Topics

I've read and/or listened to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron a few times now. It's kind of a sleeper. At first glance it seems a bit fluffy or silly, but the more often I listen and re-listen to it on audio books, the more incredible wisdom I hear in Julia's writing. Chapter Two, for example, is all about who took our creativity away from us. She calls them "Crazy Makers". Her in depth description of how these crazy makers took away our creative juices is a one-to-one description of a narcissistic parent, friend, relative, or sibling. Each time I listen to her describe the ways the crazy-makers in my life (My narcistic friends and siblings), convinced me that I don't have the right to be creative, the more I find myself laughing at how right she is. She has it down.  It's like, "OMG! That is EXACTLY what my evil sister used to do to me!" I laugh, not out of comedy, but out of obviousness of how right she is.

This book has opened me up to accepting that I was indeed born with creativity but was raised in the lies that made me ashamed of it. By the time I'd grown to be a man who could make my own life's choices, I had lost all ability to know what my original wiring was created for. I wanted to be everything and nothing. I wanted to be a singer, writer, painter, musician, architect, and more, but at the same time had been taught to KNOW that I am nothing but a servant to my narcissistic friends and family members.

When I first listened to the audio book, I spent the first half hour thinking it was dumb. But soon enough, Julia hit some nerves and I became enthralled with her wisdom and her explanations of, not only how my creativity was taken from me, but of some ways I can begin to find it again. It's there. We all have it. I believe now, that part of the emptiness, loneliness, hollowness, that we with CPTSD live with, is driven by that little part deep down inside us that knows we have a creative spark still alive in us that would make us feel amazing if we'd just use it, while the rest of our inner parts are too afraid to accept that, so they are fighting to keep that part from becoming known. Our inner parts have assumed the roles of our original bad parents and siblings and have become the protectors who are trying to protect us from being humiliated again by the world that originally beat the creativity out of us.

I recommend this book for anyone who is really struggling to believe that you have a purpose but can't seem to find that purpose.

Our creativity is not gone. It's still there. At this point, the flames are cooled, but the spark is still there awaiting a day when we might give it permission, and oxygen, and fuel to reignite and bring us the joy that we know is there for us. It's there.

I entered into this book with a lot of cynical opinions that it was just a fluff book. I am now finding that it brings a flicker of hope that I just might be able, one day, to loosen my own bindings that keep me from experiencing the otherworldly joy that a person finds when we become who we were originally born to be...before narcissists and crazy-makers tricked us into abandoning just to feed their own jealous hatred of seeing others happy.

[The Manager role]

As I'm reading Richard Schwartz's books on Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, I'm learning some of the mechanics behind how it works.

The Manager role
For years my therapist has been helping me to connect with all sorts of little "parts" within me. I didn't know that what he was doing was called IFS. It's been working really well, but I admit now, that he and I have been focusing on my exiles. Exiles are the little victims who need protecting by another part called a Manager. Schwartz's book An Introduction to Internal Family Systems, says that the managers are the ones who protect (by imprisoning) the exiles, which is why they're called exiles. Up until today, I've never even considered working with my manager parts, but as of this moment, I'm shifting my focus onto them. I will be reading more about them and going into meditation to find them and talk with them more starting tonight.

Burnout is killing me
For the past few years I've been utterly exhausted. This winter has been torture for me because I can't work up the energy to even clean the kitchen, let alone complete my bathroom remodels, and repairs on my truck. As of the past two to three weeks I can't even stay awake for a full day anymore. I sleep 8-9 hours a night, without even getting up to use the bathroom. Then around noon or so I can't keep my eyes open. I see double. I crawl to bed. I was sleeping for two to four hours during my naps, but they've become about an hour to 90 minutes now. Then I watch TV with my wife during the evening, struggling, all the while, to keep from dozing off for a few hours until we finally turn off the TV and go to bed.

I'm exhausted. I was starting to want to go see a doctor to get some bloodwork, when, TODAY, while listening on audiobooks to Schwartz, he piqued my interest in my managers.

How I burnt out my managers and myself:
I've been a sick workaholic my entire life. I've believed that if I don't outperform everyone around me that I'll be kicked to the curb as useless. It was burrowed into me by my family as a boy that I have to work harder than everyone else on earth if I want them to respect and love me. So I have devoted my life to working 60 hour weeks, raising a family, volunteering at hospitals, maintaining my own yard, doing all the cooking and cleaning, and building all my own fences and sheds and decks and landscaping, all without any help from anyone, and all because if I were to hire help, I'd be seen as an utter failure and would lose the love of my family and friends.

