Thank you to everyone who responded to my post. It is a relief to feel welcome in a space where people 'get it.' Sometimes I think the people in my life believe me about my mental health experiences, but most of the time I get the feeling that they believe that 1. I'm making excuses to excuse erratic/controlling/emotional character flaws or 2. that I'm blowing everything out of proportion to get attention. Just to be believed and understood is very helpful.
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#2
Please Introduce Yourself Here / I want out of the storm.
November 17, 2018, 06:18:17 PM
This is a tough post to write. I keep starting and then second guessing myself. I guess I don't know what this introductory post should look like, but I just want to start by saying I am grateful for this forum. I don't know anyone else who is going through recovery and I just recently realized that I have CPTSD, not that I am fundamentally just a scared/mean/controlling person. There is a reason why I feel this way, why I act this way, and I can change it. There is hope, although at this very moment, it doesn't feel that way.
I am thirty years old. I have about a dozen people who were once in my life, but who now refuse to talk to me. I wonder if my current partner of 3+ years and I are headed in the same direction. He keeps reiterating how embarrassing and exhausting I am. I don't blame him... Whenever I start to face my symptoms, they get worse, and fights and flashbacks escalate. I have finally started therapy, and I think that this forum may also help me to quit hating on myself so much.
My trauma was experienced in childhood. I don't know my bio father, although he lives in my city. First step-dad physically abused my mom and then disappeared. Second stepdad was a cheater, a convicted pedophile, and an emotional and psychological abuser. But he came back in our lives after prison because my family was incredibly religious and believed in redemption over protecting children. My mom developed epilepsy a couple weeks before he got out of prison. She continued to have seizures and was very medicated through out my preteens, leaving me and my sisters to fend for ourselves against step-dad's abuse. When they finally divorced when I was fourteen, my mom and sister started to have physical altercations regularly, until she finally turned 18 and charged my mom with assault.
I've come to realize recently that my trauma is perhaps more rooted in my mother's neglect than my step father's grooming and tirades. She often dismissed me as "too emotional" and looked at me with disgust. I'm fairly certain she has CPTSD, too, and she just didn't know how to properly nurture or soothe.
So there's all that. And it's not my fault. But it is my daily pain. It is never feeling at home or safe in my body or my relationships.
Here's to recovery. Looking forward to getting to know you.
I am thirty years old. I have about a dozen people who were once in my life, but who now refuse to talk to me. I wonder if my current partner of 3+ years and I are headed in the same direction. He keeps reiterating how embarrassing and exhausting I am. I don't blame him... Whenever I start to face my symptoms, they get worse, and fights and flashbacks escalate. I have finally started therapy, and I think that this forum may also help me to quit hating on myself so much.
My trauma was experienced in childhood. I don't know my bio father, although he lives in my city. First step-dad physically abused my mom and then disappeared. Second stepdad was a cheater, a convicted pedophile, and an emotional and psychological abuser. But he came back in our lives after prison because my family was incredibly religious and believed in redemption over protecting children. My mom developed epilepsy a couple weeks before he got out of prison. She continued to have seizures and was very medicated through out my preteens, leaving me and my sisters to fend for ourselves against step-dad's abuse. When they finally divorced when I was fourteen, my mom and sister started to have physical altercations regularly, until she finally turned 18 and charged my mom with assault.
I've come to realize recently that my trauma is perhaps more rooted in my mother's neglect than my step father's grooming and tirades. She often dismissed me as "too emotional" and looked at me with disgust. I'm fairly certain she has CPTSD, too, and she just didn't know how to properly nurture or soothe.
So there's all that. And it's not my fault. But it is my daily pain. It is never feeling at home or safe in my body or my relationships.
Here's to recovery. Looking forward to getting to know you.
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