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Thank you, woodsgnome and Three Roses! Yeah, last time I posted I wasn't really ready to be "seen", so I got really afraid/ashamed and didn't even check if there were any responses to it but I checked now and it seems someone actually got something out of it

Hello, fellow recoverers.

I never know where to start with introductions. I can't organize my thoughts or even access half of them when I'm trying to talk about myself. And the ones that do come up, I'm too afraid of being judged about.  I would rather just lurk in the shadows and respond to random posts, but I'll never build a sense of community that way.

My C-PTSD is from childhood, but the shame and isolation got worse after dropping out of college a few years ago. In college I was seeing a psychiatrist for meds and CBT to try to treat the diagnoses of social anxiety disorder, GAD, ADD, etc, but that never helped the core issue of shame and self-hatred. (And before that, in childhood, I was misdiagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, which I'm sure my parents were very happy about because it took all the blame off of them.) I've been seeing a psychodynamic/relational therapist since then, and we finally hit upon the CPTSD diagnosis. Therapy is helping me not kick myself so hard (figuratively), but I still get stuck in shame, I can't even talk or answer questions when I'm totally stuck, and part of me is afraid that that'll never be treatable. I've read about emotional flashbacks and I've gotten better at handling the ones make me hyperaroused, but I still can't get out of the freeze response most of the time.

Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling now, which I guess is better than not having anything to say. I've been sitting here for half an hour wondering if there's anything I should've changed, added, or left out. Oh well, here goes the plunge into that "post" button.

I used to experience pain in my elbow tendons and the soles of my feet until discovering the works of Dr. John Sarno. But I still experience a weird "hot"/"tingly" feeling in my skin, even after reading his works. I used to fear that this feeling was a precursor to "spontaneous human combustion", but even after disproving the existence of that phenomenon (or rather, proving it as due to a deadly combination of alcohol and cigarettes, and not spontaneous at all), I still fear that the feeling will overcome and kill me. It's been happening less often with meditaiton and therapy, but whenever it does happen, all I can do is "comfort" myself with the fact that I'm going to die at some point no matter what.