According to what I believe I just learned about IFS, In my early years, I enlisted the help of some IFS managers to keep me from failing, and to respond to the fire alarms whenever I felt like I was going to be humiliated for being worthless. As they have never gotten a single day off in 60 years, they are now utterly burned out. So therefore I am utterly burned out with them. Nothing is getting done. Shame, which drove them to a life of hard work, is on the rise while energy to keep overdoing life is on the decline. I'm not even sure I can live much longer due to my lack of exercise, my poor diet, and my lack of will to live. A week prior to Christmas 2023 I felt the words go through my head "You won't be here for Christmas 2024". I believe this is my one final chance to release the shame and the false belief that I have to do more than everyone else on earth if I want to earn the right to live another day.

Could this be my salvation?
I shriek with excitement when I think that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I can find peace for the first time in my 6 decades of life, enough to rest, relax, enjoy life, and find my energy again--SHAME FREE! The idea of not hating myself, and not pushing myself, and not feeling like sleep is the only thing I can do to pass the time, feels like a distant light has appeared for me to follow. A light of hope. I've been praying for hope for three days now. I've been saying that hope is the motivator that I'm lacking so as to keep going. Is this the hope I've been praying for? Is this the answer to my prayer?

Shame drives overwork which ends in exhaustion
I have lived with massive shame over things that were said about me that others believed, and used as evidence that I was unlovable, valueless, and that even God himself hated me. Since kindergarten in 1965, I have put these poor managers to the task of protecting many little exiles who are afraid for their lives for being called lazy and useless and stupid. I now see that the energy I've made these managers expend on my behalf is wiping them out. They are exhausted. Burned out. And as a result, I am also exhausted and burned out.

My plan for what to do with all this new information
During the next few days, I hope to find some connection with at least one of these manager parts, or firefighter parts, and begin building some trust with them so that they can help me work with them to release the pressure.  I know that I held a lot of deep secrets that most likely forced them to work 24 x 7 x 365 for 60 years keeping vigilant watch on protecting my secrets because I believed my life depended on it. I kept it secret that I was being SA'd as a boy, and that I was falsely labeled as gay, and then abused by my entire school for it for most of my childhood. That was a secret I didn't want my family to know, because if they believed the lie too, then I'd be put to death. That was what I believed for my entire childhood, and that fear followed me for my entire life. So I've forced these managers who live within me to work round the clock keeping my secrets safe so that no one would kill me because of them.

I predict that as I meet any of these manager parts or firefighter parts, that I will discover that in order to make peace with them, I'll need to give in and allow myself to let the secrets out. If I can prove to my manager parts that I'm willing to live in the freedom that my secrets are all out in the open, and that I'm NOT ashamed that I didn't build my own house with my own hammer, then maybe they'll appreciate being let off the hook for helping me live in darkness for 60 years.

And maybe, just maybe, they will find peace, and I will find peace, and maybe I can become my authentic self, which requires very little energy. It burns a LOT of fuel to keep secrets from the world. It also burns a LOT of fuel to live under someone else's rules. What if I can feel so free that I actually feel energetic in the morning, and stay awake and productive during the day? I have always envied the people who's families supported them and allowed them to grow up to be who they are. Those people have fun, good energy. I have thick, exhausted energy. Living the life I was born to live is a fantasy. But Schwartz claims this type of parts work can free the soul. My fingers are crossed. I'm old, but I'm not dead yet. What if I could spend the silver haired years happy and proud to be who I am?

I'm exhausted just by writing this. But this little, tiny flicker of hope that was lit today by Schwartz's book...well...God help me so that I'm finally on the right track here.

The truth is I can't stand living under this state of utter exhaustion anymore. I won't see Christmas if I don't do something now.

This episode is on how IFS parts cause physical pain.

https://biologyoftrauma.com/are-the-trauma-parts-of-you-keeping-you-sick/

[History of the Groups]

This thread is about the ZOOM support groups that are cropping up within the OOTS forum community.

History of the Groups

In late 2023 Kizzie and a few other OOTS forum members started a ZOOM support group. After some experimentation, we have found that meeting for 90 minutes to two hours, once every two weeks works well, and that no agenda is ever needed, because when the 7 of us get together for 90 minutes to two hours, we have plenty to talk about.

Kizzie began the hosting function at first, and I functioned as her backup host whenever she was unable to attend. I have a paid ZOOM account, so I was the most obvious choice. My life is less busy than hers, so when Kizzie felt comfortable enough with me as a host, I offered to lighten her load and take over as permanent host. I now run the sessions and she is my backup.


Status of current ZOOM support groups

By January 2024, Kizzie found out about a few more OOTS members who were hoping to join a support group. Kizzie forwarded their names to me and I've responded by  starting a second support group.

That second group didn't fit all the schedules of the interested people, so I am starting a third group, in hopes that between the two different days and times, most of the interested persons will be able to attend.

Members of these current groups span multiple continents and time zones. The diversity of being in a group with people from multiple countries and cultures enriches the group experience. I am learning so much about how globally similar C-PTSD symptoms and causes really are. It's amazing how alike we are, no matter how differently our worlds look. It's also interesting to hear how differently each country handles the issue of trauma in their cultures.

