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My memory is appalling and it does bother me. I've missed 90% of my life. It is all a huge blank. People will recount memories to me and I have zero concept of them.

Bummer 

It is what it is, could be worse.

Hi Rainagain,

Do you lose time? Do you always remember what you have done in a day or night, or how you got to a location? 

This has been a major theme in my life, since childhood. The earliest memory I have of this kind of internal dynamic was when I was 7 and noticed that social institutions like police, child protection and the court system were completely crazy. In the years since I've driven myself absolutely crazy about this kind of thing and experienced huge amounts of stress and angst. None of that was productive.

Social injustice informed my life so much that I even chose to study it academically. My extremely well developed OC and righteous  passion meant I did very well academically and could have made an entire career out of it.

HOWEVER, as you guys have noted, there is a very toxic element to it and it is, in reality, very damaging. I, too, have been bed-bound because of it and any time I am becoming incapacitated about something, it makes me useless to effect any change.

Studying it academically exposed me to other opinions and a more balanced reality, and now my stance is actually acceptance. I can't control these things. Conservatives play an important, balancing role. There are realities to this planet that must be acknowledged and reconciled. We will never be able to control other peoples' beliefs, preferences or thoughts. It's not personal, it's people on a journey. I have much more humility and trust and neutrality now. That came when I accepted my own past, could see my parents in a new light, and dropped a lot of my judgment and hatred.

It was super hard for me for a while because I was working in this space and hearing all the time about abused children and teenagers and people in crisis. Because of my university study, I was acutely aware of the structural violence against poor people and the injustice of it nearly drove me over the edge. All of it, projections of my past mixed with basic compassion.

The core of it for me was this concept that I shouldn't have suffered the way I did and others shouldn't suffer. There is nothing to suggest that suffering shouldn't happen in this world. There's nothing to suggest that suffering is not possible to overcome, or that good things don't come out of it. There are some wonderful thinkers on this topic like Johnathan Haidt who discuss anti-fragility and the intuitive natural responses of people who are progressive VS people who are conservative.

The final part of this for me was discussing it with a therapist who drew a diagram for me of a person with three circles: child, adult and parent.
She asked me to list qualities of those three archetypes. During that conversation I could see that it is childlike to wish that social injustice didn't happen, and adult to accept that it does then act from a clear and balanced mind.

Hi Ellis,

Wow, you were so brave and strong to type that. Well done.

I've read that Nuisance prefers clean hair. It's very hard to treat even for families who are well resourced, with parents who are engaged with the process and really want to help their children get rid of it. Nuisance doesn't choose which people to come into contact with, and getting nuisance doesn't mean you are a bad person. Also, your mother must have been extremely sick and stricken with powerlessness and very ugly state of mind to react like that. None of this has anything to do with you. It was all circumstantial. This kind of thing happens to a lot of children and I know that if you met a child going through this today, you would know it didn't mean the child was bad. You would have a lot of sympathy, empathy, love and care for the child. You would nurture them, love them and help them. You definitely wouldn't blame them or shun them.

The only way I know to undo powerfully charged memories and compulsions like this one, is to access or experience the feeling and then hold it in a neutral, mindful space. Give it lots of love and space to charge itself out. See if you can access a part of yourself who is bigger than the memory, who can hold the space, and observe the memory and the feelings. It's like having two minds operating at the same time. See if you can just become an observer while it is happening. I hope this makes sense.

You have written it on here so maybe you are ready to speak to a therapist about it. That would be a good experience because there is no way the therapist would shun you, and that would give you a new experience about it.

If you are mutilating or hurting your head, could you wear some gloves to protect your scalp from your nails? That, again, would break the circuit.

I wonder if giving your scalp a loving massage every day, or having a professional person give you a head massage, would help to break the associations and give you a different experience of that part of your body, helping you to imagine it differently and discharge this repetitive energy loop you have around your head. You could massage your scalp while creating pictures in your mind about how it is nuisance-free, clean, sparkling, safe, nurtured and loved. You need to replace the pictures, feelings and associations. You might need to do this a lot of times.

If you notice yourself scratching: catch it, see if you can direct nurturing, loving, accepting ideas and feelings to the parts inside stuck in this loop, tell yourself why you don't have to do this any more, tell yourself reasonable and rational and factual things about nuisance.

I wonder if there is a hair treatment or scalp treatment or smell that would give you a different feeling and experience on that part of your body. Like a tea-tree oil product? Is there a smell or sensation that gives you the feeling that is the opposite of Nuisance? Put that on your head. 

I'm so proud of you that you talked about this and also that you got rid of it yourself - that's an amazing achievement.

