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It was always the struggle (or fear because I never know what is coming) that was familiar and without it, who would I be?

Indeed, without the Fear, who would I be? Like digging a hole in the sand just where the waves roll up the beach. Every spade I take out comes rushing closed with the next wave. I've seen my Fear clearly for decades now. Many have told me, let go. But each time I try to drop the script of my past, the story seems to stay the same. It takes insane stillness to hear the change in silence. It is so very hard to let go of nothing.

But I shan't stop trying. Thankyou DV, for your thoughts and well-wishes.

Absolutely beautiful post, HannahOne, thank you so much for sharing and inspiring. And I'm impressed (and jealous? :-) of your wonderfully structured writing!
 

Taking care of myself starts here.

It's NEVER too late!
 
(I'm still dressed but am in bed... and no plans on going anywhere :-)

Thank you DF. You too, Happy New Year 2026.
I look forward to continuing the healing work we've all begun. This road is so much less steep with you and all the other beautiful people here.
 

Happy New Year to you too, Bach!
    

So tonight is just serious hang-out on the Forum. I'm really good at being lazy. I might go take a walk later. An evening stroll through Bourges. When I first came to Europe in 1991 I was (maybe like many Americans) just enthralled with the old houses. The centers of most European cities often have buildings that date back to the 1500s, sometimes earlier. The Cathedral in Bourges was started around 1195. So, even after being here now for over twenty years, I still LOVE the center of old towns. And aside from Paris, I never lived in town, I've always lived in really small towns or the countryside. So Bourges is now just outside my door. I don't think I'll ever get over the wonder of it. There's a three-quarter moon tonight. It's cold, but the bells are ringing, and I'm safe when I'm alone.

Thanks NK! All that really helps. I actually don't go to doctors, except for my kids. I don't like to recognize that I am weak or broken or need anything. I've never really bought into the western Cartesian idea that the body is a machine. Most people don't, yet doctors seem to just plug along with that idea. It's funny because even so, I've not been particularly kind to my body over the years. That's changing and it's a sign that I actually went and saw an osteopath. He was very gentle, but it did indeed hurt like heck. He said I should come back in a month if I wanted, no pressure. I immediately took an appointment. I've had off and on pain in my shoulder all day, but it's different than before. It's actually REALLY important that I regain a certain amount of strength there. I've got tiles and roofing work next monday, and the bank account is seriously depleted since Christmas...

I'm spending New Year's here on the porch. Got a book and brought the scrabble board if anyone is up for a quiet game.
 

This one always tears my heart open:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMIuuV05uc&list=RDvsMIuuV05uc&start_radio=1

Thank you, Chart— for sharing and for the gift of these soft, fat, flowing tears crying down my face.

   

HannahOne, Finally putting a name on my condition, Cptsd, was a huge help for me. It has changed everything. I now know what I am struggling about. As mentioned, I think my struggle got much more difficult once I realized all the interwoven aspects of developmental trauma. And as I started to link things up, and connect the dots, the conflicting emotions were terrible. I struggle enormously still. There's so much to make sense of and work out. But it helps so much knowing that I'm not the only one. Thank you for sharing your story.
 

Hello everyone! Thank you for your feedback (and thank you for your understanding about sometimes (often) not responding to feedback :-))

It's New Year's Eve and two feeble attempts to spend the evening with friends seem to have melted. As well, my son had asked me to taxi him to a town nearby so he could attend a friend's party, then called a few minutes ago to say he had found another taxi... I was kinda sad, but then thought that accepting what the Universe brings is "okay" too. I then called my two oldest friends who live in the States and left messages on their telephones... Now I'm watching a YouTube video about how to change the clutch in a Vauxhaul Opel Vivaro... which is the same truck that I have... and to boot, I had the clutch changed when I changed the gearbox... so why am I watching this video?!? I'm not Exactly sure, but I suspect something to do with Cptsd...

I went to an osteopath yesterday. He manipulated my shoulder and now I'm recuperating. I'm pretty worried about my shoulder. Eight years ago I tore a tendon and have never done anything about it. When I mentally collapsed in 2023, my body produced a inguinal hernia and this right shoulder started deteriorating. A month ago, for work, I had to move about two square meters of earth, wet, from one place to another place, and with that and other physical work, I've felt my shoulder just getting more and more "contrary" to my expectations of functioning like it did when I was 18... I've pushed my body my whole life and it's served me so completely, utterly and tirelessly that now, finally when it's starting to crack here and there I can't but sigh and ask what it is I can finally do in order that it holds on another few years. I believe it can, but I definitely need to change how I treat myself... physically and the other third, mentally. Spiritual care is also in order. All of it comes now, two and half years after discovering what developmental trauma really is, what it does to a brain, and how I can best manage the whole affair in such as way as to live decently and with understanding.

