That's it, stop the facade and get well already!" My H was able to come home a month early (he was finishing up his last posting with the military on the other side of the country - a BIG reason I lost my bearings), I stopped drinking the day he arrived -- cold turkey (very bad idea - there is medical help to do it without risk of seizures and the like) and off we went to my GP. I told her all that was going on and what a humbling experience that was for someone who rarely asked for any help from anyone.

Long story short after a few false tries getting on the right medication I ended up on Celexa which has done wonders.  I spent two decades on Prozac and within a few weeks of starting this med I began to feel comfortable in my skin for the first time ever.  I'm not drinking (didn't really enjoy it - just wanted to be numb and blot out the fear), I don't have panic attacks any more, and I'm reaching out/opening up  as much as I can to others - on this forum and two others, in a support group for mood disorders and with an addictions counsellor.  I have Social Anxiety as a secondary disorder to CPTSD so this last bit is amazing.  I was very isolating and insular except with my H although I did not appear this way to most people.

An way, it all really helps and I wish I had reached out in earnest years ago.  Part of the problem was that I did not have names for any of what I was  experiencing and in fact struggled to believe that I had been abused because my parents were not physically or sexually abusive. And, I just plain did not want anyone to know what lay beneath the facade I had constructed to get by IRL.   

The one big piece that is still missing for me is dealing with my CPTSD both through therapy and by coming here.  I understand now that there is a lot of trauma I have not acknowledged and worked through, and that it fuels anxiety and depression left untreated. Walker's approach of working on both the cognitive or thinking aspects through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and the emotional or feeling aspects through Relational Therapy seem like the right path out of the storm for me.   

It's almost bitterset isn't it BadMemories - that we are not alone, but in the good company of so many others who are struggling with the same things as us?  I certainly wouldn't wish CPTSD on anyone, but I'm grateful not to be struggling alone any more.  I like seeing myself in others' posts too because each time I do it decreases that feeling that I am so different from everyone else. It confirms that  I have a disorder with common symptoms that can be treated rather than that I am defective as a human being.

Are you looking for a particular kind of exercise GT?  I know there are quite a few good books on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but not sure if that's what you're looking for.

HI BadMemories - I mentioned this in another post but it's worth posting it here too I think.  I think what the above more clinical descriptors add up to is an emotional flashback which Pete Walker describes on his site http://www.pete-walker.com/index.htm:

I have come to call these reactions, typical of David and of many other clients over the years, emotional flashbacks—sudden and often prolonged regressions ("amygdala hijackings") to the frightening and abandoned feeling-states of childhood. They are accompanied by inappropriate and intense arousal of the fight/flight instinct and the sympathetic nervous system. Typically, they manifest as intense and confusing episodes of fear, toxic shame, and/or despair, which often beget angry reactions against the self or others. When fear is the dominant emotion in an emotional flashback, the individual feels overwhelmed, panicky or even suicidal. When despair predominates, it creates a sense of profound numbness, paralysis and an urgent need to hide. Feeling small, young, fragile, powerless and helpless is also common in emotional flashbacks.

I see a lot of this in your post, especially the part about feeling small and numb. It is as though the present stress/trauma ignites the trauma from when we were small children, the fear, anger, shame we never were able to express or work through and it becomes overlaid on the present.  Is it any wonder we feel overwhelmed?!   

But now the good news, we can help ourselves:

When clients get that their emotional storms are messages from an inner child who is still pining for a healthy inner attachment figure, they gradually become more self-accepting and less ashamed of their flashbacks, their imperfections and their overall affective experience. They understand that the lion's share of the energy of their intense emotional reactions in the present are actually appropriate but delayed reactions to various themes of their childhood abuse and neglect. As they learn to effectively assign this emotional energy to those events and perpetrators, they metabolize and work through these feelings in a trauma-resolving way. This in turn leads to a reduction of the emotional energy that fuels their flashbacks, and flashbacks in turn, become less frequent, less intense and less enduring. Eventually flashbacks can even begin to automatically invoke a sense of self-protection as soon as the individual realizes she is triggered.

See Walker's 13 Steps to Managing EFs here - http://www.pete-walker.com/flashbackManagement.htm. 

[I am also grateful for this type of forum as it helps me to make sense of things.]

I am also grateful for this type of forum as it helps me to make sense of things.

