First post introduction - Trigger Warning

[SJH]

****TW: Suicide - sexual and emotional abuse - alcohol abuse - self-harm mentions****

Hi everyone.

This is my first post on this board after a few weeks of reading and I'm so glad to have found it, as it has explained and made sense of a lot of things.

I thought it was about time I started to contribute, especially as I am about to start therapy for the first time in my life, and I think setting everything down in words on here first may help me to communicate the trauma and effects on me when the time comes to do that. I also want to contribute to other posts and support and help others where possible.

First of all I would like to thank the kind people who have spent time and effort in setting up and running this site, and also to all the people who have contributed with their experiences and advice, I feel that without you the road to recovery could have been much harder than it already is.

I started to write everything down (history of trauma, C-PTSD symptoms and feelings) and without even trying I'm at 2000 words plus!  So I may start a recovery journal where I can start getting it all out.

But without going into too much detail and after reading this site it's now clear to me that childhood wasn't "normal" as I assumed as the time, and that my mother in particular had narcissistic traits. My father took his own life when I was 12, and was replaced with an emotionally unstable and abusive stepfather. This led to self-harm, alcohol abuse from age 14 or so to numb the pain and risky behaviours to feel something, anything else. Unfortunately, as I'm sure many of you will know, this can become a vicious circle and these ways of "coping" led to further problems including sexual abuse aged 14/15 from a neighbour. After finally standing up to him and threatening to go to the police the neighbour also took his own life. There is more but I will leave that for another time.

Through all this there was no support or apologies, no recognition that a little boy was left to deal with all this on his own and turn out ok. However I became very good at pretending everything was ok and have been burying everything for almost two decades.

I am married with 3 children with ages ranging from 8-16, and have always tried my best to be a good husband and father, trying to break the cycle of abuse that can easily transferred from parent to child. I also hold down a stressful job where I have to manage up to 20 people. Sometimes I wonder how I've done all this, but recently I'm starting to see signs of everything tumbling down and I have realised that I could not bury the past forever.

Just one small example of this was recently while at a friend's house with no warning whatsoever in front of everyone I had a flashback and the fear simply roared up inside me. Shaking and with tears in my eyes I excused myself and locked myself in the bathroom and sat with my back to the door rocking back and forth and the tears felt like they would never stop. These kind of episodes are getting more and more frequent, and that made me finally start to talk about some of these issues with my wife and to start to seek some professional help. I also de-personalise frequently and my wife says "that my eyes change from alive to dead" with no warning.

Then one day I was googling my symptoms and while looking at personality disorders that didn't quite feel right I stumbled across the mention of C-PTSD and it was a lightbulb moment. It really helped to put a name to what I was going through and even better to stumble upon a whole community of people who were talking about it and offering support. Since finding this site, I have been to my GP and was fully open and honest and agreed that it was highly likely that I had PTSD (they don't use the C-PTSD term in the UK yet!). I have been referred on the NHS but there is a 7 month waiting list, so I am about to start getting treatment with a private therapist who has been highly recommended.

I hope to be an active member and will no doubt have plenty of questions about the healing process along the way.

I look forward to talking with you all.

Thanks
S

[Hope67]

Hi SJH, I would like to welcome you here - I am glad you've found the forum helpful already - and that you felt able to write your first post here - I have read it through, and I am so glad that you've been able to begin to have some support and I very much hope that you'll find this community to be a good support as well.  I saw you are thinking of starting your recovery journal too - and I have found doing mine to be invaluable in helping me to talk about things - and everyone is so supportive here.
Welcome.
Hope 

[SJH]

Thanks for the warm welcome hope!

I do intend to start my journal this week, hopefully it will prove to be helpful.

Your name has reminded me that since discovering CPTSD and finding this site, that there is hope of recovery, and hope is a powerful thing. I have always tried to live my life and not be defined by the things that have happened which is positive, but my coping strategies have never been based on anything positive, so hopefully that can change.

Thanks again
S

[Three Roses]

Hello, SJH, welcome to the forum!

Then one day I was googling my symptoms and while looking at personality disorders that didn't quite feel right I stumbled across the mention of C-PTSD and it was a lightbulb moment. It really helped to put a name to what I was going through and even better to stumble upon a whole community of people who were talking about it and offering support.

This is also my experience. I had a diagnosis of ptsd (they don't diagnose cptsd here yet, either) and I was looking online at info about it when I stumbled on this forum. It was eye opening and the beginning of really looking at this beast in clear detail.

I look forward to hearing more from you!