My ACE score is 9 too!

You've made it to 50 

The higher likelihood of early death is due to the increased likelihood of traumatised people to smoke cigarettes, self medicate with drugs or alcohol, over eat or under eat, experience suicidality, be too 'triggered', dissociative, depressed, anxious or agoraphobic to work/earn money/pay for good nutrition, etc. All lifestyle factors. Decreased self care is the cause of early death.

Also, untreated CPTSD keeps our bodies extremely hypervigilant, pumping out endless cortisol and stress hormones, which taxes our organs over time.

We can do things about all of the above factors.

As mentioned, resilience scores are also important. 

It's OK if you have DID. It will be OK.

DID is an amazing survival mechanism. It's only really a problem if you have parts who are self destructive due to pain, or who argue with each other about what is best for you as a whole and who want radically different things. If you have parts who do different roles to keep you functional and safe, good. Not a bad thing.

Hey Wattlebird,

For balance to the thoughts or feelings that may be making you feel understandably rattled:

The vast majority of 'neuro-typicals' and the rest of the population is on autopilot, effectively 'missing' around 90% of their days and lives due to lack of presence, attention, or mindfulness. That is, they're not embodied in the moment but caught in mind chatter and engaged in automated activities, not paying attention. They have a common experience of 'why did I walk into this room/how did I get here?" or kind of coming to, waking out of a dream almost, when they have reached their destination in a car with no real memory of driving there. This info is from an academic study conducted in partnership with 'Smiling Mind', an Australian mindfulness company.

The brain is very overloaded in this current age - it has an onslaught of way more information and tasks than it is designed to process. Busy people totally forget entire conversations and agreements. I see it a lot in people at work and university who don't have CPTSD or any particular psychological condition. They're not dissociative, their brains are acting the way any brain would act under the circumstances of general overload. And we have not trained our population to be present and mindful. We're a highly distractable culture.

People with CPTSD have further complexity because the parts of our brains capable of being present and aware are further compromised by the habituated big sweeps of stress hormones that flood us, so we are more likely to 'forget' or apparently lose time. We possibly got in the habit of disconnecting from painful moments when we were young. If life was generally unbearable we would have disengaged to survive.

AND we have the added pressure that bringing our attention to the moment if there are 20 triggers in the one mundane setting, or bringing our attention presence in the body, can make us
vulnerable to EFs. Realistically it is intelligent to avoid what might be stored in the body unless we know how to stay mindful and observant rather than reactive and prone to being overcome with the flashbacks, emotions, mind states etc. That takes a lot of love and care and gentleness and patience and practice for us. If your mind protects you by keeping you a bit dissociated, and you have capacity to carry out tasks regardless, GOOD! Good for now. I commend that adaptability.

So this  "on occasion I can find myself somewhere or doing something and can't remember how or why I'm there" doesn't necessarily read to me as anything other than a perfectly reasonable set of circumstances and it really may not indicate a new clinical problem or marked, concerning dissociation.

It makes me think of expectation VS reality. I hold myself to this standard of how a human's consciousness should be and it may be totally unrealistic. 

Oh.

Makes perfect sense.

Thank you Boy22 

Whenever I acknowledge my CPTSD symptoms I get WIPED OUT TIRED.

If I stay in denial and focus on being busy I have plenty of energy.

If I see a therapist, write about it, or tune into the reality of it, I become incapacitated with exhaustion.

I've been diagnosed by two separate people, roughly four years apart. I haven't done much trauma therapy. 

Does anyone know the biochemical reason for this difference in energy levels?

Thank you for your kind and encouraging welcome, everyone 

Yeah, what the heck is with this?

I'm noticing it too. I have been for a few years but it's another one of those things I just stop looking at too closely if things get too real.

I definitely have Protectors. They're scary to outsiders. They're a bit toxic. They don't always see things very clearly or fairly.

I'm quite sure I don't have DID (although if I was the host, I wouldn't necessarily know even if I did, I'd feasibly be the last person on the earth to know. DID is all about hiding).

There are such distinct parts in me with different objectives and opinions. They have different jobs or roles.

I swing between distinct lifestyles and modes of being too.

Just today I was driving home thinking of a strategy to eat, because I don't get hunger signals due to too much flight or fright. I know I've not eaten if I get weak. Not sustainable forever. And the thought occurred to me: just pull up the guy who will make you eat well, let him be active. As though there is a complete self in here, dormant, who could take charge of it so 'I' didn't have to. That was a suggestion that came from inside my own mind to another part of the mind that didn't know that was a possibility.

