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I often wish that there was a button after every post that we could click, like a like button, to show solidarity and support for the poster.

About ten years ago I was a CEO of an organisation which had three directors who were academics. One of them once told me, before I was fired, that I "was one of those people who get folks backs up," another told me that he marked his students at the university of Warwick on attitude more than content. looking back now, I see that they lacked the emotional intelligence to see that students that they routinely failed were probably those who suffered mental health issues and CPTSD.  That is the reality of the world we live in and living with CPTSD.

The last couple of days I have been attending interviews for a new job within a government department. It was a one and a half day affair full of being asked to present information, solve problems etc. The department gave me a big feeling of being inadequate and that despite 15 years of experience in my field I felt completely like an imposter and a fraud. I was hyper--alert the whole time and could not relax.

The assessments were being conducted by a psychologist, at the end of the day said about me that she saw things that were excellent and things that they didn't like, so I didn't get the job. I guessed that at some point I was triggered,  and I attempted to make a point in order to be heard with in the group which she picked up upon. She saw this as being an inability to listen to others and that I was talking over other people in the group, I am not sure if she saw PTSD but I got a feeling that she could see that I was carrying some pain. That kinda confirms and reinforces, the feeling of not being good enough, increases ones self doubt and adds another coat of varnish to the layers of insult and injury.

I wonder if this was a self fulfilling prophecy, that I sabotaged the day as I need this job, but thought that ultimately I'll get fired so why go there. I also wonder what should I try to do, what job might I be able to do and manage to live without causing trouble or "getting people's backs up" so that I might be able to avoid future pain so that I might be able to lick my wounds and heal.

I remember reading Pete Walker and how he managed to get a job despite being triggered in an interview. I so envy him.

Obscured that's really tough.

I have been experiencing something similar I posted it under a bit of a crisis... My partner has gone cold and is with holding. We have small child which I think has helped to keep things a bit more stable. I can relate to everything you have written. My reaction was to try to talk but nobody would listen and I got so down I was ready to die. I realised that by doing that I would simply be punishing her for hurting me, she possibly represents a kind of mother surrogate. We look for these people who will behave like our parents so that we might re-enact our childhood in the hope that our hurt inner child might be reunited by a neglectful mother. Of course the result will always be the same and we will be hurt and suffer EFs.

I can feel the emptiness and dispair that you must have felt while trying to reconcile with your partner and save your relationship while being ignored and then beaten up for trying to get what you need.

I hope you're OK.

A few years ago I read "The seasons of a man's life" by Daniel Levinson.

The book is a number of studies of subjects as they pass from leaving school to late adulthood. It models that all people must pass through certain stages in their development. I picked up the book again a couple of weeks back and the CPTSD cases jump right out!

As far as I see, in common with my own experience, decades of trying hard, seeing ones  own potential, but that potential was never recognised by others, as we know we are sending out "don't trust us" signals. Ultimately, the cases either settled for much less, going from dreams of middle management to a blue collar job, or being unable to hold down a job, losing ones family and becoming destitute. Both guys that I identified suffered significant health issues.

The book is now 25-30 years old but still valid, it would be good if this could be updated to see how the generations are coping with modern technology, deskilling and outsourcing.

Levinson also conducted studies of the lives of 45 womnen over 25 years, the study is now dated and to some degree has lost most of its validity in modern society.

Hi C,

I have experienced the same thing many times and I can relate to those feelings of insecurity when in new relationships.

I think that three things are going on. firstly being "in love" or Eros, call it what you will, provides us with a huge rush of neuro-transmitters, seratonin dopamine etc  that act like opiates and can override our critical parent and makes feel nice and warm,. the work of Helen Fisher is an essential read to understand how they work like very strong addictive drugs.

what we do is associate our nice feelings with the person rather than the neuro_transmitters, a nice trick that nature plays on us. what also happens is that when the stimulus is taken away or threatened, serotonin levels drop and you do cold turkey, your body craves them which makes us want to be with that person. then your critical self steps on and starts to tell you that your lover and the source of those drugs has left and is not coming back. that hurts of course.

