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Hi Auto,

This post is dedicated to my response to your question: Can people share if they've been able to heal in the setting of a long term relationship?

I think this is a great question because I also believe that CPTSD is very, very hard on some relationships. Why do some survive while others don't? Well...I can't speak for other relationships, but I am happy to share how my long-term relationship has thrived despite my plethora of irrational fears.


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I'm in a long-term relationship with the love of my life. My wife, Gramma Coco, and I will celebrate our 40th anniversary next April. We married when she was 19 and I was 22.

We'd only known each other for 4 weeks on the day we married, so we really didn't know each other well, and SURPRISE! My trauma disorders really flared up fast in our first decade of marriage. It was the 80s. Any help I sought failed. Most therapists were bad back then. Nobody understood Trauma, and the term PTSD hadn't even been coined yet. So my young bride and I were alone with my trauma disorders. This was very hard on both of us. It did put a bit of stress on our relationship.

But she stuck by me. We approached MY problems as a team. We endured those first confusing years because my wife is just the perfect partner for me. She loved me so much, that she became determined to learn what she could about my history with sexual abuse and religious abuse.  When I was 29 and she was 26, she answered an ad to volunteer as a Sexual Assault Victim's Advocate through our county's Sexual Assault Victim's Advocacy Center. This is a critical reason why our relationship helps me: where another spouse may have thrown up her arms and said, "I didn't sign up for this!" She, instead, answered the ad because she wanted to learn more about ME through immersion with other victims. Not long after, I took the 8-week training and joined up alongside her.  For a few years, she and I handled the 24-hour Crisis Hotline together, answered calls to go to hospitals, police stations and courtrooms to advocate for victims of rape, or any other Sexual Assault.

Those years where we, together, stayed immersed in the world of SA victims really drew us together by helping us both learn more about the lives of people like me, who were victims of rape and sexual assault. I credit our work as a team on that project for being what it took in the 1980s to learn how to understand the pains of what I'd been through.

She is light on the Autism Spectrum, which has made her into a stable person who is the same person every day. She's 100% honest, even when it hurts. Her intelligence is a bit higher than most peoples', but her social skills are a bit challenged. Not much, just enough to notice. She counts on me to keep our social life alive, and I count on her to love me, even when I go to bed and stay there for a week. When she was working with clients at the SAVAC, she was amazing. Unwavering. She remembered everything that had been taught to her in the training. Her clients were lucky to have been able to snag her, and many of them stayed friends with us for years after we left the program. What she learned through them, has given her intel on how to handle me.

That supportiveness, plus her belief that I'm "worth the effort" has made her into the perfect partner to be with as I struggle for days, weeks, months, years, and decades, with my irrational trauma responses to everything in life.

I know she doesn't really understand what it feels like to be me, but she respects it and stands behind anything I do to try and heal. I spend THOUSANDs of dollars a year on Ketamine treatments, talk therapy, and my own quirks of overprotecting her, my kids, myself and everything we own. I've been attacked by so many different people that I spend thousands on cameras, alarms, locks, and all sorts of tricks to keep my family and our possessions safe from thieves and catastrophic events. She may not agree with everything I do, but she knows how hard I'm trying to become a better person and she loves me for it.

Also, between her and I, we have more problems than just my CPTSD. Coco struggles with life threatening disorders that require her to diligently manage her health every second of every day. I take as good care of her as she does me. I attend all her doctor appointments; I research with her on emerging treatments for her Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Renaud's. She's fragile physically and I'm fragile emotionally. We balance each other out, and we mutually support each other. EVEN THOUGH neither of us fully understands the other, we fully respect each other's struggles.

Finally: I respect her fears over my problems. I've made 4 suicide attempts from age 19 to 50. How scary is that for my wife and children and grandchildren? I may be traumatized but I'm not selfish. I OWE my family to do everything I can to keep myself from self-harm. I tell them this openly. I know that if I don't keep pursuing healing that I won't survive. And I can't do that to them. So, as a courtesy to them, I intentionally take care of myself. That kind of sentiment goes a LONG way in a relationship.  I'm the one who brought trauma disorders into this family, and I'm as responsible as they are to keep me safe from those disorders.  A lot of what I do to protect myself is really to protect them. And they know it. We've fostered a family that supports one another. That's what I believe is keeping us together through this exhausting journey through a life of being afraid of everything that moves.

So that's my sharing of how my long-term relationship has been instrumental in my healing. (Without Coco I probably would be dead today). Also, this is how our relationship itself survives and thrives while we live with my C-PTSD.

I hope this was helpful in any small way.

Hi Auto

For someone who is just beginning the healing journey, I think you're asking all the right questions. Leveraging the experience of the other members of the forum is also a great way to get some momentum on your new journey.

You've asked two big questions that actually have complicated, long answers. I'm already guilty of writing too long of posts, so I'm going to make two posts, one for each question, and I'm going to try to not write too much.


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To your question: Has anyone else experienced...a fear of getting better?

Answer: Absolutely. And the reasons for that are many and complex due to the fact that I am the culmination of the equation: My genetics + My unhealthy childhood rearing  + My vast volumes of life's experiences = Who I am today.

Who am I? I'm a guy who is healing from lifelong sadness, doormat behaviors, and a laundry list of other self-protective behaviors. My early life decisions to internalize my pain, rather than turn it against the next victim and continue the cycle of abuse is a decision I'm still happy with today. I'd rather be a nail than a hammer. Nails are good. They hold houses together. Hammers are aggressive and violent. I don't want to be a hammer. I may not be enjoying myself much by being put in my place by the hammers of the world, but...it's who I am now and who I've always been. My ego has established itself as who I am RIGHT now. Good, bad, beautiful and ugly. It's who I am whether I like it or not. Everything I do is from this place of trauma and trauma responses. It's who I am. People love me for who I am: a peaceful, compassionate Fawn Type (as described in Pete Walker's book, Complex-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving).

