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I've been waking up with EFs most mornings for almost 4 years. Lately I have found out something about myself, but I'm not sure yet if it's really true (will watch it for some time). It's quite astonishing for me: when i get a small Ef for some little trigger, i get by emotions. Not really bad, but not in control what's happening. And this is what causes a really big EF, because i get terrified for getting flooded (i.e. being helpless, which is a really big trigger). So what really helps me out of it is telling myself: I am afraid because I am flooded and i am stopping this now. And then i can stop it by labeling the panicky part "only a part of me" and actively activating another part of me that's talking to the scared part. So I'm no longer helpless, and it becomes manageable.
It really would be great if it keeps going on like this and i have finally found a way to deal with my morning EFs! I feel really dumb for having so much of them and being disorganised every morning, and it's not always easy to be friendly and compassionate to myself about that.

I'm so sorry to read this happening to you! Big hug, sorry though it's been some time since your original post 
It's really
1) awful to have these strong reactions due to past abuse,
2) and it's frustrating that many people cannot understand it because they have no experiences of their own that would be similar enough to facilitate understanding
3) and it's * that WE are the ones who feel even more isolated as a result of  the not-understanding. We already felt isolated because past issues with trust and bonding make it quite a challenge to build friendships or relationships.

So: hugs (if wanted) 

Hello Wife#2 and Contessa,
you are both great! 
That's so very true and also not-so-easy-to-do, to skip the drama and go straight to the laughter. Thank you for reminding me, that's what I need from time to time 

I also want to share a story. In the last weeks I was triggered over and over and had one EF after another every day, just getting out of one and then the next. So when I had some time alone, i tried to do laughter meditation. It was not very naturally, but i wanted to get some light energy. And in the evening my father tried to tell me what's wrong with me: he told me that i never play outside with my child and that i was bad at parenting and if he would have his way with my son, the child would be allowed to play outside. This was so completely rude and crossing boundaries. On the other side, it was so nonsensical, because we go outside often, in the garden and in the woods and go climb trees or build huts for dwarfs and elves, or whatever - the accusation was so far from reality. I just told him he had no idea and was telling nonesense.
This was quite a trigger, because I am triggered by being accused of something that isn't remotely true, and i had the next EF. But when I told my wife about it, I really started laughing when I imagined all the nonsense I could have replied to this statement - and the ef was over. It was really a relief to see the comical side of it.

And i wish you (wife#2) fast, reliable and affordable help with the car and the heating!

Hi GJDavies,

that's an interesting description. Yes, there are quite a lot of memories and also current actions that have more meaning to me than I can explain properly to other people. The usual thing if i try to tell the actions and my reactions and feelings is "Aren't your feelings a bit disproportionate for the things that happened?" And I guess, either I cannot tell properly, or it triggers me, and so it really is disproportionate to the actual trigger and proportionate to the hurt i accumulated.

I find there are some memories which stand out has having an 'emotional charge', the meaning or significance of which is unclear. Sometimes the emotion overwhelms but there is no sense to these memories. [...]

Do you have anything like that? Events that stand out but you are not sure quite why?

Yes, it's really hard for me to try and make sense of this. And propably for this reason it helps me to draw conclusions from current arguments to early childhood. It helps me to ask questions, to formulate questions.

The last question I asked is "I don't feel any interest in talking with me. Why? For many years you didn't talk to me on the phone, for example". Of course the question is very direct and confrontative, but I didn't feel like beating around the bush. He told me he didn't want to talk to me and thus didn't, because at this time i lived in a homosexual partnership and he wanted to avoid any topic associated with this.

So I do get answers, and i try to draw conclusions. The conclusion i come up with is that he has not many ressources for dealing with anything that's not complete mainstream for him and his strategy is avoidance. I guess that even as a small child i got a lot of that avoidance because something or something else was too much for him. It explains to me why he feels like a stranger to me in one way - and why i desperately try to establish a good relationship with him. Well, with this kind of answers (even with a grain of salt) getting a good relationship might be much too much of a goal, getting clear boundaries is more realistic. But it's hard to let go of the urge to finally get SOME relationship with ihm.

In the past years, I read a lot of psychological books, looking for... I didn't know it exactly, but I guess I was looking for a bokk that made me feel understood. Because I couldn't understand myself and I couldn't understand my feelings and actions. There are lots of good books, and each had parts of wisdom for me, but I never got a "big picture" that would make me feel understood. And I couldn't explain myself to my wife, either, at least not in a way that she would understand. That was very hard for both of us.

Then  -with a lot of tenacity - i came across "Out of the Storm", and with the keyword "CPTSD" i found quite a few resources. And finally, finally, i made sense to myself. It was and is such a relief, even though the self-prescribed diagnosis CPTSD is not a light one. So, yes, I can see myself from this angle and say "Yes! This makes sense. I make sense!". That's great, and i am really thankful to all the people out there on the internet, here in this forum and on youtube and on personal sites, that make information available and share personal stories. 

