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Hi, Hannah. I'm so sorry that you're feeling alone and confused. We all go through that, and it really sucks. It sounds like you really want to talk to someone but you don't really have anyone appropriate to talk to, and you have reservations about opening up to your friend. I think the answer depends on your friend and your relationship with her, and what feels right for you. I don't think you're shameful, and if your friend is kind and compassionate then she won't, either. But, in my experience, friends aren't the best resource for the kind of support you're looking for. Friends may really want to help, but they don't have the knowledge or ability to support CPTSD and other mental health issues. That's my opinion. All I can do is tell you what I know is true for me based on my own experience.

Personally, I prefer to share the most with people who have had the same experiences or are trained to help me, like here on this forum or at 12 step meetings like Al Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics, or with my therapist or in group therapy. My inner circle of friends - about 5 people - know that I had an abusive childhood and that I'm working on my healing, and we talk about it or related issues sometimes, but I don't discuss it with them in depth. It's not because they'd judge me or treat me differently, but because they're not qualified to help me. They provide empathy and compassion for my everyday life, which CPTSD affects, and this is wonderful, but it takes a trained professional or someone with similar experiences who's come out the other side to go into the deep darkness with me. Plus, unlike a relationship with a therapist or recovery group, friendship should be about equal in give and take. I only give out to friends what I think I can also consciously and healthily take from them. My friendships are focused on mutual respect and support, not pain, because 1) I don't want my friendships to be about pain (that's not the kind of friendships I want), and 2) I have a lot of tools for processing pain that don't involve my friends (a few do, but most don't). If I'm going to open up to a friend, I need to be in a place where I can also shoulder their pain when they open up to me. For most of my journey, I haven't been able to take on anyone else's pain, so I haven't had very deep friendships, but that's starting to change. Maybe I'm wrong, but I got the impression from your post that you need a lot of empathy right now and are running low on how much you have available to give to others (i.e. love/empathy deficit). If that's the case, it's best to find someone neutral to talk to so that you can take without giving for a little while. People who've been through this or are trained to help understand what it's like to be in an empathy deficit, and they can give you some space without demanding too much until you've healed enough to give back. Friends, on the other hand, may end up feeling depressed or burdened or used if they can't reciprocate properly. I've been on both ends of that kind of situation, and it's bad either way.

Maybe, until you can find a new group, you could call a toll free line that provides trained listeners. I haven't used one so maybe another member can recommend one, but a quick Google search yielded CONTACT emotional listening support.

Again, that's just my opinion, based on my own experiences and healing journey. I hope that you find your answer and get the support you're looking for.

Sunny

Thank you for sharing, Hope! That's wonderful!  How nice to have such a good friend who would give you such a special gift. Your friend must love you very much. I agree that a name is very important. I'm sure that you will find the perfect name for your new doll. And the good thing about names is that they can change, so you can give your doll a new name if she ever needs one. I hope that you enjoy playing with her once the other people go home.

Sunny

So it could be that it is too early for you, or it could be the class will be fine even though the video wasn't.

Thanks, Blueberry. The video made me cry the first and I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I had to stop it.

The next day, I watched it 5 times. 

Quick update: I'm reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and he specifically mentions self defense as a healing modality. In particular, "model mugging," which attempts to enact the moment of fear and surprise when you're attacked. The fighting back is theorized to be effective for PTSD because it allows us to complete the action that the stress hormones we release during trauma are designed for (fight or flight, as opposed to helplessness). The video I saw was of model mugging, and I cried my eyed out watching a woman yell "No!" repeatedly as she fought back against an attacker. It hit me right in the gut. I guess the universe answered my question. 

I'm jumping in late here - just joined the forum last week - but I'm also a teacher. I'm not teaching at the moment while I work on my master's (I know my limits), but teaching and furthering my own education have actually spurred a lot of self healing and growth for me. As others mentioned, teaching requires good boundaries and empathy, both with students and faculty/administration. There are now a lot of great resources about social emotional learning and trauma-informed practices that support our work. I feel that we, who have CPTSD (especially from childhood), actually make the best teachers because we understand where the kids are coming from. We don't see behaviors as defiant, but rather as a cry for help because that's what they were for us, too. We don't see kids as bad, but rather as coming from bad situations. This can make a huge difference in their lives.

