Messages

Rainydiary, Chart, MountainGirl, thank you very much for responding. 

Rainydiary - I feel that connection with children, too. It´s amazing how kids can effortlessly get close to you and make you feel safe and maybe even heal some of your invisible scars. They have the ability to do that and the genuine interest in human beings. Maybe we see that open-hearted, innocent, child-like part in them that we used to be and that´s what makes us feel at ease.

Chart - I can relate to living in the fantasies only too well. I´m doing that 90% of the time, imagining better, more fulfilling lives, in which I´m taking chances and making friends. To fantasize is sometimes the only thing that helps you through the day. I´m glad that you have at least one person in your life who motivates you and I think it´s pretty cool that you´re planning on giving a lecture, even though your motivation to do so is to "explain yourself".

MountainGirl - I´m glad that you started to recognize and feel your emotions you weren´t able to feel before. I think it´s a big step ahead when you start to focus on what´s happening inside and naming your emotions. Of course there are "negative" emotions that we don´t want to feel, too. That was the reason of disconnection in the first place - the unbearably painful feelings. So it´s hard to allow ourselves to feel everything fully.

Just a final note on this: I had a therapy session yesterday and we talked about this topic. My T asked me if I would like to try to feel in my body what´s happening at the moment (we were talking about the pain I felt about my lost childhood). I tried to feel that and I had a very profound experience - I felt pressure in my head, my chest and my throat and suddenly I realized that those were all the painful and suppressed emotions that want/need to be released, but I can´t let it happen yet. So maybe when I´ll be ready to feel those emotions that are buried now and face them, the emptiness and void will fill up with life and maybe I´ll realize that the emptiness is not as empty as I thought. It´s definitely a long way ahead of me.

 

 

MountainGirl, I can relate to this topic very much. My T is the third that I have, the first one was really horrible, she didn´t care about the impact of her words on me, she was dismissive and very arrogant. Going to her was one of the worst experiences in my life. Unfortunately, in my country there is not very much awareness of mental health issues and the importance of their treatment, so basically everyone can become a therapist/psychologist without proper training, they need just an academic title. The second T was much better, she was caring and kind, but didn´t really have much time and space for discussing my issues in a deeper way (she was paid by the state, as most of the therapists in my country, so she had lots of clients). She´s now on maternity leave, so she´s not available anymore. After trying and failing to find someone new, this February I finally found a therapist with whom I meet twice a month. She´s great, super caring and kind and knows very much about CPTSD and childhood trauma. I never felt more understood than when I´m with her. She was the first person ever telling me that it´s okay to be angry with my abusive mom and also she was the first to ask me if I´m OK and if I´m able to leave after I cried during a session.

Sorry for the long introduction, but I wanted to highlight the importance of a good therapist in someone´s life and the difference they can make in the healing process of someone with CPTSD. After those episodes of her display of affection I felt very uncomfortable. I never experienced unconditional love and caring, so I couldn´t handle it. Also, because of my history of trauma, I interpreted her behavior and my response to it as weak and pathetic, as something unacceptable. But luckily I´m now conscious enough to recognize those patterns of thinking and reacting that make me feel weak and pathetic for having feelings and needing help and care, so I know that receiving and giving love and kindness is perfectly acceptable and normal and not something I have to feel shame about.

I understand that it can be scary to feel emotionally dependent on someone, especially when it´s not your relative or partner or anyone close to you, but I think that it´s great that you have a T you can rely on this much. So I wish you that this mutually respectful and loving relationship lasts and also that you together find a trauma specialist matching her qualities.

Hello everyone,

I´ve just finished reading a book called Running on empty by Jonice Webb and I wanted to share my experience and maybe start a discussion on a topic that is very important to me and what I struggle the most with.

So the book described emotional neglect in childhood and it´s impact on our behavior later as adults. The topic was not entirely new to me, but it helped me to reinforce the fact that I´m not a weirdo for having odd feelings I can´t explain, I´m not "fatally flawed", as she named it, because everything I feel has a reason. I found myself especially in those parts where she describes that emotionally neglected people often feel empty inside, as if they were just looking at the world and people from the outside, the inability to really feel the emotions, to identify them in themselves and in others.

One of my biggest struggles is finding a clear purpose and a goal in my life that I can follow. I would like to do something, but I don´t know what my calling is and when I look inside for answers, I find nothing but emptiness and silence. That´s why this book resonated with me so much. It opened up a gate that was inside me, that needed to be opened, but didn´t give me clear answers on how to change the things I want to change.

So I wanted to ask you if you have any experience with working with the sense of emptiness. What did you find useful in the process of finding your way out of disconnectedness? Personally, I find it very hard to look for something that isn´t even there, cause the absence of it is the problem in the first place.

Thank you very much for your contribution.

Dalloway

I always have difficulties sleeping before and during full moon and also I tend to have very weird and depressing dreams that give me uncomfortable feelings after waking up. I don´t know the science behind that but it happens regularly during full moon.

Welcome to the forum, unwinding! I´m sorry that you don´t feel safe in your body. This is a very kind and supportive community and I hope that you´ll find here what you are looking for.

it sounds like such a minor thing, but it isn't

It really isn´t. In fact, the absence of something that should´ve happened is even harder to spot. You can´t see the invisible bonds between people, and it´s even more impossible to see the blank space where those bonds should have been. That´s why so many people struggle with expressing this particular feeling of missing something. The incomprehensible nature of running on empty is what makes the healing journey so hard. It´s hard to find the authentic self, when you lived all your life without the knowledge of it. It´s also hard to renew the connection to the world/humankind/oneness with all beings, when you never had that connection.

