Hello. I was diagnosed with CPTSD 23rd December 2015. The reason I have this is between the ages of 5 and 13, my adopted mother persistently tortured me. Thel trauma affected my education, relationship and impacted my adult life greatly. I am 51. I have had therapy which was very difficult for me as I had kept everything locked away from all people. I wanted to spare others their imagination. I am currently writing a book about my experiences as I was told it would be good for my healing and I must say it is helping although it is tough at times. The book will be made up of 3 parts, my childhood, my adulthood and my experience with seeking help and how it has affected me today. Thank you for allowing me this space.
Welcome here :heythere:
Hello and welcome! I am sorry to hear what you've been thru. You've found a group of people who can really empathize though - who can validate your pain instead of trying to minimize it or explain it away.
I hope you get the same sense of belonging and support that so many of us have found here. Thanks for joining! :D
Thank you Three Roses. Do you know for many years I thought I was the only person this was happening to! It was once I had been diagnosed that the magnitude of the problem and how many others were trying to get through each day as I was and do. Selfishly, I was relieved to know there were others suffering as I was, to be able to speak to people who understand how it is and share experiences, coping mechanisms and therapy etc is wonderful.
Hi, LittleBoyMe.
Something you wrote twinged one of my scars. That's the m[other] issue; adopted or not (I'm no longer sure which was mine, actually--although adopted makes me feel better somehow).
Anyway, it's always been hard for me to go there, especially in a culture that teaches 'women don't abuse'. This was so common in the circles I was in that I took to lying about the m and brushing it all away by saying she'd died when I was 7 and strongly hinted that I wanted to hear no more about it and would not discuss it. In fact, of course, I was grieving but the true cause remained hidden. I don't hide it anymore; try to avoid it, but I also no longer care what others think, as it was my experience, not theirs, and it's easier on me if I don't hide it.
Guess the reason I'm saying this is just to stem the loneliness you indicated you had with this. At first I was surprised, then relieved to find, since joining this forum, how many others were abused by those not 'supposed' to be of that ilk. In my case, I experienced abuse and molestation from both men and women at religious schools and a lot of my recovery/re-framing has involved those times. It didn't help that even after I though I was safe and 'grown up' I was attacked while in a park.
My takeaway is that abusers come from all sorts; there isn't a defined 'type'; which is alright for my mind's sake, but it also fed my fear of all people, regardless of gender, status, etc. That fear, despite having been in a people-oriented vocation, I find crippling (even in physical ways) to a point stretching beyond hyper-vigilance and is probably my greatest scar from those years still in need of healing.
Nice to see you here.
Thank you woodsgnome. The one person who I looked for love, affection and protection was the person doing the abusing, so because of who it was, I had no one to run to or talk to. If it had been anyone other than her, I could have run to her for protection. Once I realised the abuse was going to be persistent I told myself that I was unlovable. Even as an adult I see me as a child saying 'please stop hurting me mummy'
Like you, I have serious issues with other humans especially authority figures. After 29 years of marriage, I will still pull away from my wife if she tries to touch me because as a big adult, I can runaway