Messages

No, there wasn't a lot of physical violence in my childhood. But what there was, was mostly directed at me. I learned to hide, to please, and to pretend like it never happened. It is so hard to put into words what I experienced. Nothing I have read in books describes it. Or it only describes a part of it.

There was a large degree of emotional abuse but that was mixed with physical abuse and threats of abuse. There was physical and emotional neglect. What it really amounted to was a house where everyone avoided each other most of the time. So I had to figure out how to survive the attacks and how to raise myself amidst threats to 'send me away' or 'get rid of me.' I grew up thinking I shouldn't be alive.

My biggest issue in recovery is learning how to stop acting the way I think others want me to. I want to become authentic. And I look at my life as it is now and see that nothing I have done was out of knowing or trusting myself. I am beginning to feel my feelings, find my voice, and make choices that honor myself. It has been a long road to get this far.

Sometimes I think of the process as trying to become real or authentic and sometimes like I am trying to finding my soul. In doing so, like you, the gravity of the experiences sinks in. As I remember things that I have thought about so many times before, it is as if I finally am grasping that they happened to Me, the Me that is here now and not just a child that exists in my mind.

I think when we witness violence like you did, it's like it is actually happening to us. It is like we don't have the proper boundaries between what we saw and what happened to us. It was all happening to us. Because we were not Safe.

Thank you for your words of appreciation.

Sometimes when my feelings are jumbled up it helps if I stop and sit with them and ask what part of my body is feeling the worst. Then I try to listen to what that part wants to say to me. Sometimes works, sometimes not.

I am not able to feel in the moment especially when other people are around. I usually need to be alone to check in with my feelings. But just knowing that is progress.

What you describe does make sense. I think you will soon find a way out of the jumble.

I smiled at your celebration that your legs are working!

Yes, the loss of a house is truly worth grieving over. A house, a home is similar to a person with a personality in our lives. In our lives, we look for things to make us feel safe in a world where we were rarely safe. It is very understandable that you feel so agitated.

You are better at expressing your internal discomfort than you might realize. And expressing it helps both the writer and the reader. I admire your writing ability. You will get through this. 

I remember you. Many have come and gone from OOTS. Welcome back. I often lurk but seldom write. I feel out of place here even though it is kind of my place to be. I come here when I feel alone knowing there is this community of people who truly 'get it.'

I wanted to send you validation and support. 

One reason I seldom post here is that I am not very good at it and usually just go off writing about my own troubles instead of lending support. But for what it's worth I am writing this.

You asked for similar experiences - mine are similar in that most was emotional and verbal. It is rather hidden in that I am still uncovering stuff that happened and how bad it really was because like you say, it was not the traditional media portrayal. But it is just as damaging and just as difficult to recover from.  In my situation there was not much in the way of calm, love, and kindness except for fake shows of such in public.

It is good that you have support now. I do too. I have all you listed except I don't have a brother. I hope to hear more from you on this recovery journey that we share.

Thank you for your words, Saylor. Yes, there is so much to figure out. To identify the things we need to 'unlearn', then unlearn them, then replace them with healthier more accurate information. It is a lot of work and takes a lot of time.

What you wrote is so important for those of us who were led to believe that everything is our fault. All people come with their own baggage. We don't need to take what they say and do personally. But that is much easier said than done.

Woodsgnome, you describe therapy so very well. At first, it was hard for me to accept that it was 'my therapy' and I was in charge. My tendency was to see the T as another authority figure that would tell me what to do. Fortunately, my T's didn't go along with that tendency and eventually I was able to grasp the concept.

I do hope these responses are helpful for you, Owl25. 

I agree with all the answers in this thread but I would like to add some of my own thoughts and experiences from my recovery journey.

The treatment for cptsd is very individual because we all went through differing traumas at differing developmental stages resulting in varying damages and deficits.

You ask if anyone recovered from this? I had a therapist that said yes, definitely, one can live as if they had experienced a life in a safe, supportive, and nurturing family. Personally, I think that one will always have some degree of symptoms but they can become very minimal.

That therapist had superb, impeccable credentials. However, he went to the extreme when using the term 'client-based' therapy. He was looking to me for cues as to how to do the therapy and I was looking to him to lead it. So we came to a stalemate and after a few years I finally got brave enough to stop seeing him even though he kept insisting that he was helping me and I was making great progress.

You ask: Are therapists just taking their best guess when they try to help us? More of a yes than a no here. They will try different things and check how you are doing with them. They need a ton of input from you in order to be effective. Giving input to therapists is very, very hard for most of us with cptsd so it is essential that you find one that you are incredibly comfortable with and this may not happen quickly. You need get to a point where you feel free to speak up when things aren't going well for you. The most important things are Voice and Choice. That is what we didn't have growing up and what we need to learn as adults.

