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Did you try cbt to deal with the critic? Saying no to it etc, no I won't let you beat me up again.

Again I don't struggle much with an inner critic because my psyche is very dominated by an outer one, but one step to dealing with the inner critic is to say no.

Hello! I haven't had the feeling that my childhood happened to someone else, but I have done quite a bit of minimizing over the years. I don't connect much to my feelings-I read a list of traumas to my therapist a couple of weeks ago and sounded like I was reading a grocery list!

I am connecting with my feelings more than I did, and I swing from crying to raging to numbing back out again. I had a major emotional breakthrough last week and have felt like * ever since- but I guess it has to hurt to heal.

I'm glad that you are back and taking baby steps!

Haha yes to the grocery list! I used exactly that analogy to someone else recently which really was a good wakeup call to maybe try to stop trivialize my problems with a "a strong person would still struggle less than I". I also relate to feeling disconnected from my past history. It mostly feels like a distant dream shortly after waking up.

All right, I understand. I'm very competitive so if it would be a sport it's definitely a contact sport for me. Anyway you wrote this:

"I also tend to wait for that faithful day when everything will become clear and I will start to rapidly change into another whole new me who is extrovert and happy."

I think this is an important piece to the puzzle because sometimes waiting simply isn't going to give us what we want but only actively chasing it will. How can we change if we don't try to create an action for change? With no movement everything stands at a standstill.

And for someone scared of movement which it sounds like you are, hence the issues with expressing anger, acting out obviously becomes very difficult.

At that point I think it's worthwhile to ask ourselves what we gain vs what we lose from change and what we are scared of to actually happen. Typically people tend to get stuck in a situation where you have nothing to lose if you don't act because the situation wouldn't be any different anyway.

That's important to remember when we are scared of moving forward.

No worries, you tried and I am thankful for it 
I bet the "fight" part of you makes it easier to exercise, just like many other fight types that I've met

I think I started of as "flight" and I used to enjoy horseback riding because it didn't really feel like exercise, too bad it's too expensive for me.
I've been looking for similar fun things to do that doesn't make me focus on the exercise, hopefully I'll buy me a new bike this summer since I love bike riding.

Though I got sidetracked now about exercise, it never made me release my anger but kept me somewhat healthy

I do like explosive kinds of exercises, yes, though I was not per se a naturally active child. The freeze aspect was very strongly reinforced as a teenager, because I realized I couldn't fight this woman, so I withdrew by reading lots of books etc. I also never liked physical exercise because it meant I had to feel in touch with myself and my body and my body was a great source of discomfort.

So the reason why I suggested exercise is that it can help to get in touch with that fighting spirit. Maybe try contact sports or team-oriented sports?

I'm sorry these suggestions don't work for you. For what it's worth I consider myself to be fight/freeze in that order so I fully understand how difficult it can be to activate yourself once the freeze effect sets in. I can only speak for how it works for me and how I access anger since it's something I so very easily.

Like I wrote, the biggest triggers are things I perceive to be various forms of injustice. Learning to recognize your boundaries could help to eg where does my will begin and end?

Hi,

That sounds really terrible though I can somewhat empathize because I was borderline on developing similar tendencies at my worst (though not with regards to god since I was never religious). What helped me at least in creating a sense of self was to focus on the present and who and what I am today. Who I want to be, where I want to go, what I want to accomplish and all those things. It helps to create a sense that your self is at least grounded into something real that you can always point back to and say "yup, that's me". And while that's not a replacement for actual inner work, I think it helps when we are feeling lost and confused because it creates an anchor to hold on to for the time-being while we work on other things.

Hi,

I think identity comes in many different shapes and forms. I for example have an easy time formulating my likes/dislikes (especially dislikes), I always felt I knew who I was in the sense that I knew where I began and ended etc. because I always felt like I had a strong sense of boundaries even though it was pounded into me to not assert them during a certain portion of my life which made it really difficult for me to do that no matter how much I wanted to but that eventually disappeared. I also understand my intrinsic value and what I am worth in relation to other people (generally speaking), and I am aware of my own capabilities/competencies, but I don't feel like I know who I am in terms of my history. I don't feel like I have a cohesive narrative of myself as a person. No idea how to explain that in a way that makes sense to someone else unless you already know what I mean.

