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Wowie yeah I haven't been around, apologies.


I hope everyone else who's struggling is doing okay and getting some sort of support. For me, getting used to the way the world is now helped somewhat. I won't lie, it's still tempting but getting used to things and talking to my (supportive angel of a) wife has been very helpful. Like, we don't necessary talk about the temptation to drink, more... our fears and anxieties related to the state of the world.
The big plus is that she's a nurse so while she's not an expert, she can definitely tell me if a worry related to Covid is like, totally out there.



So... I'm dealing. Considering giving meetings of some sort a go, but tbh I've been sober for years so I'd feel like I'd be taking a place from someone who really needs it. Would be nice to talk shop with someone who gets the struggle, though.

So... I haven't been here for a while.


Things have been relatively okay. My relationship is going very well, my wife and I have been together for 16 years now (our anniversary was in july) and we're continuously working on improving ourselves and our future together.


I'm also on the waiting list of several therapists and trying to go inpatient for indepth trauma therapy plus made two specialists appointments I should've made years ago, but better now than never.


Currently I'm working through a lot of trauma from my last stays in psychiatric hospitals, because the place where I was as a teen was... bad. Not overtly abusive, but incompetent.
And I feel like I have to make progress there because that trauma is the mayor thing keeping me from going inpatient. I live in a country with (almost) free healthcare, at worst there's a wait of a couple of months so I feel very priviledged but I feel like I'm currently not well equipped enough to handle being inpatient.


Hopefully I'll get there, though.

Absolutely. Everything was normal, I was doing great. And until I was like... 13, 14 maybe I thought everyone else was doing the same.
Sometimes I still do, but that's mostly because my sense of what's normal and what's not is very wonky.

It's a coping mechanism. People, especially very young people, aren't meant to carry the burdens we carried. You didn't lie, OceanStar, you survived. And that's okay, because that was the choice you had and doing anything else might have unforseeable consequences.
That doesn't make you a bad person or guilty or a liar, it makes you someone who survived bad things and no one has any right to take offense in that.

This is belated, but thank you all for listening, it helps a lot to be heard!


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These last days were hard for me. I've slipped into a depressed rut just due to the general situation in the world and feeling kind of trapped in my home for Covid 19 reasons.
My diet is currently pretty bad, I've been coping by eating junk food way too much. Plus my wife is currently on vacation and struggles with food too so that was a bit of a recipe for disaster.


We've sat down and made a meal plan for the coming week which includes healthier versions of our favorite meals plus planned snacks as well, which we don't usually do, but I hope it helps a bit. I know I feel better when my diet includes less sugar and more fruit and veggies.


I've made a few healthy changes as well, such as starting up roleplaying again. I have always loved writing and it's a very expressive creative hobby that helps me interact with my emotions in healthier ways. Plus it also means I spent less time obsessively checking social media or numbing myself by playing video games too much.
I also find it helps me regain those verbal skills that CPTSD makes difficult to access at times.


I have this habit of disappearing of the roleplaying sites I use after a few months, usually when my depression/anxiety get worse again, but I'm hoping to prevent that burnout this time, only I'm not quite sure how to do that.
Usually what drives me away is a lack of emotional energy to engage with others plus imposter syndrom, feeling like all the stuff I come up with isn't good anymore.


Anyway, I just wanted to say... I'm slowly coming out of this depression ditch and improving. Plus, these phases get shorter and less deep and dark lately, which I think is pretty good.

I can only agree with what the others have said, Kizzie. This is a great place and for me at the very least the first place where I feel like I can talk about my experiences without holding back or being ashamed.


Thank you so much 

So...


with the possiblity of going into inpatient treatment again - in a proper specialized clinic this time - I'm completely freaking out. I am trying to be gentle with myself because given how my last inpatient stays went it's prefectly understandable, especially the parts of me still stuck at that time are terrified.


Oh yeah and the fact that I kind of understand that these parts apparently exist is... a lot. I always thought my traumata weren't severe enough or didn't start young enough but apparently that's a thing that my psyche does.
Also serves to show me how deep my denial goes, I started getting abused at two, if I'm being honest about it.


Anyway, those last few days I had started making a few connections to the outside world again but now I just feel like breaking all of that off again because it feels like too much. Like I don't have the energy and tbh I'm too scared.
I'm scared of being rejected when those people find out I'm going inpatient, in case of the people I don't know super well yet, I'm scared of them finding out about my mental health stuff and deciding I'm too much work or too flaky or whatever.


I long for community so bad but I just... I can't deal with it. I can't deal with people that don't carry trauma judging me for my coping mechanisms. I can't deal with those people demanding me to get better or demanding me to have energy I plain don't have. And I don't know how I am ever supposed to.


People that don't carry trauma are naive, often extremely ableist and take so much energy to talk to because they take every attempt to explain why I can't/won't be able to do something as an excuse and not the valid reason it's in 90% of cases. (I'm human, sometimes I really am just lazy)


And it sucks. I wanna live in that world too where not every minute of the day is colored by trauma. Where things are just easy for more than like, what, a day maybe? at a time.
And I won't, ever, of course, but it's just so much to deal with right now.