How the Support Groups work

One person is the host. As the current host of three groups, my only jobs are 1) Pay ~$14 a month to own a ZOOM account, 2) Schedule a recurring 2-hour meeting in the software 3) Send the ZOOM link to the members, 4) Start the ZOOM meeting on time 5) Say hi to everyone.

As the host, I'm really just a member who sends out the link in email and then starts the ZOOM connection.

I feel most comfortable with 4 to 7 members. Each group is closed membership. The same people join each time. Attendance is highly encouraged because, as people with C-PTSD and trust issues, trusting each other to be engaged is critical. Naturally we all have times when we are sick or double-booked or on vacation and can't attend every session, but knowing we all try to attend is a courtesy that is appreciated by all the members.

There are no agendas, and the rules are pretty much just the rules of decency: Be polite to one another. But that's not been an issue with the kind-hearted people who have been joining the groups.

I am online for two hours. We usually go around 90 minutes with everyone, while a few people sometimes stay the whole two hours. 90 minutes to two hours has proven to be ample time for everyone to connect and enjoy each other's company.

Joining a group

Current room: At the time of writing this post, there are openings in our newest, Tuesday group. The first session is scheduled for Tuesday, January 30, 2024. Start time will be (Probably) 9:00 AM in the U.S. Pacific Standard time. Most members are usually in the US and Europe. 9 AM in US PST is 5 PM in London, 6 PM in Sweden and Germany, and 7 PM in Finland, or 4 AM in parts of Australia. (I use www.Timeanddate.com to calculate global start times) The Tuesday start time is still being settled upon, as membership in the Tuesday group is only just starting to build up.

I may not be able to host more meetings at this time, but I am encouraging anyone interested in being a member of a group to respond to this thread OR send me or Kizzie a private message in our private folders on this forum.

If more people want to try a group, we will need more hosts. I'm nothing more than a guy with a ZOOM account and a willingness to commit to being on time each week to start and attend the meetings. If anyone is interested in being a host, I'll be very happy to show how I do it and to help get another meeting started if needed.

Possibilities for the future

I think about how future groups could look. Anyone with a ZOOM account can hold a meeting. Before the internet existed, I hosted a face-to-face meeting for adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Groups like that can now be started over ZOOM for people of any specific culture, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

I can't host more groups, but I can help people start their own groups if asked. Anyone who is interested in finding out how to set up a ZOOM support group, is free to ask any questions about it either here on this thread, or on my private folder.

My hope is that C-PTSD and Relational Trauma Support Groups will begin to flourish all over the world. ZOOM has certainly made it easy for us to get together. I think of how AA was started by one guy who just needed some fellow addiction sufferers to talk to, and now AA meetings are universal and abundant all over the globe. I hope that one day, Trauma support groups follow that same model.

Has anyone ever tried hypnosis in dealing with C-PTSD?

Last week I made a comment to my therapist, "If I thought hypnosis worked, I'd pay anything to get hypnotized so that barking dogs no longer bother me."  I thought it was a joke, but my therapist asked if I was serious. He gave me the name of a hypnotist in Seattle who works with trauma.

Having been duped into spending tens of thousands of dollars on every type of medication, treatment, therapy, etc, and still being trapped in this trauma-response that I live in, I'm apprehensive about calling her.

If I could get help via hypnotherapy, I would want to find myself no longer over-eating, no longer isolating, no longer angry at neighbors for being insensitive jerk wads, no longer bound to this depression / anxiety / depression / anxiety cycle that I live in, no longer torturing myself with shame and regret for every word I've ever spoken.

But if others have tried it, and found it to be unhelpful, I'd like to save my money and time and not bother. But if people HAVE tried it, and it HAS been helpful, then I'll probably do it. I'm sure it's a lot less expensive, and less time consuming than my monthly Ketamine Infusions.

Any thoughts? Anyone? Is hypnotherapy a cure or a snake oil?

I didn't see an actual IFS thread posted in this forum, so I thought I'd start one. There are a lot of IFS postings and responses being written all throughout the forum. Perhaps collecting our thoughts in an IFS location will help anyone who's interested in IFS by making it easy to find any IFS talk all in one place.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapy style that is proving to be helpful for a lot of people who struggle with our past traumas which are causing stress in today's life.

In his book, Self-Therapy, Jay Earley Phd. says there is benefit to going through IFS therapy with others as a group. So I thought I'd try starting a group to see if anyone is interested in sharing, learning, teaching, collaborating anything IFS related.

I won't start posting until I know if anyone is interested in sharing in the IFS journey with me through this, or some other thread.

