Messages

Elemey - I read every word of your post. I'm so sorry you went through all that! Being heard, responded to supportively, and validated has been part of the healing process for me. No one judges here. It's my hope that you'll find courage to tell more of your story and say who you really are and find your path of Healing, starting here, with people who understand.

Thank you for reading that. I am too! haha, I really wish somedays I could go back and erase it, but I guess I wish more that in those moments I loved myself more at least. Or, I do wish others loved me more too. :/  That's really really great. I hope to interact more with this community and be apart of the support too. I'm still learning quite a bit and trying to balance my schedule together. I'm excited to grow, learn, and to heal, especially with others who get it.

Your story is heartbreaking, Elemey. I'm so sorry you went through all that.

Thank you for sharing. I know that posting publicly can feel a bit weird at first, but I hope it's helped.

Hey, thank you very much for reading! It actually helped a TON. I read it and really absorbed it and to myself I went, "holy crap. if I met a kid going through what I went through I'd do nothing else than to give her/him a hug.. It was heartbreaking and then really relieving because I learned that it's extremely important to heal. To learn myself inside out and to take care of that kid so that she can grow into what she's always wanted to. I'm going to really put efforts into myself and to the community around me with love. I really want to break the cycle of trauma and pain.

Elemey, I read your post. I hear you. You have been though so much. When I read that you moved in with a friend your senior year, I held my breath, hoping you received care. So sad that the move resulted in more trauma.

You asked how you heal and get the life you want. That is a big question. I am still on the journey, but for me; being heard, seen, and believed is huge.

Hey, thank you very much for taking that time to read my story. As I grew up in life, I really didn't know what care was, I didn't think it belonged to me, and in my head I focused on others whenever I was around them, hoping they would never have to go through what I went through, and then secretly suffering and hoping I would die every day. It's not a fun or productive way to live, I do have to admit now. All of this, I haven't written or have been on the computer since I've been busy with appointments and figuring out myself more and more, I decided to really devote myself to really owning everything I am. My emotions, the feelings I have throughout my whole body, my mind. It's been an extremely challenging process, but so far... already I have seen huge results. I've been practicing yoga everyday now for this week, and my body is way more easily able to relax when I need it to, I've been allowing my emotions through and pinpointing where they are coming from. I've been eyeing myself like an eagle. Making sure I understand every part of me. I think that's the first step I've noticed to heal. And you are right. The only way I'm actually heard, seen, and believed is when I'm being completely honest and loving to myself. I hope to keep learning, to keep my mindfulness strong,, to keep going with therapy, and to keep connecting with you all here. ^^

HI Elemey and a warm welcome to OOTS    It can be scary to be diagnosed with CPTSD but many of us found it was a huge relief too because we finally knew what was making us feel the way we do.

I personally hid some of my symptoms for decades as I felt if I told anyone, including T's I would find out I was really unwell. How do you explain being triggered by something seemingly innocuous and having an emotional flashback? Back then no-one knew much about CPTSD including relational trauma survivors so we were wandering around in the dark basically.  Here we can just talk about things and members just get it which is a huge relief and helps make our symptoms so much more 'normal' - a normal response to trauma that is.

I hope you find the information and support helpful 

Hi~ Thank you very much for your kind words You are very right. It's been the longest journey feeling insane and hiding everything because I didn't understand anything I was going through. I felt maybe I was over exaggerating, weak, or anything really negative, but they were all legit coping mechanisms that worked and kept me alive and going as a kid. Now that I have this community here and an opportunity to have my eyes opened. I am going to heal and hopefully help others with the same issues. I've been trying tons of things and really really listening to my body and my mind so that by the end of the day I can say to God that I owned everything I gave and experienced. It's been extremely helpful and with more people to talk to, to love and to share experiences... it's been a hope I've never thought I would be able to get So thank you and I hope to hear from you and everyone here more as we go down this journey together. 

Hi Elemey, and welcome!

Sorry to hear you had such a rough time that you went to the hospital, but it sounds like you're on a much better path now, so that's good. I hope things go well for you with the therapist and such. All the best on your healing journey.

Hey, thank you for that. It's a much much better path right now. I've been extremely focused on healing and everyday claiming my mind and emotions. So far, it's been extremely beneficial and challenging, but at the same time, it's worth every effort and I've shifted getting upset at the challenge to taking an opportunity to try and win every battle. I didn't realize how much I needed help, and before I was always terrified and nervous of people. I still have it, but now I'm aware of it. So my awareness of myself is becoming way more awake! Thank you very much for your kind words. I'm ready to heal and to put now my debilitating habits into healthy ones.

