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Thanks for that, Hope!

Hey slow river. I hope you are doing well these days.
I just wanted to say, I often play out scenes in my head over and over, inserting variations to see how I might play those out. It's just part of who I am I guess, but I sometimes go overboard with it (according to my own self blame.)
I had not realized it was dissociative until I ran across your post today. Thank you for posting.

Thanks for the reply Hope, but don't feel bad for missing my post before. I just checked back in today, the day after your responding post. Love and grace, hope.

This is all very fascinating to me. For contrast sake, I went the opposite direction. I used to have the most vivid dreams with full or mostly full recall. Full color, lots of details, remarkable adventures. Rarely would I get a real nightmare. (Could it be the nightmare was my waking state? esoteric question.)

My CPTSD comes from childhood abuse combined with the loss of loved ones. But in 2003 after my SO suddenly died, I stopped dreaming. It was like - slam on the brakes. My first dream didn't reappear until 18 months later, and that one was hard to recall. I was surprised I remembered a dream at all. I was sleeping only 5 hours every night at that time.

I had about one dream a year for several years. Then I started having about a couple a month starting about four years ago right before I remarried. The last few months I've had a lot of dreams and some are again, at last, vivid, but still not always easy to recall.

I do recall now some dreams that don't turn out so well but I seem to wake up calm. In a recent one I physically appeared to die and turn into a skeleton, still living I suppose, since I remember having something to say about it. I seem to wake up calm, but then my anxiety doesn't manifest as a fear in the moment. It's like a broken alarm clock that goes off unexpectedly, well wound, I suppose.   

My anxiety manifests when everything is all fine, as in inexplicable panics when things are almost ordinary. But that anxiety also has reduced more and more over these years. (I walk with my anxiety as a potential given in a more confident fashion because I'm more aware of it. )

I still sleep about 5 hours at a time before I wake up. I mostly go back to sleep. I consider that a relative success story. I hope you find a lot of nice sleep soon.

 

I appreciate that everyone has a unique journey and I learn a lot from reading (listening) to these stories.
Thank you all for your responses. I'll keep checking.

Thank you, radical, for your beautiful post.  I see a lot of hope and love behind it.  It's particularly helpful to see how you can live with it on some level, as long as you continue to deal with it in some way.

My own journey into the grief involved a lot of "oh not this again" regrets for all the tears and pain resurfacing and in need of processing. I sometimes used to feel like I was going crazy, but when I stopped and told myself to go ahead and go crazy, I felt nothing at all (except I felt better that I really wasn't going crazy.)

For me, I don't think grief stops just because i grew tired of it and wanted it to end. I'm a complex and sensitive being. It's a life long process for me where the grief resurfaces, cannot be denied, and eventually ebbs until next time.

It's been tidal in it's ebb and flow and one friend gave me some sound advice I still follow. When it's time to examine it and take it all in, do it with the trees. When it's time to let it pour out, do it near water.

I don't think this is any kind of cure all, but as a motto has essentially helped me divide the grief into two broad categories. The first category is to remember to examine it, and using a park or the forest or the back yard apple tree allows me to focus a little better on examining it. I literally talk to the trees almost as a sounding board.

Lucky for me, the ocean is an hour away and when I feel too much sadness, I go there and cry and commiserate with the timeless waters. This is my special place to let the grief pour out and dissolve into the universe. The lapping of water on the shore is a gentleness that seems to frame my grief, not only to let it out, but to make me feel safe while doing so.

[Here's the background.]

Here's the background. My history was one of childhood trauma due to parental and sibling abuse. My father was physically abusive (he died in 1992.) My mother is one of the kindest people you could meet. Huge contrast.

One of my earliest memories was when I was around 3 and at that time my father violently spanked my two siblings and me (a total of four of us later) by pulling over on the side of the highway and giving us all a bare butt spanking with cars whizzing by. His spankings were violent enough to cause a learned response where each time he spanked us, our bladders would void. He was out of control and that time it was a heavy spanking, one I received because I knew what my older siblings arguing would lead to - my crime was to open my mouth to tell them to stop. I was terrified of him. That this was the earliest memory and I was trying to prevent him from reacting with my comment to my siblings, the violence was already well known to me. The worst it got was when he choked me when I was 16. 

I include my siblings in the abuse because my father had a problem with my obvious gay nature. He told my older brother to hit me to toughen me up. This my brother told me when we were in our twenties. I didn't know why he would hit me out of the blue before he told me that. It was all very confusing. Additionally my older sister eventually became a heroin addict and at 18 developed schizophrenia.

By 1985 I was was in therapy. I was treated for panic attacks and generalized anxiety disorder for three years, but the healing of therapy seemed limited and I left when I saw no further gains.

Death has been a big factor in my adult C-PTSD. It hit a zenith when my partner of 16 years had heart failure in 2003. I watched the paramedics work on him and then they took him to the hospital. By the time I got there he was still alive but unconscious. For the next three days in the ICU I fought for his life, but he was finally diagnosed with minimal brain activity due to the loss of oxygen. For the next two weeks after that, in hospice, I fought for his right to die against family members who were just finding out he was gay (even after living with the same man for 16 years?!?!) We had all the legal frameworks set up in advance, thankfully.

It was during this time I went to a doctor to get a note to allow me time off work to attend to hospice. My partner and I weren't married so my employer didn't allow my time off without a doctor's note. The doctor diagnosed me with "temporary ptsd." I was forced to take time off for a mental health diagnosis. Keep in mind this was in 2003 and PTSD was just surfacing on the public's consciousness.

I now see the more updated term here of C-PTSD.  It's not so easily to pinpoint a traumatic cause when so many factors have built the problem. I'm glad it's getting its recognition.

So there's the background and here's the issue. I will turn 59 this year. Though my C-PTSD does continue to cause problems, I do not want to go back into therapy again. It seems more like a life long challenge I'm stuck with at this point. C-PTSD gives me a new twist on it (though I used to just tell myself all the problems I've seen were related to PTSD before hearing about C-PTSD, and all about anxiety before hearing about PTSD, and all about growing up with abuse before hearing about anxiety.)

Though I did move on and I have found a wonderful person (we married in 2013), I know the residual remains. I tend to keep most people at arm's length. I'm friendly, affable, publicly adept, but I want no one to come to my home (my sanctuary of sorts) and I tend to have only a few trusted friends at a time. I don't feel the outside world is a safe place, but I can travel great distances and feel right at home once I get there. I still get anxious, but I have very few panic attacks now.

I've come to peace with the fact that I will always have some edgy anxiety issues burbling in the background. It seems like it's in its place now and I'm tired of dealing with it. I know it's not "ideal living" with this problem still in my psyche, but I feel at this point in my life there is only so much I can do. I feel like I've reached the better balance, and I'm wary of letting any change come to that.

So I want some brutal honesty. Brutal honesty seems to be something I trust more than kind words. Maybe because brutal is what I knew growing up. What do you think is up here? What would you suggest I try? Does age become a factor in how C-PTSD is treated?  Do I bother with fighting for improvements, or do I spend my energy for the rest of my life living with what's what?