[***TW Self harm, incompetent medical care***]

I remembered three other bad things and would just like to write them down somewhere people can see. I'm  looking to go back into inpatient treatment again and apparently not even the facts that this time I'm a) an adult b) wanting to go into specialized treatment and c) going there 100% voluntarily are keeping my brain from freaking out and bringing all of these memories out of their hiding places.



***TW Self harm, incompetent medical care***


So a few I think it was days after I arrived in the psych ward for the first time, I relapsed with my self harming behavior. I think I remember trying to reach out to the staff before I couldn't hold back anymore, but I'm not 100% sure so let's give them the benefit of the doubt.


I know I'd been missing my home and my usual routine very terrible and feeling incredibly unsafe as well as having flashbacks. My room mate had told me about a tool for self harming I could get to on... I think it was my first day. But I don't blame my room mate, we were all just kids coping as best as we could.


Anyway, the troubling thing for me is the staff reaction. There I was, feeling unsafe, dissociating (which of course no one noticed  ), tears still streaming down my face because I was like paralized from the waist up, sleeve pulled up and self injury very clearly visible.
I walked up to one of the nurses playing a game with some of the patients and tried to talk but I think I just like... managed one croaky sound.
But I was still standing there crying and bleeding and no one even looked at me. Like I think some of the patients looked at me and didn't know how to react (and I still feel bad, that wasn't very good of me to do but yeah, I was extremely out of it) but I was in view of at least one staff member because we were right in front of the nurse's room (like where the paperwork is done and everything, idk the English term).


And I felt like a ghost. I felt like I wasn't real. So I went back to my room, self harmed some more and waited until the shift changed to get my injuries cared for. And then I was berated for waiting until I got so bad and for being irresponsible.


-------


And then there was the time the station's doctor (who was also an educated psychiatrist so should've known better) made fun of me for self harming.


I had the top bunk and one night I was listening to some loud music on my CD player and like... doing a little dancing in my bed but I wasn't really aware of my surroundings so I gave myself a small cut on my back with the ceiling light. I went to get that patched up and he made fun of me saying that normal people self harm on their arms or their legs and that I just had to be the weirdo doing it on my back.
And I felt so deeply ashamed because I think I was trying to make a joke but at that point I had fought very, very hard not to self harm for 2 months.


-----


Also the time one of the nurses yelled at me because I had used a coping mechanism he wasn't okay with. I'd done the thing where I'd drawn all over my forarms in marker to "simulate self harm" which, by the way, is a skill that does absolutely nothing for me, and then I'd self harmed anyway because everything was super overwhelming.


Went to get my injuries cared for and instead of being happy that I was at least taking enough care of myself to get bandaged up, he yelled at me for using red marker and making it so hard to see the injuries.
I'm pretty sure he was extra generous on the disinfectant and extra careful to wrap the bandage tight, too.

Thank you two for your input, it's very appreciated!


snowdrop, I will definitely check the videos and the book out once my ability to focus gets better again in a day or two. I've had a brief glimpse and it seems helpful!


three roses, that's interesting to know as well, I didn't know DID could work that way. And thanks to the lovely people here, I feel way less alone. Feels like I just have to ask "Hey is this a thing?" and a bunch of people come out of the woodwork. Not that I'd not rather have all of us meeting on like, a knitting forum because we're okay, but it's so nice to know I'm not the only one that feels/copes a certain way. 

Thank you snowdrop, notalone and owl25. You make me feel like it is okay to aknowledge this pain because it is real and reasonable.


I've never had this pain validated, the one time I tried to talk about my experiences at the psych wards I was in I was told to forgive because this was the early 2000s and people weren't educated plus that the nurses recieved no special training before being allowed to work on a psych ward for children.
I feel like none of the things the nurses did would require special training to have gone different, just human decency.

Thank you, three roses, it's very nice just to know I am heard. And hearing that I apparently wasn't "just" being an overly sensitive child.

I know no one here can give me a definitive answer, but I'd appreciate it if people have any advice, their own experiences to share or whatever else comes to mind.


So, I don't remember a time in my life where I didn't frequently dissociate so it's very hard for me to tell what's normal and what's not.


However, when I recall past trauma like in a post I did earlier, I find sometimes myself... it feels like slipping into the skin of my younger self. The same emotional state, craving doing things I did back then, craving music I listened to when I was that age, acting like I did then. Being confused about differences to my body (like being heavier, having shorter hair, no longer having my earings...)


And then some time passes and I calm down or I manage to ground myself and I'm back in the present, back in my own self.


Plus I find that I have like... not alters, that's not it. Just parts of me that don't feel like a whole being.
Like, my inner child is so pronounced I can feel myself slipping into their skin and having only the ability to understand what my 7,8 year old self would understand. Not being able to recall big words, for example.


And it's the same for other aspects, parts, whatever the terminology might be, of myself. It's like I shut a door and what's out front is me, but a different version of me.


