Dealing with CPTSD- Men vs Women

[Dyess]

Since our names on here are so gender neutral it's hard to tell what kind of diverse community we have here for sure. It seems that there are more women here, but I know there are some men here.  So is recovery harder for men? Is it harder for them to talk out the issues involved with the CPTSD? So if any males want to describe the issues they faced in coming to terms with the diagnosis, and seeking treatment, feel free to share. There may be other men coming in that would like to read this as well.

[woodsgnome]

Trace wrote: "...is recovery harder for men? Is it harder for them to talk out the issues involved..."

Good question, but no ready answer. I'm sure the stereotype may be that men find it harder to communicate, they brood, etc. But I'm not at all stereotypical in most areas anyway, so I've no idea of whether I'm typical. I suspect not. 

I did experience a couple of gender-mixed "attitudinal healing" groups and noticed I was the only male to speak up much. Don't know for sure, but I suspect I may have been the only one in those groups (ratio about 3 m to 9 f) with what could be called a cptsd history. Perhaps that made me more sensitive to topics that verged in that direction.

I'm shy in groups per se (unless it's an acting/speaking gig lol), but in that setting I was definitely not afraid to show and share my feelings about the emotional scars from my youthful years, and how it affects me now. Male, female, or human, I wanted help; desperately.

With regard to T's, I've had a bunch, but they were pretty similar. Perhaps it's my strong outer critic tendency, but I wasn't terribly impressed with any except one female T nearly 20 years ago. Otherwise, I had no problem dealing with the issues as they came up. Unfortunately, a lot of the T's, male or female, just didn't seem with it. I felt more in tune with the issues than they were, it often seemed. Weird. Or maybe not.

So I hesitate to say my experience sheds much light on the question of gender-related takes on cptsd. Actually, in most areas I can think of, I'm well shy of stereotypes in lots of matters. But I thought I'd put a couple thoughts in the hopper. Like the other thread you posted, I feel like I'm in a "bubble" most of the time as is.   

 

[Dyess]

Thanks for the feedback. Not sure why, but I didn't know you were male Not a bad thing, it just doesn't matter to me because we are all healing and helping each other. But I just have a sense that the forum is predominately female. Anyway, how about pref. to male female counselor? I prefer a female. I guess to it would depend on the trauma. Not all trauma is sexual, I think that is the hardest to discuss and takes a lot of trust before opening that vault. Thanks for the feedback and honesty, I really appreciate it. I was about to give up on getting any male responses

[woodsgnome]

When it comes to trauma/gender, I'm right in the middle and so maybe don't even take into consideration the counselor/therapist's gender; take what I can get (none since Dec of last year).

I mean, I was abused sexually, emotionally, and physically by several men and women, one of the latter being my m. They've all blended into collective monsters to me. I've no idea how this fits into any grand theories vis-a-vis cptsd. I don't recall Walker touching on this aspect. In a way, I don't want to know, if you get my drift.

[Dyess]

I can see how you would see them as monsters. I truly hope there's a special place in * for people who abuse kids, animals and old people. I've heard a lot of stories about abuse, but none get to me more than a woman sexually abusing her own child (male or female). She must be a special kind of sick. Were you able to get help or get out of the house? I'm sorry you had to got through that.
I think there are more opportunities for kids to get help through school and other adults now. When I was younger you didn't talk about such things as abuse. I expect they talked about even less when my mother was growing up. Maybe by shedding light to this problem more and more there will be hope for the victims of the future. Maybe kids will know they have options of where to go to to talk about abuse. It's got to get better.

[woodsgnome]

Trace wrote:

"Were you able to get help or get out of the house?"...there were regular incidents 'til age 9; then the f (at work when most of the bad stuff occurred) found out, and I think stopped her somehow...prob threatened to leave...there was a time when she set up a confrontation where she prodded me to say something to the f, and I think it led to his figuring out the rest...but he turned it back on me--my first experience of blaming the victim mentality...from that time on, I was virtually an orphan as they abandoned me to the other set of monsters... .

...The religious school was where the other monsters operated. The principal was conveniently a cousin to my m but was only one of my probs--I was molested in gr K, 3, 4, up to 8, the grade he taught.