I've taught pre-K all the way through college. The education system isn't designed to produce emotionally healthy adults, so we can't expect our colleagues to be on board with character development because it's not on a standardized test. Plus, you can't teach what you don't know, and that goes for emotional skills, too.

It's really hard to work with people who are emotionally abusive to the students, and they're surprisingly common. I had one colleague who openly said she wanted to be able to hit her students, like in "the good old days." Luckily, when you've learned the tools to set boundaries and stand for them, you also gain tools to stand up for your students in productive ways. Learning about nonviolent communication has helped a lot, both with students and those I work with. We, as survivors of abuse and neglect, do have an advantage because, when we deal with our own stuff, we end up becoming pretty mature, emotionally stable people. Students, especially children, really need that. (As a side note, I found the most warm, caring colleagues while teaching preschool, but that was just my own experience.)

I've had to do tons of work on myself, and I'm not even close to done. But I was led to this career as part of my healing, and it's been invaluable to my journey. You can't be a great teacher and an emotionally unwell, stunted person. I'm going to be a great teacher, and I think that you will, too. 

Sunny

Hi, Rainagain. I understand your concerns, and I think that saylor and Blueberry made some good points. I do tend to intellectualize rather than feel, and I sometimes willfully ignore attacks because defending myself never did any good. (Unless I think I'm being bullied, intentionally or not; then "* hath no fury.") I want to comment on the spirit of your question rather than the details, though, if I can.

I have questions like this all the time. They take different forms, but they generally start with "Should I" or "Am I" and boil down to not trusting myself and wondering if I'm doing a "good job." When you grow up being told that you're inherently bad and wrong, it's natural to seek out external confirmation for your thoughts, feelings, and actions because you have no faith in them.

It took me a long time and a lot of practice to find my internal compass. Maybe people who don't have CPTSD have access to it from childhood - I wouldn't know. It took a lot of meditation and inner work, and to me it feels like a superpower. But now that I've found it, I don't have to ask these questions of other people, and I always get a better answer from myself than I would from others because I know me best. (That doesn't mean I never ask them of others; when I'm in a bad place, it's easy for me to look outward.)

The key is what I call radical honesty, and it happens in conjunction with what I think of as my connection to my higher power. I feel it in my heart area. If I have a question like this, I can ask it there, and my heart tells me what the truth is. It's gotten to the point now that I can feel when I'm about to say something that's not true - this makes my therapy sessions much more productive. 

I have to be willing to be really, painfully honest with myself because the answer is often not what I want to hear. I can only speak for myself because I have no idea how this works for other people, but I've found that, in general, if I have an impulse to ask someone else one of these questions, it's because I know I won't like the answer. For example, when I found this forum last week, I had tons of questions. I wanted to know if I should go no contact with certain family members, if what I was feeling was normal, what books I should read, and how I should start my healing. Basically, I had a lot of anxiety about the past and what lay ahead. But no one could ever have answered those questions for me, although I'm sure the kind people here would have done their best to give their perspectives. I know roughly what I need to do right now, and what I don't know I trust that I'll find/be shown when it's needed.

I know this doesn't really address your question, but that's because I know with 100% certainty that some part of you already has the answer and that your conscious mind can find it. Part of this process is learning to trust yourself, and a lot of other healing can only happen after you do that. I could be way off base, but it sounds to me like you're feeling anxious about the changes you're noticing and that you don't trust yourself to be making progress. If you were me, I'd say to sit quietly, do diaphragmatic breathing until I felt calm, then ask the question and wait for the answer. I'd probably get a lot of mental answers, but the real answer generally feels deeper and almost like it comes from my body (specifically, my heart and/or belly) rather then my mind. It usually has a much calmer, quieter, slightly deeper voice, and I feel more relaxed and confident when I recognize it.

I hope that's useful to you in some way. Maybe it's not useful now but could be later. This journey is a process, and it's not linear, but my experience was that this self honesty and trust was absolutely necessary for other things to become possible for me. Your mileage may vary. And please feel free to remind me of this answer the next time I post a question like this on the forum. 