Elemey,

Thank you for sharing your story. I can just feel the pain you are describing and carrying. I hope this forum will provide you some type of opportunity to heal.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read it. I really really want to heal, and I hope I can learn this forum well and use it to the best of my abilities. Thank you.

Elemey,

I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing your story here.

I'm still learning how to use this website! Thank you for reading.

~~TW~~
And a kind of long one?

This is strange journaling publicly, or really doing any of this publicly. I've usually been a private person when it comes to how I really feel or see the world. I only try and express my hopeful thoughts but internally I have the negativity screaming over or laughing at myself, wondering if I'll ever get to experience that hope I pour into people. Today was a really okay day. It's been a bit confusing.. so I'll start from a brief summary of where I'm at.. to kind of get a grip over what I'm dealing with and there's a right for it to be utterly confusing.

This all really started before I was a wee one. I was sexually abused by my father, my kindergarten/first grade "friend"'s father, emotionally, physically abused by them.. my father was an alcoholic for a while, my mom I believe has bipolar schizophrenia, or some sort of disorder that I don't know about. I grew up in a family that had 7 kids, me being the third oldest. I had lots of fights, dysfunction, there was incest that happened from some of my siblings and myself, probably due to the raping my dad was doing on us girls. I was the adult whenever I was with my mom, there's actually a ton of horrible things that would take a novel to write down where my memories stem from. Not a day went by in that household where I felt safe. Where I knew what was going to happen the next day. I started thinking of suicide from the age of 2nd grade when I first learned I couldn't hug my mother, and I couldn't depend on anyone. We moved from Colorado to Montana, and I had to then always say goodbye to friends whenever I got the chance to gain them. I watched as my parents constantly screamed and were physically violent to each other. I listened to my mom tell me all the horrible things my dad did to her in bed during late nights, she gave me weird drives and fed me ice cream... I didn't know I was her therapist at the time.. in 4th grade I don't think you would. I remember we moved a ton through Montana, and then finally my parents decided to buy a home. My parents split when I was in 5th grade. The house was foreclosed and I remember hiding under the table as the cops banged on the door and my mom screaming. After that we were homeless for three months. My dad then came around with the police, took us into custody.. and I felt stolen. I hated my father at that time with a passion.
Zoom to 8th grade, I moved in with my mom who then lived in Georgia. I got to experience craziness all over again. Homelessness, I had to fake a broken wrist for 6 weeks for my mom so nobody would suspect my absence being us being homeless. Everyday I stepped on shells while my mom was loving, then burst into hatred or anger in moments, telling me not to trust anyone. I was the rock and adult in our relationship. I would talk to others that she would get upset with in hopes that they wouldn't try to attack. I began my unknown journey with annorexia that time through high school and a little after graduating. But, I then moved back with my dad for my 9th grade. Moved to Butte, MT, then senior year moved  yet again but to a friend's home whose mom was a hoarder. My room was the only clean room in this giant house. Every other room was covered in dog urine and junk.  Throughout high school I attempted suicide 4 times. I never went to the hospital. Basically I stayed in bed and vomited for 3 to 4 days straight. Whoever I lived with thought I was just very sick.
Through those years I just remember dreading school every single day of my life. I would look out the bus window and think, "Someday I will be one of those people, driving around on my own. I just have to make it." It was prison for me, and for many other kids.
After graduating I went on the journey of overworking myself, moving out, and numbing my emotions through working 70 hour weeks and playing video games. Finally, after shifting through so many jobs, wondering why I was always trying so hard, always trying to be my best and getting nowhere. I had been having extremely weird symptoms from middle school (bad migraines, partial seizures) and I was driving home one very stressful day from my truck dispatching job. I decided... "I can't do this anymore. I quit. God if you're there, I have been talking to you since a kid, but I don't understand what you want from me. Everything is in your hands now, I officially give up. This life is horrible." So I pushed my car to over 100 and rolled it. I survived and didn't have a scratch on me. The ambulance came and told me I should have at LEAST broken a bone with how the car turned out. I was just sad that I didn't at least die. Because of the incident, they believed I suffered from a seizure, took away my license, and then I went to California to live with my grandmother and her 52 year old son (my dad's brother) who has OCD.
That was extremely hard. Every day I wondered my worth as my uncle called me a pile of trash, inconsiderate for not folding a towel right, an annoyance for playing the piano while he tried to chill. I shared a room with my grandma, worked full time at Starbucks, worked two jobs in the church, and then took a semester in college for 18 units. That is another very long story, actually positive one on how I got into a semester of college! Then I finally moved out on my own, lived in an apartment with a roommate, who smoked weed everyday, woke me up at 3 am while she got ready every morning, and partied sometimes on days where I really needed a break. Rent was 2,000 between both of us and not including everything... I got the dining room while she got the actual bedroom, and I didn't have much privacy. A year into living there, her and her friends gave me an edible, which then lead me to have a 2 hour long grand mal seizure. And that started my journey through three years of epilepsy, having three seizures a day, working two jobs, and then walking 10 miles a day between work. I got generally 4 to 5 hours of sleep every night. I was dating an emotionally distant person at that time. As they were trying to solve my whole seizure case, they found out some of them were pseudoseizures... and brought me to a psychologist, who then got out some repressed memories of being sexually abused. After that it was trigger and flashback central.
Finally things got so hard that I attempted suicide again. This time I had to be taken to the hospital. The night before I attempted I finally decided to reach out to my boyfriend for help, his reply was, "I can't deal with this right now."
Two days after I got out of the hospital he broke up with me. My first boyfriend relationship. I was broken, starving, and quit one of my jobs and was dead. Still having flashbacks. Thankfully I had two co-workers who were extremely compassionate.
After about a half a year, they find out my hormones had a lot to do with my real seizures, put me on birth control, (I was always having a 2 hour seizure during my period. (More like tonic-chlonic seizures.) so then they disappeared, and now I've been terrified of being a woman even moreseo and having a period ever since. Things were looking up, I was able to be conscious in a full day, and I felt way better. I fell in love with another guy, who was extremely sweet, but also.. red flags I ignored completely. I just thought, "He likes to give me hugs. My God, so nice."  Two months into the relationship I found porn on his computer and confronted him. I told him, "I told you about my past. This stuff cannot be in my life. If you are going to do that, it is either that or me. But you can't do this to me if we are going to be in this relationship." Then he said he'd quit and tried, but little did I know he never did. Two years later, we are engaged, I'm moved in with him, and I find out he's been lying to me for two years...

