First post and second-guessing

[eucatastrophe21]

This is my first post.

My therapist has told me I have been one of the clearest cases of Complex-PTSD she has ever seen.  I had thought I had pretty much processed things from my past, but I ended up in counseling after my wife had an affair (we're doing well now but still working on it).

I guess the affair flared things up and then my brothers recently told me that my step-mother was particularly cruel to me -- singled me out and 'poured her rage into me'. They told me "I don't think you realize how bad you had it."  That stirred some things up and I've already been pretty raw in working through the affair and working to renew my relationship with my wife. It has been more than strange to be in my mid-forties and to suddenly be a person who is less stable in terms of emotion and mood and even what I believe about my life. It's been a wild ride.  I do remember that there were some stereo-typically traumatic events that happened when I was a kid, but I don't remember some of the things my older brother said.

So I'm a bit disoriented because I'm starting to understand a lifetime of anxiety, depressive-ness, social issues... from a different angle. From the outside, I don't think people would know much because I've worked really hard to be pretty normal. But I flip back and forth between having a conviction that my long-standing 'symptoms' really can be explained because of emotional abuse and neglect and having a conviction that I really am embellishing or exaggerating so that I have an excuse or a story or to get attention.   I say 'conviction' because it sort of over-rides whatever facts may be available at the time. It doesn't help that I feel so different than I did not too long ago and it's confusing how everything could just emerge so strongly now. And a few hours or a day later, I don't even relate to what had been such a powerful conviction in a few hours or a day before.

I'm not looking for some reassurance that things really did happen or it really was 'bad' in a way that would warrant my symptoms, because no one reading this knows. But I want to ask if anyone can speak to this:

What do you do when you can't decide and trying to know for sure just makes you neurotic and makes you spin your wheels? I'm trying just to relax with not knowing for now, but then the question comes up... How important is it to KNOW that there was mistreatment or 'abuse'? It feels like the answer helps me know something about how to proceed. Or does it? Is the course the same either way?  My therapist says confidently that this isn't mental illness -- I've asked because it feels that way sometimes -- like I'm just a little crazy. But what if it's just some other anxiety or mood disorder and I buy into a story that just misses the mark?

What do you do when you can't know -- FOR YOURSELF -- if you're just exaggerating and embellishing or if you can really rest-assured and use the diagnosis to move forward with a new understanding. I want to be sure I'm not fooling myself and that I haven't fooled my therapist.

Can anyone say why it matters to know (if there was 'abuse and neglect') for sure and what to do if you can't stick with being sure?  Ideally, we are just present and feel what we feel without judgment. But interpretation seems to matter too.

I don't want someone to just tell me "Don't doubt yourself!" Because I do doubt myself (and am not consistent) and I just want to know how people handle really not knowing when knowing would really help (or am I asking the wrong question in trying to be sure.)

Many thanks. I tried to keep it short...

[Three Roses]

Hello, welcome!

Statistics show that when it comes to "making things up," survivors of childhood abuse are more likely to negate and minimize the abuse they suffered.

The debate on "recovered memories" and "false memories" dominated the media coverage of child abuse for much of the 1990s. In the media, proponents of the "false memory" position argued that there was no evidence for traumatic amnesia, and that "recovered memories" of sexual abuse were unreliable, and often the product of overly zealous therapists, and hysterical, malicious or confabulating women. Since then, this debate has become less heated, with science increasingly affirming the existence of traumatic amnesia and the reliability of "recovered memories."

http://www.blueknot.org.au/Resources/General-Information/Recovered-memories

As children, we trust in the adults in our lives to care for us and keep us alive (literally). Challenging that represents challenging our very survival, which we are not likely to do. So we bury the truth and pain and it stays hidden until a landslide in the form of a personal crisis uncovers it.

If you want to know the truth, ask that child that still exists somewhere inside you what he endured. But be careful to do this with proper help! Dealing with things too soon can be re traumatizing.

CPTSD is an injury, not an illness. The brain - not just the mind - is affected. Dr Bessel van Der Kolk's book "The Body Keeps The Score" would be helpful for you to read. Again I caution you to do so only with the approval of your therapist. Don't go too fast with all this.

Good luck, and thanks for joining!

[Wife#2]

Welcome, eucatastrophe21.

You sound like a very logical, well-balanced person. So, you don't want glad-mouthing you want real ways to handle things. Ok, first, you have your brothers. They have no logical reason to tell you these things if they're not true. Second, if you don't remember much of your childhood, that's another red flag that abuse may be hidden in those shadows.

People who have not been abused typically remember big chunks of their childhood and can tell a coherent story of who they are and what they've been through. People who have been abused and have suppressed these events usually cover them by forgetting.

Yes, knowing the difference between actual memories and stories you've been told and now believe is difficult. This is why so many of us start with the Recovery Journal. It literally becomes our memory recovery journal. We can't fix what we don't know. We can't address what is missing in our tale of who we are. If you don't want a public one like on this site, then I do recommend getting something somewhere that you can try to start recovering the actual memories and not rely on your brothers for their take on things.

Do you really think you are seeking a tale to match the diagnosis? Do you really think you are seeking a victim state? That seems to go against everything in your post. Consider what the therapist said. What you spoke about that caused the therapist to come to that diagnosis. Maybe write it down somewhere, then wait a day and read it. Would it sound like 'abuse' or would it sound like ABUSE to you? Would your answer change if you pretended it was someone else's writing?

Neglect and belittlement and emotional games played with a child can leave very big scars. Nobody needs to hit a child to hurt them.

