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Hey - I get the label issue.  I have probably 5 or so labels that directly apply to me and I regularly get hung up on them.  I have several other labels that either might apply to me or actually do apply to me at times and don't apply to me at other times.  When I start going down that road, I drive myself nuts.

In just this last year it was pointed out to me that a label is a judgment.  To apply a label to something means that I have judged it.  I personally have found C-PTSD to be the most dead on explanation for what I go through and to get inside that explanation has given me quite a bit of relief.  Over time, my biggest stumbling block has been my minimization of the trauma that occurred to me, which mostly consisted of emotional neglect (although there was some pretty * conduct in there as well).  Still, I would hold up my trauma to someone else's trauma and figure I must just be weak.

But that is a judgment also.

Judgment is a disease that binds us to the past and steals our hope for a better future.  I try not to judge because at the end of the day, my most brutal judgment is always reserved for myself.

So do look into C-PTSD.  To find that it fits has given me a ton of both peace and freedom.

This is awesome and it is very cool to see how the community built it.  I am just adding some main ones of mine.

I really, really go into self-hatred and debasement.  All or nothing thinking.  I become very quick to anger and will go into a rage.

Physically, I cannot stand to be touched and really don't even like to be talked to.  I can't stand looking anyone close to me in the eye.  I believe that is a shame thing.  When I am touched, it feels like I have sunburn.  Someone else touching me is very irritating and I will avoid it.

I dissociate.  I stare.

I thought it was just depression until I started reading all this stuff.  I used to get it so bad I would have to stay in the bed.

Lonewolf

I'm with you on the flashbacks - I never knew what was happening.  I'm also with you on the dissociation.  It is amazing to find something that fits so well and explains so much.  Take care.

Thanks lonewolf;

I just got finished reading Pete Walker's piece on emotional flashbacks (http://www.pete-walker.com/pdf/emotionalFlashbackManagement.pdf) that I discovered on another part of this site and I must say I have never seen anything that made so much sense.  I don't know why I did not find it before.  I guess I wasn't supposed to.  I do believe everything happens for some purpose.

On the achievement, in my younger days particularly, I did all of it in hopes that it would somehow win me friends.  It never worked and to this day my friendships (with the exception of my wife) are very lacking.  My friendships have a tendency to be emotionally void.  My family of origin is completely disintegrated and I go back and forth on whether I care to try to do anything about it.  I probably won't.

I have found that, among my emotional choices, rage is pretty much the easiest after nothing at all.  I know what is coming and I can tell you I am scared and resistant.  I have to give up rage and feel the pain.  I have been steadfastly resistant to doing that.

Thanks for the kind words.  I have already been helped a lot.

Hello all

I have known I have CPTSD for probably 2 years now.  I figured it out through internet research and also in doing what I do for a living (that being a criminal defense lawyer).  I have done a lot of death penalty work and read extensively in preparing for trial in cases where my clients were severely neglected or abused.

I am one of the ones who has discounted the abuse story.  My folks divorced when I was 4.  My father was non-existent except when I visited him during the summer.  My mother was a freak-show-mean drunk who married another almost like her.  In my house there was screaming and door-slamming, but no outright sexual or physical abuse.  I guess if I had to really just capture the essence of it, I would say my mother just hated men.  And she was the only one in the house who was not a male (animals included).  She would go on rants about how rotten men are.  It was strange.

In my house, mainly because of my step-father, work was the ticket to respectability.  I started working when I was nine.  I started drinking when I was 11.  I started using drugs when I was 13.  I was always high-functioning, though.  Fortunately I never got busted.  I made it through the Army, college and law school with flying colors.  I have now been sober for 25 years and have a wife of 20 years and two children who have grown up very differently than I did.

My first introduction to mental heath treatment was rehab at 25.  It was there that I first found out that my childhood had issues.  I really didn't know how crazy it was until then.  It would be several more years before I learned the extent to which it damaged me.  Still, I catch myself minimizing it because it was light on outright physical abuse.

I have done years of therapy.  Talk therapy, mainly, but also about a decade of on-again, off-again psychodrama.  I have reenacted the worst incidents I remember from childhood.  I've done all that.

A few years ago, in my mid-40s, I had a heart attack.  It was technically a "cardiac spasm."  Among other things, it was precipitated by my use of nicotine.  I was using 12 to 24 4mg pieces of nicotine gum everyday - equivalent to 3 to 6 packs of cigarettes.  I had not ever counted it all up.  A friend did so after I had the heart attack.

In any event, I had to quit the gum, which caused about 3 months of outright delirium, followed by another year of major depression.  Then I started raging.  I would have rage attacks at really unpredictable times and they got worse and worse.  I really started hurting my family.  At the same time, I started really wrestling with my sexuality.  During this time I was listening to audiobooks of Brene Brown and Eckhart Tolle.  It seemed like it was helping.

Then I had a complete breakdown.  For a month I lived outside my house, alone.  I did a good bit of fetal-position crying, which I needed to do.  I felt sad.  I had really never processed sadness as sadness.  I always registered it as anger.  But I was sad.

Coming out of the fog (so to speak) it seemed like a miracle had happened.  I had about 6 months of almost uninterrupted peace.  I had never been happier.  My wife and I were on a different plane and my kids were really happy.

Then about a week ago I started getting that old feeling of non-specific unease - like something bad was going to happen.  That was the way it always was - just general malaise.  I dissociate.  I get the 1000-yard stare and can't concentrate.

Then, this weekend it happened - I was at a restaurant with my family and got bad - make that really bad - service.  Out of nowhere I raged at the waitress.  My wife was pretty devastated and so am I.

I'm also kind of pissed off, quite frankly.  I had hoped to have been free of this.  I guess not.  I am really beyond minimizing the abuse I lived through.  It was real and I know that different people process things differently.  If I was half as sensitive then as my son is now, I can't see how it didn't kill me.

I was comforted to see that others here have had just out of the blue total breakdowns.  That happened to me.  It was mind-bending.  I couldn't do anything other than just show up for like 60 days.

But the recovery and subsequent months, I guess, got me into some magical thinking - that I might be cured.  Sadly, I'm not.  CPTSD has kicked my *, I guess.  I'm looking for solutions and I truly do want to get better.

So there you go.  Thanks for having this site and for taking all the time that you all take in writing down your experiences.  I read quite a bit before I wrote this.  Actually, I can't believe I have gone on so long.

Thanks.