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Why do I do this to myself? So every once in a while I will look up my cousins online. I don't even know if I miss them or not. I barely knew them growing up. The only reason my cousin got in touch with me (after only meeting her a couple of times during childhood) was because she needed some backup on something. Which is lovely because obviously she saw an ally in me, but not so much because it would have been nice to have been contacted just because we're family, no?

So I started getting to know her a bit.

My ex was very violent, controlling and abusive. I turned to my cousin when my mother made me homeless but I couldn't be fully honest because my abusive ex was present.

My ex manipulated me coercivity controlled me to stop speaking to her. After I escaped I tried and tried to get in touch, to no avail. They'd moved home but she and my cousin in law never responded to my numerous messages on Facebook. I had an account under a pseudonym, no photos, so they might not have checked. I no longer use Facebook anyway.

But I was doing my usual today of searching for them online and I found them... and their kids... and it just broke me.

Because my kids missed out on having cousins their own age to hang out with. Because I missed out on having them as family. I do love them but I realised after my kids told me they're not interested in getting in touch with their cousins (why would they? They're just random people to them) that if I tried and was rejected I would feel awful all over again.

I try to be optimistic but they must have seen my messages. Surely? My mother has laid down so much poison about me that I know I'm sn outcast and I don't want to risk being treated like one, or worse, having my mother or her flying monkey relatives hurting me again.

Their cruelty, to them, isn't cruelty: it's perfectly justified.

I don't see why my cousins would be any different. They're doing very well for themselves and I'm struggling and hurt.

I don't know why I suggested to my kids to try to contact their cousins.

I just think that their generation has the right to start again but I don't want my kids to walk into a trap set by the elders.

So I'm going to try to forget them.

But I'll probably just carry on looking them up and wondering... do they even care?

That's a good idea and well needed. I will have a think about that.

 2.08am and again, not sleeping, took meds 3 hours ago... it's infuriating it really is.

I forgot to mention: friend did not have any reliving trauma from a different perspective experience at all, just random, completely irrelevant dreams.

Hi there, opening this thread back up because I've some experience of iboga. I knew someone who tried it for heroin addiction (due to childhood trauma including CSA) and it didn't work. Very high expectations, very unexpected results with a lot of pressure to give iboga a good press subsequently. I tried microdosing iboga and just one very small recommended dose absolutely floored me. It causes something similar to sleep paralysis (I can't remember the word, sorry) . I was trapped in my body whilst awake, feeling very, very nauseous, vomited a lot beforehand, couldn't function AT ALL. I also heard through said friend of an ibogaine treatment professional facing prison because of a patient dying during treatment. It's not something to be taken lightly and I would not recommend it unless you are very well educated on it and absolutely sure you want to try it.
You are promised an experience where you are able to relive your trauma from the viewpoint of a spectator in order to gain empathy, detachment and release. Reality can be very different and can lead to death during treatment, death by overdose afterwards by not realising how little of substance you actually need now (supposed cure for heroin addiction is not a miracle cure: those who have succeeded generally agree and there was a lot, a lot of pressure to say it was a miracle cure around 2012,13,14). I'm not saying it doesn't ever work or can't help, but it would need to be done in a very controlled clinical environment with exceptionally good aftercare, and proper bloodwork/blood pressure must be done first to determine whether it's suitable as some people aren't able to take it.

Benzos are so difficult aren't they? I had a fight on with the anxiety they caused me, I very much empathize. I honestly don't know how I didn't end up in hospital with my psychotic behaviour on SSRIs. I think it was probably because I was in a big city and also an IV addict. That seems to help towards not getting help...I guess I just blended in as another crazy addict at the time. Not sure if hospitalisation would have made things better or worse to be fair: it was a terrifying time and I ended up in rehab so it kind of worked out, for a while at least...
I get a lot of anxiety dreams too. They're really scary. Not sure where the line is between the two...
Thanks for your reply, Kizzy. Ugh, I've been on and off meds since I was 18 or 19 I think. I hate having to go back to them because of side effects and fear of dependency and them stopping working and having to come off them and the fear I will end up worse off than where I started before I took them...

I started thinking I'd been autistic my whole life so started taking online autism tests, which all said I was probably very autistic but that other conditions overlap.

I was selectively mute from as far back as I can remember, and no adults ever intervened. They thought I was deaf after I just sat blankly through hearing tests because I was too anxious and embarrassed to hit the table with the wooden hammer when I heard the beeps through the headphones.