I'm quick to talk openly about my Complex-PTSD as having been caused by a lifetime of betrayal by narcissistic elders, sociopathic peers, abusive religion, and the gaslighting via a million lies and gossips that took away my sense of who I really am. It isn't until later that I sometimes tack on "Oh yeah, it's no big deal, but I was molested at 7 years of age also." I still minimize my CSA. I treat my Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) as a secondary afterthought that barely scratches the surface of relevance to my lifetime of neurotic emotional triggers and struggles.

Well, today I'm waking up and reversing the order. It has been called to my attention, by following many of the posts on this forum, that I need to stop treating my CSA as if it were a non-event. I need to really grasp the severity of the damage it did to me.

While the rest of the abuse was a million small betrayals over 50 years, the CSA was a short-lived but catastrophic betrayal that has, most likely, done 90% of the damage I continue to try and repair today.

I think about why SA has the deep impact it has on us humans, and I keep coming back to my theory that sex, food, and safety are the three most deeply ingrained attributes of our survival wiring. They are wired into us to guarantee that we survive as individuals AND that we are compelled to procreate for survival of the species. My T calls this "the Lizard Brain." It's the core, root, base wiring that makes it so that we do not need to be taught how to breathe, eat, or procreate. To betray one of the higher attributes, like trusting a friend to tell the truth, is bad. But to betray one of the CORE attributes of our very existence, i.e., sex and sexuality...well that's not bad, it's catastrophic.

I talk very easily about how my parents and siblings turned me into their servant who had no rights of my own, but when I even try to think about the SA that I endured at 6 and 7 years of age, my body goes into craziness. Within seconds of trying to focus on my past with SA, I begin to get sick to my stomach, I get dizzy, I start to shake and if I don't stop at the shaking, I hyperventilate.  I'd say that's cause for alarm, and that this old man needs to stop discounting CSA as just a bad day at school.

All my other problems get full attention, but they are not at the root of my "crazy."  I am starting to suspect that CSA is not bad, it's horrific. It's not a setback, it's catastrophic damage.  CSA is all too often the cause of eating disorders, armoring pain, employment difficulties, and so much more. Somehow, maybe because it's one of the three root wirings in our survival programming, that it hits a different part of the brain? Maybe it hits us at the very center of our brain, where all other abuse hits us in more peripheral areas of the brain?  I don't know. Don't quote me on that, it's just a theory that I have. I took family abuse for 50 years and I can talk about it. I took CSA for a year or 2 max, and it's still so terrifying that I still can't think about it without going to my crazy place.

If I'm going to find self-love and a pure heart, then I need to fully embrace the real damage in my emotions, and I need to go back to my healing plan and really think about how to move CSA from the bottom of my list of issues to the top, #1 position.  It's been over 50 years since it all happened, and it's about dang time I address it seriously.

I just read an article about "the Of Course" method for breaking free from narcissists.

https://www.selfloverecovery.com/blogs/blog/of-course-method

It's a brief article, but it's leading me to do some more reading on the topic.

I've started Papa Coco's Journal to try and train myself to stop being too wordy on the open forums.

My therapist reminds me that I am being heard for the first time after a childhood of being ignored, and after working 42 years in a John-Wayne style male dominated industry where sharing my fears could get my tires slashed in the parking lot. I learned, as most men my age learned, being a man is about NOT talking about your feelings or your childhood abuse.

And now that I've found a safe place to talk, I feel like I might be overdoing it.

I apologize to all of you for being too wordy out on the main forum, so I'm going to start putting most of my thoughts here in my recovery journal, which is, (I believe) a safe place to talk about anything I want to talk about, because no one feels they have to read what I've written if they've gotten tired of my long responses.

I've always been an open book, but the years when I was forced to act macho and disconnected with the emotion-phobic men and women I worked with were pretty exhausting years. Forced to talk only about cars, women, and fishing for 40+ years made me feel like I'm one of those Facebook pictures people post of themselves with a broad strip of black tape over their mouths.

Anyway, I commit to spending more time in the future on this recovery journal and less time writing long responses to your stuff. There's a fine line between being engaged and being a troll. I worry I might be seen as a troll if I keep responding too often and too long to everyone's posts.

I really like this forum and many of the people on it. I don't want to mess that up.

Clinically administered Micro-dose Ketamine Infusions for the purpose of helping PTSD, Depression and Suicidality are legal here in the US. They are relatively inexpensive and are covered under my medical insurance. So I finally tried it. On May 1st of this year, I had become so depressed that I could barely lift my head. Suicide was the only relief I could imagine to my lifelong pain, and shame, and anger at my abusers, and my habit of ruminating, or obsessively reliving past abuse.

SUCCESS! It worked better than I had even imagined it could. My suicidal thoughts dropped away immediately following the very first 40-minute infusion. Now, after just a few weeks, and a few more infusions, I don't hate myself anymore. I've stopped reeling in my lifelong hatred for my family and my abusers. I'm free from my daily habit of ruminating and self-torture over past guilt and shame. My obsessive reliving of the past is silent now. I'm less of a doormat.