And now I'm threatening my ego by trying to change who I am? NOT so fast, says the ego.

Fundamentally changing my ego's sense of self is a hurdle I'm not good at clearing as I run the track of healing. I'm like the guy who wants to skydive but is afraid of heights. I WANT to get better, but I'm scared of losing myself in the process.

I'm still connected to my sad little boy. He lives inside me, still feeling lost and alone. As a result, he causes a lot of my CPTSD behaviors. I love him. If I get better, will he die?

Also, the quirks and problems I have today: Sadness, loneliness, isolation, dissociation, being a doormat, being a nail rather than a hammer, and more, are good, functioning protections that I built out of my smart little brain as a small child when my permanent personality was forming from scratch. ALL those defenses, as uncomfortable as they are, worked. I'm still alive. They were put in place by my brain to keep me safe—and they've done so. The very idea of giving those safeties up is terrifying.

Lastly:  And this is a big one for me: My childhood traumatized me so badly that I couldn't even talk about it until I'd been in therapy for a few years. The things that damaged my hippocampus gland and gave me PTSD are things that traumatized me fast and hard. Now I'm on a slow, easy journey to reverse that damage, and if I do it too fast, I'm terrified that I'll just retraumatize myself. It's like....it takes one second to destroy a car's door by hitting it with another car. (a trauma to the car).  If a body mechanic tried to pull the dent out as fast as it went in, he'd pull the door right off its hinges and cause worse damage.

We pull the dents out slowly. Evenly. Carefully. I believe that, for me, healing from emotional trauma works the same way. My fear of healing too quickly is a good fear right now. It keeps me from going too fast. I have been uncovering memories of sexual abuse for years. The abuse took minutes. The healing takes decades. My brain is giving me a gift by leaking the information out slowly, and giving me a healthy fear to keep me from demanding my therapist put me into a trance and DRAG the memories out of me so I can be done with it. If the trauma caused THIS much damage when it happened, how much more damage will it cause if I go through it again today? My brain keeps me from pulling too hard by giving me a healthy fear of healing too fast and retraumatizing myself all over again.

Summary statement: I've spent my life hating bullies. My ego thinks that if I stop being a victim, I'll become a bully. So, here I am. I want to heal, but I'm too afraid to.

To keep my posts as short as I am able to, I'll start a new post with my response to your second question: Can people share if they've been able to heal in the setting of a long term relationship?

Thank you Phil.

Your support really helps.

[My point for telling you this story is that I made a profound discovery back then:]

Hi Milkandhoney,

That's a beautifully written post to start your journal with. I'm sorry to hear about losing your job and the person you love on the same day! That's two big deals at once. However, I'm so very glad to hear that you kept yourself from suicide, and I agree with your reason for pushing it away. I have spent most of my life pushing it away also. Today, I rely on the same reasoning you do, that if I harm myself, or leave the planet by my own hand, that I will horrifically and permanently traumatize the people who love me.

I have all the proof I need that suicide is the worst thing I could do to my loved ones. In 2008 I lost my baby sister to suicide. That was 14 years ago, and I'm in tears right now as I write about it. I haven't stopped missing her, nor have I ever been able to stop blaming myself for not stepping in and rescuing her before it was too late. So, lesson learned. I now know I can't do that to my wife, son, daughter-in-law, grandsons or friends. If I truly love the few people who have loved me unconditionally, then I won't do that to them.

We, C-PTSD folks, usually Fawn types, often don't realize how many people really do love us. We tend to be empathetic people, and others appreciate that more than we even know. So... it's best for these people for me to keep going and let old age get me when it's the right time.

I encourage you to write as much as you feel safe writing about in this Recovery Journal. The journal is yours to do or say what you need to. You can write long stories or short blurbs. It's yours. If you want to start by slowly telling small bits to see how others might react, that's just fine. In fact it's a good plan to not push yourself harder than needed. I respect your apprehension. Pushing yourself to tell more than you're comfortable telling would feed into the trauma you're already dealing with.

If you're like me, I tend to delete more posts than I post because after I write them, I feel too vulnerable and too in danger of being scolded or laughed at. It would never happen on this forum, but my trauma voice still remembers a thousand times in life when I said too much and brought a wave of criticism and judgment instead of the help I was asking for. So my trauma voice protects me by deleting posts that it feels are too revealing. I know that we humans don't like to air our dark sides, but like you said, healing won't happen if we continue to hide our problems from those who care about us.

I guess vulnerability is a double-edged sword. It can put us in danger if we're vulnerable to the wrong people, but it can also be our savior if we're vulnerable to the right people. And so far, my year on this forum has proven that these are the right people to be vulnerable with.

My trauma makes me delete a lot of posts I didn't need to delete, but...that's what trauma does. It applies the right fix to the wrong problems.


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I have a personal story about the positive aspect of vulnerability:  To mitigate my trauma's fear that I'm writing too much about myself on your forum, I've turned my personal story blue. Rather than me going away feeling afraid I should delete this post, I'll let the blue color of the story give you the option to read or not read it. That makes my trauma brain feel safer about my long post.

In 2010, on the two-year anniversary of my little sister's suicide, while being the new "youngest sibling" I was now the target of my elder narcissistic siblings' hate. The confusion was too much for me. I was about 15 minutes from jumping off a bridge near my house when the phone rang, and a very panicked lifelong friend had somehow detected through the ether that I was in serious trouble. When I answered the phone, she didn't say "hello" she yelled, "JIMMY, WHAT'S WRONG?" This was further proof for me that we humans are connected in ways we can't fully understand. Her call, from 2000 miles away, saved my life at the last second, and science can't explain why she knew to call me as I was grabbing the car keys to drive to the bridge.