The Out of the fog forum has helped me More than anything else that I have ever done to help myself. ( I am sure this forum will be a big benefit to me. also) I have been in day patient treatment 2 times. Some of it helped me... but until I realized More about personality disorders and How it affected me then I was still in a fog. The dynamics in My family were so bad that reading good books did not help me much because I didn't understand what they were trying to say most times. Forums help me because they are down in the trenches type advice and self help ideas!

I was just reading something - geez wish I could remember where -- about the really positive benefits of belonging to an online community of peers who share the same problem or interest as you.  I know when I joined the other two forums I am a member of I read and read, and then read some more soaking up all the experience and knowledge of others who were dealing with the same thing as me. And then when I started to post I found I was able to start sorting through the tangled threads  that were my thoughts and feelings and feel validated, affirmed and encouraged by the support from members.  No more suffering in silence and thinking I was alone - what a wonderful feeling!

[the head smack]

Welcome to OOTS Globetrotter! 

Ah yes, the head smack - that's the glorious sound we make as we begin to find our way out of the storm that is CPTSD lol. 

Glad you found your way here and I'm looking forward to reading your posts 

Hi Glenna and welcome to OOTS.  I hope that writing your first post here helped bring down your panic attack by reaching out for help and support.  We are just a small community right now, but hopefully we can provide you with that.  {{Big hug}} 

I know how the attacks feel as I just went through a really bad patch of them in the spring after a pile on of stressors overwhelmed me. I couldn't even get out of bed some days so the fact that you are here and are able to post speaks to the inner strength you do have.

It sounds like the death of your exH triggered your panic attacks, as though the door to a lot of underlying trauma was wrenched open when you weren't ready for it.  Everything I've read about CPTSD suggests gradually opening up the vault where the pain and fear lies, but life isn't kind in that way.

One therapist I saw when I was having the panic atacks  gave me a little exercise that I found quite useful.  She told me to picture a container in my mind, a box or whatever and see myself putting the things that were making me panic in the container one by one and tell myself "I will come back to you later," close the container and put it somewhere in my house.  I'm not great with these kinds of exercise -- always worry I won't do them perfectly, but I gave it a shot and it did help.  I guess it's a way of telling ourselves, nope we're not avoiding or stuffing the things that are causing us pain or to be afraid, we are just going put them away and will deal with them when we're ready, preferably a little at a time.  It takes some of pressure off us to deal with everything right now.

Another resource that I found really helpful is Pete Walker's "13 Steps for Managing Emotional Flashbacks" which you can find here - http://www.pete-walker.com/flashbackManagement.htm.   

I hope some of this helps Glenna and hopefully other members will have some suggestions to help with your panic attacks.  If you can try to keep posting here I think it will help. Keep us posted on how you're doing   

Hi and Welcome to OOTS KeepFighting! 

I'm sorry you had to go through such a major illness and then find out you have CPTSD which as you say involves ongoing work on our part to manage.  It's adding insult to injury isn't it?  PTSD is no picnic in the park to be sure, but when you are diagnosed with CPTSD and realize it does involve additional symptons it can be a real blow. In an odd way it can be also a bit of a relief to find out that we are NOT crazy or broken, but are dealing with injuries to our psyche or sense of self which is less the case in PTSD. 

One of the things we do share with PTSD though is being triggered by certain things - people, sights, smells even.  You mentioned that sometimes you feel OK and but then something happens and your sense of inner peace is destroyed.  Have you been able to identify some of your triggers?  I see that you are a member of OOTF so I imagine people who act in a personality disordered (PD) manner are probably one major trigger.  I actually have left a couple of jobs because I was so triggered by someone who acted in a PD fashion, and certainly my family of origin (FOO) are a big source.   What I didn't realize is that when I am triggered I have emotional flashbacks EFs), overwhelming feelings that tip the world on its side almost, and I feel really shakey and like everything is a little surreal. So before I found out what they were I did feel like I was losing it and maybe was going or had arrived at crazy, but then it would pass. *?!   No wonder so many of us feel like we're going crazy!  I read about EFs in Pete Walker's book CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving and it was a huge aha moment - "Oh so that's what's been happening, well now it makes more sense."  Do you get these at all?

I'd be interested in hearing about the books and exercises your therapist (T) recommended. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is helpful I've found, but it doesn't get at the trauma does it? I am looking for a good T to help work through all of that "residual goo" as a friend of mine calls it and learn how to defuel those darn EFs.     

Glad you found your way here KF, I'm looking forward to reading your posts