Ketamine infusions are not a one-shot "cure" for PTSD but if I'll keep up with regular follow on, clinically administered infusions about once every 3 or 4 months, (Same frequency as my dental cleanings and my car's oil changes), I should be able to retain a suicide-free, mentally healthier lifestyle, even as a person with lifelong C-PTSD. Ketamine infusions have given me a chance to healthily handle the C-PTSD traumas as they pop up. I won't bother y'all with any more information. There's plenty of information on the web. But I'll watch this post for a few days to see If anyone has any questions or comments from my own personal experiences with Ketamine Infusions. If you want to know more about what they feel like for me, or how they've changed me, just respond to this post. If I don't hear from anyone, I'll politely move on.

[Here's the really FREAKY part:]

At 14, in 1974, I discovered my torso was deforming. The left side was pushing outward. I wanted girls to like me, so I started lifting weights to build big chest muscles to hide the protruding bone on the left side.

At 19, in 1979, back pain became a problem. Doctors called  it "Scoliosis" and promised I'd need pain killers for life, and would be unable to work by age 40.  They also begged me not to see a chiropractor. I didn't know what a chiropractor was, but their insistence made me curious. So I went to see one. Voila! My pain was handled and I was able to work hard and live free until retirement, and I'm still pain free to this day.

Here's the really FREAKY part:
In 1992, when my son turned 5. My chiropractor recommended we x-ray him to see if he's got what I've got so we could try curing it early while he was still growing. The x-ray was a duplicate of mine, just smaller. The chiropractor said that the twist to the left at the top, the compensating twist at the bottom, the flattened ribs on one side but not the other, and the crooked pelvis were something that showed we were missing our right arms. We were not. Both of us have all our limbs.  He then asked me if I knew what my father's x-ray might look like. I suddenly felt shock. I said "No, but he lost his right arm in the war, 20 years before I was born."  This chiropractor, who thought he'd seen everything, and who usually believed in the unbelievable, was stunned. "Your KIDDING!" He shouted.

It seems that when my father was 21, and lost  his right arm, his body then began to twist his spine over the next twenty years to compensate for the lopsided stress on his frame. My father was an unbelievably, freakishly strong man who had a reputation for being stronger with his one arm than two, two-armed men. THEN after twenty years of understandable evolution, he passed that spinal compensation genetically on to me, who then passed it, genetically on to my own son.

If physical trauma is transferred through genetics, why can't emotional trauma be transferred also?
I've experienced absolute proof that physical trauma is passed down from father to son to grandson. Now I am trying to understand how emotional trauma is also passed down the same way.

I grew up in the church and a family who routinely called me a liar if they didn't want to accept my problems nor my truth any time it was something they didn't want to face, or couldn't explain, so I know that when I tell this story, there will be those who just call me a liar to avoid having to challenge their own confirmation biases. So, I don't tell this story very often.

Doesn't matter. I read the articles written by so-called professionals who live by their own confirmation biases, who will either call me a liar, or promise it's just a bizarre one in a billion-trillion-gazillion coincidence—twice—but I know. I know, I know, I KNOW that physical traumas that happen during one's life, CAN mutate into the DNA and then be transmitted to the next generation. I didn't read about it. I didn't dream it. I have experienced it myself, against all the biases of the arrogant medical world.

This leads me to believe that emotional trauma can also be transmitted through DNA to the next generation. My same son who got his grandfather's spinal trauma also has CPTSD, even though no one ever abused him in any of the ways I was abused. But he suffers from so many of the same emotional problems I have. He's lucky to have me helping him find good therapists, and good information that I learn on my own journey, but he still swears to this day that he has no memories of me belittling, or abusing, or calling him a liar when he tells the truth. I know there is some truth in the fact that my trauma caused me to behave in certain ways that he picked up on, but I do NOT believe that he started out 100% healthy and then was damaged by my painful behaviors alone. He has unexplained traumatic responses—just like mine—that reach far beyond the experiences I gave him by my own Fawning personality after he was born.

So, this is just a journal entry, with a slight hope that I can learn more from other genuine experiencers rather than arrogant researchers who foofoo this and say that ALL trauma is taught to the children, and that since DNA transference isn't in their paradigm, that means it's not real for anyone else either.

I don't expect anyone to respond. I'm fine if no one does. It took quite a bit of courage for me to post this after years of reading the expert's biases against what I know to be fact, but I just know that when I post things publicly, it gives me some relief from holding it all in...

And maybe—just maybe—someone on this forum has also seen or experienced this phenomenon too??? If anyone does want to share any corroborating stories, I'd love to hear them. It would really help me find the truth in this reality that the medical world bullies are still not ready to accept or admit to.

