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Hi BeeKeeper - this is intriguing. I've not tried anything like this before. It holds promise of being a way to make jewellery for my grand-daughters so I will bookmark your link to remind me where to go. Thanks so much for your explanation.
Bluepalm

Kizzie,

Thank you for this recommendation. I've bought this book to read and will now give it to my grand-daughters to keep. It's a comforting book that conveys important ideas with a light touch. I love the way Charlie Mackesy  leaves his working pencil marks around his delightful drawings. To me that conveys an ease in showing how we try and try again to get things right and eventually we get there and all the efforts together make the result more interesting and more human.

Hi Pluto and welcome to this kind and caring community. Your story is devastating to read and my heart goes out to you. When I was your age I lacked the degree of understanding about myself that you have, but I can certainly relate to the confusion, despair and vulnerability you describe about what happened and continues to happen to you. I hope you find the warm support, validation and increased understanding of your trauma that I have found through being a member of this forum.  Thank you for joining and telling your story with an open heart.

Oh Kizzie thank you! Your response brings smiles and tears. You know I do this with my dogs - I scoop them up and hug them and tell them 'I love you so much, you are so beautiful' and I know its my way of hearing the words I never heard and it gives me pleasure and comfort to say those words out loud to myself and my lovely dogs. 

Hi BeeKeeper,
For me this medication remains something of value and I dearly hope it gives you relief as well if you try it.

I started on 3 mg and now take 4 mg each night - although the effective dosage will, of course, vary from person to person. It definitely still takes the 'edge' off nightmares. So even if the content of some nightmares remains as it was, I do not wake from them in fear, screaming or sweating. It's as if my mind has a more objective view of the story it is telling and allows me to experience it without the immersion of my whole body in experiencing the story.

A therapist once told me that my mind is always trying to help me, not hurt me, so nightmares are ways in which my mind is trying to resolve trauma or understand issues. That explanation rang true to me and gave me a more tolerant view  of what I experience. That tolerance has increased now that the impact on my body has lessened with the Prazosin.

I am grateful to have some of the ongoing trauma removed from my life.

Hi everyone,

Palms have, since my childhood, when I felt I was living in an icy war zone, symbolised somewhere warm,  beautiful and unthreatening; somewhere I would feel comfortable, with the breeze caressing my skin gently under sunny skies. It was my childhood fantasy. I had never been to such a place in reality. 

My favourite drinking glass is blue with palms embossed on it.

As I was wondering what name to use for OOTS I spotted my favourite glass and thought the combination of palms, and all they mean to me, and the blue for the pervasive sadness of my life, was an appropriate image to use for this forum.

Your last two lines pack a real punch and made me smile RainyDiary. Altogether an effective poetic statement!

Beekeeper your necklace is absolutely beautiful - a true work of art. What a lovely talent to have to be able to make such beauty with your hands. Since I've started crocheting my old arthritic fingers have become much more nimble so I'm tempted to find some tutorials online and have a go myself. I'd love to make a necklace for each of my granddaughters. Thank you for giving me inspiration to investigate another creative activity.

Thank you for what you wrote Aish and Blueberry - I read it too Aish. The sleep, the paranoia, the shame about failing to function, the self-blame. Please be gentle with yourself.

I've recently finished reading a wonderful book, 'The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog', about which I posted in the 'books' section of this Forum. It brought home to me afresh how complex our brains are, how the circuitry of our brains is vulnerable to external trauma, abuse and deprivation, and how even highly skilled psychiatrists and other trauma specialists struggle to understand what has occurred in our brains and how to heal the harm that has been done. 

I feel we people who live with the effects of relational trauma response or CPTSD, need to consciously try to relieve ourselves of shame and blame and, listening carefully to our minds and bodies, go with whatever we feel is right for us at any particular time. And if that is withdrawal and sleep, well that is what we do. As Blueberry experienced, I too feel that withdrawing from the world through sleep played an important part in saving me from self-destruction in my childhood and adolescence. It was a sensible strategy to deal with my situation.

I'm sorry this experience has been so distressing for you rainydiary. I think you were courageous in speaking out. I also looked up the power wheel and it seems to me to be an accurate, albeit broad brush, description of social hierarchies, and hard to argue with.

What you say here is truly admirable:

I tend to think big and see connections that other people don't.  I think I want to help make the world better for everyone and try to find moments where I can stand up.  It really isn't comfortable and I am working with  difficulty in feeling safe to speak up.

Finding moments where I can 'stand up' is something I have long struggled with. Having been trained in my FOO and marriage to be silent and compliant and yet having a mind that is capable of deep analysis is kind of paralysing - I remain afraid of speaking up because I anticipate the kind of defensiveness and aggression you experienced if I speak my mind and I feel ill-equipped to deal with that kind of emotional assault despite calmly feeling inside that my analysis of the situation is a reasonable one. So I admire what you did in opening discussion of this topic here and on Facebook.

You also say:

I am also noticing that I am processing the "positive intent" comment several weeks after it happened.  And that brings up more feelings of "why didn't I say something in the moment?"