And then my line of thinking went like that: ok, I see that many of the symptoms described match my situation quite well: anxiety, shame, emotional flashbacks driving me into dissociation, lack of trust in myself and other people, having a hard time forming connections with other people, ...
So I guess there was a reason for this, propably in my childhood. Well, I don't remember being beaten or molested or worse, so that's not my story of how i became a cptsd adult. But what IS the reason? Do I need to know the reason or is it not important? "Just get on with your life". "Don't make such a fuss about your childhood". "Everybody has childhood wounds, you're not special". Those sentences I heard a lot, and I also told them myself sometimes. And no longer! Yes, I do want to know what happened, because i want to undo it. If i was always told "You're too sensitive", then i want to know the story behind it! So i can give myself now what i would have needed then - and only then i will check with myself if it is ok to go on, to let go, or if there is a need to go deeper into it.

Well, my mother died 10 years ago, so i cannot ask her questions. She would have tried to answer most of my questions, but while she was still alive i was to afraid and confused to ask the questions i have now. And with my father, he is always ready to blame me.

So what I am doing currently is kind of an interpolation: I'm finally strong enough to contradict my father. And then he rages and shouts at me, and tells me what a bad child i have always been and how my behaviour is not acceptable at all.
The strange thing is, though these encounters with him are not enjoyable, I am deeply relieved. I guess i was much too timid and small and introvert to confront him when i was a child, and I use his nowadays behaviour to make assumptions about my childhood and his behaviour towards me. And my guess is, that during my childhood, it was under the surface: i didn't have the moral strength and the emotional ability to really fight with him, so i just became less and less visible because i sensed clearly how ugly it would become if i risked an open word. And it really helps me, in a strange manner, to see him so harsh and hostile and blaming and invalidating: finally I get an idea of what i suffered as a child, finally I can tell myself: I didn't make it up. It was not only in my fantasy. I'm not overly sensitive, i'm just hurting...

Thank you for reading/listening.

Thank you  for sharing your personal struggles. I am very touched.
And I have been through very up-and-down days with my ongoing meditations, which is a good thing, because before i had mostly down-only days.

Isn't it wonderful that we are given tools to aid us to heal and grow more ...

Yes, it is really wonderful, and it's good noticing it. And I try to notice every baby step, because it helps focusing on the progress.


I am no longer trying to forgive my father. I find it counterproductive, the more i try, the more my resistance grows. This does not benefit either of us, so i changed the meditation to "I look at him, I say what I have to say, I listen, and i have the final say". And not trying to forgive leads me more to having some peace than a forgiveness for which i am not ready now.

I have worked on forgiveness with my dad through 12 step recovery .. I cut him out of my life for some years and was in deep pain.. I went back and said I was sorry for cutting him out and that I was wrong ..
this felt a natural thing to do, I felt more grown up and the child pain had lessened .. I was and am so pleased that we are now connected and have a relationship ...

[...]
... I may very well reach my grave with no one in my family acknowledging what happened to me and for me it is important to accept that as a reality ...
the acknowledging is the stuff that goes on in myself, the acceptance and subsequent compassion that I am starting to have for myself ...
My dad gives love and care in his own way today and when it comes my way I enjoy it ... for the many times he can't meet me ( emotionally and internally I work to accept it 'forgive him for what he does not know

This is so touching and encouraging. Kudos to you for your ability to grow, heal, and be inventive for your own good.
And i can relate to what you say about your mother - yes, it is a deep need to be in control of your own safety and to be able to stick to your own truth. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging this need!

your thoughts help me a lot in refining my idea of forgiveness, what it is and what it is not.
And I find that I have to forgive myself a lot, an awful lot. When i was small, i couldn't handle what happened and so i made lots of efforts to perfect myself, to become more lovable, to be a good child. And I became angry at all those aspects of myself that caused so much trouble, that lead to ridicule and being shamed.
And all that anger is still here, alive and I beat myself up over and over again for not being good enough, lovable enough, ....
And for that I forgive myself, as good as i can. I forgive myself for not having invented a better strategy, I forgive myself for making a habit of it and i forgive myself for taking so long to realize it.
And i forgive myself, as good as I can, for being so hard on myself, for killing so much joy in my life, for the pain I caused myself.

I currently do not want to use my energy for being angry at the parents who were a part of this. I choose to use my energy for comforting an saying sorry to myself, for inventing new strategies for dealing with being not-perfect, for finding ways to reduce the inner antagonism between people-pleaser-partial-self and the needy-and-wanting-to-be-validated-partial-self. I choose to use my energy for creating and conjuring images of grown-up people that say to me: "You are doing a great job!", "You are such a dear!". And it helps, each and every thing.

