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Spryte, you wrote everything I wished I could have said but couldn't because the forgiveness convo is so enormously triggering to me. Thank you so much. 

I found this video to be very educational and validating, though intense at some moments because I related to so much that was described. The first half explains how developmental trauma occurs and the second half covers how to help children with developmental trauma (good for inner children, too). 


"Trauma, Brain, and Relationship: Helping Children Heal"
25:02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYyEEMlMMb0

I have a serious problem with this trigger, too, almost daily. The only thing I've found so far that works somewhat when flight is impossible is to seriously hug/hold myself, hand over hand putting pressure on the center of my chest, and tell the IC that they are safe, explain to them what is happening and that they are protected. (Actually, this is my go-to coping method in general.)

It doesn't solve everything, but it takes the edge off a great deal and at least keeps me from spiraling into an even worse state. I've found that the hug part is key and the reassurance of the inner children won't work nearly as well without it. The trick for me is to remember to do all that, which can be really hard when I hear all that awful yelling and stomping and banging.

Hi Roadie,

I have mixed feelings about telling you the following, but if it were me, I would want to know both sides. (And please keep in mind that hospitals vary a great deal.)

I have not been inpatient, but I have been in intensive outpatient (somewhat like inpatient, but you go home in the afternoon) and I have had many friends who were inpatient. So based on that:

-It is extremely likely that you will be pressured to take psychiatric drugs.
-It is possible that if you change your mind and want to leave, they will not let you. (This happened to a loved one who went inpatient voluntarily.)
-The hospitalization will always be in your medical records. While not as much of a potential liability as involuntary inpatient, this is something to consider.
-It is possible that no one in the hospital will want to talk about trauma.

*Note: ECT (shock treatment) is also on offer in many hospitals and sometimes suggested as a "safe" alternative to psychiatric drugs. This is not true. It causes memory loss and other problems.

Strictly my experience:

- "med management classes"
- "understanding our illness classes"
- many other "classes" of stuff I can't remember because it was worthless
- coloring while a social worker played with her iphone
- totally unhelpful group therapy where the facilitators would intentionally trigger patients
- check in with psychiatrist
- 0 talk of trauma in any fashion (except in spontaneous moments between patients)

I hope you get the help you are hoping for if you go in, but knowing what I do, I couldn't be silent about the less favorable possibilities.

I wish you the best and I'm sorry for what you are going through.

Thanks for sharing this.

The dynamic described in the article was pervasive in my childhood. Both my parents treated me like one of those human batteries in the Matrix. Now, as an adult, I am trapped for the time being around my covert narcissist mother again because I am disabled. I organically developed a "medium chill" strategy (even before I learned what medium chill was) in an effort to protect myself from being exploited. It has been very helpful, but the battle never ever ends and keeping that barrier in place is exhausting in itself. I often detect rage under the surface of her facade, because I'm not as easily used as I was when I was a child. Still, she talks at me endlessly, even when I don't respond. To her, I'm not supposed to have boundaries; I am a thing.

Hi, my name is Sandals and I'm stuck at crying. Anyone else in the boat with me?

I am, Sandals. I couldn't cry at all for a long long time. I've been able to a tiny bit recently, but I've noticed that it is never for my own pain. Whenever I feel a cry coming on for my own pain, another part of me silently turns off the water. I find it very discouraging because I really want to cry just about every day. I need that release and I can't get it. In addition, I know from reading Pete Walker and others that grieving seems to be a necessary step to recovery, so this makes me scared that I will never get there.

Like bheart said, you're not alone. 

Thanks for the link, keepfighting! 

I got an 82 - all red. And I know it used to be worse. This test is validating.

Thanks for replying, BeHea1thy and Kizzie   

I was worried that I may have posted too many quotes, but they all seemed pretty important and potentially helpful to anyone who may not have access to the book, so I just pasted all the notes I took from that chapter.

mourningdove,

It's so difficult to know that besides going through the initial trauma, we have to tell our stories over and over and over again. We are often misunderstood, unappreciated and swept to the sidelines once more as we valiantly try to put ourselves together again.

For me, it's been exhausting and re-traumatizing. I don't know how many times I've sat and rattled off lists of horrible things that had happened to me only to have some twit tell me that none of it mattered and I just needed to take psych drugs forever and learn self-discipline (i.e. overcome my moral failings). What a brilliant way to treat people who have been hurt. 

It's definitely powerful reading, Kizzie, and I find it amazing that it was published in 1992 and yet there is still such rampant ignorance about trauma in the "mental health" professions. It's very discouraging, though I think it is changing despite the power of the moneyed interests that would keep understanding of trauma off the map.