Use your logic and your intellect. Think about your story. Write it down. Speak your truth. If you're wrong and someone who knows and loves you (like your brothers, not your father or stepmother) says it happened differently, use your logic again. Which story sounds more true given the whole of what you know that you know that you know to be true?

[eucatastrophe21]

I so appreciate both of your responses. It seems helpful just to be able to talk about this to others who've experienced related/similar issues. I love the expression "CPTSD is an injury not an illness." I have started to write down things I remember. I have also begun to discover that some things don't sound like abuse because they were my only frame of reference -- and I also adopted a sense of unimportance. But I have two beautiful daughters and if anyone treated them that way, I would do everything in my power to protect my girls -- that helps me to identify 'abuse' or 'neglect' -- the things that I would never in a million years do to them. I think it will be helpful to write these things down -- a collection of 'How I know it was abuse and neglect.' I don't have any interest in a victim role -- I just want clarity and want to part with the things that keep me from being fully alive for myself and my family.

Thanks for the welcome and the suggestions.

[eucatastrophe21]

I would like to share something that became a little clearer after my post and upon more reflection. My question came from a neurotic mindset associated with fear, avoidance, and confusion.  When fear, confusion, and anxiety are present there is a highly increased desire to know but a greatly decreased capacity to figure things out. Seems like a dirty trick to me 

I'm Starting to see this pattern where I can simply identify when a neurotic mind state is present with anxiety and fear... I know that trying to answer some question intensely is a false lead -- not the scent I should be following.  The real trail to follow is just being with whatever emotion needs to be felt and accepting the current experience with kindness and patience.  This is a process, because when a neurotic state comes and I'm feeling the conviction of self-doubt, that sounds like "blah, blah, blah."  But little by little, when the ground sort of collapses and I don't know what to believe, I'm starting to at least recognize -- "This is a distorted state and I know that because there's a bunch of fear and anxiety or numbness."

[Blackbird]

Hey eucatastrophe21 

I can relate to a lot of the things you said, both my psychiatrist and my therapist say I was abused. I started second guessing myself recently, feeling like a fake, like things didn't really happened and this is just another way of my Bipolar to manifest. I've had periods of delusions, of psychosis, so I always think it's my mind making things up, that I'm crazy and always say these awful things to myself.

Yesterday I remembered the amount of gaslighting I endured in my life, of people I trusted calling me crazy and a liar for telling about some of the abuses I endured, that it was my fault. When I was psychotic, the memories all came back, but then vanished again along with the memory of the actualy psychotic episode. 

So, what I'm trying to say is, you're not alone. What my psychiatrist says is "when there's smoke, there's fire" and my therapist keeps pointing out "That is abuse right there" whenever I mention something.

We are forced to see, as kids, abuse as something normal. We don't know the difference. Then we start developing comparing tools through TV and movies and can see something is wrong, but we tend to blame ourselves because that's what children do. We don't have the capacity of being judgemental of our "superiors" when we're children, they know best.

I'm sorry if I'm rambling, I just want to reassure you that is completely normal and natural not to remember (I don't, some parts, either) and to second guess ourselves, only to be later confronted by it and recognizing the signs in our lives.

And Three Roses, thanks for that "CPTSD is not an illness, it's an injury", when I saw it yesterday it brought tears to my eyes.

[Three Roses]

  Blackbird

[SE7]

What do you do when you can't decide and trying to know for sure just makes you neurotic and makes you spin your wheels? I'm trying just to relax with not knowing for now, but then the question comes up... How important is it to KNOW that there was mistreatment or 'abuse'?

Hi eucatastrophe21, I lost my post in reply

Will try to remember what I wrote ... I can relate a lot to your questions since I have a similar issue due to the type of abuse I had:
1. Mine was covert narcissistic abuse, so the injury was "not seen" in obvious ways ... it's all the subtleties, inferences, implications that did the most damage.
2. I suspect my narc. father of molesting me as a young child. I have no direct memory of this actually happening, but a very long list of circumstantial evidence with 2 very suspicious memories. Yet, if it did really happen, the actual events were blacked out in my mind.

So I have often prayed that I would just remember, unblock the memories, and I've envied those who had more obvious 'abuse' in the classical sense, because my damage is as great if not greater than theirs, yet I don't have the obvious 'proof' ... one thing that has helped me is getting validation from my sibling who recently came to the SAME awareness that we were both psychologically abused, and he even could clearly identify that I have been the scapegoat and he has been the golden child.

It is very valuable to get ANY kind of evidence from a sibling. I would take that as your proof, along with all of your symptoms. They didn't get there by accident or for no reason. If we have a laundry list of symptoms and they fit the description of a certain syndrome like CPTSD or narcissistic abuse syndrome, then chances are it really did happen to us.

Also, if you can recall examples of things that were said to you that 'second-guessed' you or 'amended' what you did or said, or just plain doubted you, this is a good way to know that this covert type of psychological abuse really did happen. Because that behavior actually causes us to second-guess ourselves. This was the chief way my mother psychologically abused me, causing me a very difficult time in life making decisions or feeling good enough with anything I said or did. She gave me the feeling that anything I did could always be 'improved' .. who can live like that? No wonder I suffer from severe perfectionism and procrastination, and it has directly affected my livelihood even in middle age.

[eucatastrophe21]

Also, if you can recall examples of things that were said to you that 'second-guessed' you or 'amended' what you did or said, or just plain doubted you, this is a good way to know that this covert type of psychological abuse really did happen.

YES! My step-mother would say things like "You rotten little brat, I can see right through you...you want everyone to believe ___ but I know you really ____." If I cried, she would often say things like, "Please, I can see right through those tears, you may be fooling everyone else, but you're not fooling me."  At this point in my  journey, even thinking about her too much makes me lose track of my confidence.