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Hi, the truth.

I'm sorry to hear that you have hit a bad patch, so to speak. It seems to be a strong feature of CPTSD, this up and down pattern. You mentioned a trigger, so Blueberry makes a very good point that you may be in an EF. Do you have approaches to help with these? Just remind yourself that they do end, things will get better again.

With regards to your specific question about CPTSD, my answer /opinion is that you do. In a way, all diagnoses that we talk about on OOTS are just social constructs, a sort of framework for communication and understanding.  The fact that we come here and feel understood is what matters.

It has become something of a hobby horse to me, and still feels risky to say it, but I honestly don't believe that doctors and the NHS are there to help us. They serve a purpose for society (and get handsomely rewarded financially and with high regard and status) in return. I don't believe that society wants to face up to the existence of CPTSD. After all, society sanctioned my abuse by my parents and I grew into a person who was terrified of stepping out of line, who went into nursing, to repay my debt to society, for educating me and giving me healthcare etc. Eventually, society would expect me to care for my ageing parents. Sadly for society, my parents went too far and I cracked.

Consequently, I am no use any more. I don't work and don't care for my parents! It sounds quite crackpot, but I am actually finding it quite freeing. I've been where you are, desparate for help and answers. I have found my truth, for now, and am doing much better than before.  Some degree of relief is what I am hoping for, for you. It takes a lot of time, but I believe you will get there.

Happy, as ever, to talk about things.

Take care.

Libby

Hi Libby,

I agree fully with your statement that society doesnt want to face up to the existence of Cptsd. My employer, my doctor and my family have all reacted with a similarly discompassionate disinterest. All they need to know is that I had a history of depressive episodes. Thats good enough for them. It allows my employer to misrespresent the stress they caused me as personal frailty, it allows my doctor the freedom to invalidate my suggestion that the stress was a result of human rights abuses in the workplace and it allows my family to content themselves with the analysis that a history peppered with mental health issues explains the difficulty I had in that job, and that means they dont have to go to the trouble of feeling concern for me over very contentious issues with an employer and a GP. Lets not go challenging our pre-held ideas that this employer and this GP are reputable and professional people!

I am noticing that I am prefering to be on my own quite a lot now. I am also noticing how readily I ease into a state of anxiety when in conversation with other people. For me there is always a feeling of fraudulence about my presence and my dialogue. They, whomever they are, the people with which I am conversing, are unaware of the permanent battle I am fighting in my life, but that doesnt mean it is something they want to hear about, nor is it something that they will readily understand. So I guess you could say that I feel isolated as a person. I am isolated by a psychological condition for which there is no easy cure and I am isolated by the fact that I have to carry it around while pretending it doesnt exist.

Anxiety comes easy when you are basically living the lie that you are ok, every time you are in conversation with other people. So yes Libby, this forum is good for me. as it is for you. It's a place where I can say the things that I have to hide in real life because there are no answers to the questions the subject raises. No solutions.

Hi Blueberry,

The single greatest trigger that I have experienced, producing the most prolonged and intense EF that I have been through, occurred in the spring when I came back home after being away from here for 5 weeks. I did not expect what happened on returning home to this place.

I have been through a number of deep and sometimes prolonged depressions in my life. What happened in my mind in the spring was in the same ball park of painfulness but it was of a different nature. It was a different thing. It would be hard for me to say which was more difficult, the depression or the EF I had in the spring, which lasted many weeks by the way. (They are not really comparable- full on depression cant be topped for painfulness)

The EF I went through in the spring was kicked off by coming back here to my familiar surroundings where all of the bullying, defamation, unfair redundancy and betrayal by GP took place. It is where the lies about my character and my credibilty have been cultivated, even by my doctor. It is where my old place of work is and where my old colleagues walk the streets.

Being away was an experience of relief. I had distance between me and the triggers for the first time in 5 years. That was fantastic but I didnt see the price of that experience of liberation coming, as a result of returning home. As soon as I drove back into this area things were starting to go wrong in my mind. The dreamy relief was over and the drop was violent.

The next few weeks were among the most problematic of my life. It was April and May. I was fighting an internal battle that others couldnt see but it was massive. The thinking was sheer pain. Unrelentless, sheer pain.

How that particular EF ended is another story, there were 3 factors which helped end that EF. I did not think that EF was going to end or reduce in intensity. If it hadnt ended I would have needed tranquilising medication, more intense than the diazepam that I did resort to several times during that 2 month nightmare.

It was actually 4 factors that conspired to finally get me out of that emotional flashback.