Additionally, if you have cptsd you have issues with trust and on a sub conscious level expect that your boyfriend will either just desert you or find somebody else. from experience I believe that this is the basis for most men being unfaithful, they have trust issues and will look for other love interests to mitigate the risk of being left alone. the fact that we are attracted to people who remind us of our parents means we play out a replay of our child hoods in the hope that we can find a partner who will care for and nurture us.

I used to secretly spy on new gfs to see if they were cheating, as a serial philanderer I was always expecting my partners to cheat, I had been in the military and seen so many wives out on the town picking up young guys. it wasn't until I left the military before I understood this as abnormal. I had a couple of nice girl friends who helped me with trust issues.

I have found that knowing the mechanics of why I feel pain helps me realise it's a brain trick and not real.

Best wishes

Yeah a lot of stuff here lol.

The war didn't affect Zagreb much, the Serbs only tried to bomb the TV mast apparently. It was much worse to the south and east. It was a great observation of yours as I often joke that I am turning into him. He's an intelligent guy but I don't think he had a job since the destruction of Yugoslavia and the introduction of the "free market". So yes I think he has CPTSD too.

My son has had an official diagnosis, he is what they call hyposensitive, he takes anti convulsant drugs for epilepsy which I think probably contribute to his numbness.I have read a fair bit on autism, we take him to therapy 4x per week, the Croats are pretty good in that respect even though i suspect the government therapists are less than motivated.

We don't talk much about these things despite my attempts to get her to open up, she did say that the autism is a stress factor, I also think that it has escalated my symptoms too. She does put a lot of effort into our son although then has crazy teenage fits too. "My mash is too hard, she doesnt like poatoes now afterall and didn't i know she wont drink cold milk!" Living at home for 40 years means you don't grow up fully and develop your own sense of self. She has a lot of work to do there and I doubt looking at her mum (60 odd years in the same house) that she will.

I have a couple of job applications in, one I put the wrong job title down, lol, that's what we CPTSDers do! The other is only short term but the organisation have a million preferences such as being fluent in French, experienced in carrying out component studies and being based in the UK even though the job is in Burundi.... I barely meet 1 of those criteria but given that there are only a few hundred prosthetist in the UK I doubt if anybody there is without a job and meets their silly criteria.

Thanks Dutch Uncle,

I agree adjusting takes time.

I take him to the forest and the church nearby has swings and a slide that we use but i never see anybody. I have tried to get my SO to find a toddler group that we could go to as he is autistic and could do with the social interaction.

I blew up at my father in law because he always destroys my efforts. I am a keen gardener and have spent weeks working in the garden, I have planted a number of shrubs and created kitchen garden. Everything has been destroyed. I either find that he has simply pulled them up or he will put objects  such as planks of wood on the plants, crushing them. He recently allowed the neighbour to build a wall and didn't get them to make good, the topsoil was gone leaving clay and stones, and bare earth where there was lawn. I had vowed never to touch the garden again except I wanted an area for my son to play. So a couple of months ago I weeded and seeded an area behind the house. I went out and found that he had put piles of wood on the grass completely avoiding the concrete area. I now believe he does it consciously or sub consciously as a means of having power, passive aggression.

Everybody then gang up to make me feel bad for objecting. Its not my house or garden and yes they can do what they  want with it. I don't understand why anybody would chose to live in a place which has so much potential but never do a stroke to keep it tidy.

A few times they have "lost" my son, they were supposed to be looking after him, he comes to me and a few minutes later they come looking. I get upset because he managed to open their front door and climb stairs on his own before anybody realises he's gone. Soon he will want to explore the street. It happens once every two weeks. They wonder why I am touchy. My beef is that they are not engaging with him and simply putting him infront of the TV.

I agree that cptsd is over peoples heads, conventionally, we get judged on our personality, although folks will agree that we are the products of our experience, they can't figure that negative experiences have negative effects on us.

Hi all,

I am in a bit of a mess and just need some support. I have been with a lady for 6years now. For most of that time I worked away. We have a small boy of two. Being away I only came home for a week every three months but since I lost my job I am here full time.

I have CPTSD and am in that decreasing spiral, too many failed opportunities and I have accumulated a bit of debt. Being with my son full time has been beneficial, but it has triggered a lot of memories. I have become really low and have quite a bad preoccupation with death.

