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Hello,

I am back and in a safe place now... that was a very difficult and to be honest a sort of scary few months. I was politely told I wasn't able to be housed or boarded by my friends parents, which I respect their boundaries. They have been in frequent contact with me and have helped me find a new place to live which I have now landed to. I have moved to a much better spot where I am safe at. Currently I have taken sometime off of work, I did some IOP stuff but due to money and without a car wasn't able to commit to that long term. It did come in use when I had it though.

Now, with me having settled, and reaching a better norm I am trying to figure out as to how to use this time I have off to recover. I think coming back here will be good and I have therapy on a weekly basis during this time. Right now I was working on some therapeutic 'work sheets' that help us sort of identify ourselves and something I am realizing is how, difficult of a time I have to realize myself in actuality. I think it makes sense, I was stuck in an studio apartment for 2 years, eventually spending every hour I could escaping and it's led to me sort of having a bit of a blind spot to realizing myself as a person. That's just one thing I have been pondering, something that I will bring up in therapy.

But right now I am more so hoping to go through the building blocks of recovering now I am in a better spot. How to take care of myself throughout the day and figuring out what little things I hope to achieve here and there.

Glad I am safe, and very lucky I ended up where I did.

Hey, just posting here. Reached out for help. They are very proud, and are working on it. Communicating with therapist, taking it moment by moment, staying safe.

All I have for right now. Thanks for peoples support here it has meant a lot. 

So I have been doing a lot of thinking these past days when outside of escapisms. I am so in the hole financially, I have some debts I need to pay off and nowhere near making rent. I've really set myself back in this period. Where I am, I feel really humiliated but I think something I need to do is ask one of my two closest friends parents if they can, well to speak bluntly if I can move in for a period. I so need a reset, I can't get my basic needs met so I can't make progress anywhere. I am nowhere even close to being able to afford a car, desperately struggling in the environment I am stuck in, and falling behind. I just really need a safe environment where I can actually make progress on healthy coping skills, be able to practice actual budgeting where it doesn't send me in an anxiety induced spiral.

With having lost both of my parents, I've often been recipient of "you are our adoptive son", this I have always been skeptical towards because I don't know how genuine it is. I don't want to live with my friends parents, I really would rather live on my own, again it feels so humiliating, but I don't have another direction and I am afraid I am teetering on a brink. To speak plainly and to let go of grace for a moment they both have sons living with them, if I am claimed as an adoptive son, please I need help. I need a reset, and a safe space that isn't mired in my own depression. I've nowhere else to turn.

This is difficult, and I hope I am able to reach solution.

Hey Natureluvr- I appreciate you sharing that with me. That is a good point, while I never had continual abusers, I certainly was the recipient of terrible emotional abuse during my times of extreme loss and immense grief. And I have since internalized that I was wrong due to their actions. Ahhhg the anger too. Yeah, I'll think on this, I don't deserve to have such venomous self loathing as I do because of their abuse. I think this is most applicable when it came to my dads siblings sending me his ashes over the mail, and the callousness others had about my grief. Fortunately I was not really in contact with these people much.

One tricky aspect that my therapist has pointed out, is the day to day neglect I face isn't really anyone single persons fault. I mean with my fathers death he did in a roundabout way kill himself (really allow for his health to fall apart, and he also was quite vocal about a strange death wish he held that he sort of tied to bhuddism... which I don't know its weird and complicated), but its feels... off to blame him for that. My mother she had a brain tumor, and its not her fault she has had her brain scooped out twice. Truth told, they both loved me, very flawed people but they did so much right as parents, and a lot wrong too. I go back in forth missing them (think that is the younger version of me coming out), and hating them so much for something that for something that's not actually who they are. My therapist has said this circumstance is unique. She mentioned exactly what you had to say about abuse, but its hard here because there isn't really an abuser regarding my mother (my dad I think had some abusive attributes but some really loving ones too), and he's since passed so I don't know at least his chapter closed.

I hear you for allowing myself to grieve, I will think on that as well.

Want to continue today, first to engage with those who posted here. I think I disassociated today, which will post here to try and ground myself a little.

Naturelovr- Thank you for your affirmations and relations. I am glad to not be alone in that. It helps ground me some. Going to try and keep sharing here, and see what may come of it- stay connected and help a little more grounded in a difficult chapter.