I'm definitely neurodivergent. But my son explained to me that I was traumatized from before I was born, so I would have had CPTSD from a young age. And of course my mother did everything possible to make herself appear perfect so I was just considered a naughty child.

I do worry that a lot of traumatized children are misdiagnosed with autism, but at least if they have the autism diagnosis there will be things in place to help them navigate the world around them (I hope).

All my son's friends - every one of them has an autism diagnosis. Only one of them has no history of trauma. One specifically went through extreme DV in her younger years. Autistic or not, they all but one probably have CPTSD, undiagnosed.

I wonder if the UK prefers to keep its true abuse statistics cleanly hidden behind a veneer of autism diagnoses?

So many kids these days are diagnosed as autistic, when in fact the world itself is becoming overwhelming... and of course people aren't going to be able to cope with an overload of information and so much pressure to not only conform, but succeed in an ever changing, increasingly competitive, increasingly unaffordable world. Threats of war, so many refugees struggling to survive in a hostile environment, having fled war and famine...ugh... it's scary how little compassion so many have.

I was waiting outside a shop with my dog, for my partner to come out and an Afghan refugee offered me some money - he thought I was homeless: I was overwhelmed by his kindness. He'd lost EVERYTHING yet his compassion was greater than those amongst the locals who were campaigning to get rid of the refugees... making lies about them...they were generally very polite and frightened. I was sad to see them moved on to goodness knows where. Anyway... life's hard for so many.

Thank you for that article, Kizzy. It's well needed!

I finally got prescribed 15mg mirtazipine to take at night for CPTSD and insomnia. Prior to that I was prescribed promethazine 50mg which took at least 6hours to just about kick in, followed by vivid recurring nightmares and feeling drowsy all day. I feel exhausted all the time anyway, but they made nightmares worse. Prior to starting promethazine I'd been taking over the counter antihistamines (nitol type) which really did nothing. I wasn't sleeping much at all and when I did, I couldn't wake up in the morning due to absolute exhaustion. So I was very excited to try mirtazipine again after around 12 years as I remember they helped with nightmares.

Well, I must have remembered the wrong meds because my nightmares are worse than ever and every night. But the bonus is that I'm now not laying awake until it gets light every night, panicking and flashbacking and scared to fall sleep.

My nightmares have woken me up a few times but I've been eventually able to get back to sleep. To more nightmares.

The nightmares are more abstract than they have been previously: no actual abusers present, though representations of abusers are a thing. Which is a good thing considering I previously had a lot of nightmares involving my mother being abusive towards me in my childhood home and my psychopath ex chasing me. So it's a relief those nightmares seem to have stopped.


I'm not noticing the mirtazipine making me drowsy at all though after just over a week, starting to worry they're going to stop working like everything else always does. Last night I managed to get to sleep around 4am (which is actually good going for me) and managed to wake myself in the morning and not fall back asleep, which is unusual: I normally get trapped in nightmares I end up unable to wake myself up from because I'm convinced they're real and the need to escape overwhelms my brain's awareness that it's just a dream.

Hmmm.

I don't want to end up on higher and higher doses of any meds as I'm an ex heroin addict and obviously I have a very addictive brain. It seems to get used to meds after 3-7 days and ask for more 😔

Has anyone had any success training their brains to stop having nightmares?

The mirtazipine seems to have dried up my ability to cry easily, which is good in one way as I was crying over everything and anything, but bad in another way as now it feels trapped and unable to find an outlet (which I was struggling with for years, unable to cry, and my anger overwhelmed me)...

Now I just seem to feel slightly on edge, not understanding how I'm feeling. It's confusing.

I think it's helpful in some ways and not in others.

I can't handle SSRIs. They make me psychotic.

When I finished the first draft of my first novel, it was very kindly pointed out to me that the f word in its various forms was prolifically scattered over every single page... oops. I hadn't even noticed how frequently I'd used it. I was such an angry person back then!

Hey again Storyworld,
It's so good to hear you've only had one nightmare in the past month. That's so reassuring to hear. And feeling rested after sleep sounds miraculous (it would be for me, so that's also very reassuring). It's good to hear others' positive experiences because it gives me hope. I don't remember the last time I woke up actually feeling rested.

