Messages

Thanks Contessa!

I totally understand that fear. I definitely won't be back by next year. I've been undergoing treatment for two years so far. Progress is so slow. I'm afraid my credits will expire before I'm able to go back.
Hang in there! We'll make it through!

Thank you so much Moon Hare!
I have worked on that some as a part of my treatments. Primarily learning to have compassion for myself, learning the functional roles of various aspects of myself, the hurt child, the protector, the all too misunderstood anxiety/excitement, etc...
I'm finding that, as I learn to really look at why I've developed these aspects, that each one of them is trying to protect, heal, help, even if it seems like they're causing me harm, it definitely brings relief!

Hello all!
This is one of the main reasons I started looking for information on C-PTSD, which led me to this site.
This is going to be long. I apologize in advance.

I was a straight A evolutionary biology/speech, language, and hearing science double major when I started experiencing nervous depletion in my senior year. Turns out, when you have untreated C-PTSD, your entire nervous system starts shutting down. It took 20 years for it to start, but once it did, it only took about 6 months for me to completely shut down. Digestion becomes a problem, sleep cycles break down, language centers stop working your brain, social systems stop working.
I had just completed my research for a very exclusive undergrad research program (only 2 people were accepted each year), the University had sent me to Puerto Rico to present my work, and I was preparing to publish.

I was very nearly unresponsive for about two years. I couldn't process the world around me. My family and friends all disappeared, claiming they thought I "needed space."
The only reason I didn't end up homeless and unable to even communicate at all was my wonderful partner of 14 years. He didn't encourage me, or pick me up and brush me off, or offer sympathy, nothing. But he stayed, and he supported me financially. He didn't let me fall, he never complained. He just quietly stayed by my side.

Now that I'm becoming more able to interact with the world, I can get out my front door with only a relatively little anxiety. I started a new job in January. They love me there. It's a smoke shop, entry level position, minimum wage, just three days a week. I'm great with the customers. I make their days better, get their brains producing oxytocin. That makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something again. I'm not answering any pressing scientific questions about the world. I'm not unlocking the secret of coevolving communication between humans and domestic canines. I'm not building complex mathematical models of animal migration in response to climate change.
But I'm changing people's day, bringing light, and maybe changing the way they see the world and themselves just a little bit.

My boss is very encouraging. She says I'm the best employee she's ever had, that she and everyone else adores me.
Strangely, here's where the problem lies. Every day feels a bit like Russian Roulette. Each person that comes in the store represents the possibility for a negative interaction that will start my heart racing, my hands shaking, my gut churning,  and a fog moves into my brain. Not just a just woke up and haven't had coffee fog, but a full on terror, I can't form coherent thoughts kind of fog, and it will last until I can stop everything, turn my focus inward, and spend a good 20-30 minutes just focusing on breathing. I don't usually get that opportunity at work. This is when I make mistakes. I ring someone up wrong, make change wrong, sell the wrong product, have to ask someone to repeat themselves over and over again.
My boss is trying so hard to help me, but she doesn't understand it at all. She tells me to just take a deep breath and slow down, that I don't have to rush no matter how many people are there or how much of a hurry they're in. What's important is that I serve them well, not quickly.
But, she says, we do have to find a solution to the mistakes I'm making.
How lucky I am to have a boss who is so encouraging and willing to work with me.
But I'm in constant terror that if I can't fix this, her patience will eventually run out.

I think maybe I've taken on too much, too soon. I can't go back to parasitizing my partner, can't go back to staring at a wall all day. I have to find a way to be a responsible adult again.
I feel trapped and I don't know what to do. I should be able to do this job in my sleep.
I'm getting nothing done on the house or yard, because the four days I'm not working I shut off completely, and if I try to do anything on those days, my anxiety skyrockets and virtually guarantees a very painful day at work, with mistakes and fog and me near tears.
How do I be an adult right now, when my body and brain feel like a child taking on way more than I know how to deal with?

Thank you Kizzie!
I don't know how to do the (hugs) emoticon thing, but hugs back to all of you!

Oh hey! Here it is!


Edit: I love your profile picture! I think dogs are just about the best people on the planet! 

Thank you so much for your responses!

Thank you Three Roses! Your warmth comes across loud and clear here on the forum, and I'm very glad you joined!

Thank you Mourningdove! I find that the conversion therapy was really just an extension of torture that started much earlier. Any time someone can convince a child that there is something fundamentally broken, ugly, unworthy, and repulsive about them, and convince them that it is within their own power to change it, and that changing it is necessary for them to truly be loved by their family or by God, that child will torture themselves worse than anyone else can, just trying to be "enough." When they, predictibly, do not change, it destroys them. Their own parents, their community, and every authority figure they've known destroys them.
I don't wish that environment on anybody. I'm so glad you survived and escaped. It takes a special and rare kind of courage to face the entirety of the world you've known and say, "No. This is not the world I want to live in." It's like chewing off a limb to escape a trap.
You deserve to be proud of that!

Thank you all for the warm welcome!

Mourningdove, agreed. It is an important distinction. We live in a society that so often places the blame or shame for mental injuries on the victim, or asserts we could "will ourselves better" if we were stronger. It's nonsense. We wouldn't tell someone to think happy thoughts to mend a broken leg.

Three Roses, yes! I actually just discovered that author yesterday. It was a YouTube video from him that led me to this forum. I have a hard time reading these days. I was a straight A evolutionary biology student, but now it taxes my brain badly to try and focus on the words on a page. I'm checking to see if audible has him in audiobook form.

