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I like the sound of this book, WhoBuddy.  Added to my reading list.

Thank you 

Hi Hope and WhoBuddy,
Thank you for your encouraging messages and posts.

I am dropping by to say 'hello' and let you know that I am still reading this wonderful book by Janina Fisher, and expanding my understanding of my trauma by the day.

I haven't been well and found myself needing lighter reading for a week or two. But over the last couple of days, I have been getting back into it.

This morning I wrote several pages in my journal about Chapter 5: Befriending our Parts, Sowing the Seeds of Compassion, where I am now.

I read, digest, write in my journal, review, write. It takes time, but it's how I learn best. There is a lot to take in, but it's all so relevant, and I feel very comfortable with Janina's style of writing.
Sometimes I wonder whether she is a survivor herself, as she refers to "us" and "we" much of the time.

I think a lot of people here will relate to this feeling she states: "I don't know myself, but one thing is clear: I don't like myself."

This was me for most of my life, I hated myself at a visceral level, until I found out that I was suffering from 'PTSD.' Then I began to realise that my experiences weren't normal; they were abuse etc, and that helped me to have a little compassion for myself. But I still didn't have any external validation for years to come.

Others may relate to this statement also:

'The ability to be compassionate or comforting or curious with others, which comes so easily to many trauma survivors, is not matched by the ability to offer themselves the same kindness. What it took to survive has created a bind. It was adaptive "then" to avoid comfort and self-compassion, to shame and self-judge before attachment figures could find them lacking, but now it has come to feel believable that others deserve or belong or are worth more - while, at the same time, it feels that these "others" are not to be trusted; they are dangerous and uncaring.'

I had to behave 'nicely' to my FOO who treated me with anger, hostility and contempt, while hating myself. I wrote a lot about this today in my journal.

Most of my life has a surreal quality to it, like a hideous theatre production, with me staring in a role that was forced upon me, that was NOT me, with no one 'seeing' or 'hearing' me, the REAL me. Confusion overwhelmed the little me (or little me's - the parts) and I became disconnected from myself quite early on. A therapist actually told me I denied myself a few years ago, but I didn't understand what she meant at the time. Now I do understand.... I denied and disowned the parts that drew the most hostility and attacks, and adapted as best I could to the demands of my FOO, especially my F and M. No one was interested in the parts that wanted to speak up and express themselves, so they went undercover, and maybe some of them got lost in all that. By the time I left home, I felt lost. I had given up trying to be me and learned that you've got to keep quiet at all costs, don't have an opinion, agree with the other person in order to be safe. Great start in life, huh! (Not) 

Understanding what happened is part of the healing journey, and I feel lucky to have got this far, to be here now and learning so much that can help me rebuild myself and my life.

I have a sense of the names of some of these disowned parts, and I will go back, review and write them down. Then I plan to befriend them, in the way Janina explains.
This, I understand will give me a new inner resilience, making me feel safer within. (pages 77 - 78)

I recommend this book to anyone who feels stuck in their healing, and is looking for a compassionate approach by someone who really understands.

Fen

[sympathetically activated]

Hi Hope and WhoBuddy,
I am just popping in to say 'thank you' for recommending this book by Janina Fisher. I ordered a copy from my library, who (fortunately for me) chose to buy the book, as they did not stock it, and began reading it immediately. I will need to buy it as I want to scribble over the pages, make notes and reminders for myself.

Her words speak to me on every page, and deepen my understanding of how trauma has impeded my every day functioning and distorted my personality. She helps me find compassion towards myself, my discarded, lost and shamed parts, and most of all, gives me hope by showing ways to reconnect and feel whole again. She's expanding my vocabulary with new words related to trauma experience and recovery, which will help me to express myself better, more accurately, and clearly.

I am reading every page, starting with the acknowledgements, because there is so much nourishing, validating info in each one.

I learned something in chapter two (page 35) that is helping me make sense of my chronic state of being years ago, an overwhelming exhaustion and passivity in the face of a predator threat, following a period of prolonged terror and captivity immediately prior to the encounter. Maybe others will benefit from this excerpt about 'traumatogenic environments', where the threat of danger is ever-present.

In traumatogenic environments: '... it is more adaptive for both children and adults when their bodies are conditioned to maintain a readiness for potential danger.'

'These automatic patterns of response may be sympathetically activated (biased towards hypervigilance, high arousal, readiness to take action, impulsivity)  or parasympathetically dominant (without energy, exhausted, slowed, numb, disconnected, hopeless and helpless).'