[by openly talking about it as an addiction that I'm no longer okay with]

I am finally ready to address my compulsion to use Amazon.com and weekly trips to Costco for the endorphin and dopamine rush that calms my anxiety.

I call it shopping porn. When anxiety is sending me through the roof, buying something cools me back down and settles my flight/freeze response. But that doesn't make it alright. I'm compelled to place orders on Amazon.com every time I feel anxious. I use Amazon to buy a lot of things I need, but more and more, I'm logging on without any item in mind.

If I leave a store without a purchase I feel empty, like I'm leaving a restaurant without having eaten. I shop until I see things I realize I didn't know I wanted, and add them to my cart as I go. I used to go shopping a lot at the malls, hardware stores, clothing stores, etc, but as I'm aging, I'm becoming more reclusive. Also, to avoid buying impulsively, I intentionally avoid malls and Ikea stores. Unfortunately, Amazon has it all now so staying physically out of stores isn't even a deterrent anymore.

My problem used to be worse. I would buy brand new cars more than once per year. The debts I used to rack up nearly cost me my home about 6 times over the past 40 years. I've curtailed the need for new cars, but I see now that I can sure spend a lot of money every week on large bags of small ticket items. I'm becoming acutely aware now that I do it because I'm trying to calm my anxiety by filling a bottomless hole in my chest. No other reason. Every week I throw away expired groceries that I overbought last week. My shopping can be a $400 power tool that I think would be fun to own, or a $3 bumper sticker that I may never put onto a car. Either way, hitting the "submit" button on Amazon, or running my credit card through the reader at Costco gives me a dopamine hit that makes me feel really, really good—for about an hour--or until the remorse makes me feel really, really bad.

Today marks the day I've decided this addiction is worth openly dealing with. I need to start by asking if other Trauma survivors have found ways to handle shopping disorders. I think it's the same as using alcohol, porn, gambling, cigarettes, or any other modality to trigger the endorphin/dopamine rush that calms anxiety.  I'm told that all addictive behaviors share the same purpose: To trigger a comforting shot of dopamine into the brain as a calming drug.

My plan is to quit compulsive shopping the same way I had to quit drinking and smoking—by openly talking about it as an addiction that I'm no longer okay with. The longer I shop in secret, the longer I'll shop at all. I'll repeatedly admit my addiction publicly until I finally start to take baby steps away from shopping to get through a bad day. My first fear is like what a good friend says to me; if I stop [shopping] what else will I do with my hands? Replacing one addiction with another is a slippery slope that can lead to just changing the name of the problem. How I choose to learn to deal with that horrific anxiety that grips me several times a week is what is on trial here.

Wish me luck.

I'd like to share my experience with closure. I'm not saying that since it worked for me, it'll work for everyone, because my abusers may not have been the same as everyone else's. Mine were pedophiles, narcissists and sociopaths. But I figure if I openly share my experience, maybe some parts of it might help someone else a little at least???

In 2001, when I was 41, I tried to make contact with one of my abusers. Through a fluke, I was given his phone number by someone who'd found me by accident on the internet (Which was just a new household toy in 2001). I spent a week working up the nerve. I'd spent 30 years wanting to ask him why he'd done what he'd done to me. What had I done to make him abuse me the way he had? He was my best friend! How could he attack and then abandon me the way he had? 

At 41 years of age, I had been having chronic, violent nightmares about him and about those days at Catholic School ever since I was ten years old. Parts of my brain and heart just burned with an endless, boundless need for him to explain and apologize to me. He needed to see how much pain he'd caused me. I was just sure he'd apologize if he knew how much pain he'd caused. He was my best friend! I still felt my heart's connection to the best friends we'd once been. And I needed to know what I'd done to cause him to hate me so I could apologize to him too. At that point I still believed I'd played a part in what he'd done. I needed this for closure. For over thirty years I just couldn't find any closure.

The day came. I set up a time when my wife and kids were all busy and no one would bother me. I locked myself into the bedroom and dialed the number. It was his place of business. One of his employees answered. I asked to speak with him. She put the phone down, then came back and said "he's with a customer but he'll call you back shortly." 

He never called back. Ever.

Ten years later, while I was still having those relentless nightmares about reconnecting and apologizing to each other, I learned the words "Narcissist" and "Sociopath." I started reading books on who Ns and Ss were and why they were so cruel. I immediately saw him in the pages of those books. Word-for-word. He was a vampire, sure as could be. I quickly recognized how he'd charmed his way into my life. He'd tricked me into inviting him into my heart. Then he started sadistically leaching the energy from me slowly over the next few years. He'd diabolically groomed me for what he eventually did to me at ten. I started to really, truly understand that Ns and Ss are animals. Vampires. Predators. No better than monsters or hungry alligators in the pond. I started to recognize that being the victim of a narcissist/sociopath was like being struck by lightning. It happened to me because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was accidentally born into their family or put into the classroom with them. At the time that I was being abused by him and by key members of my own family, I didn't know how to defend myself against these vampires. But fast-forward to 2010, at 50 years of age, through reading books and webpages on Ns and Ss I began to realize that this person, and my own siblings, were, in fact, my original teachers in the "School Of Hard Knocks." They were the Ss and Ns who taught me how to recognize future sociopath/vampires and how to avoid ever being targeted by one ever again.

