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I can def relate to this. I recently read a book by Pete Walker called The Tao of Full Feeling and realized that was a part of my healing process that was causing me to still be stuck with the past.

Victims of abuse usually learn early on to hold their emotion for survival reasons. By the time they reach adulthood, these repressive behaviors become so automatic. This very true for my case. I cannot force myself to cry and when i do it would be brief and in an outburst. I would write journal about abusive past that if someone else have written it I would be compelled to cry and soothe but I can't do it for myself. Still a working progress...

Angry.

Ever felt like you are doing things twice or more work than everyone else around you to do the right thing but when you need help you don't seem to be able to get it?  Sometimes I feel like we need to literaly be dying to get someone to realize we need help!

Halloween theme joke:

Why didnt Dracula have any friends?

Cuz he was a pain the neck!

Hi Tea,

I think being afraid to separate from parent and "doing your own things" is normal. For people with abusive past this can be extra scary. However from experience I would say the feeling of accomplishments and healing beat the scary part.

People with abusive past tends to have distorted unkind images of themselves. In reality, they can infact do the things that they didnt think they can and do it well if not better than others.

This is my anology:
Imagine a Ferrari, fast, aesthetically appealing, luxurious etc. People want it. If the owner take good car of the Ferrari, the car will run smoothly and sparkle beautifully like it should. Imagine the owner doest take care of the car. Its the same Ferrari but it has leaked and problems. The car is covered with dirt you dont even recognize it as the same car when you look at it. Infact you are disgusted by it.

In the anology above, the car is the victim of abuse and the owner is their family. So when the victim of abuse take ownership of the car (their own self) and begin to work on their problems (toward healing), they will start looking and realizing things differently.

My point is you may not be confident enough right now but as you do your journey away from your abuser to be independent, you will not only reclaim what is lost but discover new things about yourself you didn't know before.

Also, I just want to let you know that I sincerely hope you will heal and find happiness. I can't tell you what to do to resolve your situation but I just want to put it out there that there is and can be something better for you in life than the current situation you are in right now. 

Hello Three 
Thank you for the welcome

Today I'm grateful to find a community where I found people continually working to improve themselves despite the pain and hurt they have experienced. It's humbling and give me hope.

Congratulations on the raise! 
Being assertive when needed isn't easy especially for those with CPTSD. So the fact that you did several times (I read few of your posts) stand up for yourself is great 
Glad your workplace recognize your work.

Hello Tea,

I would like to share my personal experience and hope that it can help encourage you to fine happiness and healing that you deserve because I can relate to a lot of things that you mentioned here.
[POTENTIAL TRIGGER BELOW !!]

================================================================

My family were unhealthy, abusive and unsupportive. In my case, I was the designated scapegoat and also therapist in the family. My mother specifically have gone through many traumatic events on her life. Since I was a child (very young) I became her confidant, her object for ranting and a tool to make herself feel better. I developed empathy at a very young age exceeding even the adults around me. I did what I thought would alleviate my mother pain by obeying her every whimps, letting her emotionally and verbally abuse me. Whenever I tried to speak up and point out things that are painful but factual, she got angry and belittle me, calling me selfish. Boundaries were crossed so many times I lost counts of them (One time my mother wrote a journal "on my behalf" writing as if I wrote them and shared it with her friends. I was so shocked and speechless when I found out about it "real-time" as in when she showed it to her friends infront of me) My father wasn't any better and my brother was absent. Over time I stopped taking care of my needs. I started to developed depression and isolate myself. This continue for years well into my teenage years. Then one day I came into realization that it would never get better. My family was stuck on a cycle in which each member have roles and they couldn't see what I saw, the true sources of our problems. I remembered crying, hating and cursing the truth: I was going to be the one that broke the cycle. It took me few extra year after that and desperation (as at that point I was force to suicide) until I was able to accept the truth. I cut my ties from my parent.

What I wanted to share with you is this:
a. When I decided to leave my parent I was living in USA (this is not were I was born and raise).
b. I knew basic English grammar and vocabularies but never actually have conversation in English
c. I was 19 just starting college and my sources for income came from my family and federal grant. With no family help I couldn't go to school so the grant also is gone.
d. I didn't know anyone except extended family that didn't rly get a long well with me (which I also stopped talking to) however I was lucky to find a good friend that rly understood me and helped me to move on.

