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Hi Geeky Gramma, what a hauntingly beautiful poem. 

Your words strike through me. They are visceral, ringing out, echoing.

I hope those monsters are leaving you alone now. I hope you are OK.

Thanks Kizzie.

I forgot about the November meeting. Would be good to let her know we are still interested.

This is a subject of immense importance to the millions of survivors out there, as well as those offering counselling and therapy to chronically traumatised people who acquired CPTSD in their childhood.

I wasn't able to find the full presentation or an article about the study on the ISTSS website, and hope that they - or the researcher Lisa Hen Shaw, will get in touch and keep us updated.

Fen

Hi Londongal,

Welcome to the forum from another Brit who knows London well.

I am a few years older than you - in my 50s, and was the scapegoat in my family too, with both parents involved in gaslighting. So yes, I ended up very confused and full of self-loathing with a load of other problems.

Interesting to hear that EMDR worked for you. I haven't tried it.

My hypervigilance and EFs calmed down when I moved out of London into a quiet area, stopped working in triggering environments (mainly from home).
I have tried all sorts of methods for healing, whatever I was drawn to that I could afford. It's an ongoing project, and I am grateful for the peace I now feel.

I wish you well on your journey, hope you find the keys to unlocking the places that need healing, and share with us your successes to celebrate. 

Hi Petrichor and welcome to OOTS. 

Congrats on making the switch to participating. I have always found the forum to be a great place to connect with people who understand, and feel supported, and I hope you will too.

I know relapses are common and we shouldn't judge ourselves harshly about them. Hoping that you are having a good day today. All those steps you have taken recently towards healing are really impressive... I like to think of recovery as a personal project, a kind of adventure, as the learning and growing continues, and emotions are healed, perspectives open in new ways. It requires patience, but it's all well worth it to get to that place of inner peace and self-acceptance.

Hi Geneva, Glad my comments were useful. I was wondering whether you've read Pete Walker's book, 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving', as he explains the effects of growing up in a family that made you feel unwanted, unliked, rejected, emotionally abandoned etc in a clear, helpful way with lots of info and tips and recovery. I'm finding it very reassuring to read, another eye opener.

Wishing you all the best with your therapy, and hope to see you here again.

Hi Geneva,
Welcome to OOTS 

I'm from the UK too. Well done on finding a counsellor who understands CPTSD. My healing journey started quite a few years ago and no one seemed to have heard of CPTSD, including me.

I found CBT offered on the NHS inappropriate for dealing with flashback triggers (which weren't even identified as such then, just considered 'irrational' thinking and behaviour), and ended up stumbling from one private healer/therapist to another... none of whom ever mentioned CPTSD. Some even caused me psychological harm with blaming and shaming. It's hard to choose the right person if you are severely traumatised and dissociated (as I was) because your perception is skewed. So I would say, if you have found a counsellor who understands you and can help you progress, that's great! Go for it, for as long as it feels right.

I have since found specialist therapists offering something different, that helps rebalance the body as well as the mind. I was simply drawn in that direction, and followed my instincts.  As I slowly developed more strength and clarity, each experience contributed something of value to my healing. So although no one therapist or therapy is perfect and offers an all-in-one cure to CPTSD, carefully selected individuals can work on different aspects contributing to greater wellness. I hope that makes sense. 

Hi EPQ, Welcome 

Wow, I admire your courage to share your story with us in such detail. I know that writing about CPTSD-related experiences can be triggering for us. I'm glad you're here!

Sounds like you are hugely motivated and disciplined, reading good books too.  I recognise a few of those. I'm reading an Internal Family Systems book at the moment, which is very eye-opening and useful. I agree with Jdog about Pete Walker.

Wishing you luck with your novel. Maybe the storyline can be developed to become a pleasant form of escapism? I hope so. Sounds like you have a talent there.
There's a Writers Lounge page in the Community Corner/CreativeExpressions that might interest you. Look forward to seeing more of your posts.

Hi KnownUnknown,

Welcome to the world of OOTS, where you can have meaningful kinds of conversation with people who understand.

You did really well to study psychology to masters level. Awesome!  I would have loved to have studied psychology, but my parents discouraged further education assuming I was not academic, when really I was just very stressed and confused, and needed to get away from them! Then my life went in another direction.

My whole life has been seeking "the truth", and as I recall often drawing mazes as a youngster, I can see that this mind was already trapped and entranced (of course out of necessity) by understanding the incomprehensible family dynamics. 

I hope you find the truth you are seeking. I think you will, if you keep going, continue learning and developing. Slow and gentle is best in my experience, gentle on you 

Hello SOS,
Welcome to OOTS, one place where you will be heard and understood.   

I relate to those feelings of loneliness and panic you describe, the hypervigilance, the exhaustion of it all. And wanting to be on a mountain. Away, away from the triggers!
Now I know that it makes sense, because nature is grounding, calming, helps rebalance an overactive nervous system.

I agree with Boat about connecting with others who understand, although I've started rather late in that... maybe because I didn't know I had CPTSD until a few years ago, so didn't know there might be a whole community out there. For me, trusting that the right kind of help is out there, you've just got to keep looking for it, has helped, reading too, and of course, now....  there's OOTS, which has provided wonderful feedback when I've needed a trustworthy point of view. 

I recommend Pete Walker's book too. Reading it right now. He makes a lot of sense, talks in normal language and offers plenty of self-soothing, healing tips and ideas.

Hope you feel better soon and keep in touch.

[used to be]

Hello Hope,

I enjoyed reading your reminders  of some of Janina Fisher's earlier writing in the book. There's so much to learn in every page, and easily forgotten. 