There is a great deal of info out there about fight or flight, and most people expect you to act in the face of a threat, but that is simply not necessarily the case in real life.
Janina Fisher's work backs up Pete Walker's 4F's, and gives the 'Freeze' response even more validity, with her explanation of the parasympathetic response. Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with it, but now, thanks to Janina, I am starting to feel less critical of myself, understanding that this was/is a survival mechanism and served a useful role when there was no other option in my chronically traumatised (internally dysregulated, disorganised, dissociated) state.

I am in chapter three now, and hope to join in more conversation with you later.

Hope - you mentioned that you found this book triggering and had to read it slowly.

I have had to put it down a few times for the same reason. I have had a couple of disturbing dreams since I started reading it too, suggesting it's working on a sub-conscious level.
I do ultimately feel that I am in safe hands with Janina though, as her entire approach is life-affirming and validating. I think some of those little, lost and forgotten, wounded parts are stirring inside of me. The idea of reclaiming them evokes strong feelings, and the need to them gently back to life.

Thanks for posting Blueberry. 

This is a great article, spelling out some harsh realities. Emotional abuse is so often misunderstood and minimised.

[can't]

Hi Hope,
I am sorry you have had this unnerving experience with your GP surgery.  I think finding the right GP can be so difficult, and your story about being put on anti-depressants for depression when you have complex CPTSD sounds familiar. That's how I was treated as well. Like you, I stopped taking the meds because they did nothing for me at all. In fact they were harmful with their nasty 'side effects'.

I am afraid I don't trust medical doctors either. Because of this I avoid them at all costs. I simply do not wish to be misdiagnosed (again) and medicated with poisons.

I thought I was brave to choose to go back to her, but I was disappointed by her lack of bothering to read any of my notes, or remember anything about me.  It's like she didn't see me either, and noone in my FOO 'saw me' - not really.

I totally resonate with this feeling Hope. I call it 'blindness' and 'deafness'.  I used to get angry with my FOO, assuming they were rejecting my pain and suffering, just like they rejected me as a person, but now I have come to the conclusion that they can't perceive it, and are not interested either.  Professionals all too often seem to lack the ability, and the will, to do the excavation work, to find out the details of our suffering, how we came to be in this state.

It's things like this that make me feel very small and powerless and vulnerable.

I am just wondering whether there are any other NHS services available to you? One thing I did when I lived in London, was locate a Trauma clinic and get my GP to write a referral.
In the end the clinic wasn't that useful (long story!) but it could have been...  and maybe there is another service in your area that you could be referred to, somewhere more appropriate for your needs. Just an idea.... We shouldn't have to depend on our GPs, as they are, after all not trauma specialists, but general practitioners.

Sending healing wishes and hugs x

Hi Artist and welcome to OOTS!
I am sorry to hear you suffered so much in your childhood. Many of us will relate to that kind of wounding (including me). It's the buried traumatic memories that can be the hardest to heal, that can be the cause of so much seemingly incomprehensible misery. It sounds like you have lots to share with us and that's wonderful. I am of the same school of thought regarding the pharmaceutical industry, and the enormous harm they are causing people in the name of profit. I too am aware of horror stories. I am also aware that some people have benefited from pharma's drugs eg antidepressants, sedatives, painkillers, as mentioned by some members of OOTS, but I am also acutely aware that there are safe, natural alternatives which are being suppressed, banned even, with governments coming under enormous industry pressure to do so.

My recovery journey has consequently been self-directed, leaning on natural therapies for support. For many years, before I had even heard of PTSD or CPTSD, I used alcohol as a kind of sedative, to allow me to function in highly triggering environments, where horrendous flashbacks were common. I hated it, loathed the way I was poisoning my body, but thought there was no other way. I have since managed to move out of that. I am very health conscious and my life is totally focused around a natural lifestyle, meditation, wholefoods, peaceful location, no triggers, no abusive people etc.

I think it can be very individual and require a lifelong dedication to moving past it. Yet I also think it is a doorway to personal growth and finding a deeper experience to life- I didn't always see trauma that way.

This I feel is the upside of CPTSD; the silver lining. The personal growth potential is huge if you are open to it. And yes, life can be experienced more deeply, in a beautiful enriching way. This has been my experience too. So, in a way, trauma can bring unexpected blessings. Life has meaning for each of us, it's just that it can take a while to find it through the fog and pain of trauma. But when we start to feel our way there, it can be so rewarding.