For me, specifically, I think it stems out of the fact that I have a lot of "lost" memories. I don't remember much of my past and my childhood and whatever things I remember are not recalled with the same strength and vividness like I could a memory from last week, but they all feel hazy and dream-like as if I am not sure if they really happened or not. This is likely a result of heavy dissociation during the events of these memories, but I am not sure. I also don't tend to have any emotions attached or associated with them, which adds to their sense of surreality. My lack of memories is related to my emotional repression and my sense of feeling internally numb and just oblivious and unaware of my own feeling states and as a result, I feel as if my existence is separated into different fragments that do not meld into one cohesive unit. During my session with my therapist yesterday, it really sucked to admit how much denial I was in because it would be easier to keep denying.

I suppose from a purely psychological perspective, what I am trying to express is that I have not been able to integrate my inner child, teenager, adult, elder etc. into one unified experience. In particular, I think I have a strong repression of my inner child with an over-emphasis on my adult self and this sense of adult self emerged very early on when I realized I had to learn to take care of myself because no one else would. And from there it feels like as if you lost something, something precious and innocent and you keep searching for it in order to feel complete.

I'm fiction I'm thinking about the kinds of stories we see where someone that had to go through a lot of great pain which results in the person (sometimes literally) splitting into two people, one good side and one bad side. The good side tends to be in the form of an innocent child whereas the bad side remains in the real world and grows up into an adult. So there's a sense of feeling like you lost something there, lost your childhood or your innocence or whatever, and this to me, at least makes me feel like I don't know who I am. I know what I do, I know what I can do and cannot do etc. and I strongly identify with my actions which leads me to have a lot of integrity because I always stand for what I do and say, but if you take away these things from me, I don't know who I am. I can say I stand up for a certain cause, it's important to me, but it's like standing up for this cause is more like a replacement for something in the inner realms of my being I don't feel like I have anymore. An inner child or what have you.

Maybe I am not making a whole lot of sense, I don't know. But this is how I experience it, anyway.

Thanks for replying!
I'm on my phone now but I'll do my best to answer properly.

The thing about my negativity that triggers people might be improper timing and my "tone" (even in texts) though I make sure to use smileys.
I can get judgemental at times but it's been long since that happened, thank godness!

If I feel rage I immediately feel fear because of the consequences it has had.
Either a beating by an angered parent or loss of friendship.
It got to the point where I've hurt another child badly so there is also shame and feeling like I am a horrible person when angry.
If I am angry at someone I usually feel terribly guilty towards them even if it was justified.
Got lots of guilt trips from mother who didn't like it when I was mad at her for bullying me, I remember hating myself for it.

It's just too much to bear.
I've acted so improper in the past and didn't know how to resolve issues that I still find it hard to deal with conflicts where someone is angry.
I stopped fighting and let people walk all over me instead.
I got beat for "talking back" aswell so I also flashback into feeling scared when trying to defend myself verbally.
Even in discussions where everyone involved is calm but judgemental.

I guess i flashback too much to have time to feel anger. There's just so many other traumas attached to it.

No, I understand. I figured there must have been a sense of rejection associated with your anger so it may help to remember that you are alone and do it when alone. You may be angry at something, but whatever you are angry at is not present and cannot judge you for it.

Like was suggested below, I sometimes write a lot, though I write poetry. I also listen to music that speaks to how I feel and can help me get into that kind of state or help me enhance that state. I also think for people that hold back their anger, physical exercise is very important because it helps to trigger our body's need to exert excess energy that anger creates. That in itself can help to free up some of that anger inside.

It may also be worthwhile to discuss roleplaying with your therapist where they agree to act out the role of the person that you could be angry at but will not retaliate in the way you were used to. That may be very emotionally difficult but I think will help a lot in rewiring your current negative patterns surrounding anger.

Not sure if this is going to be useful for you or not, because I am a person that's very easily prone towards feeling angry, but for me, what helps me to feel angry is to think about injustices and unfairness. All the things wrong with the world and all that, how everything is wrong, unjust unfair, and especially towards you. One of the most defining feelings I can remember ever since very young is anger. Anger over how things turned out to be this way, anger because of how I was treated, anger because no one bothered to step in and do something about our unhealthy family dynamic etc. At some level it's not even an angry at anyone thing or person, but it's an anger at everything. It's a very existential form of anger; there's no real target to direct it at because it doesn't exist. It's an anger at the very world in itself being the way it is.

Sounds to me like you are scared of your anger now, perhaps because it was so explosive and uncontrollable when you were young? What do you think is going to happen when you are angry? I have a very immense control of my anger, even when I do get angry. It seems odd, I know, because we associate anger with a lack of control, but I control exactly how much I let out. That's because I am also scared of what happens if I would relinquish my entire control of it.

