Missing piece of the puzzle

[RedRachel]

Where to start?! 

I found out about emotional flashbacks a little over a week ago and realised that this is what I've been experiencing intensely for the past 17 months. From here I read Pete Walker's book on Complex PTSD and it was like being given a user manual for my own mind for the first time, and a roadmap of where to go next. I'm 45, and I have cried many tears of relief while reading Walker's book because seeing myself in black and white was incredible after decades of feeling defective and broken.

The abuser in my child/teenhood was my mum, and the abuse was emotional and psychological. I was the eldest of three daughters, my type is fawn-flight. I developed hyper vigilance in an attempt to predict and turn my mother's rages, and would frequently get between her and my sisters in an attempt to protect them and distract her, and I am working my way through heavy grief that I was unable to keep my little sisters safe. I have had problems with my neck and shoulders for years, and I now realise this is due to decades of armouring.

I spent a year in talking therapy last year while I tried to make sense of the tsunami of emotion and despair that I was assailed by. I stopped seeing that therapist in early January as I felt I had gone as far as I could with her, and I now have my first EMDR session booked for this Wednesday. One thing that has been lacking in this process for me up until now is anger - lots of pain, fear, grief, shame, and anger on behalf of my sisters, but no great degree of anger on my own behalf. I think this may have been because my previous therapist encouraged me to reflect on why mum acted the way she did, and while I acknowledge that my mum had her own demons I think to fully process the trauma I need a space where I can say what my younger experience was and not then feel I have to caveat it with justifications. Because I don't think you can justify talking to one child the way she talked to me, let alone three of us.

I'm here to engage with other people who have C-PTSD as this isn't something I can talk to family about, and I want to be careful about what friends I discuss this with too as I think many of them just won't 'get it'.

[Armee]

Hi, welcome and I'm so sorry for what you've been through. I've had really good luck combining emdr and parts work (like a therapist who does both interwoven). It gives more space for all the feelings we don't feel like we are "supposed" to feel.

That said, (lol), I haven't yet felt anger myself either and I've been working with a good therapist for 5 years. More than. Ugh.

[Kizzie]

Hello and a warm welcome to OOTS RedRachael 

I totally get the conundrum of needing to be angry but understanding my NM had a lot of trauma herself (otherwise she wouldn't be an N), and feeling guilty for wanting and needing to be angry.  But, it is something IMO needs to be done to start to manage the trauma. I had to convince myself that is is vitally important that younger me (the parts Armee talks about), must know it was wrong no matter the reason and that it is perfectly OK to be sad and angry. I would often re-read Pete Walker's take of his anger towards his parents to give me a feeling that it was something I needed to do and it was OK.

I never tackled my NM with all that I felt because nothing I said to her would have made any difference (because she was an N).

So venting here and in therapy is a a healthy thing we need to do for us IMO.   

[RedRachel]

Thank you both for your comments Armee and Kizzie

I have a feeling that a block between me and anger is the fact that I may see anger as a 'bad' emotion. Hmmm. Something to investigate there!

[Kizzie]

 

[Papa Coco]

RedRachel

I'm so glad you found this forum.

I don't mean to hijack your introduction, and I apologize for going on a bit long, but what you said about your therapist not really being a huge help, makes me really want to agree with you by sharing my own experience. There are good therapists for C-PTSD, but they are harder to find, and the wrong therapists are plentiful, but are not doing much good for us.

I'm a fawn-freeze. I can really relate to why you ended your relationship with your former therapist. I have been in talk therapy for over 45 years. The first 20 years were spent looking for a therapist who could help. I burned through 7 of them. All of them were CBTs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapists. CBTs are not suited for trauma disorders. Their goal is to use rational thought to "reframe how we view the world" or to make us "think differently." CBTs are good for simple issues like grief counseling after we lose a loved one, or fear of flying, or depression after losing a job or a marriage or whatever, but when a person has a trauma disorder from a childhood that was built on a foundation of emotional abuse, we don't need someone telling us how we should feel about who we are today. We need the type of therapy that helps us understand which parts of us are rational and which parts are still in the grips of childhood trauma.