So all I can do is try to feel into every nuance of my life and try to listen to and hear the response coming from within that tells me what is real for me. This is the part of the "work" I can make (for) myself. But it´s not easy to present this authentic me to other people during social interactions. I struggle with this every day of my life. At this moment, there are only three people in my life who really get me. When I talk to them, I´m sure they understand every word just as I meant it. It´s really hard to function like that. I tried to change it, talk to people, get involved in conversations, but at some point, I always sense a dead end in the interaction, a wall I stumble upon when trying to dig deeper. Me being myself amongst people is funny or weird for them, but never something they can relate to. Fawning was my long-time response to these situations, but I´m not really doing it anymore. We can say that I sacrificed social interactions to be more authentic. But somehow I know that there has to be something deeper, that there must be people out there who understand me and this forum is the proof that makes me keep hoping.

I believe this level of loneliness is an EF. It's what drove me to sign up here. Very few people seem to get this, making it a self-reinforcing issue.

Yes, I very much agree. And that´s why this forum is a haven for people with CPTSD present in their lives. I experience in my everyday life how desperate the feeling of not being understood or even seen is. My co-workers, random people I meet, old acquaintances -- it´s as if they were looking through me like I was invisible. They don´t see me and I feel too helpless to change it. This is the wall our traumas build brick by brick around us so in the end we cannot reach out and see clearly. But this place, the OOTS, makes me feel seen and heard and validated, so everything that happened to me is starting to make sense in a way that the pieces are getting together and I finally feel that I can breathe. The first time in my life. Wishing you at least this wonderful experiences here.

I agree with both of you. My biggest pain, regardless the particular situation, comes from feeling alone in this world, which is rooted in the feeling of not being connected to the rest of the world. This is the scariest and most unbearable feeling -- that I´m all alone in this whole big universe, amongst billions of people. That everything and everyone is wired together, but me. It´s like floating in the space with no gravity.

And yes, nothing can really "cure" this "condition". No books, therapy, podcasts. They are of huge help, of course, I can´t deny that, they helped me a lot -- to discover myself, the inner voices and the causes of my unwanted and uncomfortable behavior --, but I´m starting to think that feeling connected is the biggest gift of all.

SenseOrgan,

welcome to the forum. I´m sorry for all the emotional neglect and abuse you went through. Your story resonates with me very much, I could relate to almost everything you wrote in your introductory post. Most of my childhood was also about emotional neglect, abuse and parentification, coming from my mother, who´s unfulfilled needs and the abuse from her parents made her emotionally very unstable and made her copy all the abuse she went through, just to switch the positions and relive all the things that happened to her, now from the perspective of the more powerful one.

My mother´s instability manifested in extremely strict and ever-changing rules, so we could never master them and so she could always punish us. There was never a space for opinions and different views. Being seen was dangerous, so I quickly learned how to be invisible.

Now, as an adult, I´m a people-pleaser, always trying to be compliant, never hurting anyone´s feelings and always putting myself last. Although I´m doing much better now, feelings of isolation, loneliness and alienation remain. I´d like to reach out to people, connect with them on a personal level, make friends and have a social life, but I just can´t. I´ve been invisible for so many years, that I feel extremely anxious just thinking of coming out from the shadow and being vulnerable.

This is a very long journey for all of us, but this forum is the best place for sharing our experiences with each other and learning something helpful along the way. The stories are different, but the way we cope with the consequences is what connects us. So welcome.

Welcome to the forum, Nightingale. I´m sorry for the abuse you´ve been through and that you feel abandoned. People with CPTSD often find it really difficult to trust anyone  -- for understandable reasons. I hope you´ll find this place safe enough to feel supported and loved. People in my country are also not very informed about trauma, lots of them take it as only weakness or lack of willpower, so I understand that stigma that you mentioned. That´s why I appreciate this forum, because it´s full of people who really get me and can relate to my struggles.
I wish you the best finding your voice or just being present here. 

I´m so happy for you      That´s a lot of progress and it´s also great that you´re able to recognize the changes that make you feel better and to give yourself the credit for making them happen.

Thank your for this topic, Dollyvee. I ditto what you and Kizzie mentioned, I also perceive CPTSD as something that is still not really understood and accepted, not even in the field of mental health. And what I experienced amongst "regular" people (non-professionals), is that most of them perceive these kinds of things as something uncomfortable or they feel like they should give some advice when we are talking about our experiences. One of the hardest things for me is getting people to understand that when I´m sharing something with them, I don´t necessarily want advice from them. So that´s, I think, very widespread in our culture, the urge of fixing everything immediately and the demonization of the negative emotions.

The article you linked was very interesting. I really liked this part, it´s so well written, so simple, yet so complex, that it gave me an aha-moment.

Then again, if we don't look on this "bright side" and we instead sit in the emotions that maybe aren't pretty, we are told (or it is implied) that we are doing things "wrong," that we are not doing things well enough, not trying hard enough, or that we are in "victim" mentality. (A question I ask clients a lot is, what if it's not "victim" thoughts or behaviors, but grief?)

Not victim-thoughts, but grief. Just wow. So thanks again, I think this is a very important topic to talk about. 

Welcome to the forum, Rebecca. I´m glad you´re here and hope you´ll find here all the support and kindness I found. 

Blueteddy, I´m sorry you´re in such a difficult situation and that you feel lost in this process. I don´t have similar experiences, so I don´t have any advice on this, but I wanted to tell you that you´re not alone and I really hope that your appointment goes well and that you can take one step forward, even if it seems like a small step. Take care.