The emotional abuse got worse at the religious h.s. that followed; by age 15 I was nearly wasted. No help, no counselors, no nothing. Suffice to say I almost gag recalling it now, so have to stop; just wanted to answer your question.   

[Dyess]

I know this is hard to talk about and don't do it if it makes you gag. Not worth it. If and when you want to talk , how did you cope? I had a motorcycle and I would get on it and escape on the trails in the woods. Would be gone most of the day, no one knew where I was. I felt safe in the woods, it was quiet, peaceful and beautiful. Also loved music, so dove into that quiet a bit.

[woodsgnome]

Coping.

No motorcycle, but I walked, literally, all over the metro area I grew up in. All that hiking, despite asthma—which interestingly was usually only a problem around home or school. I live deep in the woods now; part of my total—and fortunate--escape when I fell into an acting gig after university, left town and never returned.

On one childhood walk, I met a gentleman who suggested I learn what was behind the religion I was being taught. He was my "alley angel" in pointing me in a new direction--a stranger that I'm forever indebted to. Then I discovered the library--it became my cathedral--on Saturdays I'd go and stay 'til dusk. My real education took place there. I found ways to laugh via old Laurel and Hardy films—in my mind I became Stan Laurel, who always trumped up the rotund Oliver...I began to consider the school bully monsters as pushover Oliver Hardy's who I, as Stan Laurel, would foil, at least internally. So reading, Stan Laurel, and an "angel alley" helped me cope. I also found music, picked up and learned accordion, especially Celtic stuff, still a huge love of mine. I also found an old unused attic room for peaceful reverie at home, away from the mad people downstairs.

One day, age 15, I just ran away from the school. It's an awful story, but it was how I discover my own strength which I wrote about before (warning--it's a long vent): 
http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=2189.msg13525#msg13525

Sorry if I wandered a bit out of the men/women in therapy theme this thread started from. Kind of like life in that regard—twists and turns; yet here we are, still healing, still learning, somehow still coping. Who'd a thunk it?

[Dyess]

It's no accident that we are all brought here together, there's a greater plan, we may not understand it, but it's there.
Ahhhh music. How it moves the soul to dance. I think nature is a wonderful recovery tool. I have seen retreats for PTSD patients and children in the mountains, like outdoor survival retreats. I think that would be cool to go to one of those. I used to love to camp. Just so grounding to be in nature. Got to hit the bed now. Will respond more later. Again thanks for sharing.

[coda]

I think there are more opportunities for kids to get help through school and other adults now. When I was younger you didn't talk about such things as abuse.

I agree it's getting better, thank god. The sad fact was growing up I never once thought of it as abuse. it never occurred to me, no matter what went on. It was a totally closed system, partly because my mother was obsessed with family "privacy" and expert at triangulation and false fronts, but also because everything was couched and reinforced as a form of love. She did it, ignored it, demanded it, diminished it, interfered with it, laughed at it, insisted, lied, judged, condemned and petted...because she loved us. Nothing enraged her, or pushed her into wounded hysteria like not "appreciating" her form of devotion. What she loathed in me, or approved about me, or dismissed as unimportant wasn't negotiable. I was her project when she felt passionate about some aspect of me, then put aside when she stopped caring: I simply ceased to exist.

Fear, bordering on terror, was a constant at home and at school. What I wouldn't give for one hidden video of those dark days of my childhood. I used to wonder how even without a social life but in a large, extended family or at grade school when I sat there frozen, wearing the makeup my mother applied to cover the welts on my face, not one person interceded, or even said or asked anything. But truthfully, I probably would have protected her, or gone mute. As bad as it felt, as much as I suspected not everyone's life was like this, as desperate as I was for relief, I had absolutely no way -no information, no societal resources or interal capacity - to make the leap to being abused. It was unthinkable. That is still the genius of convincing a child they can only trust their abuser.

I think your topic goes to an essential aspect of how our trauma still plays out, and one I'd barely considered. I'm sensitive to everyone, but unkindness from women can crush me in a way that feels primal. A nasty salesman might infuriate me, but my reaction to a nasty saleswomen goes deeper and lasts longer. A cheating boyfriend could cause grief and anger...but it had a shelf life. If a trusted girlfriend turned cold or manipulative, it felt like an assault on my being, something I could never work out without turning inward and reawakening all the ancient emotions of rage, failure, fear and self-loathing. Men hit me, sexually abused me, condemned me but never got inside my head.  My attachment to women, my desire for their approval and my urgent concerns about helping, pleasing, failing or hurting them are about...her.