Oops, sorry I have rambled on a bit there. No lecture intended.   

Thanks for posting Gromit. This article really resonates with me, especially this part on toxic shame:

'Toxic shame is a cellular, body quality of defeat. It manifests itself as squashing our life force energy out of us. We shrink. We feel like we mean nothing. We feel we are nothing. Typically it is our parents who dose this out to us, but it can be others; family members, bullying siblings, bullying school mates, partners etc... Sadly bullying siblings go hand-in-hand with parents who dose out that toxic shame.
Because a parent often can't feel or see that bullying, and causing humiliation to their offspring is a bad thing and should be stopped, it continues and siblings will get away with it as well which just perpetuates this vicious cycle.'

I've been gradually coming to the realisation that my parents were deeply unconscious during my childhood, and were not aware of the great harm they were causing me with their bullying, gaslighting treatment of me, singling me out of the three of their children. This realisation has helped me grieve, heal emotional wounds, and, surprisingly forgive them. I see them as victims of their childhoods, possibly just another line in generations of bullying parents. I always knew I would never repeat this unconscious harmful behaviour. Like my mother says, I seemed to know things from a very young age. I just can't help feeling sad for them, really sad for their souls. I pray for them now.

Kizzie said:

I hear you BB     That's why I think it took me forty years to understand and accept I was abused.  I've always felt  I would not have spent decades believing I was crazy if my FOO had physically/sexually abused me.  Although I would still have CPTSD, at least I would have known more clearly earlier on something was done to me rather than think I was the source of my own misery.

It took me the same number of years Kizzie, around my fortieth birthday, too, to realise that all this time I had been suffering from 'PTSD', discovered only by chance on a website written by a survivor whom I identified with. I had discarded the physical abuse as normal, and my memories of CSA were only tiny fragments, showing up mainly in triggers and EFs and excruciating re-enactments and nightmares. The emotional abuse by my FOO made it all much worse, infinitely more damaging to mind, body and spirit, as I became totally and utterly confused about who I was. It was as if they had turned me against my (dissociated) self, and I left home a lost soul.

PeTe - Thank you for providing the link to the  DESNOS paper, authored by Bessel Van Der Kolk among other luminaries. Having conducted a little background research into the WHO, I am beginning to have doubts as to whether it is worth my time commenting on their decision on the definition of CPTSD. In a matter of a few minutes, I found examples of poor decision-making by this organisation, policies that fly in the face of solid science, that go against the public interest. I wonder how much influence the WHO wields in the development of assessment criteria for CPTSD worldwide? Hopefully, less than it would like to believe. I hope individual practitioners/therapists/psychiatrists will do their own research and come to their own, more enlightened conclusions about the causes of CPTSD.

I finally got round to registering an account with the WHO and have been able to see for myself how CPTSD is being discussed and Kizzie's excellent contribution.

I have done the equivalent of a Facebook 'Like' to Kizzie's recommendation of including  emotional abuse in the definition. If other people feel strongly about this issue and would like the WHO to change its stance on CPTSD so that it includes emotional abuse, you could do likewise, register and support Kizzie's statement. It might help to show there is widespread support for its inclusion, even if they do appear to have made their minds up at the moment. I can also provide a comment of my own if I wish. I am considering it. Need to get the words right for WHO.

Kizzie said:

It surprises me that it wasn't included. As  many of us know only too well here at OOTS, Complex PTSD can develop from emotional abuse/neglect alone.  Perhaps it's that the World Health Organization is very focused on major political, economic and social crises around the world so emotional abuse such as many of us have experienced in our homes/workplaces/relationships/religions/etc may be too nuanced for them to take into account. 

It's alarming to see that emotional trauma wasn't included, given the prevalence of it as shown here at OOTS and through my own experience and reading of recommended texts.  It suggests that the majority of people entering into the discussion about the definition of CPTSD have not done their research thoroughly, and are/were ill-equipped for the task. It's a shame that CPTSD experts like Pete Walker, Judith Herman, Bessel Van Der Kolk and others, were not invited to take lead roles in such an important assessment, a decision that could, and probably will, have heavy repercussions for survivors worldwide.  People will continue to get misdiagnosed, stigmatised and marginalised as they suffer the devastating longterm effects of emotional abuse and neglect in childhood. The medicating of symptoms will continue apace, while they will be guided onto CBT courses (for which they should be grateful).

