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Hi all, I have been a listener of a podcast called shrink rap radio for a while now and i would highly recommend it, it has interviews with loads of different psychologists and experts, and recently they have had a few interviews focussing on trauma including an interview with Bessel Van Der Kolk. http://shrinkrapradio.com/ i just listen to it through my regular podcast player but theres the website if anyone is interested.

Hi I hope its ok me posting here...Im 24 my so is 28 and we've known each other about 10yrs been together almost 5. My SO hasnt been officially diagnosed with c-ptsd but we are both certain this is what he has after experiencing pretty much constant neglect or abuse of some kind until we managed to move him out of his "family" home in 2013. I would say his symptoms are very bad at the moment. He has agoraphobia so goes out very little, is very isolated as has no family (since they were part of the problem lets say) so i am the only person he interacts with on a regular basis. His anxiety is too bad for him to attend appointments at the moment. We started going to our community mental health team (the end of last year) which is part of the NHS in the UK but the nhs resources for mental health in the UK are very poor and he decided that he did not want to continue, especially since the psychologist he was supposed to see prescribed him prozac before he even attended a single appointment with her. He cant take medication as it unfortunately is a trigger to him (anything mind altering) since he got heavily into drugs as a teenager and had a breakdown and had to be institutionalised around age 15/16. Anyway so at first we thought it was ptsd but as i was researching that i came across complex ptsd and started researching that instead. We bought the new book by Bessel Van Der Kolk for him to read (as i heard very good things about him being the worlds foremost expert on psychological trauma and his views on certain things line up very much with my so's) im hoping we can get a private psych for him in the future who specialises in trauma but we're not at that stage yet. I really want to help him more, seeing him in so much emotional/psychological pain tears me apart and i feel useless. Today is particularly bad...he cried (which is rare)he said he was sad, that he cant feel anything good, he wants to feel something good but he just cant. I didnt know what to say to that, i didnt want to say the wrong thing and add to his pain, i didnt say anything, i wanted to hold him but i know he doesnt find that helpful, anyway he told me to leave him alone, he has gone back to bed now (its like 4:30pm here so daytime) im hoping the rest will make him feel a little better (though i doubt it) but he had very little sleep last night and i dont think that helped matters. I was wondering if anyone has any advice about this, about not being able to feel good things, only pain and sadness? Anything that has helped, anything i can do to help? I cant just carry on as normal when he is suffering so much.