Hi folks, my first post. :wave:
I am utterly traumatised from being forced into psychotherapy, with a therapist who saw me as a weak, non engaging failure, who wouldn't like myself at end of therapy.
There was no awareness within my mental health team at the time that my awful childhood had caused not only personality disorder, but CPTSD, which manifested as dissociation, flashbacks hypervigilance physical illness ( fibromyalgia ) identity disorder, sexual issues and a complete lack of trust in people, not to mention during dissociation becoming a small child , terrified, an aggressive angry disaffected teen, a gender dysfunctional individual , an empty soulless destroyed shadow. The trauma was always there affecting my every day life, as I always had to be good enough for the main perpetrator. Bringing the emotions and events, those that I remembered, together was killing.
my question is, what works for people ? There are few resources in the UK. I believe art and writing therapy can, alongside gentle cbt and the eye movement therapy, but again, little available in UK unless you pay huge sums, which I don't have.
Photography is my passion, when well ( good days or hours crop up at times ) as is walking on the moors, coastland cliff tops, quiet coves ( people do my nut in , in any number, as does noise, and children ). Also wildlife forays, we see all sorts, red, fallow, row, muntjac deer, badgers, foxes, including tiny grey Cubs, hares, rabbits, moorland ponies and foals, and a polecat last week. Also blest enough, walking a local canal ( water of any kind is soothing ) saw a water vole swim across in front of us, before turning its head to look at us then vanish into reeds.
Having tried private therapy since horrible nhs experience, that also went awry, after my bringing up that it felt like my dead perpetrator was in the room with us. She panicked so I lost faith. I dare not be pushed any further emotionally with further experiments. My hair is now shaved to the skin again, , so my gender identity is Becoming more obviously an issue too. I don't want any semblance of my female body left. Abuse as an adult has compounded this aspect of myself.
Is there any point ? I'm nearly 50 and so aware of how difficult I am to live with, despite being ultra sensitive and loving I can be explosive. V sorry for long intro, but need to feel there is some genuine hope.
Love guys, gals and all, hope your journeys are going well. I am so pleased to have found this oasis.
Hi Alex and a warm welcome to OOTS :hug: You asked in your post "Is there any point?" and to my mind you have answered your own question:
Photography is my passion, when well ( good days or hours crop up at times ) as is walking on the moors, coastland cliff tops, quiet coves ( people do my nut in , in any number, as does noise, and children ). Also wildlife forays, we see all sorts, red, fallow, row, muntjac deer, badgers, foxes, including tiny grey Cubs, hares, rabbits, moorland ponies and foals, and a polecat last week. Also blest enough, walking a local canal ( water of any kind is soothing ) saw a water vole swim across in front of us, before turning its head to look at us then vanish into reeds.
How absolutely lovely! In my mind I was walking beside you and drinking in all that you saw and felt. And perhaps what you have described is the point? That is, to feel and share the wonder and joy and beauty and peace of life and let it balance out the harder parts we've gone through and will go through. Admittedly it's not easy for those of us with CPTSD to do - we are trained to protect ourselves from trauma and in doing so we push down the parts of us that can feel that way lest we get blindsided again.
Anyway, not to blather on but you've taken a big step by reaching out and I'm glad you found your way here :hug:
Hi Alex, and welcome. Your therapists sound like they'd have needed a bit of therapy themselves before being let loose on you. I'm sorry to hear that this was so traumatizing, and I hope you'll find something here on OOTS that helps.
As for what works for people - I've thought of two things. One is this website: http://www.pete-walker.com (http://www.pete-walker.com). It's by a therapist who specializes in CPTSD, and he's also got CPTSD himself. So he writes with much practical knowledge, good advice, good explanation of how CPTSD "works", and a lot of compassion. He's written a book on CPTSD, but if you just want to dip your toe in, there are several free articles on his website. A good place to start might be with his articles on Emotional Flashbacks, and on the Inner Critic and Outer Critic.
The other thing: do you think you could possibly be highly sensitive? It's this new theory that says some of us simply perceive more than others. That can be about physical sensations, and/or other people's moods and emotions, and apparently even supernatural things. My oldest kid is HS, and what you wrote reminded me of her SO much: sensitive, bright, very caring, but quite explosive when stressed out. After all, perceiving more means there's this massive amount of data that we've got to process. And sometimes that gets very overwhelming very fast, and stresses us out. I call it our Bluescreen of Death, after the computer error. System crash. Smoke coming out of the CPU. Then you said that you find people and noise crazy-making, that you love nature, and that your therapist accused you of being "non engaging", which is a good word for what happens when my kid finds someone unsettling and decides to NOT open up to them and to wait and see instead what happens.
So maybe this is just me reading too much into things. But I thought it was worth pointing it out, just in case. I'm HS too, and realizing that has given me a MUCH better idea of what stresses me and how to un-stress myself. Lower stress in general = more energy (physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy) = less flashbacks and greater ability to cope if they do happen. The difference it makes can be tiny, but it was still SUCH a relief.