Messages

Aurorajo,  Welcome to the site.  It sounds like you had a very unhappy childhood.  I hope you are safe now.  I hope you are getting whatever help you need.  I, too, wonder if my experiences were "that bad."  I wonder things like if I am entitled to use  terms like "abuse" or "victim".  I think I might understand some of what you are feeling.  I think, though, that if we feel terrible because of other people's choices, than that needs to be acknowledged.  The precise terminology isn't as important as allowing ourselves to recognize what happened and how we felt about it, and how we feel now.

Anyway, I hope things are on the upswing for you now, and again, welcome.

I just today had it confirmed by my therapist that I do have C-PTSD.  This is not a surprise, but it is official now.  I think I'm happy that my ideas have been validated, but I find that I'm also pretty upset.  My hands are shaking, and my heart is pounding.  None of this is made better by the fact that my husband does not believe that PTSD is what I have.  (He has no idea, no expertise, no information.)

There are two areas on one the tests that I took that were phenomenally high.  Not off the chart, but way up there.  That was concerning.

My therapist, who I really like, and who specializes in C-PTSD and EMDR, is thinking that perhaps he doesn't have specialized enough skills to help me.  Perhaps, he thinks, I need somebody even more specialized.  I find that scary.  It's like the opposite of him saying "Don't worry, I see this all the time.  It's easy to fix."

My therapist told me that I have PTSD, but I don't meet all the the official DSM criteria.  So, in a sense, technically, I don't have PTSD.  (Seems like nothing in my life is ever straightforward!)  However, I think that a lot of emotional and mental conditions are like that -- the "official" version is defined, but people don't always fit neatly into the strict categories. 

Could it be that your therapists are not making a specific diagnosis because you, as a human being, don't fit the criteria just right, even though you still have the issues involved?

Also, I encourage you to directly ask any questions that you have about your diagnosis, treatment, care, etc.  I often feel that the thing that helps most in my recovery is understanding what is going on.

I think I dissociate at least 50% of my waking life.  Probably more.  I have different kinds.  Sometimes in my head, I replay scenes that happened in real life.  Sometimes I show myself movies in my head starring myself in all kinds of situations, from mundane to thrilling, and featuring real people, people I make up, people in books, movie stars, etc.  Sometimes, I stay in the moment, but I picture other people there with me.  Sometimes I become a different person in my head, and I have serial stories that last for years.  I play those movies for a bit, and then come back to them hours or days later and continue the action.  That's kind of hard to explain, but I guess it is sort of like what DID must be like, except that other real people  have no idea that I do this.  (As far as I know.)  If I'm sure there is nobody around, I talk out loud to people who aren't there, sometimes, playing the part of my real self, and sometimes playing the part of one of my other selves. 

Is this how other people experience it, or am I doing something unusual?  This is all new to me, so I don't know.

As I type this, I am becoming aware of how very far from "normal" this is.  I put normal in quotes, because I understand that dissociation is a normal response to a traumatic experience.  I don't how else to say it, though.  My point is:  I don't think that the general public does any of this much.

The thing is, I enjoy my dissociated life much more than my real life, and I don't want to give it up.  I use it to self-soothe when I'm anxious or troubled, I do it when I'm bored, I find that I unconsciously use it to work out problems in real life, and I just plain enjoy it.  It's a creative outlet.  Is it bad to dissociate?  Does dissociating keep people from moving ahead with therapy?

And one other thing:  People I have never met frequently say "I know I've met you before, but I can't think where."  I have read that this is one of the things that might possibly indicate that you actually have dissociative identity disorder, where you slip entirely into an "alter", and are not aware of it.  I do not want this to be the case for me.  However, I've asked my family, and they say that I don't do that, and that there are no chunks of time in which I go missing.  Any ideas?

Thanks to all of you.  I do feel as though I am among friends now.  One of the hardest things I've experienced is on the few occasions I've opened up to people and told them about my experiences, they have not understood and brushed me off.  I don't open up to many people.

It is also such a relief to hear people talking about dissociation and depersonalization.  I have dissociated a lot, for as long as I can remember.  I don't know anybody who I would trust to tell about that.  As for depersonalization, I have always done that as well, but until recently, I didn't know it was a thing.  Sometimes, I look about me and confirm "I'm at the park now." or "Paul is here now." or whatever, because if I don't take notice in a deliberate way, I am sometimes unsure which level of reality i spent the afternoon in.  (I think this is depersonalization.  Perhaps I don't have the term quite right.)

So, thanks, you guys!  I'm  learning more everyday, and what I'm learning is 1. The reason I'm depressed is that I have been living in a nightmare, and 2.  I do have friends here who understand.