I couldn't help but to respond to your post mourningdove. I was fired from a doctor once! It sucked. I figure in the end I was probably better off without her, but I didn't take to the rejection very well at the time as it was during a severe down slope.

But your story of that therapist also reminded me of when I took group therapy when I was 18 (after finally escaping home). I was in a very toxic/abusive relationship at the time. I did get out of it eventually, but not because of the therapy.  I'm not sure whether anyone has ever done group therapy (well, this was in the 80s mind you) but supposedly it can help because people in the room mirror your relations, which can allow for processing. However, it actually just traumatized. One woman, a replica of my mother, was abusive to me in the group. I ran for the hills!!!

I'm sorry that happened to you, lonewolf. I don't want to go off-topic too much, but I have had several experiences with group therapy and they were all very unhelpful to say the least. Later I heard someone refer to hospital group therapy as "the dogfights," and I just couldn't stop laughing.

As if just hearing those words will cause the trauma to just melt away. 

Exactly. And when it doesn't, they get miffed, like, "Wait a minute, you're not playing by the rules!" 

"Take care of yourself first."  Gave license to the narc part of her that knew little of doing things for others, only for the sake of putting another person first once in awhile.

Yeah, all these sayings work very well to justify ones own feelings and invalidate those of others.

"Don't worry; be happy." Has anyone added that yet? I find it infuriating. Oh wow, I had no idea it was that simple! THANK YOU for telling me how to feel!!! /sarcasm

So for example, you could visualize your Inner Critic as one of those hateful cartoon villains, the kind that looks a bit ridiculous.

This reminded me of a technique in a Francine Shapiro book that she calls "cartoon character." It's basically listening to what the Inner Critic has to say, but hearing it in a Donald Duck voice, or Popeye, etc. so that the ridiculousness of it sinks in.

I've been reading Judith Herman's book "Trauma and Recovery" and thinking a great deal about the way that so-called "personality disorders" are used to further the stigmatization of trauma survival; particularly among women.

Herman goes on to argue that the kinds of experiences we most frequently and persistently connect to PTSD are those that take place in the political or military spheres, which are traditionally male-dominated. Nobody says, "I don't believe you" to stories told by the combat veteran or the political prisoner when he comes home. So while male trauma survivors are stigmatized, they are believed.

By contrast, the kinds of traumas that women most frequently experience are in domestic or sexual life: domestic violence, rape or sexual assault, and molestation as children; and when survivors of these traumas come forward with their experiences, they are frequently not believed.

The severe "personality disorders" that are most commonly diagnosed in women (Borderline & Histrionic) live at that intersection of stigma and disbelief. The behavior and symptoms that result from trauma are therefore chalked up to who she is instead of what was done to her. Hence a disorder of personality rather than an injury.

I know that these are pretty half-finished thoughts; but I'm curious for a sanity check. What do you guys think?

I read Trauma and Recovery recently, and I think this is exactly what Herman is saying (though she did note that rape is typically accepted as being traumatic). That's why she begins the book talking about the old diagnosis of "hysteria." From Trauma and Recovery:

Survivors of childhood abuse often accumulate many different diagnoses before the underlying problem of a complex post-traumatic syndrome is recognized. They are likely to receive a diagnosis that carries strong negative connotations. Three particularly troublesome diagnoses have often been applied to survivors of childhood abuse: somatization disorder, borderline personality disorder, and multiple personality disorder. All three of these diagnoses were once subsumed under the now obsolete name hysteria. Patients, usually women, who receive these diagnoses evoke unusually intense reactions in caregivers. Their credibility is often suspect. They are frequently accused of manipulation or malingering. They are often subject to furious and partisan controversy. Sometimes they are frankly hated.

These three diagnoses are charged with pejorative meaning. The most notorious is the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. This term is frequently used within the mental health professions as little more than a sophisticated insult. (123)

[Trauma and Recovery]

anyone watched or read Judith Herman?