   That was too close a call. The incident proved to me, beyond doubt, that my life depended on stopping the abuse completely. I was 50 at the time and two elder sibs and my own dad were still abusive to me. Since the ringleader (the Putin of my family) was a narcissistic sister 11 years older than me, she had the entire family in the palm of her hand, and they were all using it to slap at ME with. I had to walk away from my entire Family Of Origin (FOO) and to go FULL No Contact for the rest of my life. As soon as I changed all my phone numbers and email addresses and walked away from my 3 remaining siblings and my dad, and all my aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, a never-before feeling of sweet freedom washed over me.

    I suddenly felt compelled to write a tell-all fiction novel about a boy who'd suffered everything I did. At the time, I worked at one of the world's largest companies and I had many, many friends who all knew me as a happy, kind, comical, compassionate person. (A perfect example of a C-PTSD Fawn type). The excitement of writing a novel made me talk about it. People would ask "What's it about?" And I'd tell them it was about a boy who'd been abused sexually, emotionally, spiritually and physically as I had, and who was so suicidal that he needed help getting through life--just like me.

    My friends, many of whom had known me for decades (I worked there for 42 years--but never told anyone the stories of my childhood or my evil FOO), said "I NEVER would have expected to hear that from you. You're the happiest person I know!" Then--and this is the whole reason I'm telling this story--THEN, many of them leaned in close and with sincere, often pained look on their faces asked, "Can I tell you what happened to me?" I'd say yes, and they'd start, "I've never told anyone this before but..." And then they'd tell me horrific stories of the pain they've lived with their whole lives.  Needless to say, that moment often deepened our friendship for a long while since.

My point for telling you this story is that I made a profound discovery back then: A lot of people want to share their darkest secrets but have been conditioned to believe they have to "suck it up" and get on with life. What I saw in the flushed, vulnerable faces of so many of my friends was a release like they had never really known before. When they discovered that this happy, cheerful, got-the-world-by-the-tail person they thought they knew had been fighting for my life since childhood, it gave them permission to tell that they were feeling the same way.

Realizing how much pain is really in this world led me to start saying, "There are more novels walking the sidewalks than there are on the bookstore shelves."

To me, that showed that vulnerability, when handled in the right way, is contagious, and it frees people to open up their hearts just enough to start letting people into the secrets that have been eating them up inside for years. It turns out that a HUGE lot of people are living in imposter syndrome, pretending to be in charge of their lives while feeling utterly alone and disconnected like they're the only person alive who feels how they feel.

I guess I've lived with bad imposter syndrome for my whole life. I felt like I was the garbage that was too dirty even for the trash man to pick up, but I acted like I had the world by the tail. I told jokes. I helped people move. I never asked anyone for help with anything, but I was right there always helping them with everything. I held a big, global job, I performed standup comedy in the evenings, I taught classes to aerospace engineers, I took care of my wife's aging mom for 14 years, I held big neighborhood parties for every holiday, I was the dad of the neighborhood's kid-friendly house. All the neighborhood kids hung around my house with my kids, because we were fun and kind and treated the children like they were valued human beings with real feelings and fears. All the while I was chronically plagued with recurring nightmares so bad that on some nights I got no sleep at all. I lived every day so close to ending my own life that I have to keep a no guns policy in my home for no other reason than that I'm too afraid of having an easy solution to a bad day right at my fingertips. When I was a kid, there was a song on the radio that sang "Good time Charlie's got the blues" and I always resonated with those words. Back then I didn't realize the seriousness of the fact that I felt like I was "good time Charlie" who was hiding my dark depression behind a big, happy smile. But as I aged, and the world began to understand trauma, well...I now know why I used to hum that song a lot as a kid.

I guess I learned, as many of us do, that people only want me around if I'm happy, so as a small boy, living with suicidal ideation from age 12 on, I learned to be happy when I was near other people. It made people not push me away.


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I'm sorry that I tend to write long posts, but I've tried many times to shorten them, but for me, sharing my own stories with others who can resonate with me, has proven to be the best way I have to connect. I'm not a therapist by any stretch, but I do have stories of my own that might help others feel safer with their own stories. I learn from other people's stories as well. My deep sadness is most often deep loneliness. Nothing stops loneliness quicker than sharing with others.

I believe we are all connected, and that through that connection, our lives are shared with each other, and if we choose to share in a spirit of love and connection, then those stories do good out in the world. I want healing to be as contagious as trauma is. People's traumas traumatize others, but people's compassion and vulnerability help talk over that trauma voice.

Normally, I'd delete this post before you can read it because this post is long and talks about myself. But I'm trying very hard to not let my trauma voice stop me from sharing.

And I'm now a new fan of a comedian who just posted a very powerful 1-hour routine--all about himself--on Netflix. To me, his routine is a groundbreaking boost to our healing both as a culture and as individuals with trauma disorders and perpetual sadness. His final dialogue at the end, where he says he can't be kind to himself no matter how hard he wants to, is so powerful. The show is called Neal Brennan: Blocks. He is one of us. A C-PTSD survivor whose new Netflix routine is all about him telling the world about his own problems with sadness, depression and self-hatred. I predict his routine will save thousands of people who need to hear a successful comedian tell us what it feels like for him to have C-PTSD. That sort of makes me feel better about the stories I tell about myself. So I'm going to force myself to post this and to not crumble under the anxiety that I'm no doubt going to feel as soon as I hit the "post" button. I don't talk about myself out of arrogance, but out of compassion, hoping to connect my ups and downs with others. For this post, I'm following Neal Brennan's lead and I'm going to let it all out.

So I talk about myself, but in ways that I hope resonate with you and any others. I hope that my vulnerability is contagious and gives some peace to the fears of opening up. No one on this site will think of you as a burden. We like reading each other's stories. I like reading the stories others write about their experiences, and I hope people are okay with reading mine also.