Does that mean I have forgiven my parents, especially my father? I don't know, but they are not in the focus of attention right now and that in itself is a relief.

This little forgiveness meditation did me a lot of good, and i can understand from my own experience that the topic touches so many buttons that i only go near it when i am ready to be stirred up...

Thank you for your responses! It's good to hear that others are struggling with forgiving, too.

it sounds to me (off the subj. of forgiveness) like you still have quite a bit of anger inside toward your dad.  i don't know how forgiveness could truly be a viable choice until that anger is cleared up.

I think you are quite right - with so much anger inside, i do not really forgive. Well, trying to speak the words and meaning them has shown me how much hurt and anger is there, and i could even allow myself being angry. So even if it doesn't meet the orignial intention of the meditation, it has helped me and was good for me; I'm glad I tried.

I repeated the whole meditation twice today, and i still get mad and it still is okay for me. Something interesting happened: there is a part in the meditation where i am instructed to just look at my father and notice how he looks - dress, face, expression etc. I find that when repeating the meditation i become increasingly capable of looking at him. I still get mad, or reproachful, or violent, but i am able to look at him. Which is very empowering for me. Strange, all of this.

I try to understand what's happening. Not being overwhelmed by old pain, but becoming able to feel it and address it and speak about it is a good thing. The first time was quite overwhelming.

[...]

I still know there's always someone who will 'should' me (usually a person who didn't experience that sort of abuse). One person even lays on the guilt by calling my resistance to use the word forgive as a form of what she calls 'woundology'; implying, I guess, that I must like the hurt.
[...]
And maybe just to, sadly, note that even a guided meditation can twist from its given intention sometimes--the speaker doesn't know all the ins/outs of what's affected the listener. And that's not a fault, just an observation; it's nobody's fault--and voila! perhaps in that sense I've just practiced an act of what is often called forgiveness? Or acceptance?...and then it goes on...?

Feel free to rant and be my guest! It's heartwarming to hear you! So good to hear that the very word "forgiveness" is used as pressure and "should" and that it is a part of freedom and respect for myself not to "should" but to wait if and when i really want to forgive. And i don't have to...

It's so good not being alone with this whole uncertainty - what do i feel, what should i feel, am i allowed to feel this or that, is it good for me, blah bleh. I'm happy to be a bit okay with me feeling what i feel and appreciate very much the possibility to rant here. Thank you! 

I tried a guided meditation i found on youtube - "Healing father wounds". I listened to it a first time without really wanting to go deep, so i knew all the steps that were in it and would not have unpleasant surprises during meditation. It was like this: finding a beautiful spot, sitting at a bench, meeting my father sitting at an opposite bench, looking at him, forgiving him that he could not give what he didn't have, taking the responsibility for my life and telling him he no longer was/is responsible, listening if he had something to say to me, saying something to him if i felt like it, letting go of anything i want to let go and then saying goodbye.

Well, i wasn't sure of saying i forgive; I mean: I am not sure if i can say it in a way that i really mean it, but i wanted to give it a try and see what happens. Well, when i came to the part with saying something like "I forgive you for being human and having human shortcomings" I had really violent pictures in my head of beating him and really hurting him until only his ghost remained. I realized it while it happened and thought of stopping the meditation because it was propably not intended this way, but i decided to stay with my momentary inner truth and not to change my actions, thoughts or pictures, because i wanted to respect the inner part that had this livid experience and i found it ok because it was only a meditation and not real violence.

It is quite seldom that i allow myself to be aggressive, I always feel as if aggression was a bad thing and that i cannot gain something positive from being aggressive. Most times, when i become aggressive, i dissociate and become anxious. I was quite surprised about myself later when it was over. But i felt ok, more alive, more joyful even. Certainly not what i had expected from doing this meditation, and certainly not very forgiving. I'm still not sure what to think of it. So I just write it down here in this forum.

And i am curious: what are your experiences with forgiveness and the process of forgiving, how did you start and what happened?

Good Evening, tea-the-artist! 

I can very much relate to you; I'm also having conversations with "imaginary others", be it people i really know but who are present only in my thoughts, be it imagined characters. And it does me a lot of good, indeed!
I can so understand that you are drawn into these conversations and I presume that they make sense. Some make sense in an obvious way - telling family members what has to be said but it's not possible to have the conversation with the real people. So you say out loud what you have to say, you don't ignore yourself,  you are true to your inner voices. Bravo!

There are (lots of) times when it is very hard for me to really connect to others. My internal dialogues help me a lot in these times; at least i am trying to connect to myself. And I succeed, sometimes more sometimes less.

My guess is that parts of you are very urgent, they want to be heard. So that could be the reason why it's the most important thing to do to dialogue with these parts - inner children. And it really is important to come on contact with all the split off parts. And when they are "sent off onto the splitting" once again, they may feel tremendously anxious and empty, so the feeling might transfer to you as a whole. Well, that's just guessing. Anyway: you don't do anything bad, you try to keep contact to parts of you that need it very very much.