I got my closure through those books. Knowledge is power, and knowing they were just common monsters, or "dogs that bite," I somehow cut the heart strings that had been holding me hostage for 40 years. I disconnected from them all completely. The weight of all their abuse lifted off of me as if by magic. The nightmares ceased permanently. I learned that my abusers will never apologize. I learned, and finally really understood, that they were mentally ill, and that I was just one of the many, many victims of their long, miserable, hate-filled lives. It gave me some joy to read about how people with that mental illness pretend to be happy with what they've done, but that their smug happiness is just a ruse. In reality they are truly miserable. They lash out at good people to temporarily relieve the pain of their own poisonous hatred that's scorching their organs day and night. Ss and Ns know down deep that they are unloved and unlovable. I really began to see that even though I was their victim, I was also the lucky person in that story who knows love. I hurt because I loved them. They don't hurt because their hearts are cold, poisoned corpses rotting in their chests. It turns out they really are jealous of people like you and me, and that's why they hurt us. It's some, sick, reptilian, unevolved sense of revenge that they administer daily to the people who have what they know they'll never have. Love. The good news is that as a person who knows love, I can heal from their abuse, while as Ns and Ss they're doomed to only get worse and worse and worse until they die a resentful, often violent death.

A few years ago, I got cold-called by a person who knew me from Catholic School. He found me, also via the internet. His entire reason for contacting me was to apologize for not stepping in to help when we were in Catholic School. I don't know if he was in 12-step-program, or what, but for some reason he was trying to confront his own guilt for not helping. He also informed me that not long after I'd tried to contact my abuser, that monster died a long, slow death with AIDS. No part of me felt anything. I felt no sympathy nor joy. I did, however, gain some relief that he was no longer a threat to myself or anyone else.

In the end, my closure came without ever having to confront the abusers, but from learning the truth about who they really are. My particular abusers, pretty much all of them, were cold, heartless, jealous, angry, vengeful vampires. Some were just uncontrolled pedophiles. Some were hateful siblings, one was my best friend-turned-abuser. I was nothing more than a meal to each of them.

A sociopath is like a three-year-old who just wants whatever is in your hand. They'll fight and cry and lie and steal until they take possession, or destroy, what you have. They literally do it out of simple jealous rage. The next morning, they wake up and start over. Again, they just want whatever is in your hand again, and they repeat the day all over again. They do this until you finally walk away and stop playing in their sandbox with them. When you finally vanish from their lives, you no longer mean anything to them. They have no heart, so they have no connection to you. They turn all of their attention onto the next victim and play out their mental illness all over again until that person finally leaves also. Then they find another victim, and the cycle repeats. To a sociopath, meanness is an addiction and, just like with a drug, all they need is the dopamine fix they get from hurting someone again every day. And like a drug addiction, it escalates until it kills them.

When I learned how to spot and understand sociopaths, the target fell off my forehead. I'm no longer their prey. I'm safe now. Empowered. I can see their fangs from across the room and I no longer wander into their reach.

Somehow that's where I found closure. I discovered that the true reason they'd abused me was because abuse is what they do. And all I'd done to be their victim was I happened to be born into, or wandered into their miserable, hate-filled lives for a time.

Motivation to do anything comes and goes.

When I feel motivated, I can accomplish almost anything. But motivation is a fickle friend. It stays a while and then it vanishes again. This past week I've been almost paralyzed by my apathetic sense that "nothing matters so why do it?" I recognize it as some form of depression but I have no idea how to beat it.

For as far back as I have cognitive memory, I've been waiting for something to happen that will solve all my problems and make me finally feel happy. I don't know what I'm waiting for. But I keep thinking that I can't truly be happy until some mysterious, miraculous thing finally happens, and that if I just wait a little longer, when that mysterious, miraculous thing happens, I'll magically become my happy, productive, healthy self and I'll stay that way for life. Whatever this mysterious event is, I keep believing it'll solve my lifelong problems.

I know it's trauma. But I don't know where to go from here.

This is embarrassing. My anxiety has been triggered.

Some contractors are at my house today doing a full day's job. I can't stop trying to help. I keep offering them soda or coffee or to let them use my tools. I'm embarrassing myself...AGAIN! Or at least I'm triggering my lifelong fear that I'm humiliating myself like I've done a thousand times before.