Armee- Thank you as well for cheering me on and acknowledgment of continual retraumatization that means quite a bit. Its hard because life continues- rent is expected, I have to attend my responsibilities at work but everytime it comes up I so wish for the world to stop on its Axis or leave to a different one all together. But hearing that acknowledgement is really nice, because it feels like I have to repress the notion or dismiss it all together which makes me believe there is something wrong with me- that I am inoperable. That sort of brings me to what I wanted to journal about today which is self shame (and self hatred), but before I do.

I did the dishes yesterday. I was really glad I did and am genuinely proud I did. Not getting any chores done today but that is OK.

On self shame, yeh its... resoundingly tricky, Ive been told by the therapist so often over the course of the three years we have known each other, that I hold so much shame. And its without me even knowing, so much of it feels so passively, so ingrained. I'd like to accept myself though, I really would, and there are things I genuinely do but I leave my own mind so often. It of course wont happen over night, accepting who we are. I'm trying to think of things I can do to try to do to sort of begin that rewiring. My own inner voice is just so passively harsh, and has been for years, its gotten better in many aspects but still self abusive. I think shame is a central part of my escapism, leaving my own head.

I'm open to thoughts and suggestions of what others may have, things that have helped them.
 

Hey Armee, been thinking on this. I actually quite appreciate breathing exercises. I think I will try those. Thank you for your suggestions.  

I've seen a few journal postings here. I throughout my years have had the hardest time consistently journaling. Right now too I am esp having some trouble journaling because I am terribly afraid of being with my trauma alone right now. When in therapy I can really go into subjects. So I think I will try here in search for company.

Jheez I am not doing great right now, after a stranger began acting as a caretaker for my more or less lobotomized mother been escaping hard and its having detrimental effects. I can't talk to her right now, to be honest I don't want to talk to her again. Not really sure what can be done there but that's not getting solved today. My apartment is messier than ever, falling behind on finances and struggling with nicotine addiction. I know I can't keep on escaping until my problems become unsurmountable. I really can't lose what I have gained over the years, namely very stable job and being able to live on own.

I am hoping clean the kitchen some today, I think just the practice of being a bit more present by posting here is helping. My therapist has asked I do try for other coping skills so I am quite proud to be posting here. I'd like to clean an aspect of my apartment three times this week. Just to be present in my space, wow, its incredible just looking around at messy odds and ends I can tell the moment I see it I feel intense discomfort and immediately go back to my intensive day dreaming. Things were really messy and honestly had a lot of anxiety growing up, my dad raised my sister and I after mom got her first brain surgery and divorced. In hindsight he was really depressed and things like the house fell apart badly. That's when I first started to escape, out of fear of his perpetual unemployment- financial struggles, and the future of moms mental and physical decline. So I've made myself a living situation very similar to my dads, intensely depressed, financial struggle, living space is a mess and moms condition is worse than ever (that I had nothing to do with but it scars me all the same). I'm totally just doing what I know, which I retreating to a safer space. There is also a ton a fear and likely self hatred that I am just repeating my parents fate, stuck inside, depressed, not taking care of themselves, falling apart.

But I can control some aspects, so kitchen today after work it needs it. I know I am not my dad, not my mom, and really just try and tackle one thing not even every day- just today kitchen.

It was nice posting here. I am proud I did. This is all very new to me, I seldom share these sort of things with others. 

Hey Naturelovr, I just want to 2nd your thoughts here I feel very much the same way and have been in very similar circumstance with 12 step groups.

Going off of my own experiences, They are great for getting clean and figuring out how to stay clean, but are not equipped and usually very misinformed as to anything else mental health wise. I've come across a lot of mental health professionals who have quite a lot of issues with the various 12 step programs but they frequently have to hold their tongue, cause its the 12 steps. They done a lot for me as well, but if you reach a point where you can stay sober & clean and know you will stay as such its fine to leave those programs as you move on to try and focus on other things the program isn't equipped for.

Been wondering where exactly where to put this one but though might try and explain what exactly is going on, and its tricky to figure out where do I go from here.

About a month ago had a very triggering and ongoing circumstance of my disabled mother essentially allowing some stranger as her caretaker, I am not speaking with her now and have not for a month. So when that occured just started escaping wildly. there are some other factors

I have been on Efexor which feels like it gives me tremendous ability to escape. Other is I am very isolated, I work from home and don't have a car, pretty much living pay check to pay check right now so I don't really go out much, so sort of under this oddly imposed home arrest, so what else would I do other than escape? I guess last contributing thing is usually I have a myriad of things I escape to but this time its just writing extensively in the erotica genre which is intensely potent.