Hi, Boatsetsailrose. I can really relate. I have trouble saying no in any form, and my internal critic is 90% of my unnecessary thinking. I'm just starting out, so most of my progress is in how I feel on the rare occasions that I stand up for myself (internally or externally) rather than how often I do. It's a process.

I'm seeing the most benefit from internally responding to criticizing and "disaster-cizing" thoughts. I have a lot of these, so there's plenty of opportunity to practice. After I notice a thought, I think things like, "No, FOO, you don't get to hurt me anymore. I'm not any of the things you said I was. I deserve to be treated with love and respect" or "No, you don't have permission to scare me anymore, FOO. I'm an adult and I can handle myself. Things won't always go right, but I'm perfectly capable of dealing with it." (Not verbatim, but you get the idea.) There's generally some reasonable and legitimate anger, too, and it feels good to "fight back." Unity is strength, and this helps me to be more united with myself rather than being my own worst enemy. I feel much better afterward and more powerful, and I can see it leading to more powerful external responses with some practice.

Not sure if that's what you meant, but I hope that's useful to you somehow.

Sunny

I'm so sorry if I triggered you, Kizzie.  for you, if it's wanted. I had a NPD/BP B, too, and have similar memories. I remember once, when I was quite small, punching him in the nose when he got in my face. That's where the memory ends, but I can fill in the blank.

I definitely started to ruminate, but Walker's book helped a lot. My response wasn't ideal, but it was better than what I usually do, which is nothing. I look forward to the freedom you've earned for yourself. "One day at a time" is starting to make a lot more sense these days.

No, actually, he was completely offhand, like he could care less about me. He wasn't looking at me or even facing me when he said it. I wasn't angry, but I immediately thought of gaslighting. He was intentionally trying to devalue me in order to ... I don't know, stimulate my interest? Get a chance to dominate the conversation? Find an emotional punching bag? In the past, I might have thought he was "interesting" or brushed it off as me being too sensitive, but this time I didn't. He tried to keep the conversation going by saying he was "just trying to get out of the boring norm," but there are plenty of ways to encourage a new acquaintance's interest without implying that they're unimportant.

I have a hard time knowing if I'm overreacting, partly because CPTSD leads to overreaction in the now and partly because my trauma involved being told that I was overreacting about my abuse. But I wasn't triggered into anger this time, so I'm reasonably sure I didn't misread things. He was being a jerk, and I called him on it. Saying "no" in any form is hard for me, and this felt like saying "no." I hope to be able to learn to do it differently in the future - I don't really want to go around calling people names - but these are my baby steps, and I'm learning to be okay with doing things better rather then perfectly.

Hi all,

I originally felt bad about this recent conversation, but now I don't. Although my response isn't my ultimate goal, I think it's a step in the right direction. I'm very slowly coming to the realization that I can feel and express anger, although I'm going to need a lot of practice to do it appropriately because I've never had it modeled. I wasn't really angry here, but I didn't have the energy or interest to "be polite" to someone who was so obviously incapable of returning the favor. Mostly I'm proud that I saw it for what it was: A narcissist fishing for victims.

[Upon meeting someone new at a social event held by a "friend"]
Adult Male: "Hi, I'm ___."
Me: "Hi,  ___, I'm Sunny. Nice to meet you."
Adult Male: "Yeah, it's nice to meet you, I guess."
Me: *pause* "You're a *."

Thank you so much for the kind welcome. It's been so incredibly comforting to learn that I'm not alone.

It's nice to meet you, too, Snowdrop! Thank you for being the first to welcome me.

I also try to connect with people but mostly just feel like a misfit and sometimes even a pariah.

Thank you, saylor. I'm so sorry that you have a similar experience. You're not alone, either.

I have a "social mask" that works well, and it's generally well liked, but I can't take off the mask. Ever. No one really knows me because I won't let them, and even in a crowd of 50 "friends" I feel empty and unseen. It's different here and in group (Al Anon). I'm trying to learn to bridge the gap so that I can connect meaningfully outside of these safe spaces, too. I'm getting to a point in life where if it's not authentic, it's not worth my time. I don't want to waste any more of my life on meaningless small talk, you know? It's exhausting.