The thoughts whirl of late. It is a winter storm of light snow and heavy winds. I am in many ways living on an edge, precarious and thin. I try not to look down too much, but in the depths lie the things that I feel I need to face and resolve. So I am hastily trying to learn how to fly, having come to an age when my unused wings are no longer at their prime.

Tomorrow is 2026. At least for me. I have spent 2025 fighting, just like 2024. How is it possible to just keep on compiling information and understanding, layer after layer. There is no end, I know, I know, just deeper to go. The earth is wet, full of rocks and my shoulder hurts.

I'm two-years solid every morning, PMR (progressive muscle relaxation), cardiac breathing (just five minutes per day) and abdominal exercises (I use a method called Guillarme, it's French and they have resisted my suggestion to "go English" with their technique, but it's just abdominal strengthening and there are other similar techniques out there. EMDR. I've done it in the past and have begun a second round. EMDR is tricky and confusing for me. Part of the complication is that my trauma is "mainly" pre-verbal. But I'm making headway, like crawling into a dark cave. Going slow, but very powerful. I also do binarual sounds (almost every day). Yet, I still don't know how to organize binaural sounds into a "container" that makes sense. I just listen, and let my mind wander. I believe I could be doing more, to make the experience more efficient(?) but have yet to arrive at that point. I'm committed to continuing to explore all that. I think getting both hemispheres of my brain working together can greatly aid the processing of what happened to me.

My mental collapse instigated a total draining of energy. Even now, going on three years, I am exhausted nearly 80% of the time. I'm just shagged. I organize my life around one week taking care of my youngest daughter, one weekend taking care of her and my high school son, and one week where I am "free" to work, or sleep or whatever depending on the conditions of my bank account. I have been an "independent" worker pretty much since I left New York back in 2002. I cannot hold a job in a company. I have way too much anxiety to survive working with someone else. I can do it for variable periods of time, but in the long run I am just too stressed, and so I break out and find something else where I can be relatively alone and independent. This is difficult to maintain, and after a month of working in a team, with a group, I invariably have to take off a week (or three) and just lie in bed and recuperate. It's a crazy situation when I reflect back on it. I've only in the past two years become conscious of how I operate. Now I understand what I've done my whole life, the stress and anxiety around work. My limitation, what's held me back over and over again. My brain is just deep-fried from early developmental trauma. I used to to think I was down-playing something when I would attribute my behavior and life experience to my infancy situation. Now I know, on a deep visceral level, the chaos of my first four years of life has absolutely impacted every single thing I've ever done or tried to accomplish. Coming to that full realization in September/October of 2023 hit me so hard, I still haven't recovered. I am literally re-constructing the very foundation of my psyche... and trying to do it right this time...

No wonder I'm tired. And I constantly fight that inner voice that keeps suggesting I'm lazy. That inner critic is really a wanker. I'm much better now at just flipping him off and walking past.

And in place of all those things I "should" be doing... I cry. I cry while doing my PMR. It erupts. I cry reading people's entries on this Forum. I cry when I think about my own children and just how hard it is to be a child. I cry as much as I frickin' can. I want to express just how hard I have struggled to deal with Cptsd. I want to cry and be seen by those who do not understand (and of course, I don't mean here). I want to get the fact across to the people I run across just how bad it can be. But I don't manage. I've got a couple ideas, but it takes energy, and energy is in desperately short supply at the moment. One of the hardest things I know is to react in such a way that no matter what I do, the other will not understand. My mother will NEVER understand. She didn't get it as she was abusing me, why on earth would she get it now? I got a card from her today... addressed to me formally, plus "the family" meaning her grandkids. Nothing inside but a crap Hallmark card saying "Peace on Earth" or some crap and signed by my mom and my dad... My Mother is a moron. I tried to love her, I really did. I consider myself extremely sensitive and empathic. I know exactly what my mother suffered from in her childhood. I could do nothing when her emotions ran roughshod over me my entire childhood, her anger, her over-reaction, her ignorance... she could never stand up for herself, so we kids had to submit to her reprisals. Looking back, I feel just how pathetic she really is. And she hasn't changed in the slightest. Vindictive and unjust, she lashes out at all those around her for her pain, dressed up in new-age spiritualism and watered-down Buddhism, all of which she is convinced she understands. She has apologized a million times, but I've never once heard her say it without affect, excuse, and reproach. Honesty is an absent trait in my mother.

Sorry, I don't often talk about my mother, but the digging the past few years has brought some stuff to the surface I want to get out. Thanks for listening.