1. I felt huge validation and relief on buying and reading Pete Walker's 'Surviving to Thriving'.

2. I first encountered the explanation for my pain in the message that the human mind can cope with tragedy but not it cannot cope with evil.

3. A psychiatrist fervently denied that I could have Cptsd and I realised the scale of the task in getting even a private pych. to acknowledge the true nature of the injury I had suffered, when an NHS doctor was complicit in the injury. (In an unexpected way, the futility of aspiring to be understood by an indifferent health care professional helped to finally reduce my symptoms. There was no point in asking to be heard with impartiality).

4. Rainagain assured me that diagnosis would give momentary relief at best and that I would still have a battle on my hands even if diagnosed.

At this stage, which was in June, it appeared to me that I had 2 options. I could die then and be done with it or I could try to live. That emotional flashback ended and I returned to low level simmering angst, anger and relentless thinking about what had happened.

I hope I do not have another flashback like that one as long as I live. Im trying to take precautions against it in the ways that I know how to, like not drinking.... Ive had some shorter duration flashbacks in the days after drinking alcohol.

You're not the first on here to ask themselves that question because I've done that too. For me it's the sign of an EF when I'm doing that.

Idk if it could be symptoms of anything else that you are experiencing. otoh it's pretty common for docs to deny what we are experiencing, at least ime. I went through years of that. Docs trying to explain that my symptoms were 'normal'.

Standing with you. I hope some other mbrs with adult onset cptsd respond too.

Hi Blueberry,

Thanks a lot for your message. I think I am seldom not in an EF. It is just the intensity of it that varies. At best I am thinking about what took place with mild anger and frustration. The only time I am free of this low level difficulty is when I am sleeping. Becoming awake again really sucks.

I can be distracted by activity, I get relief there sometimes but I can also be very troubled even when really busy with chores.

Ive come to a bit of a realisation. Being awake is a trigger. When I am awake I can remember the actual, real, true events that took place in my life to shape my current reality.

My reality, my day to day reality, which is a product of the abuse, injustice and betrayal that I experienced, is a permanent inescapable reminder of those things.  As long as I am awake, I do not get to think about the factors that have shaped my current day to day reality.

I can avoid the external triggers of bumping into certain people, being in certain places, doing certain activities. It doesnt matter. The present moment in my reality, even when I am lying in bed, is shaped by what was done to me unfairly. 

For me, to be awake is triggering. I do not get to not think about what was done to me.

I could have never anticipated life turning out this way. It's such a waste of life.

so what to do? Meditate maybe. Despite the crap, I want to find a way to live that doesnt suck.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the responses. For me it seems to be a symptom of mine to need validation. I think it is because the of the amount of denial of truth and misrepresentation of truth that was involved in the stress process that I went through.

Thank you all for contributing to this thread. I am less troubled tonight that I was last night. It is good to feel some semblance of relaxation.

Thanks Blueberry,

A League of Gentlemen sketch comes to mind where after reducing his patient to tears with cruel indifference, the doctor eventually says, "I am now satisfied that your pain is real!"

Its very dark humour but compelling viewing.

Thank you.

Hi All,

I have sunk into familiar anxiety, depression and exhaustion with surprising speed. Ive been triggered and I know how but I wont go into that now.

The purpose of this post is to ask a simple question. Im really worn out so I am in that 'not sure of anything anymore state'.


This might seem silly but I need to ask it. How do I know for sure that the difficulty I am having in life  is Cptsd?

I am meeting unwillingness from others to view my claims of traumatic experience in the workplace as valid. Moreover I have had my claims of traumatic experience redefined as sensitivity and delusion on my part. Sorry, I am trying to keep this to the point.

A psychiatrist has refused my first attempt to communicate to him that I am living Cptsd every day.

How do I know for sure my symptoms are Cptsd?

If they are not Cptsd, then what are they? Can you be experiencing constant anxiety, depression, triggering, relentless rumination, compulsive thinking about revenge, inability to think about anything else but the injustice you experienced as soon as you are not being engaged in conversation by someone, even though it is 5 years since that happened, and not be experiencing Cptsd?

If this isnt Cptsd when it has the hallmarks of it, then what is it? There was trauma and emotional dysregulation for years. I didnt imagine that and I certainly didnt make it up to piss off doctors and psychiatrists to force them into a diagnosis they dont want to make.

If you have a grasp of what went on then I think that is indeed an important step forward.

Its a precursor to acceptance I think, you need a narrative that makes sense and fits the facts which you can then try to accept.

I was faced with several managers all acting together but apparently making individual decisions.

Having gone through hundreds of documents and spending two years looking at what happened in different ways I have a working theory that fits the facts I know and suggests the reasons for otherwise mysterious decisions that were taken.