(And now for the test: I'll hit POST and see if I go into a panic and come back online to delete this before anyone sees it. If you're reading it...then I guess I've staved off the anxiety and didn't delete it).

Hi Autodidact, and welcome to the forum.

I'm glad you found this forum. I'm so sorry to hear how the deep sadness comes over you.

There are a lot of good people here. This forum is a big help for me. Being able to speak openly about my sadness, my anxiety, my tendency to isolate, and my irrational fear of happiness, all without having to explain myself to people who won't get it anyway softens the loneliness for me and makes me feel connected to people who care. The non-trauma world has spent 62 years telling me I'm "too emotional for my own good" and that I'm "choosing to wallow in the sadness of my past."  But no one has ever said that to me here on this forum. We are kindred souls who empathetically share our stories, and no one has to ask "why do you feel that way?" We all know why we all feel this way.

As I study trauma disorders and work with my trauma therapist, I now know that the sadness is a symptom of all I've been through, and it is not really "me." It's a leftover trauma response to stuff that happened a very long time ago, and that was given to me by a family and church who treated me like a useless and stupid family pet, not a human being. So, I grew up believing what I'd been told; that I was too stupid to make it on my own in the world, and that no one would ever love me enough to do anything nice for me. It was MY job to be nice to them, but they could say or do any mean thing they wanted to me. So I grew up under the false impression that I'm not welcome on the earth and it's best if I just stay in the shadows and not embarrass anyone with my impersonation of a human being.

None of it was true. You and I have the same rights to be alive on the earth as anyone else. In fact, what I've found during my year on this forum, and after reading such books as Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, by Pete Walker, is that people who are like us on this forum, who are Fawn type trauma survivors, are some of the kindest, most caring, and most polite people on the planet. For myself, and for quite a few of the people on this forum, we, somehow grew up to be super kind people who don't feel safe in this world.

But that's what trauma does to us. It undermines our ability to feel safe, happy, free, powerful. We may BE all those things in real life, safe, happy, free, powerful...but the trauma makes us believe we are none of those things.

I hope you find some good connections on this forum. They're good people and I'm forever grateful I found them myself too.

Good information Dolly, thanks.

Any time I've ever gone online to buy mushrooms I've been hit with the decision of what kind to even order. Golden Teachers comes up as one of the available strains, but having no knowledge of mushrooms, the names of the possible purchases available were written in another language I don't speak. Since I'm already feeling like a criminal just looking at the catalogue, that is enough confusion to make me turn off the web and just keep wishing I could buy something to micro-dose with. as a trauma survivor, living in the feeling of lack and wishing for a miracle is just another day-in-the-life for me, so getting past it is tough to do. I can handle wishing for a miracle. My whole life has been spent wishing for things I believe I can't have.

I really want to get over my fear of purchasing some psylocibin in any form. Talk about letting my irrational fears control me! Even though mushrooms have been decriminalized in Washington State, I still have this fantasy vision that I'll order my first psylocibin and the FBI or CIA or Fish and Wildlife, or the cops will show up at my door with handcuffs. My well-practiced ability to expect the worst is not letting me get past it long enough to place an order. I know drugs like this are way safer than many FDA approved medications (Like opiots) but I grew up in a time when it was considered dangerous and "sinful" and so I struggle with all that stigma.

My body responds very quickly to stimulation. I get seriously loopy on Nitrous when I'm at the dentist. When I was an alcoholic, I drank only three Vodka martinis a day, but for me that was enough to put me into blackout drunk every single night. Ketamine is working fabulously for me. Any medication I've ever been given has worked fast, (not always for the better). So my assumption is that I have a liver that will allow me to gain great benefit from micro dosing....if I'll just allow myself to try it!

Meanwhile, I really, really appreciate all the resources you keep sharing, and your comments. You are helping me feel like micro-dosing isn't as far out of reach as I keep allowing my trauma to tell me it is.

Trauma. The gift that keeps on giving. I'm even afraid of the cure!

[Journal Entry for Monday, November 14, 2022]

Journal Entry for Monday, November 14, 2022

I'm changing. I'm not sure why. IFS might be strengthening my Core Self and giving me freedom from the antics of my protectors. Or Ketamine infusions are starting to re-wire my brain to feel more grounded and less traumatized. Or this forum is helping me air out the chambers of my brain that have been closed off for half a century. Or all of it together is making me feel different.

There was once an episode of The Simpsons where an ex-ray showed that Homer had a crayon from his childhood stuck up his nose, pushing in on his brain and making him stupid. When the doctor removed the ancient crayon, Homer became brilliant and grounded and kind and a good father and a good husband and a good employee, etc.  At the end of the episode, Homer wanted to be his old self again, so he jammed another crayon up his nose and became the ridiculous, selfish moron that he'd always been. 

Somehow, I feel like that crayon has been moved in my own brain and I'm starting to feel more grounded and less perpetually sad. I'm still struggling with my choices to isolate and live half of my life alone in a cabin, but I'm feeling a healthy loneliness for my wife and son and grandkids now. I'm packing up and planning to head back to the city on Saturday morning. I've been here for two solid months, but all of a sudden, I want to be reconnected with my wife and kids. It feels like healthy loneliness, rather than the type of horrific, deep, trauma-induced loneliness that comes from always feeling unwelcome on the earth, every second of my life, even while with friends and family.