I don't know in past I have been great at problem solving, but now its like what else would I do? My therapist has tasked me trying up with other coping skills but for the life of me can hardly come up with any. I'm too afraid to journal at the moment, and meditation feels impossible right now and I just don't know what else there is. In general its in such steep competition to begin with.

Hello Papa Coco thank you for the welcome.

I would like to politely express I do not appreciate speaking of my CPTSD in a cavalier tone and making light of it. Its a very AA/NA way of going about things, which I do hope this forum shares little in common with those programs in the way it approaches trauma.

I appreciate your understanding.

I don't even know how to unpack my experiences, more so as I have gone through this forum, I have realized too I don't know "how" to interact with people who also have CPTSD I have been so conditioned to filter everything for those who are totally unfamiliar. But to try my best because I think I should.

I'm in my late 20's now. At 11 a series of surreal cause and effect events occur. Sister has suicide attempt-> When visiting her in the  pyschward we crash car, mom breaks nose-> routine XRay found brain tumor in Mom-> She gets brain operation, dramatically changes as a person-> Parents Divorce (Mom Leaves)-> Dad falls into severe untreated depression. This about took place in a span of two years.

Go into Highschool, I have my teenage years. Mom has a 2nd brain surgery, this one is bad. I wonder how much they took out. She really regresses, and has been on steady and very notable decline ever since- more on this later. Dad is unemployed through most of it, steals grandmothers money who is suffering from dementia. Dad's siblings find out what's been going on they begin the process of suing him, meanwhile he's in financial freefall, a freshmen in college at this point I am left paying his electric bills. Dad dies suddenly of a heart attack. His siblings who, I don't know what on earth they were thinking, mailed me his ashes. Got them over my dormitory front desk, its so horrible I almost wonder if it actually happened.

Moms mental and physical ability declines more, and more, and more.

I am flung into drug and alcohol abuse as an obvious escape, that lasts a couple years. I lose my car via drinking/driving accident, few run ins with the law narrowly escaping jailtime, drop out of college. I enter the NA program, maintain sobriety lasting to the present.

More or less gets caught up to now. Mom lives some states away from me, recently she has digressed where she is actually acting like a child and very physically disabled, 25 years beyond where someone her age usually is. Very recently she's let a total stranger act as her caretaker which I cannot speak with her at all while that's happening. In general, I've been orphaned, I do not recognize this ghost that has a vague resemblance to that of my mother. I've lost her so many times, I wish for conclusion so bad, not this continuation of witnessing steep decline to some unknowing end.

I'm pretty stuck too, addiction took its toll. Nowhere near affording a car so I pretty like spend 90% of my time in my apartment. I feel almost completely excluded from society. I haven't a clue really where or how to go forward.

So I lose myself in my escapes and just sort of let the days pass. I talk with my sister, I love her and we get along well. Though she lives some couple thousand miles from me and we don't see each other for years at a time. Out of fight or flight, she opted for flight, which I forgive her for- she has her own things she had to do in all of this.

That's where things sort of are now.

Understood, yes I greatly appreciate that direction.

On background, yes I actually am very comfortable discussing my background and what the circumstances surrounding my CPTSD. Its more so the energy. I was thinking of making a post of it well, just to hear what other people hear and think but I want to express it in a way that is, genuine but also coherent. Its very layered and complicated, has its moments when there is a cascade of existential dread inducing events and of course its on going issues.

Just a little things about me, that is nothing very heavy. I very much enjoy graphic novels, writing, literature, computer games, TTRPG's, board games, art, and creative endeavors in general. I currently have remarkably great therapist, I have 4 1/2 years of sobriety which has become remarkably normalized for me, and a very close albeit small group of friends I've known all for quite some time which I am proud of.

I think will post regarding CPTSD soon, it would be nice to maybe have people who understand instead of being an aberration composed of loss and trauma.

Thank you again for the direction and look forward to looking around at my pace. 

Thank you, any guidance as to how exactly best get footing here? Read the guidelines, and I presume peruse the various forums and partake when compelled? Read resources as well?

Yeah, fit here. I've survived quite a bit, and have made tremendous effort on myself, but find myself stuck, isolated and craving relief. The circumstance around my CPTSD is still very much ongoing with no definitive end in sight. To continue the metaphor of the storm, it just refuses to dissipate.

I do well in therapy, have some very great friends but struggle to go forward at this time. It's uniquely difficult being bound continuously by grief.

Currently, I'm O-kay, mostly indulging in my various escapes while I do well enough at work. In therapy, it was revealed via my reading material of choice it seems I am looking for company in relation to my CPTSD.

So hello and thanks for having me.