This 'story' allows me to make sense of things, important part of recovery.

The depth of betrayal was a tough thing to take on board, but having the story more or less correct made even that possible.

Yes Rainagain,

I seem to have gotten to a similar stage of my process. Another cycle of obsessive rumination has been completed with the emergence of a slightly different narrative. There was relief, I think there still is some relief. I find the next phase of the cycle is a renewed appreciation of how I still must think about the thing all the time, if I am not being engaged in conversation by another person. I had this going on today, but as Ive said above in my response to Libby, the thinking wasnt unbearable, just persistent and laced with the sense of the unfairness that took place.

I found this explanation of consumption V creativity very interesting last night. This explains my stunted attempts at oil painting. Im already addicted to the dopamine I get from my youtube addiction. I need to change my habits if I am going to draw on some meaningful creative energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pgaJb2Wwhs&feature=share

The parallel in our different areas of trauma is the pain of having our truth denied, so vigorously and for so long.  But we have our truth now, so we are moving on. Not to say that we won't want to go over things, here and in our heads, but we have our truth. We understand the malevolent behaviour we have been subjected to, and we are moving on.

Libby.

Hi Libby,

This is the thing we have to do. As you say, now that we have the level of awareness and understanding that we have, our challenge is to make the most of the life we have remaining. We will have symptoms as a result of the past. As I type I am anxious and it has been brewing all day. But I'm ok. Its relatively mild anxiety.

Our lives will be afflicted by certain types of burdensome thought but they wont be lost entirely to it. I had mildly challenging thought all day today also. No one else knows about it and it has been talked to death so I just have to carry it around almost all of the time. I dont bring it up now. It is actually quite ugly for the ears of others Ive found.

I do believe the pain of the thing in my head is getting less over time. It is less unbearable now than before. It can still make me become very awake when I am just about to fall asleep- its not becoming a nice thing. Its just becoming less unbearable.

Before I forget Libby, you werent shown love by your parents. I dont believe I was either, certainly not enough to pardon and counteract the contempt I was shown. Im glad you no longer blame yourself for not loving your parents because that wasnt fair on you. You cant reciprocate what wasnt rightfully delivered from those whose job it was to deliver it. Im in that boat too. I have never loved my parents and I could never feel love for God- I felt I was wrong for that but I have moved on from both issues.

I know I am not devoid of love because I loved a dog as a teenager and I have felt love-like feeling for girlfriends. Incidentally, I have only ever grieved twice in my life. Once when my dog died and another time after a romantic relationship breakdown. Never after the death of a human. Im actually ok with that because I know I was emotionally destroyed as a young person. I do not accuse myself of the 'crimes' of inabilty to love like I once did, just like you did to yourself also.

I am trying to focus on positives and I am giving more thought to self development and notions of responsibility as opposed to aspirations for comfortability (inspired by Jordan Peterson on youtube).

Yes we are moving on Libby, as best we can.

As Milk said, name it/tame it/Claim it.

You need a coherent narrative that makes sense so you can name it.

I have that and it has taken some of the pain away, its an important step.

Hi Rainagain,

As it was with the original damage causing trauma, the subtleties of the reparation have to be experienced first hand to be truly understood.

I fully understand your message above and each line of it. Until a few days ago I would have read those words of yours and felt frustration because my anger was live and my head was still adrift in a sea of confusion around everything.

I feel I have, as you say, taken an important step. My celebration was very measured though because I know from past experience that there have been umpteen breakthroughs and they have turned out to be false dawns.

All the same, for now, even if it is a temporary relief, it is still relief. The smallest victories are precious.

One thing that drove me round the bend at times was the fact that 3 individuals were involved in my demise and I simply didnt know who to blame the most. I could exhaust my venom for one of them only to find my brain then suggesting that another one of the 'unholy trinity' was equally to blame and probably more so! This was exasperating.

While they were all self serving and they were all guilty of unjust action, now that I believe I understand the dynamics of the process they delivered between them, I am buoyed up a little by the knowing how and why they acted as they did.

To some degree I feel I have the measure of them where previously I couldnt fathom their unjustness.

I think I am possibly at the stage now where I can desist from lengthy, complicated re-tellings of the unfairness that I faced. Surely that is a step back towards the more grounded me?!

Thank you both for helping me through this recent process.

Hi Libby,

Good Luck to us all indeed! You are right, I am on a good train of thought right now. This forum has helped me to achieve it.