My old CBTs used to say we were "peeling the layers of an onion" which, at that time, (the 1980s-1990s) I thought made sense, but now that I have a better therapist (A Dialectical Behavioral Therapist-DBT), His goal is to help me merge my fragmented brain parts back together and to love myself from the inside first. In DBT I get to work at the core first, and then start watching the layers of the outer onion start to heal themselves. It's sort of like DBT starts at the roots and lets healing happen outward while CBT's think they should start at the outside and work their way in, healing the symptoms first, hoping that by just changing the symptoms, the root problem goes away.

My first CBT saw me 9 times and it helped. For a year. Then I was suicidal again. My second CBT saw me for about 9 visits and I felt better...for a year. Then I got suicidal again. This went on through 7 CBTs over 20 years, and the most dangerous after affect was that I began to believe I was incurable.  Every failed therapist gave me more proof I was incurable.

I think that the reason I believed each CBT helped me is because I now know that I'm a fawn-freeze. Fawning means I'm a people-pleaser. When my CBTs told me to think a certain way, I did what I could to please them and be obedient. That was not a cure, that was a CBT treating me exactly how my family had treated me for my whole life. I was so immersed in being a people pleaser to keep from getting punished that I fawned over my CBTs the same way I'd fawned over everyone who told me their emotional abuse and constant criticism was "to help me." My CBTs believed they'd helped me because I was good being who I thought I was supposed to be in front of them. They told me to just realize my parents had bad lives too, and I obediently agreed to believe the same thing. I have no doubt now that all 7 of my past CBTs still think they did a good job with me, because I never called them back a year later to tell them I was suicidal again.

I'm glad to hear you are done with your former therapist. And I believe EMDR and IFS therapy are much more effective. I hope you find some help from EMDR. I did only a little bit of it, and it helped me get through some fragmented thinking pretty well. For me it was good "bang for the buck". Meanwhile, I hope that more DBTs come into practice around the world as more C-PTSD sufferers look for support that actually works.

Meanwhile, the people on this forum are wonderful souls who know what it feels like to be in our shoes. I hope this forum brings you what you came here for. It has been a godsend for me.

[Rosa Lin]

Anger is a powerful emotion, and I am still trying to deal with it because I am angry at my family and my mom who I am still on contact with. I have 2 younger siblings, but I received the majority and more severe physical abuse and neglect. We still do not talk about it and I am not sure if my siblings even know what I went through. I think we all have different recollections and experiences with her. They did get verbally abused so I do not want to diminish that but even now we all conquer that I am the target when she is dysregulated. Growing up, I always excused her actions attributing that to the abuse that she received from her family and my dad. I never blamed her or held her accountable, I just put it all away as something that happened. When I started talking in therapy, I realized how f* up it was. Listening to myself say some of the things that happened (and they were the lighter events) unraveled all the emotions you listed but mainly anger. I realized I did not deserve that and I cannot fathom doing such things to a child or to any human being for that matter. I going through my emotions and just letting them flow through for now. I have a new therapist now too and I hope that she is able to guide me. I had not realized that I had big T trauma and that not all are trained in that.

There are emotions we may not be ready to feel and you are in your own healing journey. There is not a right or correct path. I hope you find what you are looking for here and in your new therapist as well.

[Chart]

Hi Redrachel, just a quick reflection on your expressed absence of anger regarding your mother's abuse. I identify significantly with this. For me what I realized is that my mother's abuse started so young for me that it seemed natural and "normal" and my brain assumed it was valid for her and also an extension of myself and how "I was". And since she had so much anger there was no reason for me to have any of my own. I see it like this: when the primary job of the child is to "solve" the parent-problem (as we fawn-types do), this leaves very little time or energy left to put into working out our own emotions. And quickly, from an early age, this model can leave us "absent" of not only emotions but a significant identity as well. At least that was my experience. I want to add that it actually took very little work to finally get in touch with my anger and it really all came out quite quickly. Sadly my mother didn't understand in the slightest, she was too far in denial and delusion to see her own behavior. I have since worked on resolving my anger and eventually came to a point of forgiveness. This freed me from the negative aspects my anger was bringing into my life. I will never have an intimate relationship with my mother but we are cordial and she knows she must respect my boundaries. When she doesn't I just sadly tell her I won't accept that and walk away. I am sad, but also proud of my commitment to my own integrity. I wish you strength and confidence in finding the righteous and positive anger you gave up as a child all in the hopes of "solving" the parent-problem.