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Thanks everyone!

I know this is an old thread but I so relate and want to reference and possibly get "updates" from the folks who've posted here. So I'm gonna continue here...

So yes, I pretty much suffered strictly and only infancy trauma.
This is what I've been told:
TW
Punched in-utero. First four years of life listening and witnessing, physical, verbal and psychological abuse of my biological father directed at my mother and older sister. Once "kicked" out of the way by my bio-father. After about four years my mother got a lawyer and my father left. Almost never saw him again. My mother remarried, a decent guy, good enough father. Totally non-violent. Emotionally limited, but deeply caring nonetheless.

I resonate most with Woodsgnome: Things seem to have only gotten worse for me as time and "knowledge" has accumulated. Discovering Cptsd was relieving at first, but paradoxically my symptoms have actually gotten worse!!! I'm totally bedridden outside of two fundamental demands: work/financial demands (this means I have to go to work so I go to work) and taking care of my daughter one week out of two. But both of these things are extremely difficult for me. I feel like I am just barely holding it together. Suicidal Ideation comes up a lot. But I CANNOT inflict that on my three kids, especially the youngest who is 11 and would be certainly severely traumatized by such an event. Not to mention the pain that my action would reverberate amongst family and friends. Complicated, but destructive for others for sure.

So now I'm wondering what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I am as utterly lost as I have ever been. I literally don't know what to do except doing as little as possible. I live on this forum. I literally live on this forum. I keep rereading stuff, I keep rereading my own posts, I keep searching in old posts. It's very hard to finish Pete Walker's book. It's very hard to cook and clean. I know I should take a bike ride, but I am just too terrified. I went back on antidepressants for a week, but that just exploded my anxiety. I am now on no drugs whatsoever except caffeine. I am really really lost. I was in therapy but I have stopped for several reasons. I've made an appointment with a psychiatrist. I know this might be a mistake. But I don't know what else to do. I have very very little support. This forum has almost become my only support. I try to participate and support others but I feel I'm not that good at supporting others right now. Maybe that's my inner critic. It's just everything is so very hopeless inside of me right now. Finding a trauma informed therapist where I am located is nearly impossible. I've thought about trying to find someone online and doing it by zoom or Skype or whatever. The problem is I'm scared it's so little, so infrequent, and costs money. So taking that decision is really hard. I also know just how ineffective talk therapy is. When what I really need right now is to be held, hugged, loved by the woman I broke up with eight months ago. I so desperately need to be loved. And I so deeply feel utterly unworthy of being loved. And I so utterly feel hopeless. I'm so sorry, I just had to get all this out. Thank you for reading, thank you for listening. Any hope you can pass along will be greatly appreciated. I am managing to meditate a little, but I call it "desperation-meditation". I've no idea how effective it is...

Chart, my heart goes out to you. Being divided against ourselves is so painful. And I think this forum is probably exactly here for you to be able to express things like that. I'm sure it strikes a chord with many people, as it does with me.

Hi everyone, I've been moved reading other people's experiences here. I've not been diagnosed with CPTSD but I tick pretty much every box. It's hard to explain how I got here: anyone observing my parents from the outside would probably think they were salt of the earth types. And indeed, I do think they did their best, albeit from a rather moralistic, almost puritan, standpoint. But after many years of therapy, trying to come to terms with how bad my relationship with myself was, I've come to believe (and feel the truth of it in my body) that there was a deepest rupture between my me and my parents when I was very young, pre-memory. Obviously I can't describe what happened because I can't remember, but I suspect my mum might have had postpartum depression (I cried really a lot until I was 2, apparently). Whatever the reason, I was left with a haunting sense of inner wrongness, a belief that I had no right to the consideration I gave others, constant low-level anxiety, and a crippling sense of humiliation at any slight social misstep. I exist on 2 levels - both genuinely enjoying my friends and yet underneath never really trusting or becoming properly connected to them (with one or two exceptions). It's like after good experiences with people the tide comes in and sweeps everything away, and I have to start again from scratch the next time I see them. There's a profound mismatch between my outward life and my inner one. I self-medicate with chronic internet use. I go to addiction meetings to keep a lid on this as at times it has really felt overwhelming. The meetings feel like a supportive community.

Having said all that, things really have improved in some ways. I'm much less paranoid than I used to be, for example. I manage my everyday life a bit less chaotically than I used to. I'm finding performing anxieties (I'm a musician) easier to manage as the years go by. But deep fissures remain. I haven't yet found the self-love to truly tackle my self-destructive behaviours whole-heartedly - I try to deal with addiction more for my wife's sake than my own. Sometimes I just really want to say "To * with it" and tune out life and sink into my own little hellish world, but that has serious implications for how I relate to her, so I don't go all the way there. We're seeing a marriage counsellor who is excellent and helping us both recognise what we are contributing to the underlying dramas in our relationship. But if there was one step I could will myself to take, it would be to register deep down that I'm worth looking after for my own sake, that I'm not worthless. Isn't the brain a strange organ? I can fully recognise the valuable contributions I make professionally and personally, but somehow my body and mind won't take them in. I'm scared by what this "To * with it" side of me is capable of. I don't want to destroy my marriage. But I struggle just to exist in my body; this constant anxiety is so wearing. I find tai chi and slow walking a little helpful so I try to do those when I remember.

So that's where I am at the moment. Thanks for reading. I'm glad to be joining this community.