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Cheers and thank you for your reply.  I stopped taking sertraline because I felt so dissociated anyway and I wanted to feel more grounded.  It has not been easy and still is not. Sometimes, i feel as if I am slipping and have no doubt that I would have taken my own life many times over the past few years. The only thing that has stopped me is because I now have my dogs who I care about dearly and my partner who I love as much as someone like me can.

I was given the last rites by a consultant and was so disappointed when it transpired I had sarcoidosis, which had mimicked Lymphoma perfectly, with enlarged mediastan glands, three pints of fluid in one lung lining and something else that confirmed cancer and a certain death. Supposedly!

I often describe my current state as someone who would be just learning to walk again after three years, if this was a physical injury. I wish it was. I wish it had been. It's difficult to talk to anyone about because it is so misunderstood. I remember reading the drop down list of symptoms for the first time after disclosure. Every symptom read like excerpts from my life. As the memories of violence and self harm, near death and erratic behaviour came back, i had tears for myself for the first time in my life.

How can you forget getting drugged and raped when you are a small boy. How can you forget seeing your beloved pet dog being kicked to death in Front of you when you are ten by your mothers boyfriend?  I don't know, the previous poster suggested that I have a firm grip on my sanity. All I can say is that quite often that grip becomes very weak indeed.


I feel for you trying to get your diagnosis. Usually they make you wait for so long for anything just in case you might die, or simply drop off the radar. Mental health care in the UK is at best a joke and at worst an abomination. I'm sorry if I seem negative but I'm sick of sticking plaster therapies and under qualified councilors.

Steve.

---Trigger Warning---

Hi All.  I had a final straw moment with my mother, a single carer.   Subsequently, via various mental collapses and shenaginans, a new past emerged.

Memories of sexual and physical abuse when I was an infant came back. I can remember visits from older persons into my room, whilst I lay in a cot. I can remember being peirced by safety pins when I had diaper changes. I can remember the lazy Incompetence and my struggling to breath in and shrink my torso to avoid the piercing pain.

I grew up morbidly scared of the dark and regarded my home with horror and fear as if awaiting certain death. So I was physically abused and negelected from a very young age. Up until the age of 13, when I could finally fight her off it was a daily nightmare of abusive carer's, sadisitc 'uncles' and mental and physical torture.

On my first camp with the scouting organisation, I was seperated and drugged and raped by a 'helper' who thought he could help my bed wetting by ensuring that we spent the night together. I had always thought I had caught a virus, or mild pleurisy afterwards. I was seperated and consigned in my ilness. feverish, shivering and virually insane in the pitch black farmhouse room I had been abandoned in. Now I know, it was the physical 'comedown' after an overdose of some prescription drug or other.  I never pondered his demand for me to drink bitter coco, with just sugar and water.

That's the trouble, so many memories. So many bad memories and so many peices of jigsaw that continue to fall into place and make sense.

It gets, worse, much worse. When I was ten, I had a dog that I loved dearly. The only living thing that I could connect with. He was killed in front of me by one of my mothers jealous boyfriends.

Abuse at school, abuse at home, abuse by strangers and relatives abuse everywhere and the whole damn lot remained hidden from me until three years ago.

So, an awful lot of your supposedly normal life starts to make an awful lot of sense. The abuse of animals, the abuse of others. The random self harm, the drug over-doses and resusitations. The inapropriate relationships, behaviours, attitudes, isolation and pain. The whole carnival of classic c-ptsd has played out all of your life, whilst you desperatly try to 'do the right thing' always. Truble is, your pysche is defined by guilt and memories and tectonic feelings of inadequacy and self loathing.  Even when I changed at school, I hid the signs of abuse on my body. It was always shamefull to me when i might forget for a moment tha they were there and somebody would say. "bloody *, look at the marks on his legs"  And do you know what, I felt shame as if I deserved it.

Every day was an assault on my self. From the tenderest yaers, until when i was older it was a daily ritual of legelect. One of her many favourite tactics was to inform me that I was going to recieve a beating. This would be done in the best traditions of public school sadism. I would be sent and confined to my room. Say age 8. Then, I would have to wait. Sometimes it would be within a few minutes but usually, it could be all day. all the time here footsteps would approach and receed outside my door. Eventually, she would open the door and then it would begin.

She was merciless and sadistic, reducing me to tears quite quickly, making me feel nauseous and weak. Day after, day, after day. Year after year.


My life has been an un-coordinated muddle of missed chances, blown opportunities and confusion. All my life from the earliest days I have been wracked with introspection and existentialism, pondering Why?.    Well now I know and all I can say is that coping with the inate waste of it all is difficult sometimes. It is as if I have sat through a film all of my liofe and just as I am leaving, somebody says. "No, you have just sat through the wrong one"


Steve

Thanks for that, I will try to find a thread which is suitable for where I am.  Treatment in the UK is non existent. You are more likely to be dosed up on Sertraline and kept as walking wounded.  Then, you are subject to our humiliating, degrading and vicious social security and benefits system if you cannot work. Some choose suicide, (One of the UK's growth sector's) others sink further into despair.

I will write on.  Steve.

When I was a young boy, I would sit alone amongst gently swaying long grasses driven by the summer breeze. Above, the clouds would often be heavy, grey and cobalt, separated by seams of platinum and flecks of azure blue. The sighs of the wind through the grass and the changing stormy light my only company. I would come to this place to ask why? I would come to this place to re-establish my grip on my sanity and my self. It saved me I think, in view of the relentless horror of my existence.   

Fifty years later, I walked my dog's around our local fields this morning, far away from that place. Amongst the long grass at one edge, there is a area where the grass does not grow.  I sat down as usual. Now I know why, but now the horror has worsened as so much has manifested itself. Sitting at the edge of this field helps to repell the relentless horror of my existence.

The past was unbeknown to me in my former fractured and disjointed life. That was until three years ago when I had the 'final straw' moment with my primary parent and abuser.  Then, in a horrific kaleidoscope moment which continues to this day, pieces of jigsaw images, recollections and thoughts and memories started to tumble out of the sky into my current and present mind.

I remember exactly the moment, the floor of the living room started to turn velvet black. It spread from under my feet and covered the floor quickly, climbing the walls around me. Like a dark quick sand, the light was being blacked out and I could feel myself losing conciousness and sliding somewhere else. The darkness spread up through my feet and legs, moving up my torso also, I was slipping and losing my mind.

Then there was a gold flash. I was holding onto a chair, I hadn't realised. Panting and breathing deeply, I could not draw enough air into my lungs. Back again in my suroundings my fear was tangible and as my partner entered the room, she gasped at the site of my gaunt, sweat covered panting and stooped broken figure.


My first panic attack. Its an art to feel that vertigous creature stalking you, or moving closer to attack, only for you to head it off using an un-formed technique. It happens now and again. The startling realisation of facts and the odd dis-jointed feelings of remoteness to your new-found existence. Odd to feel so distant and disinfranchised from you home and family and loved ones.

Crikey!



Anyway, I have never talked to anybody about my experiences properly. So I thought it would be interesting to discuss c-ptsd.

Hello.