A lot of people believe that the Pandemic gave us a wide-open view of how much mental illness is really present in the world. People were forced to isolate for months, even years, and found themselves face to face with their own lifelong battles. Last night, on Phil's suggestion, I watched a comedy routine on Netflix called Neal Brennan: Blocks. He was raised Catholic, like I was, and has lived his life feeling lonely and sad. He's done Ketamine Treatments, medications, therapy...all the things I've done. He is one who says COVID helped to expose the mental illnesses plaguing so many of us. My feeling, after watching him perform to millions of people, exposing his mental struggles, was that FINALLY the world is starting to hear the truth about what it feels like to be a traumatized adult. I think this is going to open up THOUSANDS of minds. I believe Mr. Brennan has probably turned on a lightbulb in the minds of scores of people who suffer as we do, or who love someone who suffers as we do. I can only imagine the fan letters he's getting.  I think this is a good, good thing.

I never did start water aerobics, and now my window is closing. The pool at the beach is low key. Never crowded. But the pool I live by in the city is so crowded you can't even get in it, so when I'm in the city, there are no water aerobics classes available to me. And I'm packing up and and getting ready to move back to the city.

What I DID succeed at is I DID build shelves in my garage this weekend. I was able to get so much stuff off the floor that I could get the Jeep into the garage and close the door. WooHOO!  I didn't do the aerobics, but I DID do a bunch of projects around the house and garage that have been needed to be done for a long time.  So I'm calling it a win.

Also; I'm finally becoming bored with my Jigsaw puzzles and Lego builds. For two years, I've been using jigsaw puzzles and Lego builds to distract myself and kill time. I isolate. I'm alone. No pets. No kids. Even my wife is 160 miles away. So if I can't make myself go outside, or to the pool, or start building the projects that need to be done to renovate this house, then I'm so bored I can't stand it. So I've become addicted to puzzles and Legos. But as of this past week...I'm getting bored with them. They serve no one. If I'm going to look for ways to distract myself from a lonely life, then I'm starting to want to use my time and skills and attention to do good outside of myself. I'm starting to think about maybe getting another job. I worked in aerospace for 42 years. I got laid off when COVID and the FAA made it so we couldn't build anymore planes for a while and my job got outsourced to the lowest bidder. I've been "retired" ever since. And now, for the first time in 2 years, I kind of want to get back out into the world and connect with people again. If I decide to go for it and find a job, it will have to be one that gives me social interaction. People to laugh with. People to talk to. People to work with and share goals and interests.  THIS IS ALL NEW. It's been coming on fast over the last few days. My big question for now is: Is this the start of a new and permanent trend, or just a temporary vacation from the loneliness?

I'm learning to push myself out the door and just do what needs to be done without sitting around wishing I was someone else, somewhere else.

I'm handeling my on-the-fly Emotional Flashbacks better than ever.

I don't know if this is a permanent change for the better in my life, or if I'm just having a rallying moment where my trauma brain is giving me temporary boost of feeling good. Time will need to tell us whether this is a moment of progressive, irreversible healing, or a temporary vacation from my trauma responses. But for now, I'm happy to be feeling a little more in control while I allow myself to exist within the boundaries of reality. I'm not used to this. I usually live in fantasy land. Reality feels weird.

At this very moment I'm being texted by my wife and my son. Apparently my two grandsons, now 11 and 8, are positive for COVID. They tested positive yesterday and are both very sick and spending the whole day laying on the floor. So, new worry for me. But, again, this worry feels legitimate. Real. This isn't a Trauma-induced irrational fear of something that isn't as big a threat as I believe it is. My plan is to relocate to the city on Saturday, but if my little men need their Papa for any reason, I'm gassed up, packed, and ready to head for the city on a moment's notice.

Hi Tulip17,

Welcome to the forum. From your short-story-long, you sound like someone who shares many of the same trauma induced lifelong struggles as most of the members. Many of us struggle with the same issue that when we try to talk about our situations to "normal" people, we get flustered and tangled up. It's like we have to defend our trauma reactions to people who simply don't get it. For most of my life, friends and family used to routinely call me "Too emotional for your own good" and "Why won't you just get over it and get on with life like a real man?" It's humiliating and causes my brain to spin to the point that I sound like a blabbering idiot when I try to explain my quirks to the non-sufferers.

But here on this forum, with all these like-minded souls, we don't need to explain ourselves. We all get it. That has been the most powerful part of joining this forum for me. I can tell about my trauma reactions and No one says "oh just get over it" like a million people did to me outside of this forum. So when I have issues I want to air, I don't need to "explain myself" first, the way people in the outside world make me do.

I like to say "It's easier for a woman to describe the sensations of pregnancy and childbirth to a man than it is for a Trauma survivor to explain the sensations of CPTSD and trauma and Emotional Flashback to non-traumatized people. For me, getting all confused and anxiety-riddled while trying to explain myself to non-trauma survivors kept me dissociated and in a dream world for decades. It kept me from realizing how bad my childhood really was (I minimized it for years, before I FINALLY accepted the severity of it...that's when healing began).

I hope your therapy appointment went well and your therapist was happy to hear you'd done your homework.

There is a lot of connection on this forum. A lot of beautiful souls whose childhoods turned out to be confusing and difficult to come to terms with have joined, and there seems to be a strong sense of empathetic connection between many of us.

Healing from childhood traumas is best handled with a multi-pronged approach. It's good that you've started therapy. And joining this forum gives you a place to talk when you feel safe doing so.  There are great books out there that the members of this forum will often share information about with each other. It's good to do therapy, and connect with like-minded people, and read up on the new, emerging treatments and social attitudes that are promising to help us get through this. It's good to do all the things that are within our reach as we learn to navigate life with a better understanding of where we came from and how it affected us.

I'm a 62-year-old grandfather whose life has been lived more inside my head in a dissociative state than out in the wild with eyes wide open. Life was too confusing for me to stay engaged in it. So I lived most of my life in an imaginary world where I was stronger, wiser, handsomer, safer, richer, and able to trust the people I loved. Which was not the case in real life. My family was religious and badly traumatized themselves by wars and religion, and they passed that trauma down to me and my 4 siblings.