DutchUncle, thank you so much! I was thinking about posting a bit on the Spiritual/Reliigous abuse thread. I want to be very careful and deliberate when I do, though. I still have a lot of anger regarding religion, and particularly around Evangelism and other more conservative sects. As kids we were taught that our version of Christianity was the only kind, even Catholicism was considered tantamount to pagan idol worship. I'm only recently discovering that not all Christians are abusive. It is a hard thing to remember when you can't turn on the news, read a paper, or listen to the radio without hearing or seeing a Christian politician or organization denigrating gay people, trying to punish them socially and legally, or demonizing us, comparing us to pedophiles or drug addicts.
It is wearying, and it becomes very easy for me to lash out in broad strokes if I don't keep my anger and frustration in check. I don't want to do that here, so I want to make sure to only post on that subject when I'm lucid and calm and in a healthy mental and emotional state.

Thanks again everybody!

I'm not sure if it's the same thing as what you're talking about, but I've been called "over-sensitive" my whole life.
Even in a crowded room, I can tell a person in pain, even if they're trying to hide it behind a smile.
I sometimes think it is more painful for me to see someone else suffer, than to suffer that same thing myself.
It is certainly exhausting, and often excruciating, and it does affect my anxiety levels, but I've never considered it a weakness or malady, but a strength.
In such a cruel, callous world I can spot pain and I can often times ammeliorate it. Sometimes just giving someone an opportunity to drop the mask, sometimes sympathizing/empathising can not only heal wounds in others, but in me too.
We're a social species. We evolved to care for each other, to aid in each other's survival. I consider it a weakness of our society that we have become so crowded and busy and self oriented that we no longer care for each other. I consider what people these days so often call "over-sensitivity" to be an adaptive trait, and one that shows strength and resilience and character and integrity and courage.
I apologize if I'm talking about something else entirely, but if not, I recognize it can be hard and it can be painful, and self care is absolutely necessary to manage the additional strain, but it is something not a lot of people have, and something that can do a lot of good in the world if embraced.

Yes!
Oh my gosh this has been the hardest part for me.
In the beginning I had a lot of linguistic difficulties, couldn't understand what people were saying, even though I understood the individual words, couldn't form words, etc...
Now, after 2 years of treatment, most of that is over, provided I'm careful to take what I call "cave time."
What is killing me now is I still get brain fog bad, especially when I'm triggered. I'm only just getting back into the work force and it's affecting my job performance. It is so frustrating, never knowing when my heart will start racing, I'll start shaking, and that fog will move in and I'll start making mistakes at a job I should be able to do in my sleep.
If anyone has developed strategies for dealing with this, I would absolutely love to hear them!

I'm right there with you!
I grew up being called a "pansy," or "sissy," or much worse, for being compassionate (real men don't love animals, they kill and eat them, etc..), so the exact attitude you describe sends me into a rage as well. Since when did being a decent * person equate to being a p**sy?
Don't let it get you down. I spent my whole life believing them, till I realized that they are the cowards, the ones who live I constant fear and lash out at everything different than them.
It is a mark of courage to envision a better world and to work and live to make it happen. It is bravery to show compassion when callousness is so much easier and less risky.
It is a mark of strength, in a world that tries it's best to make us hard and thick with callous and scar, to refuse to be hard, to choose to be kind and gentle and to show empathy.
That's a real man, a real woman of character and strength and courage and integrity, not that bulls**t Hobbesian barbarism that passes for mcTough these days.

Hello,
I was just curious if anyone else here is a survivor of "conversion," "reparative," or "ex-gay therapy," or who grew up in an anti-gay environment?
I find there is very little support for such situations, especially once you're an adult.
Feel free to comment regardless of background or experience, whether you fit the above category or not.
I think it would be interesting, and perhaps a bit healing to see commonalities and distinctions of trauma related to such an upbringing and other kinds of developmental trauma.

Thank you Papillion!
I love your name!
It's kind of funny, I've looked everywhere for a survivor's group or support group related to conversion therapy. There doesn't seem to be anything out there.
I don't know if it is because so few of us survive, or because it is so political right now, that we so often risk our stories becoming more public than we are comfortable with.
I really don't know. Maybe when I'm well enough to be reliable I will start one.

Oh my goodness yes!
I have a very bad tendency to put on a happy face, even when I desperately need to be sad or angry, and if I ever do slip I feel guilty, like I'm a downer. I know it can be exhausting. But the worse is that no one believes you when something is seriously wrong, because hey, you look happy!
I often feel like that pink girl in Guardians of the Galaxy, the one with the collector, with the huge smile and the terrified eyes.
Hang in there!

Hello Cin,
I can totally relate!
I've learned...er...am learning...slowly, exactly what is being said above, that just recognizing that it is the past informing the reaction, rather than, or in addition to the present, helps you recognize it for what it is, makes it easier to put in context, and eventually, easier to address and dissipate.
Another thing I've discovered, that might be helpful, is that one of my survival strategies is to "preempt." Since I lived in an environment where contempt, loathing, and violence were always a threat, I would try to inflict it all on myself before anyone else could, and in that way possibly either anticipate and avoid it from others, or soften the experience by subjecting myself to it, where I had control, before it could be inflicted upon me by others.
I hope that helps and wish you all the best! Always remember, you don't deserve suffering. You deserve happiness and peace and security, always!

Hello ph03n1x13,
I love your name. It is a courageous and hopeful one!
I'm new here too. I hope that this forum offers what you need!

Hello AquaticRange,
Welcome! I am new here as well.
I only just met you and I'm very proud of you for embracing your anger as a healthy and life giving force! That's still something I'm working on. I know it in my head, but the instinct to suppress the rage is strong. Lol
Anyway, I'm so happy to see you and so many wonderful, courageous people here!