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It makes sense to me. An life-defining illness or injury that was not shared by others marks a person out as different. A powerful experience that cannot be spoken of properly. Feeling so different is like being outcast.

[not]

Thinking about my kind, generous mother, who home-schooled me and my brother, and how her genuine interest in our well-being might have affected me. I was never smacked, and on the face of it, great 'respect' was given to me.

I've been reading Pete Walker today, and I'm pretty sure my mother has traits of fawn/fight about her (nurturing so strong it controls or smothers).

I feel bad, as in pathetic and guilty for it, that I might have a form of C-PTSD that was not driven by beatings or constant put downs.

Perhaps my sense of self (this is what I am trying to grasp) was overwritten, not crushed. Subtle stuff. My anger was not allowed. I was supposed to be reasonable, grown up, clever. To have empathy. My mother approved of those things, expected them and praised me for it. I remember being enthralled, and I remember how good it felt when I succeeded in appearing to be more adult than I really was. I remember performing. Needing her 'respect'.

Does this make sense? I'm still trying to work things out, so if anyone reading this knows about non-aggressive (even well-meaning?) types of abuse, I'd like to discuss it.

I've heard it suggested that mania can be a temporary form of, or EF of the narcissistic defence (as per Walker's four types).

Thanks, really interesting. Perhaps more to do with what he calls 'Pseudo-Cycolthymia', a flight response which endlessly rekindles business after exhaustion.

I remember the comedian Eddie Izzard doing a sketch in which God hands out the sexual positions to all the animals (dogs of course get 'doggy style,' cats are indignant because they get 'doggy style' too) and when God gets to humans he says, "Any way you like -- so long as there's guilt in there somewhere."

Sounds like your family are giving you their guilt. Is BDSM psychologically interwoven with shame? I find the practice fascinating, exciting in fantasy, but haven't explored.

Beyond mere lack of self-esteem, it feels like having survived being pushed off a cliff, without a firm foothold from which to begin the climb back out. Now what?

That's resonant. It kicked in shortly after leaving school. My mother was depressed and I didn't know where to turn. Haven't since.

Lack of worth and sense of alienation follows me into the workplace. I dread it there. The strain of performance, not belonging. Never changed.

Rather than fearing romance, I've craved it pathologically. Stayed for 11 years in a damaging relationship because I my saw parents break up, because I have been dumped and remember how it feels, so to let that happen was unthinkable. I've tolerated so much in the name of 'love.'

Perhaps that is three things. I feel like the tracks ran out and left me peddling air; I am an alien at work; I can't bare to 'let her go'.

Just as an aside, I wonder whether euphoric, eager and manic states might not be flashbacks too?

Thanks everybody, have fun.

If the diagnosis feels right, and the evidence for the drug is good, I have greater confidence. I used to feel similarly to you, I'd happily take a one-off pill (like a sleeping tablet) but long-term course of treatment felt false, too much of an imposition on my consciousness.

I've tried psychiatric drugs --- the effect was not dramatic. They turned out not to be of any use. One felt noticeably pleasant to take at first, one was hard to stick at for the first week or two.

If you feel the doctor has a robust thought-process for recommending one (not just a general, 'here, why not try this?') then you might not need to worry about some part of you being overridden -- if the pill doesn't end up making you feel more like yourself and how you feel you should feel, you could ease of it again -- at least, my doctors have always been helpful and understanding in that respect.

I know what you mean, there has to come a time where we stop remembering and start to live with eyes forward (hopefully).

Just thinking about this idea of 'reconstructing', really. I know for quite a long time I blithely assumed nothing 'did me any harm' and I couldn't fathom why I was hurting. Something felt 'wrong' with me --- my fault, of course. But it was in those memories, which wouldn't quite explain themselves, that I first I began to unpick the threads and tell a different story --- one in which it wasn't OK that I'd been hurt and bottled it all up for years. Subtle things, on the whole, hidden between nicer memories.

It sounds as though you are able to infer a lot from how your dad is now. Do you have any residual wish to 'make him right' these days, a hope that if you say the right thing he'll finally understand?

Interesting stuff, Woodsgnome. I have also read how family-stress factors may induce asthma, that even in pre-verbal (and pre-remembered?) infant states, a disrupted family environment increase the likelihood a child develops the condition. But I think it is also a very isolating illness, and very hard to imagine from the outside (estrangement?). It makes us helpless, and it is always there in potential, as a pitfall, over the years (a trap, an ongoing threat?) so even without the interpersonal aspects I think it is a complex and layered trauma.

I think lack of reciprocation (one-sidedness) and unpredictability of flare-ups are both aspects of mental illness in others that can be most destabilising. I cared for someone with schizophrenia, which is why I say this.

But perhaps your son's repetitive and predictable discussions affect you in another way, by their very relentlessness?

I made myself a list of events and situations that I think contributed to my condition. It's quite long.

First is childhood asthma. Do you think this is likely to be a factor for CPTSD? I suffered a great deal, it would strike out of nowhere, and chest infections were also common and much worse due to my asthma.

I know interpersonal causes are strongest, but my illness was a constant worry for my mother, who was completely unable to assist me effectively. I learnt helplessness and not having anywhere to turn. I withdrew so as not to experience her fear (in some ways, she gave my illness greater significance than I did). She also had a strong mistrust of doctors, which I think I picked up on. Asthma became part of my identity, and I recall feeling 'weak' and 'different' to other children because of it.

Mainly asthma seemed inevitable, horrible, made me a problem to others and I felt helpless.

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. Why have they stayed there, floating on top of the hazier details of life, but also quite hard to look at clearly? It's in this kind of memory that the nature of some of my own traumas has been revealed. I needed to talk about them with a counsellor.

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

Hello everyone, I'm just lurking around and having a read. I'll probably join in properly in a while.

I used to have a bipolar type II diagnosis but it never felt right. I discussed this with new psychiatrist this week and received a C-PTSD diagnosis. It makes good sense. Over the past three years, through counselling, I have admitted to myself many of the painful events I didn't want to acknowledge before.

I'll look forward to getting to know people soon.

Merry Christmas!