Yesterday I had a breakthrough in my ability to comprehend the exact nature of the stress that I went through in that job and today I had another 'light bulb moment' on the back of yesterdays new awareness. I find it interesting that only in the past 2 days I watched talks by Jordan Peterson on youtube and in one of these he stated that, after you have been the victim of malevolence you wont be able to think about anything else until you figure it out.

Well that is exactly how I perceive my situation. I have not been able to think about anything else for 5 years. My mind has been obsessed with the injustice and I find myself thinking about it whether I like it or not, day in, day out, year in, year out!

The new comprehension that I have arrived at yesterday and today is for the moment giving me a sense of relief and some much overdue respite from the constant rumination.

You know when something just makes thorough, authentic sense on a very intuitive level? I have had 2 great hits of that in the past 2 days. I feel great relief.

Ill make it short- The stress that I underwent at work was not just because I was being bullied. I was carrying out their most demanding job while they refused to acknowledge that it was demanding. I had the opposite of the support that I should have had considering the nature of the work. It was patently clear that they would never acknowledge the truth on this. So I had to make a sacrifice in order to protect my job. I had to forgo the expectation of my employer honouring this truth in order to keep my job and to not annoy them with a truth they were unwilling to acknowledge.

I had to pretend their fictitious reality was the truth for the sake of a sort of peace with them. This weighed very very heavy in time.

All the time I was allowing them the indulgence of this fictitious reality, they were indulging another huge fictitious reality, at my expense. After initially admitting that the boss was known for a rotten attitude towards workers, his no.1 manager back tracked and together they established the lie that I was being unreasonable when I stood up for myself against disgusting bad manners/systematic criticism. They showed me in no uncertain terms, that the truth was of zero relevance in relation to this and that they would decide, in order with their own interests, what the truth was.

Again, in order to keep my job and to try to not rock the boat with them, I had to accede to their fictitious stance on this.

So while I was allowing them to cultivate fictitious realities on those 2 huge matters, in order to not jeopardise my job security, they went one further. The boss skillfully identified material, comments and actions by me that he could use to belittle and ridicule me with to other staff. Basically he set out to establish that I was an idiot and a source of silly comical behaviour and statements. This was because I had had the nerve to challenge his behaviour in the past and the more he could remove my credibility, the safer he would feel that no one would believe or care for my grievances.

All of this was at my expense. It wasnt long before I was displaying very surprising emotional dysregulation as I worked under this climate of lies, lies and more lies. I lost it several times as the boss visited me with stupidity and pettiness that it would take too long to describe here.

My stress was a product of my having to allow them to bullishly deny the truth on various fronts, my thanks for which was to be ridiculed and defamed in a systematic manner behind the scenes, as I continued to do work vastly more demanding than any other job in the place, for no extra pay. I hope this makes sense. So this was yesterdays moment of clarity- the stress developed from their privileged refusal to honour the truth on a range of points.

Today I realised that up until the time when my employer was given permission by me to speak to my doctor, they really didnt know what they were going to do about me. They knew my grievances were based in fact. They knew the boss had been gravely in error and they werent sure how things were going to go.

I invited in my life long GP due to desperation, stress and exhaustion, 3.5 years into the job. It dawned on me today, that it was only when my GP became involved that my employer found his route out of the mess with no consequence for himself. Until that point they could not have known to what degree my GP understood the situation and to what degree he might support me. They were, to some extent, walking a tightrope before my doctor became involved. After that however, they got the crucial information that had until that point been inaccessible. My doctor has communicated in some fashion that he would not stand in the way of my redundancy and they have become emboldened. I know it intuitively as I lived through it and I can understand the whole process when I reflect on the experience.

My doctor provided them with the confidence they needed to execute a putrid, lie ridden wrongful selection for redundancy, something they did not think was a safe option until they got speaking to him. 

Libby Im sorry if this is tedious but I want to record it when it is freshly realised.

As Jordan Peterson said, after being faced with malevolence, your mind will not let something go until it can make some sense of it.

I think I might be about to experience a release from painful rumination. Things make sense and that offers a chance of mental relief.

I didn't know you are still in the middle of things, I thought your employment issues were 5 Years ago.

Hi Rainagain,

My employment issues were from Jan 2009 to  August 2013. I have confused you, sorry! The job is over, the initial betrayal by the doctor is 5 years old. The psychological injury is ongoing. That is all that I meant by saying the issues are still live and not over. It is over for them, not for me.

.........I have just been able to put into words, in the most accurate way yet, the nature of the difficulty I was subjected to in my place of work. I have recorded it in my phone as a text to myself. I will share it later. It is remarkable how these experiences can be so complex and challenging to convey, that it can take 5 years of attempting to describe them before you get anywhere close to a true appraisal of what actually happened.