So I have the biggest mental breakdown in my entire life. I screamed, I broke my computer, I punched through a door, I laughed and said, "Go on then, how much more do you want to rape me and abuse me? How much more do you want to disrespect me? I've devoted myself, my love, my life to you for these times, you crapped on our hopes of marriage. You crapped on me." I was reacting to so many flashbacks and him at the same time. I just constantly screamed for him to kill me. He tried to hold me down, but it felt like my dad, so I punched him. I then was taken to a hospital. Then after that, found out the revealing factor... and now I'm here.

After writing all this down (sorry it's insanely long) It's helped me really get a grip of just where I've been and how it's been literally chaos for so many years... I do know through all of this I've been fighting and striving for a better life, but the biggest thing I want to know right now is,
How the heck do I heal and get that life? I've given a lot of love and a lot of support but I feel like I've been given abuse, and everything else back. It's really really hard to look at life and go, "Why can't I receive love?" "Will I ever trust a man sexually?" "Will I ever be respected?" These questions haunt me so badly and make me feel so low so many times in the day.. I just want to break free but I don't know how to trust people anymore.

Hi everyone , I'm new.. and a bit confused, scared, hopeful? Mixed?
I'm 26 years old and after an episode of nearly committing suicide, going to the hospital, going to a psych ward.. I was diagnosed with C-PTSD. The psychiatrist in there was a really brilliantly kind man, and I was terrified I had BPD, schizophrenia, I was afraid of having anything really. When I was diagnosed... it didn't surprise me, but yet I had just a weird assumption of PTSD. I had no clue about C-PTSD, nor did I realize how much it affected me and how much I NEEDED help... so it's brought a lot of waves in my life, lots of them. I've been through a lot of childhood up to now trauma, as many of you have as well. I'm hoping to gain more understanding, and also gain a group of friends who get it. Because in this world, people are kind of cruel with differences.. and it gets really lonely. After I was diagnosed, I then got with a therapist, but also a psychotherapist who specializes in trauma. I'm hopeful but also extremely  mixed. I have bits and pieces of memories of childhood and I know I've blacked out tons of them. I don't know if they'll come up, or if I'll be mostly in the dark for the rest of my life.. and I'm really hoping to live a good life and not be the blocker of it ...