Messages

I try to take it easy and slow but it is so helpful and life-changing to me that I really want to read and learn.
Today I am hopeful and self-compassionate.

Anjulie I'm really glad to hear this because I am feeling this way too about finding OOTS. I've also just started reading Out of the Fog and realise that on OOTF, too, are people who have had similar life experiences. Reading books about CPSTD is not the same as reading the words of others who share the experiences. I've told my GP about OOTS because I think it's an absolutely wonderful resource. 

Thanks so much for your response sj. The thread is https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=8428.0 - about the answer always being no, and it was started by Phoebes under the Emotional Abuse heading.

In a thread below about the answer always being no I read a statement by DecimalRocket which has excited me all morning.

"To many others, the hardest thing is to get out of their "comfort zone", and growing means toughening. But to us with trauma, many of us don't even have a comfort zone to go into, and growing means slowing down. Taking it easier. And resting.

Rest is precious."

It may seem strange but I am only just learning, in my early 70s, that rest is indeed precious and healing. I have driven myself forward all my life - a relentless quest to 'manage' a life that felt fraught, where there was no 'comfort zone', no sense of safety, nowhere to belong, no-one to protect me.  Since my latest crisis, I've been resting - not just withdrawing from people but actively 'taking it easy', drifting through my days, coasting along, shunning commitments, letting go of the feeling that I have to 'manage' the outside world. And it has somehow allowed me to feel, for the first time, how shocking it was that I was so relentlessly traumatised by those around me when I was helpless to protect myself and that I was left so vulnerable.  Respecting my need to rest is allowing me to start feeling the self-compassion I've read about but not fully absorbed before. This is exciting to me. So thank you to DecimalRocket and those who started and commented in that thread. It has helped me a lot.

Yes, I agree with Blueberry's  comment: "You're starting out fairly young, unlike people who don't find out about cptsd till they're in their 60's, so there's a great deal of hope for you, I'd say!"

I was in my mid thirties when, crouching on the far end of the analyst's couch, I told my psychoanalyst that I did not love my parents. It felt to me as if it was the most shameful thing I could say. This despite the fact that, as I can see clearly now, my parents had treated me with unrelenting hostility from the day I was born and left me with a lifetime of struggling every day to manage the consequences of trauma. I do believe, from this experience, that the urge to love one's parents is so very deep and necessary to our survival that it takes a massive amount to upend it. My mother lived to 96 and until the day she died I still, despite all evidence to the contrary, hoped that she would turn to me and smile with kindness and we would connect. In fact, the last time I saw her she refused to look at me or to even acknowledge I was in the room, despite my brother's trying to get her to do so. But somehow I'm glad that inside me I kept the wish, and the potential, to love my parents. It feels it was the right thing for my soul.

So, CrashPhenomena, I am impressed, and I think its hopeful for your future, that you already have the insight to understand the conflict you feel. 

Kizzie, you said: "I hope OOTS provides you with the safe harbour you are looking for not to mention a 'tribe' of sorts". I've only been on this forum a few days but already I feel immensely grateful. It does feel as if I've found somewhere, a 'tribe', that has lived an experience like mine and finding that is truly healing. It's like being wrapped up in something warm. I spoke with my GP about finding support in the community but could not find it locally where I live. I didn't know you were already waiting here in the virtual world to provide what I need. So, to Kizzie and the others who founded and are running this forum, may I say a huge thank you. You are providing me with an anchor, a safe harbour, as I work every day at trying to manage life. I look at the OOTS icon on my laptop as a friend. Thank you! 

Hi Allison,
I can relate so much to what you say about your memory. Huge chunks of my life are just a blank to me. I don't remember people or events from most of my life - just isolated incidents or impressions - and I marvel at people who can recount stories from their past complete with details and conversations. And what you say about having no emotional response to a memory also rings true. I can recount a few instances of what would be called abuse from my childhood but while I do so it feels as if I'm describing what happened to someone else, not me. I need to understand this more. I will follow the links given in other responses. Anyway, I just wanted to say you are certainly not alone.

Thank you so much to all of you for your welcome and messages. It means a huge amount to me to feel acknowledged. It's also really helpful to hear that others feel that managing complex trauma gets harder as one gets older. I too have done extensive reading over these past years to try to understand what is going on inside me and why. My most recent episode of despair was triggered by thinking I could stop taking antidepressants and manage my feelings of sadness and anger by a combination of intellectual understanding and willpower. It did not work and I now know, in my bones, that I cannot manage by an effort of will alone. Understanding is important but I also need support by way of my therapist and medication and I need to pay way more attention to becoming attuned to my body, nurturing my body, and stop judging how it reacts, but rather respect that it is telling me when I need to protect myself. For all my reading, it feels I'm still stumbling towards really understanding what Bessel van der Kolk means by saying the body keeps the score. Thank you again for your responses. I will read more on these pages and see where I can contribute.

Hello all, when I first read about complex trauma a few years ago it was an enormous relief to be able to make sense of a lifelong struggle. As a young woman I had sought help for my sadness and despair, but neither my therapists nor I had the understanding or language of complex trauma to help explain what was wrong. So I was left trying to manage to get through life with what felt like a hidden disability, all alone. I'm now in my early 70s and with the help of all that's being written now on trauma I'm trying to listen more carefully to my body and work with it to protect me. As I get older I feel that I'm becoming more, not less, vulnerable to shocks and I'm withdrawing from people even more than I did in the past. A recent episode of acute despair led me to reach out (yet again) for support and I discovered OOTS and decided to become a member in the hope that I will find a safe community of understanding people with whom I can share my experiences, learn and, I hope, feel less alone.