I'm 55 years old and I'm not sure how this works. I'm trying to get my life back together after so many let downs. I'm good at helping everyone but me. I now believe it's because I never knew about cptsd until I ran across this site. I want to get my life back and have try ed everything so any insight would be awesome. I'm tried of the emotional Rollercoaster it's been. Just looking for support and help.
:wave: Hi jmena,
I am fairly new here myself, but I can tell you it seems to be a the right place for me. There is a lot of information, and places to add new information as it is found. The members here share info gathered as well as info about their personal journey with C-PTSD, and everyone can share and compare notes. Which, is a way to get info to professionals, and there are some of those in various places who are. Able to help themselves, their business or practice, and we all can both understand ourselves, help the field with the body of knowledge, and form a plan for healing.
So, browse the site and see what you learn new. Ask questions...someone will either get it in the right place to be answered, or jump in with a reply, or tip. Friendly helpful people here, who understand what you have been going through, that is so difficult to find. Maybe not physically close, but just that they can relate is a lifeline in itself.
Welcome, and I hope you find everything you need. :hug:
Thank you EmoVulcan I hope this will help me just so tried of being lost and alone I've tryd everything including suicide just haven't been able to find help anyplace. And this time of yr is always the hardest if I can make it through this one. Once again thank you.
I am 53. We have survived a very long time. We have thought incorrect things, because we were told and experienced negative things that validated them and we internalized them, making it part of our self-talk. This is where you learn and understand what is wrong, then the knowledge will at least let you know yourself better, and give you clues and tips to correct behavior we learned, but does not serve us anymore.
There were many words, and corporal punishment that are abuses, that we believed normal and accepted. Things have changed...for the better. :bigwink:
I stumbled on this site too, on the quest to fix me. I like the premise of self-help, but healing has not been found so much for anyone with ptsd, let alone the complex version. But, given what I know, and what has worked, I think some of, if not all of the remaining pieces will be filled in by sharing our experiences here. By us, and professionals who can better see the big picture that will emerge, or might already be here. It has given me hope when I had just about ran out. Nice to meet you.
EmoVulcan thank you again because it's coming at a time in need right after a trigger. And I once again wondering why go on fighting I want to but sometimes the pain is to much. I'm 55 and have no one to turn to or trust. I have 3 children ( 18-25 ) 15-20 minutes away but they never call or come by. My friends I thought I had are only if they need something. I'm a fighter because I've been on my own since age 10 not to mention everything I've been through. I'm trying not to give up. Thank you again.
The fact that you have been fighting and continue to fight for yourself is a reflection of self-love ~ thank you for opening up and connecting with all of us here. It's normal to feel unloved when those around us are hurtful or selfish in their behavior, but looking inwards, as you have done, is where you'll find that unconditional love. It may start as a seed, but it blossoms over time. It's so courageous of you to find your voice and reach out. Keep reminding yourself that it takes practice to undo all that we are conditioned to be, and at the end of the day being kind and patient with yourself is what matters most (regardless of how others around us are behaving). All the best!
Welcome, Jimena. :wave: I am so very glad you found this site! I have found it to wonderfully safe and encouraging. Like you, I have felt very alone and unloved and full of despair. Like you, I find this time of year difficult. The dark cold days. The family holidays that bring up triggering memories of my childhood.
But here on this site, I feel comforted by the presence of other people like me. I hope you will find comfort here also.
There is some helpful information in the guidelines for members. Please read everything that sounds interesting to you. All the best to you! :hug:
Thank you Trees. You've very right with the holidays coming it will be very hard for me to deal with it. I don't have the self love yet as Rehana was talking about but I'm also working on that to. Not having anyone else very hard just very difficult at times. Thank you again for letting me share with you.
Triggers are painful today and they suck. Not having anyone around or anyone who cares. But that's been my life.
So now I'm wondering why not end the pain and triggers.
Needing support please
Anyone?
Hi JMena, I'm a newbie here, I was coming into this forum to introduce myself, and saw your post. It sounds like you're going through an exceptionally hard time right now, and I'm sorry to hear it. The triggers can feel totally overwhelming for me, too. I definitely hear you. I'm no expert, but the thing that I try to remember, and that I have to tell myself a thousand times a day, is that what I'm feeling is *temporary.* Yes, right now I feel awful, and it also seems like I've always felt that way and always will feel that way, but the "forever and ever" part of those feelings isn't accurate.