I hope you find the forum to be a healing and safe place, as I have found it to be.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

[Without hindsight, you had no idea what you were being tricked into doing.]

Hi MOMS.

I hope you truly enjoy your weekend. I live near an ocean beach. I find myself on the sand a lot just staring out at the sea or walking or riding a bike on the ocean's edge. Something about being there really opens up my brain and heart. I hope you find the beach to be as healing for you.

You said something I really want to address. You said "You sound so much like my last T He used to say this to me often. It's something I really struggle with. My rational brain knows this but I battle daily with the shame and guilt that my own behaviours at the time somehow led to this."

This makes me want to very clearly say to your rational brain that I've seen many people in my lifetime abused in ways you report. In hindsight you can see where you made choices that led you to the abuse, but that's because hindsight removes all mystery. During the time that you were practicing the behaviours that led to your abuse, you did NOT NOT NOT have the benefit of hindsight. Those two thugs were playing out their sick game of control and you were someone they intentionally targeted. Without hindsight, you had no idea what you were being tricked into doing.  I say this because I want you to know that this was not about you. MILLIONS of people have been tricked, groomed, and drawn into these criminal events all the time. This was NOT about you! This was not about ANY of the other people who've been attacked the same way you were. This is about a very bad behavior of those two nasty, lying, tricking, thieving pieces of garbage who have probably done the same thing to mutiple other women.

Almost every single female I've ever met who joined the military has told me about being raped by her own fellow soldiers while serving. What I want to say to you is that you are not a deserving target. This sort of thing happens to PhD's, and scientists, and cops, and wealthy people, and poor people, and children, and adults, and the elderly, and even grown men...There are predators who will do this to anyone, no matter how intelligent or strong or wealthy or well protected.

You did not know that these two thugs were planning to do this to you. Very few victims of this crime ever do know it's coming. These pigs use trickery to get us to behave how they want us to so they can take what is ours and leave us thinking we "willingly gave it to them." I don't personally believe in the presence of a "heII" but I often HOPE there's one because HeII is not for victims who were tricked into being attacked. HeII, if it exists, is for your H and his friend who leveraged your desires for love and connection and used your goodness against you.

I'm having a bit of a new problem with my connection to my writing. I don't feel like I am really writing coherently. IFS is changing how I connect with my Exiles and Protectors and Core Self, and somehow or another I feel like my writing isn't making any sense. My goal with this post is to be sure you know that what happened to you is something that can happen to anyone and that feeling like this was, in any way, your fault, is like saying it was your fault that an earthquake cracked the foundation in your home. You are NOT responsible for what happened, and you are NOT the only person on earth who has ever been tricked by trash like your H and his friend.

I hope the spirit of my message is obvious in the writing. If what I say makes no sense, let me know and I'll keep trying to say it in a way that makes sense.

MOMS,

I'm so sorry this happened to you. It's a sad, sad commentary on the "men" who serve our countries.

I am impressed by your candid and open report of what happened and how it happened. You said that you need to stop hiding it if you want to get past it, and, to me, that seems like the right sentiment.  You've got a safe and loving place here on the forum to be so open. I'm very glad you're taking this step.

What your H and this other loser did TO you was wrong, wrong, wrong on EVERY scale. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Every ounce of the shame of these events belongs squarely on those to little pigs.  As a man I can't even understand HOW these dinks felt like they had to do what they did.

Please know that I feel great empathy for you and your situation. Drugs are so commonly used in cases like this. I suspect they were used on me when I was just a little boy too because the blackouts I used to endure at school were similar to the one you talked about: One second you're somewhere and a few seconds later you wake up somewhere else. No memory of even feeling tired. Anyone who would do that to another human being is too evil to trust with anything ever again.

I'll keep you in my thoughts for the next few days as you go through this EF. Please stay in touch and let us know how you're doing each day.

I wish I knew more to say. Just know that your story has touched my heart and I'll be watching your posts with a little extra care for the next few days.

Big, safe, virtual, no-touch hug for you: 

Ditto to Master of my Sea's comments about how we can't be nice to ourselves because we were once punished anytime we were kind to ourselves.

I had an IFS experience this morning that didn't make much headway, but did touch on, and expose, a major stressor for me.

I awoke at 3:30 AM in a mild anxiety-panic. I overthink everything because that's what people with anxiety disorders do. I ruminate about the past and worry myself stupid over the future--because that's what anxiety disorders make us do. I still feel all the pain from every mistake I've ever made, and I assume I'll feel that same pain again if I don't think of everything that can go wrong if I make more mistakes in the future. In my case, anxiety often manifests itself as chronic, constant worry and 24x7 hypervigilance.

I accessed an Exile and a protector this morning. I accessed them only for a few seconds because the pain that came with the access was too intense to move forward with. So, I got up out of bed and distracted myself with an early breakfast and some computer time. I wish that I could have not distracted. I wish I could have stayed with the pain long enough to start to heal, but no. It was too intense.

The Exile that I met this morning is a small boy who lives in my head and often blurts out the words; "Please just love me." What I mean by that is, when I'm ruminating about past mistakes, and am feeling utter humiliation from something I did or was done to me in decades past, I often involuntarily/accidentally blurt the words "Please just love me." The words sound like they're from a 4-6 year-old-child. Up until today, I've never asked myself why those words fall out of my face all the time, nor who in my IFS family is looking up from deep down in my soul, asking me to love him. This morning as I lay in bed wondering what/who woke me up, I heard this little voice, "Please just love me". So, today, for the first time in my life, I tried, very hard, to talk with this little person, and also with a protector who pops up whenever the Exile asks for love.