[Kizzie]

I react to women who are like my NPDM the most (seemingly sweet as pie), but I'm also triggered by domineering men (especially when they have been drinking).  So I guess I'm fairly egalitarian when it comes to the gender of abusers.

As to whether there are gender differences in how people with CPTSD react, that's a great question.    I don't know that I saw any differences in Pete Walker's reactions from mine in his book, nothing that stands out by gender anyway, and the same holds true (for me) here in the forum. I have noticed some differences by age though, which makes sense.

   

[EmoVulcan]

Trace, i am female, so you can ignore this, but I have been told my mind is male, and certainly having come out of CSA, I have not been done of my femaleness....just stuck with it.  I never got along with girls well.  They played house and things that I just could not get...I am logical, and analytical and spent copious amounts of time trying to figure me out, so strange, awkward, a mismatch of mind and body.

My father, he used to tell me, stop being a pantywaist...many years later, I realized he had told me, stop being a girl.

Emotions are not logic, and the times they spill out I lose the ability to think, become irrational and I even know it, but I am just learning how to disrupt them and regain clarity.  Now, here I am learning I need to let them pass for what they are and resolve the source of them.  Now, if you view emotions as weak, I think this would be a problem for most men, as I think it s associated with inadequacy, in many respects, that attack the male ideal.

I know I can barely speak to the female side...it seems to be the thing I sort of lack.

[Dyess]

EmoVulcan I can see where this would be confusing but just be yourself. There's nothing wrong with who you are and how you think. I was a tomboy growing up, mainly because there were no girls to play with only boys. Plus being an only child my dad used me as his side kick with all repairs and manly things he did around the house, which I was okay with. Certainly benefited me through the years to have that knowledge.
But my thoughts would be that it would be easier for females to talk about emotional things. But I guess it would depend on how protective you are with your past and how much damage has been done in trust. Maybe that's true for male and female. I don't know. It's sad that there may be men out there that suffer alone because of the stigma that men are not emotional or that they can not express themselves when it comes to abuse.

[EmoVulcan]

I often heard "stop your crying, or I will give you something to cry for."
Yet, crying is acceptable in females, problem is it now is the only expression for nearly every emotion, even anger.  I note by direct experience and observance in a very dysfunctional area men use anger in the same way.
Social conditioning and gender roles are in flux, and we have no equilibrium.

Maybe I am naive, but I believe abusers, for the most part are just as damaged, and need perhaps a lot more compassion.  But the dv situations are just what we fall into, as I know abuse has been a generational thing, and programmed into us.  Generally the abuser is trying to be the man, and wholly afraid he cannot.  I think this explains my marriage, and my self esteem, was hungry for validation as well.
I have made much logical sense of the dynamics..

Eminem sure captures a lot of the honest feelings and frustrations of his own walk with surviving and struggling just the same as we are.  I certainly have been a tornado who met a few volcano's.  Lately, keep playing The Monster, a lot.  Sometimes angry music makes me feel a bit better, for all that I cannot express my own, and just rage.

My current hubby, suffers C-PTSD as I do,  we both are realizing we trigger each other,'s pain, we love each other...we saved each other's life.  He is verbally abusive, and only now becoming aware of his words and struggling with the ef concept.  I have to say, he brought  me up to his level of healing by showing me what is, vs what I want it to be.  Acceptance of what happened and it cannot be changed.  He has always told me, to be who I am, when he said that, my struggles increased, and I did not expect I had blocks to voicing my thoughts, or be at a loss how to act at times.  Nothing to replace program routines that I joyfully dropped...he is more in touch with feminine issues than i.
Some of our arguments leave us both confused...stigma is a large part of this, and boxes we do not fit.

[Convalescent]

I don't share most of the stereotypic view of men and what men should be, but it's taking a toll nevertheless. Especially the worse I am. Feeling weak, powerless and helpless, being afraid, ... all these state of minds or feelings that you're not supposed to have when "you're a man". It's hard not to be affected by cultural conditioning.