Another EXTREMELY concerning thing is the memory gaps. Oh my God. I forget 99% of my life, distant past and recent.

And another is that at work I'll see I've done something but have absolutely zero memory of having done it.....? And I have maybe two or three memories total of being at work? I know  I am physically there, I have a vague, dreamlike memory that I've been there all year, but only a couple actual memories of things that have happened, and they both involve the same room upstairs.

And last night I looked at one of my old university essays from two weeks ago, an annotated bibliography that was meant to inform my research report. And I was reading it like, who wrote this?! I do not have the capacity for that level of academia. But this body definitely wrote it, submitted it and received the grade for it. But 'I' can't do it! I have an essay overdue now and I'm kind of stumped on this idea that it wasn't me who wrote that....

The more I write the more unusual this seems. Maybe I should tell Therapist.

Pretty sure it's just hypervigilance,

OMG I'm sorry that was so long.

So the things.

What were they?

My mother - FCK. I've been NC for a few years and it was the best choice ever. She keeps trying to hoover me back in. She sent this text message last Friday:

Hi darling, thinking of you, with love Mum X it's nearly Friday! with all these emojis like it matters in her world what day it is. She lives under a heavy blanket of her addiction and madness, and it's incapacitated her.

What kind of insanity drives her to expect me to text back and carry on like nothing's ever happened? She's so selfish and SO BPD/narcissistic. I am not a human to her, I am an object there to validate her. Bizarre.

My little sister is on the home stretch of living with her, a month or so before she's independent and finished school at 18. I moved out at 15, thus the late university attendence. The same day that woman texted me, my little sister made arrangements to store her belongings at a friend's house instead of our mother's house, while sister goes overseas next year. The TANTRUM that ensued. The emotionally cruel, distorted thinking, self-absorbed, ridiculous tantrum that spoke volumes about how she views her children. She does not want any of us to leave her, succeed, develop, be independent, exist other than to revolve around her destruction and just continue to cop the chaos and abuse and distress she creates. It's despicable and the polar opposite of maternal impulses that want offspring to be strong, independent, self determined, capable and happy. I am a parent so I am not speaking about concepts I don't know.

Every time she tries to initiate contact she forces me to be mean, to be cold, to be energetically violent, all over again. She knows I don't want to be that and she is exploiting the good will inherent in people, manipulating it. She thinks if she keeps making me do it there will be a time when I'm worn down and can't, and that is her entry point. She has lived her whole life manipulating that aspect of other humans and she doesn't even have it herself which is spooky and clinical on her part. She dosn't want an entry point because she knows, likes or values ME. She wants an entry point because she is a vampire and I am a pawn in her cardboard life. Without my presence she is missing a part that exists to satiate her sense of self.

I could block her number. I will. That only just occurred to me. Easy solution. She will go on a drinking bender again soon, so a good time is now.

Today I went to the bus stop and a man who was cleaning the area up said to me "You're XXX'd daughter, aren't you?"
"Yes," I said, instantly in my automated fake bubbly friendly persona.
The man said he has known her since they were kids, he saw her the other day and she's looking really well, she's a good person, none of us are perfect, how boring would it be if we were all perfect.
"Yes" I laughed, walking away.

I've had a lot of conversations like these about my parents lately.

Part of my new job involves meeting many professionals involved in a particular line of work, all throughout my region. This is a region my parents grew up in, and it's populated by small country towns, so everyone knows everyone and remembers everyone. The people I'm meeting are in my parents' age bracket and they recognise my last name and want to know who I belong to. They knew my parents as youngsters and all through their lives.

So it becomes awkward. The people want to be polite and discuss my family in glowing terms. My father is a common one lately. They will reminisce about him and I want to say: "Actually, he is an incredibly violent man with a major drinking problem. He's been incarcerated multiple times and currently lives in a bar. I do not speak to him because he's extremely unwell."

But it's impolite.

Sometimes I do say it. Sometimes the people have this whitewashed vision of my parents, and it's a wilful ignorance on their part, because both my parents have been very publically shamed, both have been to prison, both have acted outrageously and criminally and violently in public, both have been doing it for over 30 years, and everyone knows who they truly are. But there is this Australian apologist attitude towards that behaviour and those people, a deliberate looking away when children and others are being abused, and that is why it is so entrenched and hidden in our society. Australia is actually completely immoral despite its national mythology.
I am complicit when I go along with it, and I don't want to be. So I am, for the most part, risking the expectation that I won't reveal anything ugly, risking the social cohesion, and being honest. No, actually, they are not great. How are they? I don't know, I haven't spoken to either of them for a long time.

