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We're doing everything we can to keep going and to keep getting better. We just don't know what to do or say at this point. Everyone goes down the same list of ideas/solutions for us. Everyone gets stumped by the way our issues interact with each other. No one seems to have anything new to say or suggest. "I'm trying" is always met with "try harder" but we can't. Whether it's allergies or pain everything that we love is being slowly stripped away. We've been watching it happen for the last 16 years. We've been stuck in this loop for so long. We're still trying. It's just getting harder.

That sounds so hard! I'm sorry. I kind of get it too, because I've been working on my own stuff for ages and some things are getting worse, but otoh I do see and feel progress. If you don't really, then that's got to be really difficult    

I think it's kinda normal in cptsd for issues to all interact with each other. So I'm sorry if none of your medical / therapeutic people understand that.

I don't think I've been told for a long, long time to "try harder", except by my own Inner Critic. But not by professionals, so I'm sorry you've been told that. Usually with cptsd we're trying really hard anyway, so what's the use of suggesting we do even more?

I'm wondering if you would be helped by any of these https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=272.0 ? They're free and you can watch as much or as little as you like. Often when I feel stuck, this kind of thing is useful. They give me a tiny bit of hope and maybe some impetus to do a tiny bit of something helpful/constructive for myself. Sometimes a listening includes a 5 minute exercise which I find can settle down my anxiety a little bit. I learned in inpatient trauma-informed therapy that focussing your mind on 'something else' other than rumination or anxiety or stress for just 5 minutes can help.

If none of the above sounds useful, please just ignore it.

  to you

https://www.consciouslife.com/conferences/tsc-6/agenda

If you join up before the conference, there are 6 pre-talks you can listen to free-of-charge, by Peter Levine, Alex Howard, Arielle Schwartz and a few other people.

As always: These types of conferences and summits are free during the conference. Once you sign up, you'll get a fair number of emails suggesting you pay for permanent access. That's really not necessary. The material gets recycled - it'll come up in another conference/summit in a few months!

+ see my post here for additional general info: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16458.0

[not]

The second were the core needs of children: Love, Safety and Boundaries. It was very good for me to hear this explicitly.

Yes, I've heard this before from Alex Howard, and it's huge for me. In fact, I've taken notes on it before, here they are: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?msg=139726

This time it struck me too how A.H. says that our emotional needs are just as important as physical needs, like oxygen I think was his example.

A.H. emphasises how not receiving these needs as children doesn't mean we have to be without them for life since as adults we can learn to give ourselves these things, but he does say one of the consequences of not being taught boundaries is we don't learn boundaries towards ourselves (or other people of course.) In therapy I've mostly worked on boundaries towards other people, at least consciously. When we don't learn boundaries towards ourselves, it's a lot harder to say "Yes" to ourselves in the sense of nudging ourselves to do what is good and healthy for ourselves. This speaks a lot to me because I have trouble following through, especially doing things regularly.

I listened to tye replay last night. Kinda unenthusiastic at the beginning, but I did get two ideas out of the whole thing that I find very valuable.

Well yes, now that these types of things are run as a live Zoom the first minutes are usually spent listing all the countries or cities people are from, a bit of a waste of time to my mind. Plus he might just not be your type of speaker.

His main point is I think that you can heal and in his opinion the best way to do that is by settling your nervous system down, by meditating or similar daily. I think you are doing that anyway, Chart. Me, not so much. Going back to: it's hard for me to follow through and do things regularly. I tend to jump all over the place, which in A.H.'s scheme of things is being in a tired or wired state, which is Fight or Flight a stage between Shutdown and Safe-and-Social. Safe and Social is the state we should be trying to get our nervous system into more regularly because this is where we can heal from. From his descriptions, I would say that at least during part of my zoom group, I'm in Safe and Social. I suppose I need to look for more of that in my day-to-day. It's kind of complicated though. Somebody with (presumably) cptsd asked about what happens when things are a bit more complex, like you start trying to process some old emotion and that kicks up anxiety and then something else rears its ugly head and then how do you know what to work on... A.H. said - practise more meditation and thru that become more able to connect to your body etc etc 

Many roads lead to Rome. Last summer when I was at a healing retreat with trauma-trained therapists, I realised that the exercises they put us through in a group were achieving what people with cptsd attribute to taking whatever drug it is you can now be prescribed (Ketamine?) and then all of us were able to process some of our trauma or anxiety or whatever everybody had. I think that what we were achieving was what A.H. wants us to achieve through regular meditation.

Decode your trauma: Trauma seems to mean something different to A.H. than it might to us. He seemed to imply that there's trauma and then there's ptsd, and then presumably cptsd. I don't know   I assumed that if you 'have trauma' to the degree that your nervous system is consistently dysregulated, then you're likely to have ptsd or cptsd.