Hi Blackbird,

I'm new here, so I don't know all the rules and conventions, but speaking for myself, I don't think you have been over-posting. 

I got insight from your story because, although it is different from mine, it gave me some perspective.  Also, it is good to know that there are others who are around and active on this forum.

Here's a hug
We'll get through this.

Thanks to both of you for answering.

My parents were so dismissive of my protests and complaints, and I don't have a good idea of what is normal or okay.  I do think that sometimes people should be expected to carry on, even when conditions are not ideal, and I do think that sometimes people whine about small misfortunes that are really no big deal.

I was never beaten black and blue.  There were no guns involved.  Nobody was drinking.  I was provided with food, clothing, education, etc.  I was not a refugee or in a concentration camp.  Nobody died.

Candid, you said:
I get the impression most parents love their children and get a lot of satisfaction raising them. What you describe as your childhood isn't stuff a good-enough parent would do. It sounds like they enjoyed your suffering in a sadistic way, and that's more than enough to leave you with C-PTSD.

I sure never got the impression that my parents got any satisfaction from raising me.  I consistently felt like a burden, and that they resented my existence and were disappointed with me.  I didn't feel that they enjoyed or even noticed my suffering, but of course, I didn't have an objective perspective.

What is behind my question is that I want to believe that it WAS that bad.  I want to know that I'm not "making a mountain out of a molehill", as my mother would say.  I want to know that my feelings have a basis in something real.  I want to be able to believe that I'm not just feeling sorry for myself because I'm weak and a whiner, and making excuses for being a loser.  If there was a dynamic going on that I suffered from, and that it wasn't my fault, than somehow, my suffering becomes more bearable.  I want to know that I'm being reasonable.

I need a reality check.  I don't know what to think about the things that happened to me as a child.  On one hand, my parents both used to hit me, and so did my brother.  They called me names, isolated me from my peers, pretended to not understand when I talked,  and so on.    I have emotional flashbacks, dissociation,  lots of depression and anxiety, I have extremely weak boundaries, etc.  So that would suggest that I have cPTSD.

But on the other hand, many of these things happen to lots of people.  Until the 1970's or 1980's most parents used corporal punishment, so hitting a child isn't so unusual.  Lots of kids feel isolated from their peers, get called names, and so on. 

My question:  Is what I went through really so different from a typical childhood?  And if not, why doesn't everybody have cPTSD?  I often have the feeling that I'm just whining.  I feel like I am having an extreme reaction to a little bit of unpleasantness.  I feel like I should suck it up and get over it.

And then I think this:  If an adult physically hurt a child (grabbed the kid and broke an arm, for instance), it wouldn't matter if the adult's actions were harmless to most kids.  Maybe one kid had especially weak bones, or if the impact just happened to be at a precise angle, or there was some fluke that caused one kid's bone to break in response to stuff that would leave most kids unhurt.  In that case, the kid still needs full medical attention, and it still counts as a broken bone, even though other kids' bones didn't break under similar conditions.  So perhaps I was unusually delicate emotionally.  If I got cPTSD from stuff that wasn't unusually bad, it is still cPTSD, right?

Any thoughts?
Is this a discussion anybody else has with themselves?
Anybody have success resolving this kind of thing?

How often I go is determined by my insurance policy.

Thanks, you guys.  I appreciate all the support.  It is really helping.

I saw my therapist again today, and I was more assertive, and it went better.  I still think I will probably switch to a different one eventually.  I'd like to try EMDR or maybe PC.

I am afraid of what therapy might entail.  If I have to talk about and re-live my traumatic experiences, I don't know if I want to do it.  If I had any kind of guarantee of success, then I could weigh the costs and benefits, but of course, nobody can give me a guarantee.  If, as has happened, my therapist were to dismiss my problems, or tell me that they couldn't have been that bad, or that they didn't happen, than that would be awful.

I spend a lot of time dissociating in order to blunt the pain.  I don't mind that.  I only mind that I don't function well.  I have a lot of emotional flashbacks and other things that keep me from participating in the world.  I'd like to get over that, but I only am willing to peel off the scab if I think that it will do me any good.

Can anybody give me any kind of idea what to expect from different kinds of cPTSD therapy?  Any way of telling who might be a good therapist early in a relationship?  How can I know what type of cPTSD therapy might work best for me?

Also, can I get a hug?

Thanks.

My current therapist doesn't seem to know much about cPTSD, or else, she isn't interested in entertaining the idea that I might have it.  Can you give me some pointers to finding a therapist who is more familiar with cPTSD?