But if there's one thing I've learned, it takes a lot to fell me, and I always eventually rise in some capacity, even if it takes years. So I have that freedom. Freedom in the wake of total degradation.

These events make it feel like it will never end. I should save money and leave this town. But it's my original battle ground and I want to change it for others living what I lived. 

I hope this is coherent. Feels good to vent.

 

Just assume that there are trigger warnings in every post in this journal.

I'm having an argument with myself about whether to even do this.

I was being badly triggered at work (new job) and I became cognisant that my own body language and internal experience (armouring, hypervigilance, IC, perfectionism) was creating this awkward tension in the air between me and my new colleagues, but it also seems like I was the only one noticing that.

They haven't indicated anything but acceptance of me.

To define it further: they are relaxed, open and comfortable in their bodies. They are unrehearsed, authentic, uncensored and free. I, by comparison, well. I haven't relaxed since '83 (utero, if even then. Two attempts were made on my life during gestation and the pregnancy wasn't what you'd call peaceful, so I was probably a pretty wigged out foetus)

And that, there, is why to do this - this being the journal. Not the foetus observation, that's old news. But the definition of what led me to therapy. What it was that I noticed so starkly. In the act of writing I've clarified something already. I had a fake persona of a bubbly, exuberant personality. My new colleagues were the real deal. It became unbearable. I wanted the kinds of attachments they have, and the internal attachment to their own selves that they have. That inner security.

So there I was, autonomic robotised person moving around like the Tin Man, eyes dilated like saucers no doubt, amongst all these joyous, happy-go-lucky, rambunctious personalities. Something about it all was strong enough to push me into the dreaded THERAPY. I quit smoking too so I was missing old protection.

The therapist is free through the university I go to so I called her to make an appointment. Very easy compared to most attempts to access help locally.  I knew she was very experienced and had a good reputation. Downside: monthly sessions only. Could be a dangerous amount of time if I leave badly triggered. Upside: monthly sessions. A fair stretch of time between an experience of someone actually seeing me clearly.

I went in saying: I don't have a self. I need a self. She enquired about background. I said the sentence: two alcoholic parents and that was it. She knew within two minutes.

She drew a picture of a face, profile perspective, on her whiteboard and she drew the neck, brain, amygdala. She drew, for me, how CPTSD develops and what it does to the body. She pointed out that I might feel my body is relaxed or in its normal state, but to her it was visibly ready to fight or run.
She asked me to note where I was sitting. I looked down at myself. I still didn't get what she was indicating, so she explained. I was sitting with my body directed at the door, poised to escape. I remember laughing in a stilted, surprised, awkward way. She said that unconsciously I had scanned the room and found the best place to sit with an escape route, and that it had all happened in a split second below my deliberate awareness. I had no idea I had done that, but she was spot on. She said my pupils were dilated and that I was barely breathing. And yet, she pointed out, I was 'presenting' to the untrained eye as a person who was very functional, together, very calm, objective and analytical.
I checked in with my body and she was right: I was barely breathing, now that she mentioned it. My muscles were pumped full of yippy beans. I was very tense. That is a slightly heightened version of my 'normal' so I had not noticed.

It was mind blowing.

I've read Bessel, Tian, Pete. I knew this stuff intellectually. Sitting with a professional pointing it out kindly, giving me the science, giving me the compassion, was life changing. It personalised it and located it in me. It got me in touch with what it is, within me and my body.

She went in to great detail about CPTSD's neurobiological effects on the whole body. I listened, pretending I was hearing it for the first time, because in a way I was. A lot of my equilibrium has been conditional on hiding and appearing normal, so this whole process was agitating the flight/fight/freeze/fawn response even more than usual. This means I've captured a lot of that session photographically because I'd gone into that zone, but a lot of it was also me in a dissociated, dazed, incredulous state lol. Very, very dangerous to allow a person to see you. But I tolerated it because it was also amazing.

She led me through a breathing exercise and the weirdest thing happened. My physical VISION changed when I opened my eyes after it. Everything was brighter and I had better peripheral vision. Again, I hadn't noticed that I'd had literal tunnel vision earlier in the session.

So her idea is that it's a bad idea to even begin examining or attempting to process any memories while my body's so hot-wired. First thing is to calm the body, like Bessel says, so I feel I may be in good hands.

She acknowledged that deep breathing, being present in the body and yoga would be very uncomfortable for me. Yes.