In the past 5 years I have poured thousands of paragraphs into my phone as texts to myself, to reduce the stress in my head. I have just discovered a true description of what happened to me. In a nutshell, it was 'ME V lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies'

Instead of forgiveness could you think of it like being bitten by a snake?

You need to heal the bite and try to avoid getting bitten again.

The snake doesn't need your forgiveness, its just being what it is, anger is an OK response in some ways but isn't going to change the snake.

The snake doesn't think, it just bites.

I've spent years trying to work out what exactly happened to me, I'm much better informed now but I'm beginning to think so what? Why have I spent so much time trying to understand my snakes? They are just doing what they do, no other explanation required.

I am echoing Rainagain —- another term to describe this, is crazy-making. Name it, tame it, claim it —- I read through the posts and this is what I see on the healthy end, from you, and others here. The painting and music are healing for you (this is how you claim your side of this madness), keep at it —- your good intentions will attract the right people to be with. Take care and sending positive thoughts your  way.

Hi Milk,

Thanks for the positive encouragement. I finished a painting last night. It isnt a masterpiece but its a stepping stone. Each one is. My brother is a professional artist and he says all I have to do to become good, is do 100s of paintings. He is right. Other artists on youtube say a similar thing- when you are watching a proficient artist work their magic, you are oblivious to all the failed attempts and countless hours of work that they have done to get to where they are.

I am really taking on board Rainagain's advice here about making a decision to recover. When I first read it I read it from a defeated viewpoint which was- 'I have already made the decision countless times and I have still been reduced to pain due to various triggering experiences.'

However, now that I have had a little more time to think about it, I believe Rainagain has thought this through well and has drawn good conclusions. The point being, it doesnt really matter that the decision to recover might have to be made many times, as long as it isnt dropped as a consequence of retriggering experiences.

The snakes that bit me dont give a toss if I struggle for the rest of my days. It would give weight to their lies if I just self destructed and lived a pathetic or tragic existence.

I must make it my decision and my focus to take the best care of myself so that my recovery to a place of emotional well being can happen as quickly as possible. Ive already cut out smoking and drinking but those are only foundations I feel. Now I must do my brain a big favour and get an exercise habit.

I found this youtube video useful. The woman says exercise can regenerate the hippocampus. The way I see it, my brain has been adversely affected for much of the past 20 years by 3 things- stress, alcohol and tobacco use. I know my brain is not as healthy as it would have been if there hadnt been so much stress, alcohol and tobacco use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHY0FxzoKZE

Right now I have to be aware of this so that I can arrest damage to my brain and focus on taking better care of it. I am looking into better diet, more exercise and I simply must practice meditation.

This is my new decision to recover. This is another attempt to introduce 'inputs' to break the downward cycle of the negative rumination loop as discussed by Rainagain in this thread.

I am very clear on one thing- if I drink alcohol I am choosing to be retriggered. I simply cannot go there. I tried it again a few weeks ago after 10 weeks dry. I was badly retriggered. I am now over 3 weeks dry again.

In the past, if someone was unpleasant, unfriendly, whatever, I would try so hard to win them over. Repeating my childhood, over and over. Now, I don't try. I appreciate nice interactions but otherwise, leave people to themselves. What a breakthrough. So much less stress. This especially applies to my in laws, who are somewhat dysfunctional and not especially interested or caring.

I feel so much more hopeful about life at the moment and I am so thankful that I have had this opportunity to talk about these issues. It has really helped me and I hope this applies to you, as well.

Hi Libby,

It sounds like you had a horrific childhood at the hands of two people who maybe were not parent material.... not 'good enough' parents, as Pete Walker would suggest?

Im sorry you have been afflicted the way you are. I'm also sorry that you are coming up against the same inadequacy in the health service.

I wonder was I doing the same thing as you describe when I tried so hard to gain the approval of my abusive boss? I too was convinced I was unacceptable by my own parents- its the very reason I have always struggled so much with self acceptance. I had a great aptitude for the work I was doing under this particular boss. Everyone could see how well I was doing it. The boss insisted on finding faults though- so I bust a gut to achieve perfection, to try to get his approval. I now know that wasnt possible.

I had felt so unacceptable all my life thanks to my parents, that when I finally found something that I did extraordinarily well, it was precious to me. I just wanted basic approval for my efforts but my boss was threatened by my competence and he made my life *.

Trying to get approval in life has been a costly business. Had it been delivered correctly by the people who were supposed to do it for us at the start, our lives would have been very different. We would not have been so desperate for it from the wrong sources.

Lets try to work on inner approval? They say it is the only type that really matters.