Yay, Kizzie... it's great that OOTS is being included in the WHO's conversation about the definition of CPTSD. Feels like we are part of something bigger, and have influence. 

I clicked on the link you provided and found myself directed to a page to register with a variety of options on how I would like to participate and details of the rules and regulations involved when you sign up. I was too tired to go through it all, and decided I needed more time to think about it. So I haven't signed up.

Hi AJ,
Brave of you to attend one of these large mainstream group 'awareness' training sessions. Just the thought of being at one of these events makes me shiver.   

I think it depends on the nature of your trauma and how much help you have had in processing it and recovering from it, how much healing you have done, as to whether these events are a good idea. They just could overwhelm the CPTSD brain, which has had a lot to deal with, and add to the trauma.

I've had well meaning friends give me books on 'facing your fear' etc but it's not necessarily about that for us, it's not that simple. Having read Bessel Van Der Kolk's excellent book, 'The Body Keeps The Score', it's clear that trauma changes the central nervous system; it becomes 'reorganised' and this is 'based on having experienced an actual threat of annihilation (or seeing someone else being annihilated)', which reorganizes the self experience (as helpless) and the interpretation of reality (the entire world is a dangerous place).'

I didn't even know I had CPTSD for most of my life,  and group meetings - even small ones - became trigger town *, until I read about flashbacks and the three Fs (later 4 when I read Pete Walker's work). Then I changed my lifestyle, and began working from home, and it gave my nervous system a chance to calm down. Can you recover from CPTSD? I know people can improve, and personally, I can say that since my epiphany and trying out different therapies and treatments (some pretty 'out there' types included) the quality of my life has vastly improved, and I have acquired an inner peace I hadn't known before. This is also partly due to having removed myself from triggering environments and leading a very quiet life.

I am wondering whether a more gentle, smaller group, like a psychotherapy group with an awareness of CPTSD, might be worth considering? It would be shame if this experience stopped you from growing and developing your confidence in self-expression and intimacy. I do feel that linking up with people who understand is empowering, whether online or face to face. I don't expect any understanding from my family or friends. It's easier that way, so that I don't get disappointed.  Hope you'll be able to look back on this as a learning experience. Warm hugs 

Aw PaperClip... I feel for you 

My experience of therapists has been very hit and miss, and these are (mainly) ones I've had to pay.

Whereas with the conventional route, eg psychiatrists, I've always instinctively stayed away from, knowing deep down that medication was wrong for me, and never regretting that decision.
I respect your views on that too.

Healing is a journey, and I hope you will find that now you are here, that road won't be so lonely and maybe we can ease each other's pain a little. We are all on it together. Welcome to OOTS 

Hello Hope,
Thank you for continuing to post little extracts of the book as you gently progress through it. I am becoming more curious than ever, and can't wait to get my copy.

I think I would feel quite emotional too. The themes you mention go to the core, right to the heart of where we have become wounded and disconnected from ourselves.

healing is the outcome of reversing long-standing patterns of self-alienation and building the capacity to love and accept our "selves".  When we reclaim our lost souls and wounded children, befriend them, and allow ourselves to trust deeply felt compassionate impulses, to reach out to them and build bonds of secure attachment, they feel safe and welcome at long last.  And we feel whole."

This made we think "wow", she gets it! She's putting feelings into words. If this book can help us to reconnect and feel safe within, that will be some achievement. 

I look forward to finding out more.

Hope,
I just called my library and they have ordered the book for me. I was amazed at how easy it was... I will just have to pay £1.50 for placing the order.

I should receive it in a matter of weeks rather than months, they said. Can't wait to read it!  Then I will be able to discuss it with you on here. 

Hi Rainagain,

It's good that you can keep a sense of humour about the ineptitude of modern psychiatry, and the draconian approach to helping people with CPTSD.

I feel bad for him in a way, nice chap and all that but he is as much use to me as a chocolate teapot.

Like going to see a chiropodist after a shark has had your foot off.

You've got me in stitches!

Yeah, it must be embarrassing working in a profession with caveman-like tools for treating people.

I don't know whether they still administer electric shocks to people. I met a lady the other day who has PTSD (rather than CPTSD) and she said she'd received ECT a few times in the seventies and eighties in a hospital in my town. She described how it worked and the effects, which seemed to be of a short-term temporary nature. Pretty barbaric, I think.