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CPTSD can be diagnosed under the DSM in the category of "Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified" or DESNOS. I have an official diagnosis of DESNOS-CPTSD by a psychologist here in Canada. Psychologists and others have lobbied to have CPTSD included in the next DSM as its own diagnosis.

I feel absolutely terrible about this. I have almost no control over when I sleep and wake. It causes so many problems and whenever it happens I feel SO guilty. People get angry at me for not making it to things but I'm literally unconscious and I have no control over when I wake up.

I think most people are just like "set an alarm and wake up" but for me walking up is like being deep underwater, and I don't have the ability to fight it. Whenever my body has the ability to actually sleep it takes it hard and I have little control over it.

I've had sleep problems for as long as I can remember. When I try and fall asleep at night I start to relax and then I jerk awake. I have to sleep with my back to a wall or surrounded by cushions, covering the most vulnerable parts of my body but not touching them. Whenever I settle into my body too much I can feel what happened to me and it's horrible.

As a kid and a teenager I was told I was lazy and lacking willpower and I "just needed to go to bed earlier" but I couldn't sleep until all the adults in the family were also asleep. Then I'd get yelled at in the morning for not being able to get out of bed.

Even now I feel incredibly guilty and ashamed and embarrassed about it. It causes so many problems. I don't know how to tell people it's like this deep unconsciousness I can't fight even with an alarm.

Hi Maceo,

Wow, it's like you're describing my experience. I constantly doubt my own experience as being "valid" of my response to it. I disbelieve myself constantly.

I was lucky enough to be diagnosed with C-PTSD (DSNOS) by a psychologist and I still doubt it ALL THE TIME.

Like you, my parents were abused. My mother was physically neglected and her father was an alcoholic. My father's mother (my grandmother) was an alcoholic as well and she was abused by her father.

It's hard because my parents didn't have any ill will towards me. They loved me. But they still didn't do what I needed them to do. I was emotionally invalidated. My mother put my fathers' feelings above my needs, to the point where he could overrule my physical boundaries and I wouldn't be allowed to question it for fear of "hurting his feelings." I was very lonely because I couldn't rely on either of them to be there for me in times of trouble. I had to put on a mask of being ok. For most of my life I believed this mask and was so disconnected from the feelings underneath it I didn't even know what they were. I couldn't identify emotions because I wasn't used to feeling them. I believed I was weak for needing other people, because my mother was so self-reliant due to her childhood neglect she'd say things that would make me feel guilty for needing her.

Because of this I always doubt that my reactions are valid. I question myself constantly. I don't believe myself even though I have a piece of paper stating what my diagnosis is. It's because it would be against all my conditioning to say "I wasn't ok". It risks being utterly alone without my mom's support.

My psychologist calls it emotional neglect and abuse. According to her, people who were neglected, emotionally and otherwise, often feel invalid like this because there's no overt memory of abuse to look back on. It's actually a lack of something, not a something, that caused it. It's a lack of something. Because of this it feels really hard to pin down.

There's research that neglect can even be harder to overcome than more overt forms of abuse because of this denial/invisibility factor.

Look up emotional neglect. This article is one I like because it explains how easy it is to discount emotional neglect. http://www.pete-walker.com/pdf/emotionalNeglectComplexPTSD.pdf

Hello...

I'm having a trouble with eating. It's 2 am and I haven't eaten breakfast, or dinner. This happens ALL the time. I had some cheese and bread a while back, but that's all I've eaten today. I'm hungry and empty. This happens more days than it doesn't.

Over the last five years, I thought my dissociation was low blood sugar and I believed I needed to control it with eating. So I tried to do that. Of course, it was impossible. I made my diet very restrictive and had no sugar, no sweet fruit, no bread, no carbs, just lots of protein and veggies. It became such a chore to eat that I'd have to force myself. Of course it didn't work at all since the problem wasn't blood sugar, it was dissociation. So now I've stopped the crazy diet.

But I have this thing where it's just... so hard to cook. And so hard to be in the kitchen. When I do, I hear my mom's voice telling me how I'm doing everything wrong and I'm disgusting because it's all wrong what I'm doing. Nothing is right. I try and cook as well as her and I don't have the energy so I criticize myself. It's like extreme perfectionism. What I'm eating is not healthy enough, or not balanced enough, or not right in some other way.

I will lie here on my laptop for HOURS and not go in the kitchen to get food even though it's RIGHT THERE. The kitchen is such a stressful place I can only go in there and do stuff if I'm listening to a show or a podcast to distract myself from the feelings.

I have sleeping meds which do work, but I avoid taking them. Not for any reason I'm conscious of. I guess just fear preventing me. Taking them is saying I'm "going to bed now" and that is something I'm afraid of.

Yeah, I sleep with a bit of light on too for the same reason.

Hello everyone.

I hope I'm posting this in the right board -- this is my first time here so this is all new to me. I was diagnosed with C-PTSD three months ago.

I have a lifelong problem with sleep. As a small child I had a hard time falling asleep. The only way I could fall asleep was by doing a progressive muscle relaxation exercise. My body was always "tense." But somehow I hated doing that excercise and was afraid of the moment of going to sleep, when I'd have to turn off my distraction-daydreams and actually be "here". Because the moment of falling asleep requires being present first. I have many bad memories of waiting for hours for sleep to come, alone in the dark. When I got older, I'd sneak a flashlight in so I could read.

As I got older, I developed the strategy of reading (or later, going online) till I was so tired I would not be able to keep my eyes open anymore. Then I could fall asleep without having to think about it or confront the actual experience of being "present." Of course, this meant I was always tired, never sleeping till the point of exhaustion.

For years, family blamed me for being lazy in the morning and for "choosing to go to bed late." I blamed myself. It wasn't until within the last two years that I realized this wasn't my fault. I still feel very guilty about some parts of it.

This issue is so severe it's taken over my life.

I'm afraid of sleeping. Or maybe I'm afraid of lying down and turning off the light.

In the past year I've figured some things out. I am more ok sleeping with some light in the room (so I'm not reminded of the horrible abandoned times as a child, and so that I don't feel like I'm stuck there with no way out, and so I can see any potential attackers coming). If I can see out a window and have a wall at my back, I feel safer.

But (trigger warning) when I am in bed, I feel hands holding me down and attacking me. I have to curl up to protect the part of my body that was under attack. Sometimes I put a pillow over it (not touching it) so that it's protected from any attacks.

I live alone, so I know no one is really going to touch me. But I'm still afraid of feeling that. So I distract myself endlessly.

I'm so tired. I just want to be able to rest. But I'm afraid to. I need some way of just... making myself a really restful space that I can enjoy, so it can be pleasant instead of feeling like a punishment.

I have no difficulty having naps during the day. But when I try to turn away from my computer or book at night, to breathe and be present, there's a huge wall of fear preventing me.

Do any of you have similar issues? I've been alone with this my entire life.