Messages

Dear Faith, welcome to Out of the Storm.  Your current crisis involving your husband sounds quite frightening!  And on top of that, it seems to have triggered the return of trauma from your abusive childhood.  There are a number of people here on this site with very similar stories.  You are not alone.

All of us here on this site are dealing with the long-term effects of complex ptsd, also known as complex trauma, and also known as developmental trauma.  Some of us take medication in order to function better, but others of us dislike medication or find it does not work for them.  There are discussions here on other paths of healing that have worked for people.

Does your therapist know about your childhood trauma?  Can you discuss it with him in confidence?

I do know there is hope!  For starters, you are a reader!  This site, and I personally, highly recommend a book by Pete Walker, "CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving."  It is a warm and compassionate explanation of many of the aspects of CPTSD.  It will help with your confusion about what is happening to you.  It will show you that you are not alone and that there is hope indeed.

Though the circumstances of my own journey with CPTSD are somewhat different than yours, I do know very well those overwhelming feelings of fear, shame, pain, confusion, exhaustion.  You are so wonderful to be able to care for your son through all of this!  You deserve relief.  You deserve to be well cared for.  You deserve the kind of care you give to your son.

I hope you will stay in touch here.  Big hugs to you           

Hi Pigeon, and welcome!  I am so glad you found this site.  We are here to share with each other our support and compassion as we deal with cptsd.  I hope you will find that being here helps to reduce that feeling of isolation that usually accompanies cptsd.

Our #1 recommended reading is "CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" by Pete Walker.  It is a warm and compassionate discussion of the many aspects of cptsd.

And it is a good idea to read the Guidelines for Members.  They help us all post and share in a supportive and compassionate way.

I hope you will find a sense of community here, as I have, to my surprise!
Big hug, pigeon, and best wishes.   

Dear awakening eagle, I am sorry to hear you are feeling so bad right now.  I hope all the remedies you are pursuing ("Meds, therapy, meditation, exercise, support group") will begin to kick in soon so you will get a little relief.  You do deserve some relief!

Like you, I find the presence of dogs in the home to be deeply comforting.  Caring for my dogs makes me feel like someone is caring for me.  It helps a lot.  I also take antidepressants and talk every week with a therapist, and those things help, too.

I hope you will continue able to care well for yourself and your dogs.  All the best to you and big hugs           

Welcome, cmkrohne!  I am so glad you found our site.  We are a group of varied people with cptsd who come together to share our experiences and discover we are truly not alone in this difficult situation.  We all have a long way to go, and we hope to do it in a mutually supportive and compassionate way.

Please look around on the site and see what people are talking about.  Read the guidelines for sharing, make yourself comfortable, and share if and when it suits you.

I personally recommend Pete Walker's book, "CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving", as a warm and compassionate discussion of the many aspects of cptsd.  Some of us do have to read it in bits because we do find some subjects triggering.  Trust your own judgment about what you are ready to deal with.

Good to hear you have a therapist, and good luck next week with starting EMDR!
All the best to you.     

And yeah, I'm angry at my parents, but I blame my sister.  I know that's not right, and cognitively I can see that my sister's behavior was part of a system.  But in my heart, when I'm not blaming myself, I blame my sister.  But when she started bullying me she was just a little girl, so what could she know?

Hi AtticGirl,  I am glad you found this site and I hope you keep coming here and finding community.

My personal experience is that often cognitive knowledge can take some time to become serious wisdom anchored in the gut.  For me it has taken occasionally years for things I knew in my head to become things I understood in my gut.

I recommend Pete Walker's book, "CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving", and his discussion of siblings trying to learn how to survive in a household with not enough caring to go around.  It's sort of a "Lord of the Flies" situation for all the little kids trapped that way.

What a very difficult situation to deal with!  Keep reading.  I think you are on the right track.

Best wishes to you as you work your way through this pain, and big hugs:         

CPTSD has devastated my life in every way,there is nothing it hasn't touched. Nothing that it hasn't destroyed.

But I am still here,it hasn't destroyed me.

Me too, Alice, me too.  You are in the right place here.  What a fighter you are !

Keep going, Alice.  And keep coming here to OOTS.       

DaisyMae, here at OOTS we are all of us working at reparenting ourselves.  Yes, it is hard!  But here at least, among the rest of us (lots of whom are plenty older than you!), I hope you will find that feeling of humiliation slipping away from you.  I hope you will find some comfort and peace here.   

