Messages

I call my Inner Critic The Punisher.  I relate to the comment that sometimes the attacks of the Inner Critic are off the scale in terms of intensity.
How does one shrink the Inner Critic?

I think it's important--especially for survivors of CPTSD--that one feel safe and protected in therapy, and one aspect of this is feeling that your therapist really knows what he/she is doing. I don't think you should have to be in a position of having to educate your therapist about the condition he or she is supposedly helping you with. Part of feeling secure is feeling that you are in the hands of someone who is not just compassionate, but also experienced. I bet there are a lot of therapists out there who are very decent people and also very caring, but just lack the specific knowledge of a specific condition to know how to conduct therapy with someone who has it. In my view, compassion, skill and knowledge must all be there in equal measures.

Hi Candid,
Over the years, I have found vipassana (insight) meditation to be very helpful in giving me a sense of something beyond the sufferings which Complex PTSD can bring. Here are some links to a wonderful teacher I had years ago in Berkeley, James Baraz, who was one of the co-founders of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA.

I highly recommend vipassana meditation. You don't have to have a specific religious affiliation to practice it, although it is based on and inspired by the Buddhist tradition. It is also very easy to learn and practice.

There must be some teachers here in the New York area if you Google it. Here are the links:

https://www.awakeningjoy.info/teacher.html
https://www.londonmindful.com/5-day-meditation-and-mindfulness-retreat.html

I agree with the previous postings which make a connection between childhood trauma and the inability as an adult to form short-term memories. I often cannot remember what I did this morning, much less the day before or the day before that. Your posting brilliantly describes what I experience; islands of vivid memories lost in a general haze of what Dante calls a "great sea of unknowing."

Since the brains of children are still forming and so vulnerable to environmental influences, it makes sense that a child experiencing trauma and high levels of cortisol and other stress hormones may actually suffer some form of "minimal brain damage" in the memory-formation area. And a child suffering neglect may experience some form of the opposite, since, as cognitive scientists have shown, the brain needs lots of good stimulation (including an enriched verbal environment, contact with nature, toys, etc.) to develop properly. And, unfortunately, as "plastic" as the brain is, there are, apparently, certain "developmental windows" in which certain things must take place, or be lost (or impaired) forever.

It is a bit scary at times, but one consolation I have for my "Swiss cheese" memory is that I don't really need a detailed recollection of what I ate this morning (or yesterday) to function, and good memories (as you mentioned, usually connected to a positive emotion, i. e. a pleasant trip) tend to remain.

In Walker's book he calls it "shrinking the inner critic," and I think it may take time.
Maybe one way is to be with a good therapist long enough that you begin to internalize his "good self" as a counter-balance to your inner "bad self," that is, your inner critic. I wish there were a faster way, but if there is, I don't know what it is.

Hi Clarity,
It sounds like agoraphobia to me--fear of going outside. I have this, and it sometimes takes me a while to get out of the house.
On the street, it is quite intense--I have the strong feeling that people are going to hurt me.
One thing which helps me is to hold something in my right hand, I don't know why. I also generally avoid looking directly at people, although I know this may limit my chances for social interaction, which, given my instinctive fear of people, is fine with me.
This is all well described in that wonderful book by Pete Walker, Complex PTSD, From Surviving to Thriving, where he says that most "agoraphobia" is actually not a fear of open spaces per se, but rather fear of people. I'm assuming it comes from my early childhood experiences in my family.

If I might ask for a bit of advice from those on this forum: I have complex PTSD, and often have days when I feel much better, and then the next day, feel absolutely horrible. The "bad days" revolve around feeling very sinful, even for very small things that I rationally understand may not really be sins (this is my form of OCD, called "scrupulosity"). It's hard to identify any specific trigger for the "bad days," they just seem to happen. Has anyone else had this experience, and, if so, how have you dealt with it?