So far, my Exiles most often speak to me through bodily pains and discomforts, while Protectors will dialogue with me in my head. When this Exile appears, I feel a sudden shock to my chest, throat and face. I feel heat, like a volcano, bubbling up from my heart. But my heart feels cold and dead. My arms go weak. My eyes turn downward toward the floor in shame. Then the words "Please just love me" fall out of my mouth involuntarily. It happens several times per day. Without the Exile really talking with me, I feel that it is obvious why the Exile asks for love. As a child I was not allowed to ask for attention. I was humiliated and scorned if I wanted to be loved. My mother would verbally instruct the entire family of 7 of us, "Don't look at Jimmy. He just wants our attention." (This was during ages 0-7). Every mistake I ever made was hit by the famous catholic phrase, "What made you think THAT was a good idea?" And "You really think you're something...don't you?" It was not okay for a lowly loser like me to ask for attention or love, so it seems obvious to me that my little Exile is still trapped there. He knows that people forgive people they love. But people don't forgive stupid little boys who don't deserve to be loved. So he wants me to please love him so he can be forgiven. But I don't. (At least up until today I didn't. I HOPE I can work through this so that my little Exile starts to feel loved enough to stop asking me to love him).

As a child in my big family, my siblings all got all the attention they wanted, but I wasn't allowed to ask for attention or love so I had to take and enjoy love when (and only when) they darn well felt like giving it. (Which usually meant they wanted something from me, so they pretended to love me so as to trick me into giving stuff to them).

When I asked the protector why he ignores the little Exile asking for love, I was told that it's too painful for me (Adult/Core Self) to have to deal with that little Exile, so distraction is the strategy to bring me back into the present moment and continue to ignore the needy child still asking for love. It seems cruel, but our protectors are not cruel. This protector is protecting ADULT me from CHILD me. In a complicated twisted way, I understand that. This protector doesn't believe anyone will ever love this Exile, so he helps me avoid dealing with the unloved child Exile.  It's sort of a "pick your battles" type of strategy. This Protector doesn't believe I can help this Exile so he gives me the gift of distraction. We all use the gift of distraction to help us deal with the fact that we can't help every abused child on earth, or feed every starving person on earth, or permanently fix global climate change, so we distract ourselves from battles we can't win in order to avoid going insane from empathy overload. I think that's why my protector distracts me away from the Exile, because up until now, the protector believed this unloved Exile was in the "I-can't-help-so-why-try?" category. The notion of sitting with this Exile feels like a case of empathy overload. I can only handle the feeling for about 8-10 seconds before I have to break free from it.

This morning, I allowed the protector to distract me because the pain in that Exile really is too frightening to deal with. HOWEVER, I want to find peace for this Exile. I want him to feel loved so he can stop asking "just please love me."

I know that my therapist would tell me to make space for this Exile. No need to solve his problems just yet. The best thing I can do to further my healing on this step is to allow the Exile to feel what he's feeling and to simply give him the attention he's always wanted. No need to fix it. Just give him his fair space at my table.

My plan is to stop what I'm doing about 3 times today, sit down, and try to access the unloved Exile and the protector who is distracting me away from him, and to stay with the energy of that sad Exile for at least 10 seconds each time. Maybe then, tomorrow I will be able to sit down with him three times for 11 seconds. Then maybe 12 seconds. Then maybe a minute, and eventually, a permanent breakthrough.

Hi Phil,

I like this thread idea. Relaxation is an interesting topic for people with trauma disorders. For me, relaxation can bring a sense of vulnerability. Not good vulnerability, but the kind like leaving all your doors and windows open at night hoping no one walks into your home and steals your most valuable possessions. That kind of vulnerability.

I got lucky and felt safe as a boy while in bed, so that has carried forward to a place where I feel safe as an old man. On the other hand, it's also where I want to go when I feel afraid. To bed. Almost every day, I count the hours to bedtime like a kid counting the days to Christmas. If it were possible to sleep away the rest of my life, I'd consider doing that. And BTW: I never realized this tendency in myself before. Writing about relaxation has helped me to see that my waiting for dark and bedtime every day is part of me trying to find safety in the darkness. Hmm. Good for me to see that finally. Once again, I'll quote Flannery O'Connor again: "I write to discover what I know." It's true for me too. The more I try to interact with others, the more I teach myself about myself.

The instruction from the article to just not relax if relaxing isn't working, sounds silly, but it's good advice.

I have a friend who is 75 years old and wealthy. She has no reason to work for money. But she does work. She keeps herself so busy I get exhausted just listening to her tell me about all the volunteer work she participates in, the foundations she's created, the multiple Facebook groups she manages, the meticulously clean home she keeps, etc.  I once asked why she can't relax and she said it was because for her, relaxing causes boredom, and boredom causes depression. She literally stays "too busy to relax" because relaxing is bad for her. And, she feels no shame around that. Being busy works, so that's her proud strategy and she wears it well. She does a lot of good in this world, so, her way of battling depression is good for the world.

Artists and musicians will often admit that their art was how they survived their life so far. I'm no artist. But I like to write, build things out of wood, cook, do Jigsaw puzzles, and go for bike rides to distract myself from my anxiety and depression. Some days that's easier to do than others.  I'm going to try exercise next. I'm preparing to start morning water aerobics. I'll give it two weeks to see if it helps me or if it makes my anxiety worse. Sometimes social activities blow up in my face. I get so uncomfortable around people that I head back home. Time will tell how this goes for me.

I need to know my limits and respect them:  From there I have to submit to the reality that I am a survivor of a dishonest and selfish world and I can only get as relaxed as I can get--and no more than that. I know my limitations. I can never relax the way I feel we humans should be able to. So, I'm letting myself off the hook. I have to stop pushing myself to be completely relaxed as if I have nothing but happy thoughts in my life. I have to find my limits and respect those limits. Forcing myself to relax beyond my own ability is anxiety producing. So, I take what I can get, for as many seconds per day as I can maintain it, and I call that a win.