2026... hmm... more healing? And then maybe a little more healing? And after that? Maybe I'll try and heal some more... LOL

What Healing looks like to me: First and foremost, I want more Energy. Energy gives me Agency. I want to achieve things that I know I am capable of, but because of my Cptsd I have not had the force to do them. So Healing in 2026 means, to me, getting closer to my inner children. I have two: the first is a baby, new-born really, the little guy that was relatively "okay" but then started seeing things that weren't normal. And of course, the total rejection from the biological father. That he had already attempted to terminate my existence should have tipped me off. But that's the funny thing about kids, they are actually really quite decent at that age... I mean, is it really so extraordinary to just want Love? So that little baby, he needs love, Love, LOVE. The real stuff, the deep stuff, the light stuff, the airy, wavey, miss-you-already-love! And I'm gonna give it to him. I'm giving it to him this very instant. I love you, chart. You were/are one little bundle of goodness. And I love you. And it's not gonna stop. It's NEVER gonna stop. Need more? No problem. I love you. I hold you, I kiss you, I cuddle you, I protect you... I'm everything that your biological father wasn't and couldn't. The tears are flowing. They are for you, with you. You have EVERY RIGHT to be sad. I'm sad with you and being with you. We are one.

My second inner child is four. He appeared the day his biological father disappeared. Not an easy day. It wasn't a day. No one told him. Or maybe they did... You're not going to see your father any more. In a blink of an eye it was no longer an "issue". He's gone. What was never there, is now gone. Did you have to "move on"? Did you have questions? I know you did. Are you angry now? I think you are. I also think you have EVERY RIGHT to be angry. I absolutely agree with your anger. How can I help? No, we can't beat people up, though I agree I'd like to as well... no, we have to find another way, a better way, one that is good for us. What can we do instead? That's a tough one. I think we are going to have to do some work together this coming year. But I promise I am here now. I am "on it". I'm on your side, and we are going to explore this together, hand in hand. And I won't let go.

I'd better stop there. I'm already totally lost in tears of release. Happy New Year everybody. My thoughts are with us all. Much love and see you around :-)
Chart

< OOTS ice cream party. 

It really does look like that, I've seen the photos :-)

Hello Asdis, I'm here and I have witnessed your pain. I am thinking about you and sending thoughts of simplicity and balance.
Much love, chart

Now, I'm all alone in the hardest moments of my life and I don't see a meaningful future for me. It's been so long, too long, and I've had no enduring relief from my CPTSD. If anything, it's gotten worse in the last four years.

Hi Ray, Welcome to the Forum. I'm so sorry to hear your struggles. I'd like to give you my opinion regarding a couple questions and observations you have posed.

There is a general undercurrent belief that Cptsd does not get worse. What happens however, is that we become more conscious of what happened to us, and that realization is extremely triggering and can be a great cause of increased pain. For many many trauma survivors, there is a long period of coming to terms with what actually happened. It (rightfully so) remains incredibly difficult to realize just how bad things were. This process is discussed in depth in Pete Walker's seminal work, "Cptsd, From Surviving to Thriving". I don't know if you are familiar with his books, but if not it is an excellent starting point and even contains incredible insights for those who have been conscious of their pathology for awhile.

I guess my question now is if healing is even possible. I wonder, are there any people out there who have actually healed from CPTSD? What helped you? Is there any hope for me??

It it course matters what you mean by "healing". Healing from developmental trauma is comparable to other physical injuries. Healing occurs, but there remain scars. And often, the wound causes pain even after all has "healed". And someone who has lost a leg, cannot expect it to grow back. Does this mean they are not healed? Does this mean they cannot lead a meaningful life? Wounds, even serious ones, do not imply there is no longer meaning in life.

So, in my opinion, yes, there is hope for you. Please see yourself as I see you right now. You are here reading these words. Yesterday, you did not know what you would do or where you would go. Today you have taken a chance to reach out, question, seek, communicate, try to find answers to the things that are the most important. Why are we here? What are we doing? What brings joy? Why so much pain? I think many people just turn on their tv and ignore their pain. You have not done that. For me, You are the definition of Hope.

I could have died in my mother's womb. I lived in extremely adverse conditions for four years and then suffered the toxic behavior of another care-giver who was impelled to strangle and manipulate to ease her own pain. I lived in fear, anxiety and depression for fifty years. I searched the whole time for answers. It was a long road, but now I know. I understand the mechanisms on a corporal, mental and spiritual level. I've instituted practices that help me on a daily basis. I have a great relationship with my two youngest children. I have made connection and friends who understand my experience, as it is nearly the same as their own.

I want to improve, and struggle still. But now I have the key, it's called developmental trauma, and there are things that I can do. Ultimately, I'm on the right path and the healing has become the journey, not the goal.

Again, welcome. Looking forward to sharing our experiences and this strange voyage together.
Chart