Do you have people that you are safe with - a therapist you can tell what you do, a close friend, someone in your extended family? I'm so sorry to hear your shame and loneliness and what you are going through! Best wishes for being nice to yourself!
A

That's amazing. Congratulations! 
I have also had a recurrentbdream theme change for the better since I started my recovery journey. It's the most empowering feeling, isn't it?   

Yes, it is  It's great to feel change for the better! I was so glad the morning I woke up with a different ending and a different feeling!

That does make sense!  Also, I signed up for the e-course to see what I think. Thanks for the suggestions.

You're welcome  That opens up the opportunity to share experiences - If you want to, I'd really like to hear how it goes for you. For me, it's a great tool to build a "self" around all the sad, anxious or controlling parts that makes them experience being heard and being safe. And even a glimpse of this experience is really great for me!

Best wishes and thank you for bringing up this topic! 

For me it's the same - I'm constantly scanning my surroundings and am hypervigilant. I have no proof, but my guess is trauma is a good reason to become hypersensitive. If I always have to know the mood and intentions of the people around me, I train my natural sensitivity to a hyper degree. Sadly, I lose my own moods and intentions out of sight.

This said, i guess trauma also leads to concentrating on the dangerous side - if I look at people, i rather think of "what's potentially dangerous". I'm trying to think "what's potentially nice or funny" instead, because constant anxiety is not good for interpersonal relationships, though.

Dear WriteToLife,

I can very much relate to you. When I'm more stressed or more agitated, I wake up with more tension and ... well, not exactly a nightmarish feeling, but something a bit similar. More or less every day.

Recently I had a flash of understanding when one dream (that I had over and over again) changed. For me it has something to do with dissociation. I dreamt over and over again of moving from one city to another but could never get my stuff transported - it just wasn't there anymore when i would start the car or when the day of moving arrived. And then i understood that the dream was about memories, knowledge, feelings that I could not transport from one dissociated state to another - and I deeply felt i needed all my skills and memories. So the more dissociation, the more tension in my dreams, because i cannot get everything together in one state. When I got better, I didn't have to move anymore in my dreams, I could just take the cable car from one apartment to another 

So i treat it as indicator of my degree of dissociation and try to soothe myself - yes, it's hard be split up. I hear you and it makes sense. I love you and you are precious. And then i try to be a "bigger self" (like in the focusing exercises of Ann Weiser Cornell http://focusingresources.com/?portfolio=get-bigger-than-whats-bugging-you ) and that helps a lot. I did the exercises quite often for two weeks, and then I felt dissociation becoming gradually lesser. I'll go on doing it and see how it works out.

I don't know whether it fits for your situation, you know yourself best. All good wishes!
A

Hi wife#2,

you replied to a post of me a few days ago. And what you wrote was both to the point, heartfelt and very empathic. So I guess you already have quite a lot of qualities that make you a good friend  way to go!

As for your inner critic, it sounds as if you are already dealing with him. Perhaps it could help just concentrating on the goving part and not how it might be received on the other side. If it feels good giving, feels in balance with your gut and your values, then it is perhaps not so important to know in advance how it will be received. It's your own truth on giving this gift.
Don't know if this paragraph makes sense to you, both my thoughts and my English are a bit muddled right now. 

And of course: hooray for having those nice friends that show their affection in their thoughtfullness and their deeds!

A

HI woodsgnome,
I can relate to you and I wonder if you can post updates of what you found out when you tried, please!

Because for me it's also hard to become angry, it's an emotion that doesn't come naturally with me - I'm afraid, I feel shame, insecurity etc.
Except when i act out of control, then I'm angry but i regret it afterwards and I feel awful. It's a very disempowering state, so I avoid it as good as I can.
Hmmm... I never understood why people describe being angry as a powerful emotion. It feels like loosing control and admitting I have no resources left.

Hmmm. this thread makes me wonder what happened if I felt just anger without having to shout at someone or picking up a fight.

So I've talked about me because reading inspired me... let me see if I can reply more on topic to you.

It's interesting that you write "I've never been safe enough"... what would you need to feel safe? Is there anything you can imagine that would add just a small amount of safety? How far do you trust your gut and your T - perhaps sticking your little toe out? You don't have to go all the way at once - you know that of course, but sometimes it helps to hear it from others

What I manage so far is to say loud (when I'm alone) for what I'm thankful and for what gifts, events, days I'm explicitly NOT thankful. It goes something like this:
Dear ...,
I thank you for this and that, because it did ... for me or made me fell ...
I don't thank you for ... because ...

It works quite well for me to make myself clear what i feel and value ... and what I'd rather not have again.

Good luck in your ventures, you're really really brave 
A