C-PTSD happened to us because we didn't feel safe as children. So, we're stuck with it as adults because who we are as children is the foundation for who we become as adults. The inability to just "sit back and enjoy a sunset" is not as easy for those of us who were raised to feel unwelcome on the earth. But there's no reason I can't find what works for me to help me stop "just waiting to die" like I've been doing these past few years.

I'm a slow reader. I usually have a half dozen books I'm slowly going through at the same time. I'm still in Chapter three of the Self-Therapy book. Chapter three is a transcript of a conversation Dr. Easley had with one of his best patients as she went through IFS therapy for an Exile. I learned a bit more about IFS therapy.

Last night I spoke with an Exile who remembers being only barely 4 years old. At that time, my 4 siblings were all still living at home. (Seven people; two teen girls, one tween boy, one 4-y/o, and one infant in one small house made for a lot of busy, stressful noise and activity. I often describe it as having been born and reared in the winds of a tornado). We had a small house, and my dad had built a long, dark stairway down into the garage/basement and put a freezer at the bottom of the stairs. My older brother was 8 years older than me. Dinner was being made, Dad was on his way home from work, and I remember my brother was told to go down into the freezer and bring back a bag of frozen peas.

My brother was told to take me with him down the stairs. I was 4, and I suddenly realized I had to pee. And as a typical 4-year-old, it was already too late. I NEEDED to hit the bathroom NOW, but Mom refused to allow it. "NO! Go with your brother!" I tried several times to plead with her to let me use the bathroom first. I wasn't allowed to. I had to go down the stairs, and as my idiot brother opened the freezer, my bladder gave up trying to hold it. I peed my pants. At this time in my life I REALLY loved my dad. I was born with some deep, deep attachment to him. I BEGGED my brother and mom to not tell Dad when he gets home from work that I'd wet my pants. They promised they wouldn't tattle on me.  But when Dad got home, my idiot brother, who was 12 at this point, ran to him and shouted, "Guess what Jimmy did! He peed his pants! HA HA!"  That moment trapped itself in time in my brain, and for 58 years now I've felt that betrayal by my own lying family.  Dad didn't care that I'd wet myself, but the betrayal of my own brother promising to protect my shame from my greatest hero, and then IMMEDIATELY blurting out what he'd promised not to say is what burned itself into my Exile's brain and stayed there indefinitely. How could I ever trust these people again? This was a soul-crushing moment that changed me profoundly as I grew up in that house.

So, last night, I decided to sit down with this little 4-year-old and do some IFS therapy with him, following the model I'd just read in chapter three of Self-Therapy. I held him tightly and reassured him that my brother was an idiot then and still is. And that what he did was betrayal, and that his betrayals of us are going to be worse in the future. This was just your introduction to what a loser he will always be. I wasn't trying to make my Exile hate my idiot brother (We already do), but I was trying to show the 4-year-old that this was not about him, but was about having a mentally weak brother whose betrayals were not only reserved for me, but for everyone he would ever come in contact with, ever. I wanted my 4-year-old to stop thinking this was my brother's disrespect for him, but was actually my brother's disrespect for everyone on earth. And my little Exile just happened to be one of his many, many, many victims. I was trying to disconnect my Exile from the abuse. It wasn't personal. We had just gotten too close to a liar and saw him in action. Lying. Again.

But this morning, after sleeping on this conversation with my smaller Exiled self I asked him what he wanted me to do for him. He told me. "I want to love my family but without the masks."

OKAY! I immediately knew what my little Exile was saying to me. I lived for 50 years desperately loving and catering to a family who I loved...but was it really them I loved? Or was it the masks they wore? The masks of "a perfect family." The mask of love, which was used to soften the blow of the abuse. They'd lie, cheat and steal from me, but they'd say it was because they loved me, but their love came with a lot of pain and abuse. So, I loved their kind masks. The people they were pretending to be.

So today, I guess I can ponder and focus on what my Exile wants. He doesn't want to hate my family the way I do. He wants to understand who they were beneath the masks and he wants to love THOSE people.

My 4-year-old-Exile is a bigger man than I am. I'm typically happy just hating them all and moving on. But I think I'm about to be taught a lesson in forgiveness. I'm not sure yet. I just know that my 4-year-old wants to understand and love people. My hatred for all abusers and sociopaths and narcissists isn't doing me any good. Finding a way to understand them and stay safe from them, CAN happen without my hatred.  Maybe. Not sure yet. Time will have to decide whether this is possible.

Hard to say if this will change me, but I'm giving it a try. I'm going to keep meditating on this little Exile and his wishes until I know what to do with it all.  I need to finish chapter three and delve into chapter four. It's pouring down rain today. Good day to sit back and read a bit.

Hi Armee

A lot of people have tried to talk me into renting out one of the houses, or even dividing the City house into 2 or 3 living areas and renting parts of it out. It's a strong solution, but it's a very frightening one. I have very little ability to confront, so if I get renters that destroy the house, or refuse to pay rent, I'll go into my trauma place and maybe never come out. Coco and I both have no constitutional ability to handle less than stellar renters.

However, reality is I can't keep living like I can afford two houses. I'll end up losing both if I don't give up one. OR unless I decide to risk becoming a landlord. I live in Seattle where honest people have no rights. In Seattle ONLY criminals have rights. It's legal in Seattle to shoplift. Imagine the long road to insanity if I get a renter who moves in and then refuses to pay rent on the second month.

But as of today, I'm looking at my self-induced complication for the first time ever. Perhaps, if I'll dig deep enough, maybe I'll find the clear path out of my sense of being overwhelmed. I have this image that as soon as I am ready to simplify my inner world, my external world will automatically simplify itself in kind.

Rainy,

I hope your health continues to improve. I'm glad to hear you were able to get out of the house today.  Good luck with all your parental interactions this week.