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Hi, I haven't posted in awhile.  Lately I've been struggling with feeling mentally sick and overwhelmed about it.  I also feel like no one is really helping me (psychiatrist, therapist).  I have very hard mornings.  I have bipolar/atypical depression with CPTSD.  I really struggle with the physicality of this depression.  I am also on Depakote which makes me fatigued.  Every morning I wake up barely able to wake up.  Breathing feels difficult, moving feels difficult.  I get angry.  My therapist and I have worked out that part of why I have so much morning anger is that it's a way to arouse myself when I am feeling so fatigued and heavy.  Anger is bodily and emotional arousal, and that's how I'm functioning in society.  I work and manage to get myself to work everyday through 1-1.5 hours of traffic and don't take sick days unless I'm sick in the traditional sense (colds, flu).  Being so angry and acting on it sometimes, although I hold it in fairly well considering how powerful my thoughts are, is tiresome and feels just terrible.  I'm taking a science backed secular mindfulness course and meditating most days of the week now.  I'm noticing my thoughts more and really everything more.  I feel like it almost makes it harder because I truly have this physical tiredness and heaviness and my ingrained pattern is to be angry along with it, I've done this for years, maybe my whole life.  Changing it is going to be so slow, it's overwhelming.  And I don't feel like the doctors are hearing me on the tiredness/heaviness enough and helping me out with medication for it, if that exists.  It's hard to let go of my thoughts and feelings in these physical states.  I just wish someone would help me more.  I feel impatient for something to change.  I'm afraid of acting out from this anger and it damaging my life in my job or other.  Does anyone else struggle with anger in the morning, or in general and how do you deal when it's a pattern you've turned to for so long?  It's not like there are always specific events or people I'm angry at, I just have this underlying angry thinking.  I have a feeling it's wrapped up in the CPTSD...waking up every morning for almost 18 years in an unsafe home.

Hi all.  I just made it through a weekend with my inlaws in town.  They stayed at a hotel, but we were with them Friday night and all day Saturday and Sunday.  I feel like it went terribly, but my husband said it went well and he feels better about his parents.  My father inlaw is a former Marine Colonel and my mother inlaw was a stay-at-home mom.  They're both fairly narcissistic, conservative, judgmental, close minded.  My husband is a different person around them, complete with different manner of speaking.  I guess some of my struggle comes form the abandonment of who I know as him.  They also even call him Robert instead of the Rob I've always known.  I know my MIL still views him as "her boy", which irritates me.  The reason I feel it went bad is because I acted out.  I picked on my husband, was generally disagreeable in conversation with the inlaws.  Towards the end of the visit I got more quiet and shut down, which is common for me.  I feel like I always get shut down/snappy at the end of visits.  Its partly the introvert hangover.  I just have this aversion to parents/authority in general too, especially where we have nothing in common and I would never choose to spend time with those people if not obligated.  I honestly don't really like my inlaws as people.  My MIL talks negatively of other people quite often and also says strange, judgmental things about even her friends.  Like she said one of her friends married a woman who was "dark".  Feels racist to me.  I'm fairly sure I rolled my eyes.  Her talking about other people just makes me feel like she talks about me to others negatively, and that brings out my rebelliousness so I lean towards being disagreeable.  When I feel I am in a no-win situation I act out.  I'm feeling hungover still from all of this and they've been gone for two days.  My inner critic has been wild.  I probably should have taken Monday off work to sleep it off, luckily tomorrow I work from home so can avoid much social interaction and re-coup.  I keep feeling like my husband is going to snap at me for something from the weekend but he seems like it went well.  Its confusing that I can feel so bad and he feels good.

Hi, I've had years of therapy at different points in my life (childhood, teenage, young adult, current), but never true CBT.  I've had a lot of hybrid/mindfulness therapy as it seems so popular now.  My psychiatrist suggested CBT for dummies workbook and I went ahead and bought it to work on myself/with my therapist.  How has CBT gone for you if you'd had it?  Did it help significantly?  It sounds pretty practical to me, which I am attracted to.  Mindfulness can be so fluffy that I have trouble with it.  Are there other types of therapy that have really helped you for trauma?

Thanks!

Thanks for the replies everyone.  I really appreciate your support!  I do see a therapist but she's more of a casual talk therapist than a trauma therapist.  I'm considering trauma therapy.  I tend to drop out of therapy though, it's been easier for me to stay in a casual therapy situation than one that digs into me.  I've done some deeper dives in therapy in the past.  My psychiatrist has suggested CBT and suggested a CBT workbook to me which I went ahead and bought.  I think I am going to try to bring it to my therapist and work with her on it.  Thanks again!

Can anyone recommend a CPTSD therapist in Los Angeles?  It's very hard to find anyone knowledgeable about CPTSD specifically and not just general attachment disorders.

Thanks!

I'm new here.    I ran across complex PTSD a few months ago and did some research on it and thought it fit me.  Recently, I've had some issues with my mom that have been very triggering and I re-discovered complex PTSD.  I'm reading Pete Walker's Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.  My parents don't fit perfectly in any category, and I don't either.  I've had a lot of trouble figuring out which of the 4F's is dominant in me.  I'm a freezer, and co-dependent, and a fighter (angry, judgmental).  I guess I should give trigger warning starting here, or is that assumed on this forum?