Hey, Nasturtium,

Thank you for posting about hidden brain. That sounds about right about trauma giving us a different chemical makeup so we don't get the restorative value of sleep. That's been distressing me since I can remember... I've always had terrible chronic insomnia and nightmares from a very young age- I remember many of my childhood nightmares too. That podcast sounds amazing. I've actually tried to draw myself without looking at the paper and I didn't know it was therapeutic...it was just to see the results (horrible!). I did notice that I hate myself when I look in the mirror when I'm at my worst, I barely recognise myself. But when I had a reprieve from CPTSD a few years ago (I was okay for a while, felt really healed) I actually felt self acceptance in the mirror. I don't hate myself in reality, not logically, but I think I have a lot to work on there. Thank you: you've given me a lot to think about.

I was just reading your comment NarcKiddo, on "war gaming". I do that all the time and it is absolutely exhausting. It started with planning how to appease my mother too. Oh, the unpredictability is horrible, isn't it?
The last time I had telephone contact with her, she answered the phone and started a tirade of abuse. I told her "this isn't working. I'm going to call you back" and she answered in a different voice, different regional accent, and promised things that never came to fruition. Both were abusive. I don't know if she was just being manipulative or if she switched. Knowing whether she has DID or not would help me understand, but wouldn't change that she abused me throughout my life so maybe I should stop trying to figure it out.

Storyworld, I really struggle with the worry that I'm "just making a big deal out of nothing" re. my mother, as she gaslit, denied, blamed, DARVO.Knowing about DARVO was like switching on a light in my head. It was absolutely real and very frightening. I think part of my denial was desperately wanting it not to be true and wanting to believe my mother had the capacity and inclination to change, admit, apologize. She doesn't.

I got to my doctor's appointment and my partner helped me remember what I needed to say. I don't know wht I kept forgetting words for things and at one point the room started strobing? Like there was a strobe light on. Which I didn't mention as it knocked me for 6. What even is that?
So he's prescribed me mirtazipine. I'm hoping that helps me sleep and doesn't make my nightmares worse.
So all in all it went okay. Thank you for asking me to let you know how it went.

It's weird: I can type about stuff easier than write it down with a pen. Probably because my writing gets messier and messier but typing doesn't do that 🤣

Thank you Storyworld.
What you say about feeling judged especially by male authority figures is very familiar to me, authority figures in general terrify me. I think the fear of not being believed is huge for me because of the gaslighting, grooming, abuse, being accused of lying.

Thank you for your kindness and understanding. Low on brainpower still. I will try to remember to write more after doctor visit.

Thank you all. So much. I can't work out if I'm bitter, furious or just completely heartbroken.

Ah, it's number 3: heartbroken. Something in my insides/gut did that desperately sad emotional twang thing in my entire body when I wrote it.

I don't even know if I know how to feel angry any more...I don't have the energy. I spent years blocking overwhelming sadness with feelings of equally overwhelming pure rage. I don't think I cried for years. At all. I couldn't. Nowadays I think I seem to be blocking anger with pure sadness. So many things that used to make me angry just make me cry. Which is definitely better than rages. So I guess that's progress.

My dog does this really sweet deep intake of breath and a huge sigh when I put a blanket over him at night if it's cold. I feel like I reckon he does when he makes that sigh, knowing I'm in good company. It's a huge relief to be understood, isn't it?

I alternate between, "I don't want to think about this gunk ever again," to, "Okay, let's keep working on the gunk to get to a place of peace and joy.

Me too.

Sometimes I actually wonder if I'm torturing myself by focusing on it. Other times I realise that it's in my head 24/7 anyway, so wonder if I can make myself numb to it so it doesn't matter to me any more if I write it down. That doesn't seem to work, then I worry I'm just reinforcing the memories hence making the flashbacks and intrusive thoughts worse.

I so desperately want to get to a place of peace and joy! I hope you achieve this, that all of us here do.

Hey Storyworld,

Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm a bit low on brain power to comment properly at the moment but I have similar experiences so following.
I was groomed to blame myself, to believe I was a nightmare child who my "poor mother" couldn't cope with. I was also groomed to feel that the CSA I suffered was my fault, that I asked for it, that it was because I was such a badly behaved child.
Those beliefs are so hard to change and I get a lot of completely random and seemingly pointless anxiety. Huge amounts in fact. Just writing this my heart is racing, I'm feeling dizzy and that vile acidic substance, whatever it is, is pumping into my stomach area. I don't understand what my body is trying to protect me from because I'm sat in bed, quite safe right now.
I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow which I'm dreading. I absolutely hate seeing the doctor. I feel ashamed, embarrassed, stupid, like he doesn't believe me, like he's not taking me seriously. I feel so stupid in his office.