We live in the same building as her parents who have my son for a few hours each day I have never been on great terms with her mother and I just blew up at her father a week ago.

This all doesn't appear very attractive to my SO and I have tried to get her to understand CPTSD.

she is not interested in helping me, she read some of the bloom paper and told me it was too difficult to understand. She will not engage in any kind of discussion about it.

She has become cold and has pretty much indicated that she would rather I was not here. This triggers all my abandonment fears and makes me even more down.

I would get out but I have no money and nowhere to go, so I must try to stay until I have work again. I have spent the last few months with my son and now have a strong bond that I don't want to break.

I try not to engage in end of the relationship chats I have been through this before, I always find myself with women who turn out to be cold and unable to love, so by the age of 48 I guess I have it nailed!

I am not in my home country,  I have no friends here and feel like every one is ganging up on me. I am also being denied the opportunity to explain why I am the way I am.

I can see that I am being scapegoated, but there is no way to talk about what is going on. I have tried but clearly I am crazy. The trouble is their denial is triggering me and I need to run.

This book was first published in the 1980s so some things have moved on since, such as corporal punishment being removed from the classroom made illegal, but if you grew up in the 1970s its very valid. It was re-published about 10 years ago with some additional work.

The author is a German lady and she draws parallels with the holocaust and how it was possible that the whole of society could unquestionably murder millions of people. It was and still is the intention of pedagogy to remove the will of children to be themselves, to have a mind of their own.Sociologists call it socialisation. For hundreds of years socialisation was brought about by extreme brutality and humiliation of children. To some degree this still exists in so far as children are conditioned to be obedient and unquestioning of authority. We have seem this of late with the media and neo-liberal governments in western countries have set about victimising the unemployed, the sick and disabled in order to shrink the welfare state, they have been able to do so without any real opposition.

Through my own struggles in life and those of people around me, having read this book I realised that it is about time that we stopped judging people as bad or difficult. It is not the fault of the individual that they are the way they are, but simply a product of a deeply flawed system that brings about hardship, depression and suffering where there should be lightness and joy.

I have been reading Alice Miller's book, "For your own good" a must read for those who want to understand the motives behind the socialization of childhood cruelty. I think that a lot of her work is well regarded.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Your-Own-Good-Child-Rearing-Violence-ebook/dp/B007237VUA/ref=la_B000APM0AI_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446428708&sr=1-8

I am having issues with my SO who refuses to take my PTSD seriously. I have sent her the bloom paper which I think is the best brief synopsis of how we're affected by CPTSD. She has never bothered to read it. I have practically begged her several times.

When I have a flash back or am triggered such as this morning when I got into an argument with her Dad, she called med an idiot.

So advice is as follows: or experiences make us who we are, when we're hurting it's a time when it's easy to lash out. None of us like that we have such difficulty with inter-personal relationships and expressing ourselves. It doesn't make us stupid or bad people, we just don't have the tools to operate in another way.

Cptsd from childhood trauma changes the way the brain is wired so our reactions to minor stimulations are often not what you'd expect.

I disagree that we are responsible for everything we do, surely if were wired differently and don't have better models what else can we do? Scientists are only just realising that criminals behave the way they do due to the way their brain is wired and it pre-disposes them to getting into trouble. It's the same for us on a milder scale.

What we need is love and acceptance. When we screw up it's not or fault.

Don't mother us out take pity.

Peopled are attracted to partners with similar levels of mental health  so take this opportunity to take a close look inward. You probably have issues too. (My partner has chronic constipation didn't have a meaningful relationship before the aged of 35 and her mother is a deformed smoker turned compulsive gamer and insomniac. There are problems in the family but nobody is talking about them. When you have a mental health problem everybody looks at you like you're nuts and never look at themselves. Don't do that.

When your partner gets better you'll be unable to relate to their new levels of mental health and its common for relationships to fail. So quickly realise that you're in this together.

My immediate thought was that your t has issues or cptsd lol.

I would love to start therapy again, I have discoververed more crap since I stopped t five years ago but don't have resources to get help these days.

I liked my therapists lot, he was very patient and enthusiastic. He told me that i had PTSD from my childhood, but at the time didn't really comprehend the enormous depth and breadth of cptsd.