My parents are intelligent, but emotionally unintelligent.  They divorced when I was about 12 but fought fairly violently (screaming, plate throwing, hitting each other closer to and during divorce) in front of me and my sister for about 3 years before the divorce.  My mom screamed for as long as I can remember, at us and my dad.  My older sister and I lived with my mom after the divorce.  Before the divorce our house was considered messy, with dishes undone and trash on the floors in all rooms, except my sisters, which she controlled.  My mom stayed at home but there is something wrong with her which I've never been able to identify, ADHD and some kind of scarring from her dad dying when she was 8.  She didn't clean and ignored my sister and I by staying on the computer in the basement playing Everquest or WoW or whatever fantasy video game was popular at the time.  And I'm only 31 so she was a very early adopter of these games.  My dad worked full time and commuted far so wasn't home that much, and he was mostly depressed and emotionally unavailable.  He's very intelligent but has next to no emotional intelligence, at times when he's depressed he's very robotic.  He's probably on the autism spectrum somewhere.  He's also very critical of everything and everyone.  At points I was a daddy's girl because my mom was screaming or ignoring me.  When he started checking out to robotville a few years before they got divorced that ended.   

I was the underachiever of the family and I think I reminded my dad of his brother who he didn't get along with because I'm more social like him, although still introverted.  I just come from such a weird family that being somewhat social made me the black sheep.  My mom told me once he thought I had a "look in my eye" or something.  Like I'm evil?  Great.  My sister was an extremely high achiever, in gifted classes, went to a gifted high school, scored whatever high on the SATs in 9th grade and all that jazz.  Expectations were completely impossible for me.  I'm not dumb, my intelligence is a little above average, but no where near my dad or sister.  Conversations around the dinner table always seemed to be about math or physics or something of the sort.  I was 4 years younger.  I had no chance of ever keeping up unless I was one of those wizkids, and I wasn't at all.  So, I was a C student starting around 3rd grade lasting until I got to college. 

It's hard to describe my moms anger.  She cannot regulate her emotions at all.  Any discomfort leads to empty threats.  There were lots of "I'm going to kill myself" thrown around by my mom and my dad less often.  My mom still to this day says these threats and that is why I am here, she recently triggered me with her empty threats because she's having issues with her landlord.  It's a long story, but the latest was "I'm going to buy a gun and shoot the person at the front desk of my building". 

After my parents divorced, my mom progressively got worse.  More retreat to the basement, less cleaning, more yelling.  Her and my sister fought all the time because my sister required her to drive her places and to school sometimes.  My sister got hit once and I saw it.  I'm pretty sure it was only once though.  She didn't hit me.  I guess neither of us told anyone.  I hid in my room, pretty much since childhood, or was out of the house with friends as much as possible. 

My sister left the house for college within 2 or so years of my parents divorce and I was stuck alone with my mom.  She got worse.  My mom certainly tried to parentify me.  In some ways she did I guess, like by complaining to me constantly about my dad and anything else wrong with her life, whining that she "wanted her mommy" and spewing the empty threats.  Since my mom didn't clean there was always expectation for someone else to do it, "do the dishes or I'll put them on your bed", but I generally resisted like the underachiever I am.  Sometimes I did clean the whole living room or something.  That involved many bags of trash.  The house grew more and more disgusting and completely roach infested.  You could hear them.  I wasn't good about cleaning my room.  I didn't really learn to clean until I moved to the dorms.  I now consider myself pretty damn normal in the way of cleanliness.  I've had times of being more anal about it, but have lowered my expectations.  There is a point when my house is starting to go below my expectations that I start having dreams of having to clean my childhood home for one reason or another.  So overwhelming.

My dad didn't do *.  I saw him, he "came and took me out to dinner" every Wednesday.  When my sister was still around he took us for some weekends.  I didn't give a *.  I felt guilty for how I treated him, but he would always say things like "oh I messed up".  Like I needed the burden of his emotions too.  Looking back, he deserved to be treated as an afterthought.  He was awkward, sad, and unavailable and still completely does not understand what he left us with.  He recently told me, "at least your mom was home to raise you".  Yeah, great.   My sister technically "choose" to live with my mom for us and testified at the divorce.  Honestly, I wouldn't have wanted to live with my dad either.  I got away with a lot with my mom.  Sneaking out, drinking, smoking weed, harder drugs, typical teenage antics.  I was also able to steal her pain killers so I could sleep through any time I was at home.  I self harmed by hitting my fingers with a rock since I was in like 3rd grade or so and started trying to alter my mind as soon as I realized that was something I could do summer after middle school. 

If I lived with my dad, I would have had different but equal or worse problems from his criticizing. 

The funny thing is through all this my parents had me in therapy and on psychiatric drugs.  We also went to family therapy.  I guess therapy helped me some individually in high school and some of the drugs helped some.  I still don't understand how I wasn't removed from the home.  The cops even came to my house once to take my mom away for taking a bottle of Tylenol (my aunt who was on the phone with her called the cops).  They saw the house and asked if she did it, we said no, its just like that.  They did nothing.  No one did anything.

So, that's the gist of it I guess.  Sorry it's so long.  There is more of course.  I don't know how I am going to heal from all this.  My inner and outer critic are me.  I'm confused about emotional flashbacks and think maybe that's because I'm in one most of the time.  I'm diagnosed bipolar 2 but have only had any sort of hypomania/mania when I took SSRIs.  Otherwise, I'm just anxious, depressed or normal.  Now I'm wondering if it's just that I'm usually in an anxious or depressed flash back most of the time in between short normal periods.  Is it possible to just live most of your life in an emotional flash back?  Thanks for reading if you get here.