My Fawn personality can be helpful, but sometimes I push it too far and people don't respect that. (Or at least that's what my trigger says to me). It makes me look like a nervous old nutjob. (or at least that's what my trigger says to me).  I'm hiding from these guys right now. I need to just trust that if they want to borrow a tool  they'll come ask to borrow one of mine. I need to stop offering!

I feel like I just had a gallon of caffein injected into my veins. I'm shaking from the inside out. I'm starting to picture them laughing at me to my face. (I know they won't. They're very nice young men--this is a trigger from past abuse and I know it--I just can't seem to escape it). I feel like I'm thirteen again and about to be pounded on by classmates or eyerolled and scoffed at by family. This gets so exhausting. When they're done tonight and they leave, I'm probably going to collapse in total exhaustian. I'll most likely have to deal with an evening of crushing depression and self-hatred. I had to quit drinking with AA 7 years ago, so all I can do tonight is eat tons of comfort food and try to distract in a James Bond movie or something. I'll likely imagine that these guys are laughing about me in the truck on the way back to their shop. Thank god I quit drinking or tonight would be a major binge!

I'm not a stoic, coldhearted John Wayne. I try to be a kindly, gentle Mr. Rogers, but at times I feel like I'm a nervous Don Knotts that people just laugh at.

I'm going to stay hidden from these guys until I start to feel my chest stop vibrating from nerves. Maybe I can feel like a grownup around them again if I give it an hour or so of no contact.

Gads! This is so humiliating! It's exhausting! It's TRAUMA!!!!!

Hi everyone,

    I just joined today. I'm recently retired from a manufacturing and engineering company. I'm a husband, father and grandfather who became a survivor of C-PTSD because I was born as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), which in the John Wayne era of the 1960s and 70s was something for a boy to be very ashamed of. I was then mob-bullied and abused sexually, emotionally and physically in Catholic school from ages 6 to 13. At home, I was #4 of 5 children. I was taught that my family was important but I was not. I was never to ask for anything from my "loving" family. I had to behave myself perfectly every day or I was accused of making them miserable. My family and school never properly corrected my behaviors, but would instead ask "What made you think THAT was a good idea?" Or "Why do you have to do things like that?" Well for a 4-year-old, that's a tough question to answer, and instead of guiding me to the proper way to not spill my milk, they seeded me with horrific shame for "deciding to be born stupid." From as far back as I have memory, I was 100% responsible for my parents and elder siblings' happiness. When I misbehaved, I "ruined their lives." I was forbidden from ever standing up for myself at home or at school. I was never allowed to express anger, or to ask family to bother themselves by standing up for me.  That's some of how I became permanently traumatized.

    I lived in the shadow of this family right up to the day I FINALLY estranged from them all when I was fifty. I don't know how many of them are still alive and I. Don't. CARE! It was their loss, not mine. I'd spent fifty years like Cinder-Fella, always doing things for my elder siblings and parents, and never being allowed to ask for anything in return. When they finally got so ugly even I couldn't love them anymore, they lost their little unpaid servant for good.

    Today I'm happy to have the diagnosis of C-PTSD with Hyper-Vigillance. Before the diagnosis I was constantly being humiliated for being "born broken."  I was called Bi-polar, Manic/depressive, too emotional for my own good, too fearful, a day-dreamer, foolish, weak, strung too tight, ungrounded, a loner, learning disabled, (after my family willingly allowed the Catholic school abuse me for 8 years, I fell into a permanent freeze and lost my ability to learn. I became a chronic D student who couldn't focus in class...ever again). I'm succesfully recovering from such lifelong addictions as shopping, buying and selling cars, smoking cigarettes and drinking way too much booze. After my grandsons came into my life I joined AA, because I would never do anything to support MYSELF, but now that I'm the proud Papa of two amazing little grandsons, I was able to quit drinking seven years ago FOR THEM. That's who I am, a Fawn-type who will do anything in the world for someone else but will never, ever do anything good for myself.

     I only get 55 minutes every two weeks with my therapist. He's awesome and very helpful but I need more than 55 minutes of bi-weekly interaction with sympathetic others. My wife, kids and grandkids love me like crazy and I have to remind myself of that every single day. I'm a social butterfly who has enjoyed a full life of hard work, doing stand up comedy, writing books, giving public speeches, working as a volunteer advocate for victims of sexual assault, but nowadays I isolate. I'm so tired of spending sixty years constantly feeling like I have to prove myself worthy of love every single day by working harder and forcing myelf to be happier than everyone else, that I only feel safe now when I'm completely alone and out of sight of all other humans. If they can't see me they can't judge me.

     I'm grateful to have found this forum and am so looking forward to perusing the chat threads and learning great stuff, and maybe even making some small chat connections with people who "get me."

     Thanks for being here everyone.