Two years ago, I actually signed up for A.H.'s 12 week course on Regulating your dysregulated nervous system and pulled through daily meditation plus the listenings plus homework exercises and then I suddenly stopped. I managed to re-start months later, then stopped again. Yesterday I re-started, but haven't done anything today. Fortunately you get life-time access! I have noticed this before - I have trouble following through, some of which may be because I do have trouble sitting 'in' my body, with myself. It's easier to distract myself, part of which I do by intellectualising, which is something A.H. mentions too.

Anyway, enough on that. Might help somebody else, might not. 

Hugs Highimpedance   
I often lack the bandwidth myself to write much to others, but I do validation, because it is so important! I've needed it myself for years, still do at times. And I send    when I know people are OK with that. For some people especially new members it could be overwhelming, so I'm careful that way.

This forum has been so so good for me, so supportive, a place I come almost daily, despite my mostly having therapy of some type. I hope it can be a great suppportive place for you too!

I don't understand some of your original post, like ESA and php, I probably don't live in the same country as you. No stress though, I'm sure most other people understand them.

would really value hearing from others who might recognize this.

I recognise it but don't have the bandwidth to write anything else on it.

https://powerofmeditationsummit.com/season9/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fkelly-blaser.mykajabi.com%2Fa%2F2148211044%2F8hSKmLND%3Fkuid%3De418e470-0552-4e3c-aaca-fc7ced501ea0-1767623669%26lid%3D1072366%26kref%3D89I2Lnpbt5Yf

From the blurb: "Join us to explore how we can transform not just how we
talk to ourselves, but our very understanding of self,
reality, and consciousness."

Topic: meditation and somatics

Among the 30 speakers, there are certainly some with a name in the fields of trauma, including EMDR, somatics and neuroscience: e.g. Arielle Schwartz, Sarah Peyton, Ron Siegel. Not to say there aren't possibly other great speakers to learn from.

As always: These types of conferences and summits are free during the conference. Once you sign up, you'll get a fair number of emails suggesting you pay for permanent access. That's really not necessary. The material gets recycled - it'll come up in another conference/summit in a few months!

+ see my post here for additional general info: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16458.0

As always: These types of conferences and summits are free during the conference. Once you sign up, you'll get a fair number of emails suggesting you pay for permanent access. That's really not necessary. The material gets recycled - it'll come up in another conference/summit in a few months!

+ see my post here for additional general info: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16458.0

As always: These types of conferences and summits are free during the conference. Once you sign up, you'll get a fair number of emails suggesting you pay for permanent access. That's really not necessary. The material gets recycled - it'll come up in another conference/summit in a few months!

+ see my post here for additional general info: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16458.0

This looks great, thanks BB! Although I think I'm gonna be tied up at work this week...

Each day's recording become available free-of-charge as of the end of the day's session and remains free until the end of the 5 days, so certainly worth signing up for! imo + ime these things are even worth joining to listen to even one of the week's recordings. Last time I listened to one of Alex Howard's presentations, there was unfortunately a bit too much time spent on advertising the follow-up presentation that was going to last 6 weeks and needed to be paid for of course. So I hope he doesn't spend so much time on that this time, but if he does, I can always leave the session and go do something useful, or listen with half an ear. Even so, it was worth signing up for the freebie sessions - I think that one was about ADHD, rather than trauma.

I'm with you on the horrible memory Chart, and it being a handicap in professional and financial life

Welcome to the forum shosh

Got a request from B2 for a phone call to discuss certain aspects of  FOO finances. Tho I am grateful that my brothers seem willing to even discuss with me rather than e.g. decide over my head, and I am also grateful that they seem to have come round to the idea of FOO money continuing to support me to some degree despite our parents both being in care, which is super expensive. Nonetheless it took me sleeping a night on the subject to realise that I do NOT have to reluctantly aquiesce to B2's request!! It's a request not an order and I AM ALLOWED TO SAY "NO". Even it were an order, that would not be okay coming from B2 or anybody else in FOO, and so even more reason to say "No" to something that is going to be harmful to me. I mean that's the REASON for this particular boundary. FOO doesn't understand because beyond their comprehension apparently, but that's even more reason for me to stand my ground and stick to my boundary.

Register anyway! There are often replays.

In this all-new, 90-minute session, you'll have the rare opportunity to learn directly from Dr. Peter Levine, the creator of Somatic Experiencing® and a pioneer in the field of somatic trauma healing.
I'll be joining Peter to discuss:
•   How shame and grief live in the body and how they reflect the body's attempt to protect and self-regulate.
•   Core Somatic Experiencing® principles that help the nervous system's natural movements.
•   The interplay between shame and grief—how one can block the other, or allow release.
•   Gentle, body-based techniques to help release these patterns and support regulation.

This isn't just theoretical teaching––you'll see practical demonstrations and learn how somatic techniques and interventions are applied to real clinical scenarios.