It was scary time for me and the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It took me 2 years but at the end of it I had a stable job and was independent in many ways including financially. It took however longer years to deal with the traumatic events that had happened to me. It's still an ongoing progress and lately I found what has caused me to still be stuck after all this year.

If there is anything I have learned are these:
1. No One cannot truly help anyone when they are not in the place where they can help themself and their basic needs are not met.
2. Even if an individual can help someone, if the other person is not ready to be helped, they cannot force the other person to help themselves
3. At the end of the day, each person is the only who knows their personal experience thus the only one that knows the right answer to their healing and beyond that (personal happiness). Other people even the most well intention one cannot fill this task. To search for an answer somewhere outside oneself will only derail one from healing. They will be plenty of things in this world including religion that promised you "salvation". The people I saw going this route to the extend that they stopped truly working on themselves are the ones that ended up repeating the cycles to their children and others around them. 
4. Repressing emotions and not feeling them was the worse thing we can do especially when those emotions came from abusive situation. They need to be let out in healthy ways (This was the last part I'm struggling with the most. By the time I recognize the importance I basically couldn't feel anything. I can't even cry when needed. All the tensions can manifest to physical diseases. In my case I was diagnosed with 1 stage before cancer. I found out just in time to reverse the damage)

From my experience,  I hope you will find strength. Also great job on wanting and continually trying to work on yourself for healing and beyond. 

Forgot to mention  I can relate to feeling exhaused physically and emotionally and wanting a break from everything. I can also relate to being dismissed from liking art and pursuing art. Lastly for being non-heterosexual on top of dealing with everything else.

Hi Kizzie, 

Thank you for your respond. I'm going to check out the workbook you posted.

Hello Meursault,

I can somewhat relate to your experience about dreaming. Sleep rarely rejuvenate me. I typically woke up sweating feeling awful (your warzone example def. ring a bell). However I remember my dreams especially the "traumatic" one that jolt me from my sleep. I started reading this book in the past days: The Tao of Full Feeling by Peter Walker. Almost everything he wrote I can relate with and I knew in my heart was true. His book made me realize I was running away from my feelings. To be exact I was running away from feeling and experiencing the emotions related to traumatic events (They will be overwhelmingly painful).

My dream typically symbolitic though sometimes can be an actual event. For example I will dream of flying but in the middle of it my wings will stop working and I would struggle to remain in the air and avoid falling to my death. Last night I had uncomfortable dream that woke me up at 2 am. Instead of running away however I listen to what it is trying to tell me. Turned out it ended up explaining to me something that I def. never considered but rang true. It sounds to me that you recognize the important of listening to your body, mind and emotion.

I heard somewhere before that when you can't remember dream you actually are getting the sleep you need (because your mind arent supposed to be processing dream like when you are awake. Dreams are meant to process things in the background giving your body the rest it need). So if you can't remember dream but does not feel rejuvenate when you are awake (in fact the other way around), I wonder if it's because your mind and body are processing something that took a lot to process. Maybe if you actually recall the dream it's even more taxing for your body. Don't just take all my words but maybe there is something being repressed that needed to be processed but haven't been processed in waking hours so it turned to the dreamless exhausting sleep. Maybe the focus shouldn't be at trying to remember a dream but rather what is being repressed in waking hours.

Hello,

I'm new to the forum. I briefly look at existing topic but it doesn't appear that there is a topic for what I'm looking for. If there is one and I somehow missed it, please let me know.

I have CPTSD just recently had a therapist officially diagnose me for PTSD though I have known for awhile that I have CPTSD (just didn't acknowledge the true extend). I was abused by my family since a kid up till I was 19 and I decided to remove myself from the situation. For me, it was the best decision I've ever made. For years I made a lot of progress on my own but I missed the important part to recovery. I've never been able to grieve, feel and express sadness, anger or any kind of emotions related to traumas that had happened. In fact I rarely was able to successfully express any kind of emotions even joy.

Now that I realized how important it is to grieve and being able to feel and express emotions especially for traumas that had happened, I'm at lost on how to accomplish this. I tried to write and purposely bring myself back to the trauma but I can't bring myself to cry or feel anything. Occasionally maybe anger but even that usually comes up when I saw or listened to someone else experience not myself. The only time I can cry seems to come in outburst when someone else (may not even the appropriate person to express the emotion) was around.

I just recently started therapy however with only 1 session a week, I feel there is too long of a gap. I need tool to further help me with recovery. Does anyone have tips for this? A good book/video that list steps to grieve/feel emotions? or maybe personal advice that has helped?