One more new member :-) (Trigger warning)

[SharpAndBlunt]

Hi,
First of all sorry if this post is too long, it is longer than probably my subsequent posts will be because it is my introduction. I hope these boards can help me and I hope I can help others too. Please read below if you want to know why I am here!

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I often feel a great force trying to pull me down and it's an effort to stay afloat. I think it is me ignoring my emotions that cause me to feel that way.

I can't call it tired because if I lie down to sleep I just lie there with it and the sensation gets worse and worse. It's what I used to call tired, though, though now I recognise it's not tiredness I feel, just an un-named emotion or emotions.

I am a male in my early 40s who has been struggling every day since my late teens. I was mis-diagnosed with depression a couple of times. Even although I can see that I do not behave as a depressed person does, I accepted the diagnosis because a) a professional doctor told me that, and b) I had nothing else to go on.

Around two weeks ago I discovered online about cPTSD. Since then I have been reading articles every single day about it. Not one symptom describes something about me that isn't there. Everything about it confirms to me without a doubt this is what I am suffering from. I had no idea there was a known condition. I always considered myself lazy, or weak, or not good enough to fit in. Depression was the closest thing I could imagine, but I knew it wasn't right.

The health service in the UK I believe don't consider cPTSD as a condition, yet. Even Google tries to correct my search result every time ("Do you mean PTSD? Search again for cPTSD")!

I am currently seeing a good psychiatrist ever few months but he can't refer me to the psychologist because they can't agree on a diagnosis. So I have been educating myself. I have lost out on a lot of years due to this condition and not knowing what to do about it and having been told many times just to 'get over it', or 'it's not a real thing' or 'life is hard, get used to it'. I took myself off anti-depressants a few months ago because they weren't making any difference to me.

People have said (including people close to me) that I'm an *, a wank, or a moron, or I am attention seeking (a common one). These comments obviously hurt, so I self-isolate. As a result I feel very alienated and isolated. I need to monitor myself carefully to ensure that doesn't slide into depression.

I eat reasonably well, take exercise every day, and sleep, though reasonably short hours (about 6 hours is normal) and I rarely feel fully refreshed after sleep. I have disturbing dreams though I can rarely if ever remember the details. As soon as I wake my brain feels again like hot oil spitting in a frying pan.

I don't take drugs or use alcohol to take the pain away. My culture encourages only macho behaviour and alcoholism, so I have withdrawn from that also, so I have lost touch with friends that way.

I have intelligence, but no self-esteem. So I can appear confident on the outside while I 'fake it to make it' but this always ends badly, because I am no good at keeping up the front of a lie. Inwardly, I am always cringing, fearful and afraid. I startle easily and am hypervigilant.

I recognise all these signs from the book I just started reading – Pete Walker's 'Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving'. This book has been like a lifeline to me. I am the kind of person who if he has a handbook is a happy man. I have never known there was a way to get a handle on all these things that I feel and are in my head. Now I know that there might be I can hope for the future.

But for now I am always hovering over a hair trigger of disassociation. It happens very easily to me. I think I have spent most of my life in a dissociative state. Triggers can lead to total internal collapse in public, confusion, losing my place in a conversation, talking irrelevant words etc., which leads people to think I might be weird, dangerous or just acting up.

Sometimes I tell myself this is just normal human anxiety I am feeling. But it has curtailed my activities every day of my adult life. I don't believe that is normal. I also struggle with the suspicion that disassociation is something I've chosen, as an easy way out. The problem is that it sucks as an easy way out, because it's not easy. This suspicion causes great shame and self-loathing, which makes me think it is just another symptom of my disordered thinking.

I literally can't relax. It makes holidays a nightmare (I need to be active – or asleep), and makes making new friends almost impossible.

I feel great shame, childish, and vulnerable. This is no way for a man my age to feel. I am so tired of it.

Main daily symptoms are an un-named dread, anxiety, bad butterflies in the stomach, a distorted sense of time, no enthusiasm, no creativity or imagination. I sometimes think of the cartoon 'Road Runner', more specifically the image of Wile E Coyote going off the cliff. His face when he looks to the camera and you realise he's terrified - that's how I feel, except I never ever fall. That sensation of hanging has been present for over 20 years.

I used to be a sociable person but disassociation means I can't really socialise with more than one person at a time, and sometimes not even that.

I am hopeful that by reading and educating my way out of this I can have a future. I only wish I had known about cPTSD sooner. It seems that literally no-one in my life I have tried to raise this with has understood or has been too afraid to want to engage with it. This is a big disappointment, but life is not just about me, and life goes on and would go on without me in it.

But I feel I have missed my potential in life in so many ways and I would like to try to remedy this in the next 20 years or whatever I have left.

If you have read this far I thank you for it. I don't want anybody to think I feel I am better or more worthy than anyone else when actually I believe the opposite. I just want to stop feeling helpless and get strong enough to try and live the life the way better adjusted people around me do.

I am very open to talking with others about this, which is why I have chosen to join this board, almost the first chance I have had since I found it.

Please feel free to PM or email me if there's anything you want to say or you think I can help with. I hope to post on the boards also.

Thanks again for reading.

[Kizzie]

Welcome to OOTS SharpAndBlunt.  It is problematic when professionals can't agree on a diagnosis or aren;t aware of/knowledgeable about CPTSD, especially when we know right away when we read about Complex PTSD it's the problem we've been dealing with and are ready to get going in recovery.  Very frustrating.

I'm surprised that Google tries to correct you when you type in Complex PTSD - it certainly comes up for me.  Maybe try Complex Trauma which is the term a lot of mental health professionals use. 

I also wanted to mention that Complex PTSD is now an official diagnosis in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases Edition 11 which is what is used in Europe I believe (whereas it's the American Psychological Assoc's DSM in North America and they haven't yet included it). It might be worth talking with your psychiatrists about this as they should be aware of this.  Also, there  are lots of clinical research articles about CPTSD here, books about Complex PTSD/Trauma (many for mental health professionals - just scroll down) here, both of which you could take the links for so they can have a look and educate themselves.  There are also forms & info sheets here you could take to your next appt which might help you get a diagnosis.

In the "For Survivors" section of the Books page there is a good workbook for dissociation you might want to look at - I have worked with it and can recommend it.

Something we do ask new members to do is to please have a read through our Member Guidelines.   Again, welcome & I hope OOTS is helpful in your recovery.

[SharpAndBlunt]

Hello, Kizzie,

Thank you for your welcome, and your recommendations. The information you posted is encouraging and I will take it with me to my next meeting. I will also look at the workbook you recommended.

Re. my original post, I had already edited it to shorten it a bit and remove some language but somehow ended up posting the original, unedited version, I think I got distracted by a phone call before posting.

I look forward to participating on the board when I can.

SaB.

[Kizzie]

Just realized I forgot to give you a link to the book I mentioned - It's called Coping with Trauma Related Dissociation. 

[SharpAndBlunt]

Thanks 

[SharpAndBlunt]

Hi BeHea1thy,

I will try to keep my response brief. I want to thank you for your post.

I am commited to changing my disordered thinking. Like you alluded to, the ability to begin that process requires an ability to deal with painful feelings and emotions, which in turn requires a continuous presense of mind, etc etc.

I anticipate a long process - but whereas before that process seemed mysterious and insurmountable, now (with the help of all the cPtsd resources I have accessed recently) I can almost imagine I can do it

What you said about making small steps to connections had an impact.

If I can learn to trust the future, make new connections in my community (real and online) and try to be always "present" to myself then I will definitely regard that as progress. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.