I last emailed him a year ago, he said he learned a lot from my case. I guess he was winging it too lol

Before that I had two attempts at therapy, one lady obviously had a lot of issues of her own, she was highly conscious of a deformity of her right arm, which even as a 25 year old sailor made me wonder about her efficacy. Then I entered therapy when I was about 30, felt like I was talking to the wall so abandoned that after a few months. I realise now that to give her due, she did highlight that I had dissociated from my childhood trauma. I don't think I could have made progress with her though.

Did anybody ever catch the TV series called "in therapy" starring Gabriel Byrne? It highlighted just how screwed up therapists can be, giving advice to clients but completely being in denial of their own neuroses.

My thoughts are if you find one you like, stick with them, they will learn on the job. However, they might not want to take the risk of working beyond their scope.

Hi,

This is interesting. I have also had major depression, I am currently in one bout now, having lost my job.

I also become withdrawn when I am down, my experience has been that people don't want to see me when I am miserable and they don't want to hear my drama. So I withdraw.

I have never seen much difference in my MB personality type. I have always been INFP. I used to live with my opposite she was an ESTJ, I doubt that my personal values could ever make me an ESTJ, perhaps that's me clinging on to old behavioural traits. She did teach me things about being more realistic, whereas I taught her a lot about being patient, compassionate and creative. I don't think that after all that I have experienced both through my childhood and working in post conflict countries that I could lose the gift of compassion and idealism. Perhaps I project and empathise a little too much.

I found ESTJ to be highly goal oriented, I think that conservative politics are ESTJ, personal responsibility and lack of concern for others less fortunate. Pulling yourself up by your boot straps etc.we know that we're all different, have different abilities and needs. A lot of folks work hard but still can't succeed.

During my therapy I found myself changing, my partner the ESTJ, thought I was getting worse, but I was just letting go of old stuff. I started life in the military, it was the only way to escape my family. I lacked any self confidence and struggled with the recruits with big overpowering personalities, so created a similar boisterous personality. When I left the Navy I went to University, that big scary personality just didn't fit in there at all! I then had to drop the aggressive and develop in other ways.

It is hard to be yourself. I don't know how much sociology you've read but we are "socialised" which means that society has a bunch of norms and social mores termed "culture", that we must obey to fit in. A good example is that when I lived in the far East people share dishes and take a little food at a time, never loading their plates. Everybody starts eating immediately thecfood hits the table. In the west we wait until everybody has loaded their plate before we start eating. My mother in law refused to have me eat there due to my lack of table manners! Incidentally, being a foreigner in the far East allowed me to be more myself than I could ever be in the west. I worked briefly in the UK, people take themselves far too seriously, have very little ability to accept the faults and idiosyncrasies of the human condition. The NHS for example loves to strike people off the medical register for malpractice, consequently practitioners tend not to share their mistakes so that others might be able to avoid doing the same thing. Admitting mistakes means you lose your livelihood so everybody becomes closed off, on the one hand critical of others and on the other worried and secretive.

I digress.

Most therapists will help us to allow us to fit into a set of social rules, they will rarely work with you to find your true self. A good book about this is "life and how to survive it" by John Cleese and Robin Skinner. Society is not  healthy, social policy is dictated by partypolitics which isn't healthy. Our work, like with the NHS, the Navy and the University, is influenced by organisational culture which often isn't healthy so we must develop coping tools to fit in.

My folks are the same, they have everything, deny ever inheriting money from my grandparents which they have blown on new cars and junk.they constantly repeat that their kids don't deserve anything. They can't fathom how it might be that they have been an instrument in the outcomes of their offspring.

They live by the adage, well, our parents did it to us and it did us no harm. I believe that I could function in a manual job, but it's very different when you try to operate in a middle class professional environment. Malcom Gladwell devoted a chapter of his book "outliers" to a genius called Chris, who had abusive alcoholic father and working mum, he was unable to complete his degree having to work as a postman while he studied, he was unable to communicate his needs with the college faculty in a way that his middle class peers would be able to.

Gladwell talks about the seen but not heard mentality, sit down and shut up, of bringing up kids in working class families, whereas in the middle class families encourage curiosity and asking questions of doctors and other professionals. Middle class kids grow up with a very different view of how to interact with the world.