That realization was the point at which true recovery began for me and it sounds like for you now. You're not alone anymore

Thank you so much, Kizzie. That brought tears to my eyes. I've done so much work already, but as I've been learning more I've been a little daunted. All the work I've done is nothing compared to what lies ahead. But I know that it's needed and it'll be worth it, and now I have some models of recovery here and I know it's possible. Thank you.

But please know that although you may be physically alone, you are not alone in story or spirit.

Thank you, gentle rain. Just hearing that helps. It's so nice to have a tribe, even if it's one brought together by mutual suffering. I hope to find healing in giving and receiving the kind of empathy and compassion that I've already witnessed so abundantly here.

Hi, stellajames. I'm so glad that my post brought a good memory for you (so rare for us, it seems). Thank you for sharing, it was beautiful. And I'm glad that you found some additional clarity. The narcissism discovery was a huge lightbulb moment for me, I can tell you.

From your post, you seem to be a person who deserves lots of friends.

Thank you for your kind words. I certainly have never said something like that to myself, but I'm going to practice until I can. I appreciate your encouragement and am looking forward to my time here with all of you.

Thank you all again, both to those who posted and those who didn't. Just knowing that I have a community here has been such a comfort.

Gratefully,
Sunny

Hi bookworm37,

I'm Sunny, I'm also new here. I'm so sorry to hear of the painful, undeserved experiences that brought you here. I could really identify with this:

Then, it was like a door opened and light came blazing through. Suddenly, my behavior, choices, thought processes, and relationship issues all made sense.

I felt exactly the same when I found this forum, which was the first time that I'd ever heard of CPTSD. Although I wish that this forum wasn't needed, I'm so glad that it's here, that you found it, and that you're here with us. I haven't been here long, but so far everyone has been very kind and supportive. I hope that this safe space helps us both to find healing.

Hi KJOHNS105,

You're not alone. Sadly, although we all have our own histories, most of us can identify with your feelings. I struggled with depression and anxiety and a host of other things for decades. I saw countless psychiatrists and therapists, took lots of different medications (none helped), and not one of them ever asked about my homelife or mentioned PTSD. I found this forum just this week, and everything is only just now starting to make sense.

There's hope. Once you know what causes these things, you can start to address the causes instead of just medicating the symptoms or trying to "put on a happy face." You may even find, as I did, that everything started much earlier than you originally thought, even though you don't have clear memories (I've repressed most of mine).

It takes strength and courage, but you can recover. We all have the right to be well and have healthy, loving relationships. We deserve it and we're worth it. You deserve it, and you're worth it.

Thank you, RecoveryRandal and gentle rain. You had good suggestions. I found a self defense class geared towards those with PTSD, but the video on their website was hugely triggering. Journaling and lucid dreaming are the two things that I liked most from your replies, so I'll try those. Thank you!!!

Hi Boatsetsailrose,

While I'm not glad that any of us are able to identify so strongly with this topic, it's comforting to have others who understand. I also have a perfection/shame cycle. Anything less then perfection is failure, failure is lack of value, and lack of value is at the heart of it all. When things are going badly in life, that voice in my head tells me that I'm worthless and will never be anything else, and everything I'm doing in life is just an attempt to trick people into thinking I'm valid rather than the worthlessness that lies at the core of me. Nothing I do will ever give me value.

I have a suspicion that that last statement may actually be true, but in a good way, if that makes sense. I don't have to do anything to be valuable. I just am. I don't feel it yet, but I'm willing to entertain the idea.

The hope I get from having a name for my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors - CPTSD - is that I can distinguish between symptoms and self. CPTSD is very new to me, so I don't know how this will translate into reality when things get bad again. But when I read about the symptoms, self-loathing and shame among them, I thought, "Oh, so that's what I do, not what I am." I can be curious because now I get to find what I am, and I know that it's not that. It's not that.

I loved your words, and they hit me in my gut because they're what I needed to hear, too: "I Am not a walking disaster...
I have a right to keep growing and develop good enough friendships"

Thank you for sharing with us. I find strength in your strength.