Triggers suck because they seem so horribly real. My emotions come up and slap me like a giant wave and totally roll me, and my intellectual self gets completely submerged in feelings that seem so true, because at one point in my life they were true. I just try to remember that now they're not true, they're not an accurate reflection of my current reality, and if I can just hold on, and try to get my power back, the worst edge of it will pass, and I can think sort of straight again.
Hope this helps, jmena, sorry you're having a hard time, just try to remember that it won't always be this way.
hey jmena, just want to send you a :hug:. coming out of a week or two of bad flashbacking and i can only say i know how hard it is and how tempting to give up. but we are all here, all trying to go forward, and help each other as we go. a bit of support is often the thing that keeps us going.
so i am sending you some right now. :bighug: :bighug: :bighug:
:hug:Hi jmena, just saw this, and I am so sorry it is so hard right now. I struggle a bit more in the fall and winter, too. Gloomy, grey, cold, damp, rain, just make me colder, lonlier, and a bit exhausted with the overfamiliarity with the chasm of depression. I saw your three pleas, and immediately I felt you probably were in a horrible state of abandoned...I knew it,...
Somewhat difficult for the blind helping the blind, we still stumble around in our dark, and it gets oppressive, I zoned out yesterday, day gone...just like that. But, try to remember, someone will see and come..soon as can be. :hug:
Quote from: jmena on November 10, 2015, 05:47:37 AM
So now I'm wondering why not end the pain and triggers.
You really do not want to take a permenat result, in place of a temporary(and they are all temporary) challenge. I know sometimes to just end the twisting torment we experience...but we continue tormenting ourselves...but ending it iß ending everything, including the things we would otherwise miss. Believe me, I have been sprawled on the floor,screaming, and pleading for anything to make the pain stop, but also have been so numb as to doubt I exist in fact.
Lately I have taken to analysing trigger/response after the fact..get the gist of the ef and why of it, then brainstorm ideas to do things differently. I also am having some anger issues over recognition of how many times people simply cut off my speech, and dismiss me out of hand...I have stopped persisting, and go blog instead; well at least on occasion...always keeping in mind, people are freaking clueless most of the time...and that includes not really knowing or listening to "what is really going on" on all levels.
That takes hypervigilence, and I do not wish it on anyone else..(.please universe.)
There is no trying to comprehend this for others, they may have this same problem, unawares. Even well adjusted normal adults cannot really understand. I mean, I felt like my life was not
that bad.. In hindsight, I see most people do not deal with violence in all aspects, from one or two people controlling them through fear. I always suspected, though my experiences hardly support it, that people just do not go out of their way to destroy others the way the ones I found do.
I have had some very hurtful and soul crushing people around me...and they did these things purposely out of anger, or out of sick delight...hard so hard for me to wrap my head around. The truth still remains that they have no love for themselves, and often choose tyranny and bullying to build self importance. I wish I had known my college degree felt like a slap in the face to my ex, I never had a clue I was so intimidating. Now I realize that could be so for 80% of people all around, like i have something that was easy for me to get, but he never made an attempt, so it was my assumption, he did not want higher learning, it is expensive regardless. I did not finish my bachelors..priced out. I only have an associates, so its like I failed to launch for not finishing three semesters worth, just for lack of money...of course I don't need to finish...the school or life has been instructive about the lies we believe. But many would insist I have no ambition...lol if they only knew.
These days I love being a mystery, why not? I have been listening to assumptions, judgements, and the speakers tell me all about themselves, while they try to weave a tale about it to believe themselves are doing better than I am..no they are not. I am hurt, but they are delusional.
So, I hope you hang in, you will feel better again. Do something nice for you now, do not protest or raise an objection. picture you, doing what you love best, smiling while doing that thing you do. Work the details in your vision...say to yourself that is me, that is what I do, see that smile. .....I feel that. Do it every time you catch a sense of eternal doom trying to creep in. If you spend time meditating too, ideas sometimes pop up to get you from there to living that vision. This helps set a goal that is occupation (not necessarily employment or income, just what you love) oriented. I do this, and my goal is to be published. So far, I am writing and blogging, have a rough draft for a submission! And a lot of leads...I had not written in 20 years prior to the first time I did this. But I still have far to go, cannot keep schedules..grr...still get all day funks, and ef just undoes the reason capacity.