I would just like to say this feels very different from normal adjustment for social reasons, like not swearing in front of elderly relatives or having to adjust to easier language when talking to kids for example. It literally feels like an entirely different part of me is wearing my skin and I'm (mostly) just able to watch until I get my body back.


Is that still a normal aspect of your garden variety of dissociation? Is it an entirely different thing? Is there a name for stuff like that?
I feel stumped in doing my own research. I don't want like, a diagnosis via internet, I just want to learn and understand what is going on with me.

[*** TW emotional abuse, mentions of self harm, suicide attempt and sexual harrasment, incompetent medical care***]

*** TW emotional abuse, mentions of self harm, suicide attempt and sexual harrasment, incompetent medical care***

After waking up from another nightmare, I'd like to share some stories of abuse and neglect I experienced in the two psych wards I was in as a 16-17 year old. I was in there because at the time, I recieved a diagnosis of recurrent depressive disorder, was self harming and skipped a lot of school.

I have large gaps in my memories (I'm sure people here can relate) but I just gotta word vomit this stuff.

Apologies if this isn't in the right place.

One thing that looking back always sticks out to me that at least to me, it never seemed like the professionals made an attempt to cure or even accurately figure out what was wrong with me.
I took one IQ test (fun when you have the memory of a goldfish due to living in an actively abusive household) and one diagnostic test for depression that I lied on and selected what I thought were the less "depressed" options but still got diagnosed with a moderate depressive episode. And nothing else. Once, another patient and I did a test that was us balancing on some beam but I still have no clue what that was about.

In therapy, I was very obviously dissociating, there was very obviously something wrong with my memory, I was very obbviously extremely reluctant to go home on the weekends and there were a thousand other signs there was something wrong besides depression.


And then there was the actual abusive stuff.
The therapist that saw no problem telling a 16 year old child that no one likes being around depressed people so they need to get it under control.
Same therapist telling a suicidal 16 year old to smile at themself in the mirror to cure depression.
Same therapist telling me that the other patients were right when they gave me a badge for being a "fun killer" because "I never do anything". Wonder why that could be?
Same therapist who when I told him another patient was sexually harrassing me told me he would talk to him but never even tried to talk to me about it like my feelings didn't matter. This was also after having told him about getting sexually abused on my 16th birthday.
Same therapist that didn't even try to talk to me about it when my roommate of three months attempted suicide.


Another therapist (not mine, one we did group work with) publically humiliated me for thinking I might have schizophrenia. Because I was a 16 year old child only exposed to what the media at the time was saying, which was the age old confusion of schizophrenia and DID.
He could have talked to me in private, explained to me that these are two very different conditions and explained why people develop DID which probably would have been helpful for me to develope the language to talk about my trauma, but that's not what I'm really upset about.

It's that he just randomly brought that up in group therapy in front of everyone. Treating me like I was completely stupid instead of a misinformed child. Not even giving me a chance to learn or be heard about the fact that I had things other than depression going on.

And the nurses.

There was one male nurse who did night shifts who was like 6"6 and built like a fridge who used his physical presence to intimidate the patients. Nothing like having experienced physical abuse before and laying in bed desperate to fall asleep because the very large man had been "joking" that he might attempt to hurt you if you don't.
The man also found it hilarious to make fun of another patient (14 years old) for needing a night light because being in the dark made her hallucinations worse.

One female nurse I just didn't get along with for what I now know to be entirely superficial reasons (hey, I was 16...) until she decided to corner me in an empty room at me to yell at me what I was even thinking being so rude to her and why I couldn't be nice to her like a normal person.
I still think I wasn't rude, I just didn't talk to her unless I had to and then I was still polite. I pretty much stopped talking to all the nurses after that unless I really, really needed something.

Another nurse who was being super friendly with me, playing games with me when I hadn't made any friends yet and always asking me about how I was doing... giving me that positive attention I craved due to the situation at home... only for her to turn around and make fun about how "socially awkward" and "weird" I was with the other nurses.
FYI, I'm autistic. And also socially very inexperienced due to how things were going for me.

The nurse that thought it was appropriate to tell me repeatedly that if I wasn't at least going to try not to be depressed, because that's how depression works, I would be one of those "nut cases" that spent the rest of their lives locked up in psych wards.

And that's just the stuff that comes to mind right now. I find myself starting to dissociate and having trouble making words as well as using English.

I'm sorry for the word vomit, I just need someone to see this.

It's sad to hear that things went so dark for you, that must be very hard. I'm glad you could reach out to your mental health team and that you and your wife are starting couple's therapy again, I think that's a very good idea and a brave step to take. I hope you can heal the rift between your wife and yourself with time, it sounds like you're taking steps into the right direction!

That sounds like you're going through a super tough time, buddy. I just wanted you to know that I heard you, even if I sadly don't have anything to offer but a listening ear.

San, what you're saying makes a lot of sense, thank you for showing me a different perspective!


I hope your d wasn't too sad about missing out, it sounds like you folks definitely made the right choice though.


I struggle with that, putting myself first... hope it gets less hard some day. Thank you for the love and the hugs 


Blueberry, yeah, we're very relieved. Just hope things stay so calm here.