Like you and like Blueberry, I can process remarks for ages before I react to them and then wish I'd been quicker to react. This was probably one of the reasons for my husband so successfully avoiding accountability because it took me a while to come to terms with and try to understand the reasons behind his conduct or comments before I felt able to raise my reactions with him - hence his deflection with 'why are you always bringing up the past'.  So please be gentle with yourself in noticing your processing of comments takes time.

Indeed, now, after a lifetime's consideration, I've come to feel it's part of being a gentle and kind person, of being someone who does not wish to inflict on anyone else the type of conduct, the immediate aggressive responses, the contemptuous put downs and defensiveness, that led to my being traumatized, for me to take time to process remarks and conduct - to consider carefully before responding and try to understand what lies behind the other person's behaviour. 

Anyway, I'm sorry this has been distressing for you. I admire what you did, including the way you tried to understand what lay behind the strange hostile response you received on Facebook. Please be kind and gentle with yourself.  And lastly, may I say that you write really clearly and well. Your thoughtful responses to those commenting here are always respectful. It's a pleasure to read your posts.

bluepalm

['The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook - What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing']

I've just finished reading a wonderful book that I don't think has yet been included here on this thread or in the books section.

The book is titled 'The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook - What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing', Basic Books, Revised and Updated Edition 2017, written by Bruce D Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz.

The book deals with how trauma affects a child's mind and how traumatized children can recover. Compelling stories of children who have been affected by different types of trauma make this book an absorbing reading experience and the clearly written explanations of the links between brain development and the timing of trauma, the effect of therapeutic interventions and the importance for healing of the love, touch and support that can come from a strong relational community was revelatory for me.  Highly recommended.

bluepalm

Hi rainydiary, this is an interesting question. I hadn't heard either of those phrases but neither seems particularly helpful in problem solving to me.

As you indicate, assuming 'positive intent' is asking you to 'forget and forgive' someone who's hurt you - whether deliberately or inadvertently. How does this work to resolve problems? It basically allows the hurter to get away with their behaviour. It means no-one has to address that behaviour or confront the hurter. It's an easy way out for someone in charge of a group to 'assume positive intent' and move on without addressing a problem.

As for the second phrase - to not freeze someone in time - it reminds me of a frequent response my former husband would give me to any attempt on my part to discuss something he had said or done that was causing me grief or that I perceived as cruelty towards me. He would dismiss my request to talk about something by saying 'why are you always bringing up the past'. And would then refuse to talk further. Logically, everything I wished to discuss was 'in the past' because it had already happened so I saw this phrase as refusing me any chance of ever questioning him or confronting him with something he'd done or said to hurt me.  Maybe 'to not freeze someone in time' is another way of saying that you should not call someone to account for something they did in one instant but be forever forgiving? 

I'd be interested in other views on these phrases, particularly given my experience with my husband where he used that 'in the past' phrase to escape accountability for anything he ever did or said.

I've only recently learned to crochet, taught by a kind friend, and I'm absolutely loving it.

I draw and paint too, and those are integral to my expressing myself, but I find crochet has a different quality to its creativity - it's very peaceful and at the same time I feel as if my fingers are dancing and hands are alive. It's so pleasurable.

I've also taken to hand sewing clothing recently and again find this a peaceful creative activity which is also gratifying as I get to wear my works. The dresses I make are simple in form but I choose colourful and high quality fabric so the actual handling of the fabric feels lovely and the end result brings me joy.

I've wondered whether the strong recent urge to clothe myself in colourful, high quality materials is a release of the frustration I felt as a child at being made to wear ugly ill-fitting home made clothing. I was wearing the same clothes at university that I was wearing when I left primary school at 12 years of age. I didn't grow after primary school and so my mother just left me wearing the same few clothes for years. It felt shameful.

Now I can create my own joyful flattering clothing with my own hands. Mind you, since I rarely go out I wear my clothing for myself - for the sheer pleasure of it, even if no one else sees it.

(I'd attach photos but I can't work out how to do it - sorry.)

I'm pleased and relieved to report that, for me, and over the past few weeks, taking Prazosin nightly has made a significant difference to my nightmares. First, the frequency of nightmares has decreased. And when I have dreams that focus on the issues that used to leave me waking in fear and exhaustion (such as my childhood home and parents) I'm finding that the 'edge' has been taken off these dreams. I wake remembering them but I feel calm. I am so grateful to have found this support.

Welcome combatwombat to this kind and precious community, which has been an important source of validation and support for me. I hope it proves to be so for you too.

The realisation that I was affected by complex trauma dating from infancy dawned on me slowly too, over a long period, and with that realisation life started to make so much more sense. Pete Walker's book and webpage were enlightening for me. As was Bessel van der Kolk's book, 'The Body Keeps the Score'.

I'm not sure if you're aware that here in Australia we have a centre of excellence for CPTSD called The Blue Knot Foundation, which has excellent resources for furthering understanding, which you may find helpful too.
bluepalm