Hello Everyone
Recently (as in today) my therapist told me she believes I have complex PTSD. I started seeing her recently after years of explosive anger, irritability and overall unwillingness to establish and maintain intimacy. My mother was murdered when I was two years old, and I was moved from the west coast to Kentucky by my father. All within a year I was sexually abused by his sister's husband and moved from foster home to foster home. My mother's younger sister flew across the states and took me back to the west coast. But the abuse continued with her and her husband. She was not prepared to take care of a child who had experienced such trauma as well as her NINE children. She was critical and cold and I grew up believing I was not as loved as her own children, with that came guilt because I felt it was wrong to see my aunt that way even though her abuse was and still is obvious. Her husband was both physically and sexually abusive and a few of her male children were also physically abusive. Now I have put alot of distance from my family, even though we live on miles apart, most of my siblings are heavily addicted to substance, I have luckily avoided this. I am a student and a self taught artist, but I still feel as though these events in my life are controlling my direction. A few years ago I had a reoccurring night terror where I was unable to breathe, I woke up sweating, panting and with a racing heart. My therapist believes this could be related to the way in which my mother died, she was strangled to death. I still have alot of issues with talking about these things, I feel as though i'm playing the victim "was it really that bad?" and it is hard to accept that my family has abused me.
Recently (as in today) my therapist told me she believes I have complex PTSD. I started seeing her recently after years of explosive anger, irritability and overall unwillingness to establish and maintain intimacy. My mother was murdered when I was two years old, and I was moved from the west coast to Kentucky by my father. All within a year I was sexually abused by his sister's husband and moved from foster home to foster home. My mother's younger sister flew across the states and took me back to the west coast. But the abuse continued with her and her husband. She was not prepared to take care of a child who had experienced such trauma as well as her NINE children. She was critical and cold and I grew up believing I was not as loved as her own children, with that came guilt because I felt it was wrong to see my aunt that way even though her abuse was and still is obvious. Her husband was both physically and sexually abusive and a few of her male children were also physically abusive. Now I have put alot of distance from my family, even though we live on miles apart, most of my siblings are heavily addicted to substance, I have luckily avoided this. I am a student and a self taught artist, but I still feel as though these events in my life are controlling my direction. A few years ago I had a reoccurring night terror where I was unable to breathe, I woke up sweating, panting and with a racing heart. My therapist believes this could be related to the way in which my mother died, she was strangled to death. I still have alot of issues with talking about these things, I feel as though i'm playing the victim "was it really that bad?" and it is hard to accept that my family has abused me.