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I met up with an old friend about a week ago out of nowhere and we had a great time.  He and I get along really well and have very similar senses of humor.  He comes from a foster home and has had to deal with all kinds of abandonment and abuse himself and it is also quite difficult for him to function at the same time, so we get each other in a deep way. 

Seeing him though I realized how isolated I have been for the last couple years.  I had to move to North Carolina from Florida a couple years ago because I wasn't able to function down there and ended up in a situation where I was living out of my car and had to move to NC to live with my Mom to get back on my feet, although I'm not sure I've ever actually been on my feet to begin with. 

I have a night job as a night auditor in a hotel which is great as far as stress goes, but I see very few people because of it.  I also uber on the side to make up for the low pay at the hotel, and this is actually helpful for me socially as I get to talk to people but not for too long. 

But I realized I feel like I've been in a prison of fear for quite some time and I'm tired of it.  Although even if I'm around people as you guys know, it doesn't mean it's going to be easy or even possible for me to really open up and form deep relationships with people.  Not to mention the fact that I tend to attract emotionally unhealthy or dysfunctional people anyway, so I am always even more distrusting with people because of that. 

I wish there was a cptsd support group face to face so we could be amongst each other and practice opening up emotionally little by little.  I don't know maybe I'll see about starting something like that in my area. 

I am hopeful however because I've started to learn and practice effective communication techniques and assertiveness (why this isn't taught to children in schools I have no idea) and I think this will help me to be able to connect with people more. 

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've been here, I've been really busy trying to put together a business for myself that works with my cptsd and also allows me to stop working low paying jobs for stress reasons. 

My life has felt so incredibly difficult, painful, and frustratingly complicated the entire time due to this cptsd from narcissistic abuse.  I'm honestly worn out.  I would have loved nothing more than to be able to finish college like a normal person and be in a nice career with a wife and family.  I don't know, maybe my cptsd is my destiny. 

I've found some great resources for healing from cptsd mainly other people who have endured narcissistic abuse or personality disordered abuse, and Inner Integration with Meredith Miller which has been helping a lot. 

I'm finding myself tired of not only being isolated socially but of also attracting unhealthy people into my life, being a codependent as well, like more narcissists or just emotionally unhealthy people in general.  So it's kind of like my isolation and lack of trusting people is actually the right thing to do because of the type of people I attract, but now I recognize more clearly how important it is for me to work on my self healing and self care.

My business I'm creating is designed to help others with cptsd and emotional abuse (not doing any advertising here just saying what I'm doing lol), so I'm excited about that.  Spreading awareness of how to heal from cptsd and narcissistic abuse I feel is a large part of my life path and I'm looking forward to getting it going. 

I'm going to try to be more consistent with my visits to this page from now on and to connect with more people.  I'd love to talk with anyone who's interested btw!  Until next time.

After reading Pete Walker's book, CPTSD from surviving to thriving, it sounded like it is largely possible to recover from cptsd and live somewhat normal lives.  It even sounded like Pete himself was able to recover to a degree that it seemed like he really wasn't hindered by cptsd anymore.  But in my own experience with how difficult it is for me to open up to people and function in society, I wonder if it's really possible to fully recover. 

Has anyone here ever been to one of those retreats that they call large group awareness training sessions?  Some of the more well known ones are things like Tony Robbins, Landmark, Gratitude, and there are others.  They are supposed to get you to be able to open up and face your fears of intimacy while at the same time finding your personal power to lead life the way you'd like.  Anyway I've been to a couple and it was WAYYYYY to much for me.  At the time I didn't know about cptsd and no one in these training sessions knew about it either because they didn't bring it up.  But it was almost impossible for me to open up completely in front of all these strangers and exhibit full range emotions.  I mean I was like literally frozen in there, and I kept being told I wasn't 'doing it right' which led to me feeling greater shame about myself. 

But after learning about cptsd I almost don't think things like that are good for people who have been severely traumatized.  I don't know.  Some people say it's just a matter of facing your fears and getting over it, but I've tried to face many of my fears and it just seems like my cptsd symptoms never go away.  Being able to be fully self expressive and trust people intimately is something that just feels impossible to me. 

Anyway I'm rambling a bit, but does anyone think it's possible to really get over cptsd?  And how are you supposed to do so if you don't have proper support from friends and family and you're struggling on your own just to keep your head above water?

I've never understood this one.  You know, the whole don't blame your parents thing.  Or rather, I think it's probably the opposite.  I don't think people who say this type of thing really understand what it's like to have lived with and been raised by abusive and unavailable parents. 

For me whenever I tried to talk to someone about what was going on with my Mom or parents and tried to explain how I felt, somehow the conversation always got turned to how I shouldn't blame my parents.  Frankly, it just never made any sense to me.  I mean in my mind, when you have someone who commits a crime, yeah they get blamed.  Of course my parents should be blamed.  But for me the core issue was, why are we focusing on whether my parents should or shouldn't be blamed when I'm in an intense amount of inner pain from the abuse I've endured and need to be healed?  Why isn't my healing, my wellbeing, and how I feel not the main priority here?