Here is my most recent hypothesis about my recovery:
Step one: Deal with how I was trained to think about myself. This means issues like:  inner critic, right to be alive, right to have choices, deserving good things, using my voice, it's okay to make mistakes and take risks, self-trust. I recently learned a word that sums it up: Self-honoring.
Step two: Deal with how I was trained to think about people: This means issues like: they are not all dangerous, I can ask them questions, their questions are not attacks on me,  I can have relationships with those that I choose to and can leave those I don't want to be around.
Step three: Deal with how I was trained to think about the world: Issues like culture, religion, politics, environment, etc. 

I hope you find my answers helpful or at least a little bit interesting. I wish you the best on your recovery journey!

I like your poem. Thank you for sharing it.

I identify with not being allowed to cling - and yet the longing to do so is ever there. But the ability was never installed, the instinct to withdraw, repel is so much more present. I have problems with this a lot.

blueplam, I identify with what you write about your life as I, too, was severely neglected my whole childhood. The effects of which are not entirely the same as other types of trauma. I look forward to reading more of your words. Take care, you are not alone.

Welcome and I can relate to some parts of your life story. My abuse/ neglect began in childhood but continued into adulthood with similar treatment from different sources. Now I am trying to figure out the riddle that is my life.

I hope you find this forum to be helpful. It's likely you have noticed that many people don't 'get' us. This is a place where people do. You are not alone. 

Your journal entry today brought a lot of thoughts to my mind. First I want to say that it is good that you know you will feel better knowing that we will read your words and relate to what you write. I do. 

I guess I feel responsible for your uncomfortable feelings in that I recommended the book about fragmented parts. Please take time to accept and send compassion to all your parts. Even the ones who want to eat too much. Maybe if you read some of the book where Fisher writes about befriending them. Be kind to yourself.

What really struck me was your thoughts about going to see your friend or not. I have friends now. This is new to me. It is hard for me to remember that they like me and want to spend time with me. I thought for quite a while that I was simply their 'project' because they like to help people. In my past, I had never learned how healthy friendships develop and grow. So I can relate to your questions. My guess is that your friend will really enjoy spending some time with you.

I have a long standing affinity with stuffed creatures. They were there for me in childhood when no one else was. They were reliable and never judged me. I am so glad to hear of someone else who gets comfort from stuffed 'families of choice!' 

I haven't read Understanding the Borderline Mother but I read Roth and Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent. My desire was survival more than understanding at the time. I may pick that book up, too, as I have heard good things about it.

I wrote all over this book as things came to mind and I don't usually do that. It was as if it was telling my life story. So weird. A lot of my abuse/neglect was covert and on again off again so this book helped to validate what I went through and how very wrong it was.

I hope your healing retreat is awesome!

How do you guys feel about radical acceptance? If someone has worked through this - what was the turning point for you?
**************
I am certainly not an expert on this but in my limited understanding I think it has a lot to do with sitting with your feelings. Let them know you are there for them. Even the blaming ones. Trying to resist the feelings can make them seem worse. Investigate them. Think about what parts of your body you are feeling them. Think about what you would like to say to them.

Imho, I don't think it has to do with approval.

It sounds like you are radically accepting that you are having a hard time with this and that is good. It is a process, it takes time. In time, you will begin to see some space between what happened to you and who you are.

I hope this helps.

I am so very glad that this book is helping you, too! I think it was the single most significantly helpful book in my journey to recovery. And I have gotten help from dozens of books!

I had known that I had more fragmentation that what some had tried to convince me was simply facets of personality. So that was validating. I felt comfort in listing the parts and when they were wounded. It was eye-opening to write about them as separate from me and to offer comfort to them. Something shifted in me for the better when I was doing this. I bought little stuffed creatures to represent my parts and this helped me, too.

I hope you continue to share your thoughts about the book and your journey.

I have some views about therapy.

First, you are the boss. You have hired the therapist not the other way around. If you have made it clear to this therapist what you have explained here about what you want from therapy and they are not complying that is not the sign of a good therapist. You should have a list of goals for therapy and having someone listen to you and empathize is a worthy goal. This list can be changed and added to - by you. I spend a few minutes of most sessions reviewing what I am doing in therapy and what progress is being made because sometimes it seems so futile. It is true that some sessions will be much better than other sessions. That is just how it is.

I hear you on the questions about feelings and how one feels about their feelings - ad nauseum. When I am asked a question by a therapist I would like them to tell me if their question is to better understand me and what I have been through or if their question is to try to lead me to some sort of conclusion that they want me to reach. The former reason is much more preferable than the latter one, in my opinion.

I am doing okay, thank your for your concern. 

This book was good although written for therapists. The author is currently writing another one that will be for therapists, too.