Not quite out of the fog

[waltzingme]

Hi everyone...I'm new to this site and new to the term C-PTSD! I hadn't heard it before, but I started looking up emotional abuse and PTSD and was lead to several articles about C-PTSD. A lot of the symptoms have rung true for me.

The reason I started looking into it again is due to an abnormal psychology class I'm taking. We read a case study of a woman with PTSD from a train accident and traumatic ER experience following that, and I couldn't stop thinking about a situation I experienced a few years ago. Much of what she was feeling reminded me of how I felt for several months afterward.

For basically all of 2012, I was involved in a relationship with a person I eventually realized was a pathological liar, manipulative, and ultimately, emotionally abusive. He never hit me, he never screamed or yelled or overtly put me down, but he subtly chipped away at me for an entire year. He was very jealous and would make me feel guilty for "making him jealous." He lied about everything--about his volunteer work, about songs he claimed to have written, about past relationships, everything. He even lied about his lying, trying to explain it away with a traumatic event in his childhood that led to some sort of dissociation where even he wasn't sure what was true--while the event did happen, his dissociation was a lie. He isolated me from my friends and family and convinced our friends I was crazy. I ended up diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety disorder and began experiencing anxiety attacks.
The last straw was when he decided we needed some space and, over the course of several days, kept jerking me around between "I don't know if we're going to make it" and "I love you so much, I can't wait to see you again." At first I thought, once I discovered how manipulative he was, that I was able to keep myself from it. This space showed me that I really wasn't able to do that, and I ended up hurting myself, which I hadn't done in years and years. I ended things with him the next day.

For the next few months, I slept around a lot but didn't seek any meaningful relationships. I continued to have anxiety attacks and misses classes from sleeping all the time. I freaked out if someone said something even remotely questionable, sure that they were lying. One evening, this happened with someone I was interested in, and I went to a mutual friend to ask if the person was lying. The mutual friend suggested I was letting the previous relationship affect me too much and that I needed to get over it, which sent me into an anxiety attack so severe I went to a 24 hour counselor and eventually the emergency room because I didn't feel safe with myself or anyone else.

Anyway, now I'm over two years out. I go through periods where I feel much better, but then suddenly someone will say his name and I can't breathe. I haven't been in an actual relationship since. Anytime I try, I'm hyperaware of red flags. It's healthy to be alert to some extent, but I really feel like I take it too far. I feel like I'm looking for these red flags too much. My depression and anxiety have started coming back. I have started counseling again, and during the intake session, I cried when discussing the past relationship unexpectedly. It's especially bad this week, after my abnormal psych class discussing PTSD and similar triggering situations and conditions.

All of this to say I'm not sure if I'm experiencing C-PTSD exactly. I do believe I was for the 6 months following the breakup. I had been feeling fine on and off last year, but I feel like I'm starting to fall back to that 6 months following the breakup again.

I've never tried one of these support groups before, but I feel like it's the right thing to do for myself right now.

[VeryFoggy]

Welcome WaltzingMe!  I think the first time I read Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. I thought I was getting triggered by the book. It sounds like you encountered some things like that in a course you were taking and thought you identified too much with the course.  But that over time you saw that no, it wasn't the course at all, it was that you were reminded of things in your own life.

Generally, not always, but generally, the things we are feeling and thinking here on CPTSD.org  are related to our childhood. The feelings and thoughts and decisions we made as children in order to survive, then drive and motivate our choices in partners and even best friends when we become adults.  We choose the wrong people to try to replay the original trauma and make it come out right this time.  Generally it doesn't.

You don't mention your childhood , but there may be some element of what you went through with your man that may tie back if you look.

What is your relationship with your parents like? It's just a place to start, to start looking at where this came from. This anxiety and pain. And it may be fine. It may be there is nothing to look at.  But mostly these things start in childhood. Could be something else that happened not related to your parents.

I am so happy for you that you are looking!  That is the first step! We are glad you are here, and we welcome you on your journey!