I wish I had known this years ago:

p42 "Depression might once have provided a cushion against disappointment and being overwhelmed.  Hypervigilance enables even children to stand guard over themselves.  Numbing and loss of interest allow the individual protection against grief and disappointment: if you don't care, it doesn't matter anymore.  Anger pushes others away before they cause harm or, worse yet, before the survivor develops an attachment to them." 

"From a neurobiologically informed perspective, they are "survival resources", ways that the body and mind adapted for optimal survival in a dangerous world."
"

In a way it feels like an achievement to be here now, to be able to sit down and calmly read this book, and others like it, digest and learn from their contents. It's an achievement to have made it this far.

I have reached Chapter 7, page 126, with a triggering theme which I am having to go extra slowly with: Working with Suicidal, Self-Destructive, Eating Disordered, and Addicted Parts.
Straightaway, in the opening paragraphs, I am identifying with what is written, as if it is describing me, as my life used to be - and that's quite scary. Thankfully it is 'used to be' as I survived and have been in a long and bumpy recovery. No one else has ever described this set of feelings and behaviours as accurately as Janina. No one has ever understood like she has...  What an amazing book. It almost brings tears to my eyes    Perhaps I will post some less triggering extracts from this chapter when I have finished it. It's important to understand the whys and hows, to make sense of what happened, and what could happen again, although I think that's unlikely because I am more conscious and knowledgeable now, and have some self-love to protect me.

I hope to see some more of your insights from the book later, and Whobuddy and others.

Hi Laura,
We get that feeling of alone-ness here. Hopefully checking in and sharing will ease it. OOTS is such a caring community. I hope you will feel welcome and supported like I have done.

Fen

Hello Hope,
It's nice to connect with you again on here. I will look out for more posts from you about Janina Fisher's fabulous book in the Books section. I have been dipping into it again. I am up to chapter 5 on 'Befriending our Parts', and finding it so interesting. It's making so much sense. I really must make some time to find and identify my parts. I think a quiet morning would be the best time, after a meditation when I will be less easily triggered. I wish all GPs and trauma therapists could read and learn the methods set out in this book, or at least be aware of them, then they would be less likely to cause us more harm or misdiagnose us, as is too often the case.

I suppose it's natural to be taken by surprise when reading past writing now and again, especially if we have a strong inner critic. Maybe we got lost in our own little world for a while, like being dissociated, but in a positive way.  I think that happens to me sometimes, and I don't mind it at all. It's like an escapism. I always find your posts sensitively written, and you do seem to have a knack with words. Reading and writing on here can be a kind of therapy in itself, don't you think? Sharing is unburdening, an outlet for releasing emotional energy and having feelings validated. So important.

Wishing you a peaceful week of continued progress in your recovery. 

Fen 

Hello Hope,
Thanks for your feedback. I know how frustrating it is to want to get better, to sense there must be ways to heal, but find the door continuously shut to anything workable.
I agree that self-educating can be a helpful kind of self-therapy when you are able to apply learning to self, do inner work, and find out about methods that can help re-regulate neural networks and repair damaged energy systems.

There's lots for me to think about, but in the end - I need to think that GP's are just that - General Practitioner's, and not specialists in anything really.  I know some of them have special interests, but essentially they're gatekeepers to other services.  I don't have any faith in the availability of other services, where I am living. 

I think I'll stick to this forum, and my self-help books, and try to relate to my existing GP - give her a chance to get to know me, rather than project all my angst onto her - I need to be brave.  I'll try...

GPs seem restricted to their training and what their licence allows them to do; even if they would like to treat patients differently - the rules may prohibit them.

The leaps I have made in my own healing, ever since I became aware I had PTSD (then later CPTSD), have come from so-called 'alternative' therapies, especially modalities that address the unseen, and generally unacknowledged by mainstream allopathic medicine and psychiatry, energy body. Trauma displaces, disturbs, fragments and disorganises the energy field, which in my experience, hugely contributed to feeling dissociated and unbalanced, anxious etc. This may be a new idea to most people, so I  am just putting it out there for anyone interested.

Hello WhoBuddy,
I wish everyone one could read this book, not just us who are suffering  or have suffered at the hands of personality disordered or mentally ill care givers, but ordinary people.  So that we could live in a more trauma conscious society. I now accept that these (abusive) caregivers are likely to never understand what they have caused, because they don't perceive themselves as disordered or ill. But at least, we have the chance to discover our true 'selves' now.

I had known that I had more fragmentation that what some had tried to convince me was simply facets of personality. So that was validating. I felt comfort in listing the parts and when they were wounded. It was eye-opening to write about them as separate from me and to offer comfort to them. Something shifted in me for the better when I was doing this. I bought little stuffed creatures to represent my parts and this helped me, too.

This is comforting to hear WhoBuddy. I look forward to doing the same.  Now you mention 'stuffed creatures'... I have begun to wonder whether my two teddy bears (hugged regularly) are actually parts of me. I will find out more when I begin listing the wounded parts.

Hope - I am glad I am not alone in feeling like my childhood was some kind of theatre production. I think this book is so rich with info and insights that I will be dipping into it for a long time to come. I look forward to reading more of your posts on how you work out how to depict and connect with your parts. I think it's fine to have several books on the go at once. I like to dip into others aswell.  My bedside table is a heap of books!  I could spend hours in bed reading if I had the time.....   I haven't heard of 'The Silent Boy' by Torey Hayden. I'm sure you'll let us know if it's one to look into.