I can feel the front section of my head being flooded with this force trying to make it stop, making it blank. Making it forget. And a strong urge to delete this. I wonder what all that is. I'm trying a thing where I just write it and acknowledge it. I'm having an argument about whether to do this. My brain is swiping itself out into numbness and stillness. Just acknowledge it and keep going. There is dizziness. Now an internal suggestion to go to sleep. Now a feeling to run.

The thing with the session is I went in thinking I don't have a self. She said I have a very well defined self, but I do have CPTSD. Her explanation helped me make the distinction, for the first time in my life, that the physical and psychological symptoms are not the same thing as 'me'. This is the opposite of disowning it but it's understanding what it is. It gave me a lot of hope and clarity.

She explained to me, without asking if these are things I experience, why I don't eat, why I can't sleep, even things like why I can be prone to nasal congestion. All those things are to do with the constant flooding of cortisol. Digestion, for example, just isn't a thing. Your body isn't going to suggest you sit down for a meal if it's under the impression that someone is coming to kill you any moment.

She said my response was normal and unavoidable. Normal to be like this for any human. How true and reasonable and comforting. This session took so much of my self-judgment and self-rejection down a notch.
It also kinda got me in touch with the long term physical effects. This would have to shorten a life span. All the chemical components and stress on the organs.

I was supposed to practice:
deep belly breathing
looking up at a point between my eyes to stop thoughts
alternate nostril breathing

She asked if I have fun. I said no. I barely understand the concept. She asked what I do to relax. I said I flop on the couch in front of TV and zone out (dissociate?) She said that is GOOD. To stop thinking, stop reacting. She said my triggers would be everywhere (they are). Her giving me permission to be distracted was huge for me, a game changer. I used to think I had to let myself swing all over the place and that distraction was copping out, an act for the weak. But distraction can calm the body which is my first step.

It's really cool that she knew all this without me having to explain. She knew it from her long experience, knowledge, astute observation. She did all the heavy lifting in the session, then she said I had achieved a lot. But all I had done was listen and realise and connect.

Maybe this is an Emperor's New Clothes thing and I think I'm not obviously hyper vigilant but really I am, ha!

She said showing up was brave. At the time I thought that was ridiculous but now that I have strong urges never to go back, I see what she means.  I do have strong temptation to abandon it.  It is a part of myself who has very successfully helped me by keeping a lid on all of this, and keeping denial up, and just protecting me from it - that part suggests avoiding the next appointment. I appreciate this part of me, I do. I may be ready to do this now though. I wasn't before and I'm grateful that the denial and avoidance kept me OK.

I'm the most functional I've ever been. I'm working and studying and the house is clean and things are relatively organised. I haven't been triggered into a dissociated freeze response that lasts weeks, for a long time. I don't want to risk that. The therapist calls the amygdala "Pandora's Box" and that's what it feels like.

My hope here is that this journal can be an anchor point for me so that I can continue the sessions and have a safe space to explore. I don't have an external human I can talk to about my true experience.

The second session was supposed to happen a week or so ago, but we had scheduled it at 12:30 (I am always in class at that time) and my mind thought the appointment was 2 (straight after class).
Possibilities:

• we agreed to 2pm on the day, and she accidentally typed it in as 12:30
  the same part of me who scans rooms for exit strategies, wants to protect me from this volatile journey, and sabotaged the next appointment by agreeing to a time it knew it couldn't make, then cementing 2pm in the brain so I wouldn't check

The second one may be far fetched but I don't know. The truth is I lose a lot of time. The truth is I do a lot of things and forget I have done them. The truth is, I was only vaguely aware that my body might be quite tense. The truth is, anything is possible right now.

So I guess that about wraps up the first entry but I might come back and write a couple more things.

In the session when she asked if I ever have fun or relax and I said no, she asked if there are any things I remember enjoying or that could be fun. It ended up with me agreeing to put on a song I like and letting loose, dancing to it, letting my body do whatever. I haven't done that one. The other one was writing, as long as it didn't become a chore.

If I don't do this journal, I have zero self expression. All I ever do is practical and achieving: work, study, home admin. If I do, I might get lost in the huge amount of grief and pain inside.

I'm grateful that this board exists and grateful to you all who keep it alive and safe and ready for the likes of me to have a soft space to land. It's brutal being alone. Thank you.

Hi everyone,

I have been here before but was too mentally scattered to intro myself.

I'm very easily triggered and trying hard to teach the body to be calm,
so I may not be able to read much on the other parts of the forum, but I'm about to start therapy and feel scared, so I'm hoping to be able to use this board and a recovery journal as an anchor to safety, info and understanding.

IC is shouting that I should delete this post, that it's embarrassing and wrong. IC does that every time I try to post 

Thanks for being here everybody and all the best