I can somewhat relate in the sense that I always struggled in making friends. It's so difficult for me to emotionally connect to people and I am pretty sure I do all the right things too. I speak to them, laugh with them, crack jokes, share of myself, ask questions etc. But I can never feel like I can relate to them and they can probably not relate to me. The one common theme among the people I have become more intimate with too is that they too have shared some trauma in their life early on and we can connect over this emotional pain in some way, even if we aren't per se reveling in it or are talking openly about it. It's really frustrating because others can't understand; they tell you stuff like "just go speak to people". Well, I do that. I am not unfriendly or hostile though I can be introverted sometimes but I can also be extroverted. Yet I see others making friends so much more easily and everywhere in a way I don't. I know there's nothing wrong with me, though it feels that way sometimes. It's part why I decided to join this place after I found out about it, because I think that I can be myself here, without all the empty smiling and avoidance of pain that defines general relationships.

Hi Entropic
I am so sorry for everything that you've gone through. I know that you probably know this already, but you didn't deserve it.
I related very very strongly to this part:

This sense of always feeling so numb is something I've begun to increasingly realize as I became more aware of my actual inner state. It took me years to reach to a point where I finally dared to look more into myself and recognize my own inner life, part because of how it was so overlooked I kind of learned to overlook myself, too. I was taught and told that my needs and what happened inside of myself didn't matter, and now it's very difficult to unlearn the idea that I don't matter to other people, that I shouldn't be a bother or a nuisance because if I am I will be punished for it.

Just wanted to let you know that you're not alone.

Thank you for your support. I had my second meeting today and it's the first time where I felt in touch with myself. It was a weird feeling and really fit the definition of an EF. She asked me how I felt living with my grandmother while dad was away and working after my mom died and I just got this immense feeling of being small and wanting to be with dad and how I felt so angry and how unjust it was that I couldn't. I was old enough to understand why I couldn't but it doesn't diminish the emotional need, obviously.

And even though it made me feel immensely sad and admittedly feel abandoned though I really disdain to admit this, it actually made me feel like I finally began to connect to myself and feel all these feelings I just locked inside and numbed myself out to. It was extremely cathartic, addictive in a sense, even. So while in many ways life sucks because I lost my partner and I can't even speak to her anymore because of how it messes up with my head and my feelings and she was the only person I really knew, at least I feel like some things are getting resolved. I just wish so badly she could be here with me in the way I wanted her to be, even though she also hurt me so.

Thank you all for the interesting responses. I am definitely going to tell this to my therapist since as some pointed out, it may become a future problem unless I resolve it. I have a wonky relationship with mother figures in that I sorely lacked a proper one or I dealt with people who I experienced to be impostors by claiming to impose a mother-ish role for me but entirely failed to live up to one.

It was also a bit of a problem in my last relationship because this was the first time I was really close to a woman in a truly intimate way, and I projected the same feelings on her where I sometimes felt like she was a bit like a mother figure to me even though I realistically knew she wasn't, but wanted her to give me some of the comfort you get from your mother. Though at some level I don't think that's entirely unfair because tend to project this on our partners.

Anyway, it got me thinking that while I don't remember my mother because she died when I was very young, my current therapist may still in terms of personality, actually be similar to her.

Is it common and is it positive or not? I realized part why I liked my therapist is because she makes me feel like the mother I never had.

I agree about phases. I think it's a way of trying to connect to people.

Because of your post, I'm looking into this. Very interesting! I've also found a few websites that will allow a free test. As I don't really want to give this group my credit card yet, I'll use the free tests for now. But, the theory is very interesting.

Thank you for sharing this link!

I've been studying it for quite a while so if you are looking for resources I'll be glad to share them. I have a couple of books lying around including some favorites. It helped to put some of my feelings into perspective. It is a very interesting theory, I think. It takes a psychospiritual approach to personal development and healing and some authors are more or less spiritual in how they approach it. Anyway, I thought people here may be interested in it since I see some overlaps in its approaches with regards to what I've read thus far about CPTSD. Like I wrote, it's not actual therapy but some of the insights it provides can definitely still be therapeutic. For myself personally, it really helped to put into perspective why I am always such an angry person inside (even if I am not showing it), why I have a blame-mentality etc. And that I am also not necessarily bound to this attitude or behavior. It also really validates how I felt during my childhood. So it's been very helpful in helping me look beyond some of my problems and work on myself even if it doesn't address the core issues of trauma that only a therapist could.