[Deep Blue]

Welcome!
  your story sounds very familiar to many of us here.  You have come to the right place.  Many of the people here have walked similar paths and I hope you find you can lean on us if your journey gets rough 

[woodsgnome]

Sometimes in our despair to ever find anything resembling healing, we somehow manage to take a step out of the darkness. Perhaps that's what you'll find here -- a step into finding some light in back of all the confusion of living that has felt so off-kilter for so long.

So welcome  . I hope you can find a way forward via this website and forum.

[Jdog]

Warm greetings and a hearty welcome to you!  Echoing what the others have said, everyone here is very nice and we all offer a helping hand to one another, each in our own ways. 

Kizzie, the site founder, and others have put together a really great reference section which I hope you have a chance to explore.

Glad you are with us!

[Boatsetsailrose]

Hi there i can v much relate to your sharing and wanted to add that cptsd is going to be included in the next diagnostic manual icd11 which is a real leap forward for recognition and treatment hopefully ..
Im in the UK too
Here are some links
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/complex-ptsd/#.W_cb5RinzN4

[Boatsetsailrose]

https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f585833559

[SJH]

Thank you all for your comments and warm welcome.

I have had a hard week, so this is the first time I have felt strong enough to reply, but thanks so much for your support. I have so many questions and am trying to figure out where to post them!

Will be looking round the site this week, and I have my first "professional appointment" this week so will lots of questions I guess?!?

Thanks again :-)

[Wattlebird]

Hi sjh
Welcome to the site, I've been slow in my welcome mainly because of your trigger warnings but read some of your empathetic comments and thought you sound like someone I'd like to support so I read your intro, I was not triggered yay, but I'm always amazed at everyone's self awareness in working out its cptsd before even getting therapy, I was so slow to work out the causes of my problematic behaviour took some time in therapy to accept, this site has helped me tremendously, as you say we are not alone at last,
Keep up the good work.
When my therapist said that I had complex trauma I researched it and found this site, I also found a link to a utube talk that I related to so strongly and felt so validated by that I watched it every day for months it's Diane langberg "complex trauma" have a look if u want

[Kizzie]

Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS SJH   I sense you have a really good start on recovery based on how clearly you write about your trauma then and now. I know when I joined our sister site Out of the FOG (for those affected by someone with a personality disorder) 5-6 years ago, I could barely get anything out.   

Many of us seem to arrive here when life just gets too busy for us to suppress the trauma in our past. Family &  work responsibilities add up as we get older and those demands surpass our supply of energy to deal with everything. We often have to learn self-care because it isn't something we learned and/or we learned to put others first.  Are there ways you can reduce the stress in your life? 

I also wanted to mention as Boats did that Complex PTSD has been included in Edition 11 of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases which I believe a lot of European countries use.  It may be something you need to educate your mental health care providers about (if you're up to it) as it just happened in June.  There is further evidence on our Research (in the "For Professionals" section) and Books pages which make it clear Complex PTSD or Complex Trauma as many refer to it is considered a distinct diagnosis from PTSD. 

I hope you find your way around, it's a big site I know but it reflects the fact that what we struggle with is complex. Glad you found your way here and I hope your appointment goes well   

[SJH]

Hi Kizzie

Thanks for your welcome.

My first appointment for therapy is now only 3 days away and I have started just today to have some EF's as I prepare to talk about it.

It's very perceptive of you from my post to pick up that I need to reduce the stress in my life, I am learning finally that I need to care for myself, but I am finding it hard to admit firstly that stuff happened and secondly that it has and will continue to affect my ability to function properly as a human.

This will be a long journey and I'm only at the beginning which makes me feel both hopeful and tired in equal measure.

I have so many questions about complex trauma, it's effects on parenting, coping mechanisms etc that I'm not quite sure where to begin.

But begin I must, and I know whatever questions I have there will be like minded people to answer them, and that makes a big difference.

Good to see you back on the site after your health issues. Hope you are ok 

[SJH]

Ok went for my first therapy session yesterday and still reeling a bit, I'm sure it's the right thing to do and she was very good and was really pleased with the knowledge that I had gained from this site and the fact that I had read the body keeps the score in 2 days! I talked through about 80% of my trauma which was tough, especially as had two really tough days at work and then come home to a very grumpy family who has no idea how hard it was:-/
Anyway, my question is, where is the best place on this site to post my therapy experience and ask some questions?
Feeling a bit  so any help would be appreciated 

[Three Roses]

A private journal has less guidelines about what and where to post. Or, there's a therapy section that might cut what you're looking for. Journals are here, http://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=61.0 and Treatment's general discussion section is here http://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=39.0.