Dear Southbound and Gabrielle, same for me....I am officially mentally disabled and I am extremely alone in life.  I do so identify with the stories you two tell.

You folks are courageous, you are articulate, and I am so grateful to you both for your honesty.  It makes me feel less alone, it lifts my heart.

Big hugs           

WG, I have had some rocky experiences with therapists over the years, but currently I am doing phone sessions with someone who specializes in cptsd.  I have never met this person in person, and that actually works really well for me.  I am usually intimidated by a real live person in the same room with me, so a phone session  is a calmer situation for me.

Kubali, I enjoy your enthusiasm so much!  Like you, I am extremely grateful for the internet and how it has reduced my isolation and loneliness.

Like Southbound, however, I did live a lot of years unconnected and floundering in the Abyss.  Living with that kind of despair and desperation can be indescribably difficult, as I know firsthand.

Dear Southbound, there are many of us out here like you.  I send hugs to you for all these years you have been doing your best!               I know what it is like to spend an entire lifetime feeling Unacceptable.   I know what it is like to try one's best year after year and still have little or no success to show for it.  It is quite tiring and takes a lot of courage.

(Did your GC brother really let you pay for all the day trips and meals?   Appalling.)

We are not the people that our FOOs defined us to be.   If you will excuse my language, F*** the FOOs!  Them and all their ignorant disturbed scapegoating cruelty.

Please let's not believe that lovability depends upon lifestyle, or upon accomplishments or upon land purchased.   As Rain reminded me once, Jesus was homeless.  A lack of visible success does not imply a lack of lovability.

Southbound, I am so glad you are here on this site finding out that you are Totally Acceptable and Totally Lovable.   

Dear Nea, like some of the others who responded to you, I do think there is a lot of reading material that can help you discover the details of what you are dealing with.  Reading around on this website is a great way to feel less alone and less strange.

And I agree that Pete Walker's book, From Surviving to Thriving, is full of information and compassionate ways to care for yourself.

If reading doesn't work for you, there are a lot of videos all over the web about different aspects of cptsd.  Look here on this website for recommendations for these other sorts of sites.

Big hugs to you, Nea           

Does anyone else here have parts or people in there head..,,.? I'm wondering if CPTSD is enough to explain my brain or if I have DID or DDnos-the thing is my parts don't completely take over and I don't lose time .

Yes, me too, Kittylover, me too.  I felt like I was full of parts of people, all grinding against each other like shards of broken china.  I felt unable to rein in all my various parts into one cohesive self.  I felt I didn't know who I would be from one moment to the next.  But I was still present, somewhere in the background, and I didn't lose time.

As you can see from all your replies, it is actually quite common.

And, for me, that feeling has faded quite a bit, with time and gentle therapy.

All the best to you as you steer your way through this stuff.           

I take fluoxetine to sleep.  It relaxes me so I can go to sleep and then it represses REM sleep, which is not a good thing for everyone, but for me it is a huge blessing to be able to sleep without nightmares or thinking-in-my-sleep.  Some people do need to have dreaming suppressed so they can get some rest at all.  I have heard this about some military cases of ptsd, too.

If I turn off my alarm in the morning and let myself go back to sleep, then I usually have disturbing dreams.  And some years ago, when I was far worse, I was so afraid of morning nightmares that I always just popped out of bed the second I woke up.

Some people say that fluoxetine must be taken in the morning because it keeps you awake, but for me it is quite the opposite.  And for me there have been no side effects.

Welcome Delema,  I am sorry you are having a hard time but your experiences will sound familiar to many of us here. 

Like you, I've had lots of flashbacks of emotions rather than visions.  I spent a long time drowning in terror reliving the emotions of my childhood.  It has become easier with the passage of time.

Please try to take as good care of yourself as possible.  Try to eat good food and get exercise if you can manage it.  I recommend Pete Walker's book, "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving."  It has helped me a lot to understand that there are many people like us out there.  It has helped me find meaning in my experiences and to understand how important it is to learn to love and care for the abused child within my soul.

I hope you will stay with us here and join us as we try to help and comfort each other.  All the best to you and hugs, too            

Oh PaintedBlack, this post of yours, so open and vulnerable, brought tears to my eyes.  I do so identify with those fears of yours.  I am so glad you are here!      :big hug:

No matter how much you share, I am glad you are here.

And I don't see how offering lots of encouragement could be a bad thing, ever, dear PB !