He compares Chris to people like Bill Gates whose family had connections at Washington state university, he was able to use their computer at 6am for an hour everyday. In the 1970s the machine at Washington was one of the few that the public could access. Gladwell's point was that we don't live in an egalitarian society, Gates is brilliant but also had a lot of lucky breaks and resources most people don't get. The likely hood of Gates succeeding was much higher than a kid from a working class abusive background.

While I am no genius, my problems at university, both economically and communicative seem identical to those of Chris, I took time off to earn money so that I could complete the course. I once noticed a scathing memo on my course tutor's desk from one lecturer about my attitude and taking time off. The other thing is that while we cannot communicate our needs, people from the middle class, who more than likely, lived at home and had their studies funded by parents, don't have a clue what it is like to struggle through with very little income for four years.

I feel the same, the task at hand is so great that it gets me down. Only now at almost 50 years of age I realise more than ever before how this has held me back.

Thirty years since I started working and I have  gone from job to job, I have not been able to make good of any opportunity that I have had, I have had so many golden opportunities, jobs alll over the world but have been fired so many times i am almost getting used to it.  Its hard seeing those that came after me fitting in and going from strength to strength. Where I should be.

Nobody has any empathy for people with mental health issues, even if we are doing our best. I am a prosthetist, I design limbs for people with amputations. If an amputee runs a marathon the world applauds them overcoming their disability. The truth is that we are running that marathon day in day out, but we have our physical body in fact but we struggle with our minds, nobody sees that inner struggle and outwardly we might be awkward socially, have no respect for people in authority and be idealistic to the point of putting our values in front of our own needs.

I am lucky that I have had some nice relationships, I think women see potential, in their men, although eventually they get tired of waiting for it to be fulfilled.

I have a beautiful boy, although I was completely against having kids.one came along and I find it hard raising him, always very conscious of what I am saying or doing in case I might be misinterpreted. I am at least able to understand how hard it must have been for my mother with two kids 18 months apart, day in day out, not being able to manage her depression. Awareness is a big thing in relationships.

All I know is that must do my best to be kind, gentle and loving, despite what I think and feel. All of the extrinsic stimuli
Are simply distractions. It's true, we are what we are and we only have now, as much as I am deadly tired of struggling struggling struggling against everything and failing, so much I often wonder what my life is really worth. I feel like a terrible loser most of the time.

Now I am unemployed again, my former employer was a narcissist and I refused to play his game, I have debts that I am on the verge of defaulting,  they are not large by modern standards but big enough to be a proiblem. We live outside my home country and have no welfare assistance. This is a big worry for me. I do think that my cptsd contributed to the accumulation of that debt, not being able to negotiate when employers fail to meet their obligations.

Personally, I don't ever see myself being able to function like my peers. We have to ta km e each day as it comes and try not to worry about the future.

This is a very good piece. I recently worked for a traumatising narcissist, he is a neuro-surgeon.

He was always de-railing any scheme that wasn't his idea and blaming everybody but him self for organisational problems. The worst part was that he felt, and often verbalised that he was paying for all the ancillary staff out of his own pocket, who were lazy ungrateful and were wasting his money. At the same time he would pay minimal salaries and a few times staff have come to me telling me that he refused to pay them for their work.

The medical clinic made $4 million profit in its first year, after paying for is start up costs, including an MRI and a lab. Income is around $1 million a month, the three directors take home $70,000 per month each, yet he was always saying that the business was on the verge of collapse and we must cut costs.


Westerners would only last a few weeks or months but Asians, who saw the salary as being 2-3 times more than they could earn back home would grin and put up with it. This is the problem when your boss is a narcissist, people often see them as being successful high achievers and give them a lot of credibility and  when people need the job and the money walking away isn't an option.

I totally agree that narcissistic people are  also victims and we can't always hold it against them. Although if you reach such a high level in society a bit of emotional intelligence world be expected. I do think that when people are giving the narcissist the recognition he craves it is difficult for him to see his faults, after all he is successful.

Society rewards pathological personalities when they are wealthy, whereas for the rest of us we struggle and because we make little progress in the world ask ourselves all the painful questions about how our lives are such a struggle.