Still, having a goal is having a future.
Lambie thank you. I'm just trying to maintain day by day and right now it's very difficult for me this is my only outlet to kinda let it out and the pain I'm feeling is overwhelming but thank you for your encouragement
Arpy1 thank you so much you and I soooo needed to have that today.
:bighug: :bighug:
EmoVulcan thank you. The thing is that I no longer knows what makes me happy it's been so long since I've been happy I don't have passion for anything anymore & no longer really care about anything. I try to find something anything to try and remember but I can't. I'm kinda like a sailboat in the ocean with no wind I'm just drifting with no direction or hope right now I just fight the urge of ending it just about everyday & I'm hoping that I overcome this urge but then again why. I keep thinking god or whomever ever has a plan for me because to have a gun misfire 6 time's then the next morning it fire's outside with the same shells and it's not the first time something like this has happened so I know something has a plan I just hope it won't come to late. It's very difficult not to have anyone. ... again thank you.
Arpy1 thank you for your hugs they're much needed.
Jmena wrote:
"I don't have passion for anything anymore & no longer really care about anything. I try to find something anything to try and remember but I can't. I'm kinda like a sailboat in the ocean with no wind I'm just drifting with no direction or hope right now".
I've been in that boat, Jmena, too many times to want to recount. But I'll use the sailboat metaphor and hope you can feel it, too; beyond the awful numb giving up feeling I sense. So here's the deal--your sailboat is bobbing about, but it's still in the water. That water, be it sea or lake or river, contains lots of waves. You're on a wave that will, by its nature, change. Why? It's in the ocean, made up of all those other good, bad, indifferent and indiscernible waves bobbing your boat about on the sea. As your boat keeps bobbing, it will touch all those waves, and it's a law of nature that you will touch a useful wave. May you recognize it when it happens.
You also said: "It's very difficult not to have anyone." That one, too, is very familiar to me. Partly my isolation was my own doing, but I also realize it's time I stop the guilt/blame sequence, as like in the water metaphor, I'm downstream now, and what I left upstream has no more direct bearing on where I'm headed. I dip my canoe paddle in the trough of each wave, and make my way through...slowly, deliberately, but determined that I'll find the shore, even in this overwhelming gale.
"...not to have anyone," you wrote. Remember, you now have someone --those on this forum. We're pulling for you with a distinct difference; we've all been through that rough ride, too. And known the driftlessness of bobbing about, adrift and not knowing where to turn next.
May you find a course through these rapids, one that steadies the waters. Once the waters settle a bit, you'll be able to move on with the healing you will find is closer than you think. :hug:
Jimena, I am another one who has spent a lot of time bobbling around in those scary doldrums. Woods gnome describe it all so vividly.
Also, I know all too well what it's like to have no one. I really empathize with you there too. I often just have to hug me myself, in private, of course. Learning to love ourselves and feel compassion for ourselves is not easy for people like us. But we keep on trying. And we come here to hug each other online and feel a little less alone.
Thinking of you, Jena . . . . :hug: :hug: :hug:
Trees and gnome thank you I'm truly trying to look for the sun but I can only seem to see it for a few seconds. I've been fighting this for 55 yrs. My doctor ask me if I've thought about hurting myself I told her no that I wanted just to die and I did put a gun to my head and it misfired 6 time's. She asked if I wanted to be admitted to the hospital I said no it wouldn't do any good I've tried everything. I just keep trying to put 1 ft in front of the other. Don't know what I'm going to do other than try and look for the sun. This is helping me but it still doesn't stop the pain or tears from falling. I could understand if I was a bad or hateful person but I'm not but yet I'm the one always hurt and let down. Again thank you.
EmoVulcan thank you I'm trying.
Trying to avoid triggers but so had to do when most are in your head. Being alone for upcoming holidays are not helping at all. I'm trying to like myself but hard to do when everything you love seems to leave you all the time. So now I'm thinking it's me.... you have to remember after my mom died ( age 4 ) my abusive dad remarried and the gave me up to the state at age 10 I ran away after being tired of getting beat in the different foster home's. So yes every time I think I've found some type of happiness it leaves. So I fight the battle of not ending it every day and I just hope that I will win this daily battle.