I read Trauma and Recovery (1992) recently, paying special attention to Chapter 6: "A New Diagnosis," in which Herman proposes CPTSD as a new psychiatric diagnosis:

While it is clear that ordinary, healthy people may become entrapped in prolonged abusive situations, it is equally clear that after their escape they are no longer ordinary or healthy. Chronic abuse causes serious psychological harm. The tendency to blame the victim, however, has interfered with the psychological understanding and diagnosis of a post-traumatic syndrome. Instead of conceptualizing the psychopathology of the victim as a response to an abusive situation, mental health professionals have frequently attributed the abusive situation to the victim's presumed underlying psychopathology. (116)

Concepts of personality organization developed under ordinary circumstances are applied to victims, without any understanding of the corrosion of personality that occurs under conditions of prolonged terror. Thus, patients who suffer from the complex aftereffects of chronic trauma still commonly risk being misdiagnosed as having personality disorders. (117)

Even the diagnostic of "post-traumatic stress disorder," as it is presently defined, does not fit accurately enough. The existing diagnostic criteria for this disorder are derived mainly from survivors of circumscribed traumatic events. They are based on the prototypes of combat, disaster, and rape. In survivors of prolonged, repeated trauma, the symptom picture is often far more complex. Survivors of prolonged abuse develop characteristic personality changes, including deformations of relatedness and identity. Survivors of abuse in childhood develop similar problems with relationships and identity; in addition, they are particularly vulnerable to repeated harm, both self-inflicted and at the hands of others. The current formulation of post-traumatic stress disorder fails to capture either the protean symptomatic manifestations of prolonged, repeated trauma or the profound deformations of personality that occur in captivity.

The syndrome that follows upon prolonged, repeated trauma needs its own name. I propose to call it "complex post-traumatic stress disorder." The responses to trauma are best understood as a spectrum of conditions rather than as a single disorder. They range from a brief stress reaction that gets better by itself and never qualifies for a diagnosis, to classic or simple post-traumatic stress disorder, to the complex syndrome of prolonged, repeated trauma. (119)

While only a small minority of of survivors, usually those with the most severe abuse histories, eventually become psychiatric patients, many or even most psychiatric patients are survivors of childhood abuse. The data on this point are beyond contention. (122)

Survivors of childhood abuse often accumulate many different diagnoses before the underlying problem of a complex post-traumatic syndrome is recognized. They are likely to receive a diagnosis that carries strong negative connotations. Three particularly troublesome diagnoses have often been applied to survivors of childhood abuse: somatization disorder, borderline personality disorder, and multiple personality disorder. All three of these diagnoses were once subsumed under the now obsolete name hysteria. Patients, usually women, who receive these diagnoses evoke unusually intense reactions in caregivers. Their credibility is often suspect. They are frequently accused of manipulation or malingering. They are often subject to furious and partisan controversy. Sometimes they are frankly hated.

These three diagnoses are charged with pejorative meaning. The most notorious is the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. This term is frequently used within the mental health professions as little more than a sophisticated insult. (123)

These three disorders [somatization disorder, borderline personality disorder, and multiple personality disorder] might perhaps best be understood as variants of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, each deriving its characteristic features from one form of adaptation to the traumatic environment. The physioneurosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is the most prominent feature of somatization disorder, the deformation of consciousness is most prominent in multiple personality disorder, and the disturbance in identity and relationship is most prominent in borderline personality disorder. The overarching concept of a complex post-traumatic syndrome accounts for both the particularity of the three disorders and their interconnection. The formulation also reunites the descriptive fragments of the condition that was once called hysteria and reaffirms their common source in a history of psychological trauma. (126)

I think this Discovery News video is a really useful summary of a study that was reported on late last year.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LsaaUTyc2E

The study defined psychological maltreatment as "caregiver-inflicted bullying, terrorizing, coercive control, severe insults, debasement, threats, overwhelming demands, shunning and/or isolation" ("Childhood Psychological Abuse as Harmful as Sexual or Physical Abuse," http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/10/psychological-abuse.aspx).

It's too bad that the majority of society would take the stance of "they are your PARENTS, you should be nice to them". "You will regret it when they die".

In all honesty, I'm not sure I would be devastated if they were gone. It sounds harsh, but right now I could take it or leave it.  A part of me would probably be relieved too.

I relate to this. A part of me would definitely be relieved. In fact, one of my parents is dead and it's actually a huge relief in a lot of ways. They cannot hurt me anymore and I don't regret anything. So ambivalence doesn't sound harsh to me.

So yeah, the "common wisdom" about regretting when parents die doesn't ring true for me if said parents were abusive. I wish people would stop assuming that just because THEY had parents who were okay, that everyone else does, too. This belief just heaps further stigma on top of people who have been mistreated by parents. It's gas-lighting on a societal level.

I do not have to forgive.

Hi DoveCry 

I'm new here, too, but wanted to welcome you in dove solidarity. 

I relate to the enormous shame you write about. It's a terrible burden. I have been discovering lately that this is a burden that I was saddled with by others so that they would not have to take responsibility for their own pain.

And I've discovered that there are differing schools of thought about what it means to lose ones mind, and for some it is seen as a necessary step towards healing.

You are not alone.