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Hi Slashy,
I don't know if you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. I fall into the second category and as mental illness is a big part of my family background, I'm reluctant to try anything that might upset my brain chemistry too much.

However, you might want to discuss with your GP about trying a low dose of amitriptyline (I take 10mg) - it's a pretty safe, non addictive and well tolerated antidepressant that isn't used much nowadays as it causes drowsiness. Taken before bed, it's enough to get me to sleep and stay asleep without feeling drugged or groggy the next day. It's not recommended with alcohol as it enhances the drowsiness effect, but that could act in your favor and allow you to cut down on the amount you drink and still have the same effect - but do discuss with a doctor first.

Hi. I'm having couples therapy and it's really making me revisit my traumatic childhood (which is probably a good thing but I'm finding it really unsettling). Today I realised that I was abused by a neighbor's daughter as a child. I feel really ashamed and confused because it's taken me until now (35+ years later) for it to even occur to me that it was abuse. Even now, my almost impenetrable wall of dissociation is telling me that "it wasn't that bad", "I'm over exaggerating", "other people had it much worse than me".

In my head I think I was abused and that was a bad thing. But I've no idea how to respond to that. I experienced so much different trauma as a child that it is all so normalized for me that up until now, I've passively accepted everything. Most of the crazy stuff that's happened to me I've just passed off as amusing anecdotes to tell people about my weird upbringing (not everyone can say that they had a stranger escaped from a secure psychiatric hospital sleeping in their living room for 6 weeks when they were 9, or that their mother convinced them in their early teens that they were too sick to go to school for a year just so that she could "care" for them). It's only really now that I'm realizing that none of what I experienced was appropriate for a child and I'm starting to grieve for the years that I've lost and for the negative parts of my life now.

How do you all even try to come to terms with trauma in your childhood if you have no reference points for how it was supposed to be and learned coping mechanisms which blank all feelings about it all out?

Hi. Sorry thanks for the kind words and welcome. I'm kind of still lurking at the moment and trying to read through everything. 

Hi. 40-something from the UK here. I've just joined the forum and been looking around reading the resources for the last couple of weeks. I've not been formally diagnosed with CPTSD but for the first time I think I've discovered something that finally makes sense of who I might be. I'm really looking for a place to explore more about what I suspect about myself and people who might understand and share their wisdom with me. Apologies if I'm oversharing, I can delete if it's too much.

I've always known that my childhood was "unconventional", but I've never really been able to disentangle from it's chaos to understand what "normal" is supposed to look like. Basically I grew up in a loving home, but with a mother with severe (undiagnosed) mental illness, crazy religion, and a father who cared, but basically was out of his depth and enabled all of my mother's craziness. My whole childhood revolved around my mother's illness - whether she was bedridden for months, seeking spiritual enlightenment or hospitalised with psychosis. I could never escape. I just learned to be hyper-vigilant the whole time and read the situation and try to fade into the background and not make things worse.

I feel a fraud because I've never had a "breakdown" and have learnt to always hold myself together, but inside I'm crushed. I'm so lucky to be married with children, but I've no idea what a "normal" relationship should be like and have no reference points for how I'm supposed to feel in certain situations. I just spend my time trying to hold onto stability and peace and it's so exhausting. It's only now, having couples therapy with my wife that I've been given the space to actually stop and understand how much prolonged trauma there was in my childhood and how much my actions today are in response to trying to protect myself from reliving traumatic events from my childhood. Is there a way to unravel yourself and work through things?