I'm one person who holds nothing but contempt for my parents, but I also want to heal.  And I have been learning how to heal pretty much half of my life at this point and have been making some progress.  But has anyone ever had experiences like this where you are trying to express how you are feeling and what's going on with you, only to find that once again you are being shut down and your feelings invalidated and denied by someone you're speaking to, AND in defense of the abuser?  To me it just seems like total insanity. 

Hi all,

So I thought it might be a good idea for me to start a recovery journal/journal in general to be able to get my feelings out there and share my process of recovery.  This is my first post and I'm not exactly sure what 'can' and 'can't' be posted in here, I would just like to keep a daily journal anyway regardless if I'm talking about recovery.

So it's February 23rd 2018 and I'm feeling angry, irritated, alone and fed up.  I'm 31 years old and rent a room from someone and I have no contact with my family, as they are quite abusive and toxic and don't do anything for my wellbeing. 

I have very little money as it's difficult for me to hold down a major career esque type of job and so I work two low paying jobs that allow me to have little stress and little interaction with others. 

I have no support emotionally or financially and have few friends so I definitely fall into the frozen and isolated category of those with cptsd.  I am working my recovery and have some tools I'm using to do so, but it's hard when I'm having to work around the clock and almost have no days off just to keep my head above water. 

Out of the storm is a huge help for me.  I found it as a result of discovering out of the fog and feeling a huge relief at finally knowing what is going on with my mother.  I am the scapegoat of my mother and family and so they all see me as just some troubled guy who has no respect or something. 

But the fact is I'm generally reserved and quiet, I've always gotten good grades in school until I had a nervous breakdown in high school due to the high levels of stress at home and at school and not realizing how insanely high the abuse was that was going on in my home.  And I've also been solutions minded you know.  I've always been interested in learning how to heal emotionally and in regard to spiritual growth.  My family really hated that too because they are the type of people that love to blame others but never take responsibility for their own behavior. 

I'm currently working on a couple of online businesses that I found were helpful for people with cptsd (not advertising my business in here just mentioning I'm working on one) and so I'm excited about the opportunity that this is affording me to be able to feel like a 'real person' who is contributing to society you know.  I've always felt like such a loser because I've been held back in so many areas by cptsd. 

But of course once I learned about cptsd and what it is I started to take it easy on myself more and have some more patience and compassion with myself and in where I am in my life right now. 

Honestly at this point in time all I want is to have a decent income coming in so I can focus even more on my healing and in being on my own completely (not having roommates or renting rooms from anyone).

I just want to focus on healing and growing in love and joy and processing through all my emotions buried inside, along with learning how to have healthy intimate relationships with people and not being so isolated.  I have absolutely no interest in ever seeing any member of my family ever again as it's honestly been nothing but * and chaos my whole life.  I just want peace and quiet and to enjoy the rest of my life. 

Currently I work at night and don't have a girlfriend or any kids so it's really just me trying to survive in the world, and hopefully one day soon start to thrive. 

Grateful for this forum and community, until tomorrow. 

@Contessa

I am working on the whole assertiveness thing myself.  Honestly I didn't even know what being assertive was for the longest time.  For me it was either passive passive passive until I had to become aggressive, and even passive aggressiveness would pop in from time to time.  I mean I can confront people and tell them what I think but it's always fueled by anger underneath.  Learning to be assertive in a healthy way is definitely something I'm working on for recovering from cptsd as well as my low self esteem.

@Blueberry

Thank you for sharing that post with me.  I definitely can see how anger serves to cover up pain and the feeling of being a helpless child and the shame that comes up with it.  It's almost like something triggers you and makes you angry, but then you start having an EF which brings up feelings of shame and helplessness and you get angry that that happened, then you get even angrier thinking about the people who abused you in the first place.  That's sort of how it happens with me anyway, and it happens in a split second when I get triggered.  Writing things out for me has been a method that has really helped me to slow my thinking and feelings down and really be able to process them. 

@myprison1965

I'm right there with you.  There's not a day that goes by where that thought doesn't cross my mind.

@rainagain

You sound like me.  I isolate and just want people to leave me alone.  Dealing with people in general is a real hassle and strain for me in general, but when someone decides they want to mess with me for whatever reason, they quickly find out that wasn't the best idea. 

For me I think cptsd gave me something that....I don't know how to explain it.....but it almost feels like something one might get from military training.  The look that people get in their eyes when they realize not just that they made a mistake by trying to cause problems with a person that they apparently assumed would take their *, but realize they are now dealing with something they've never quite come across before in normal circumstances is always somewhat enjoyable to me.  It's as if they are witnessing some wild beast that has emerged from the depths of the congo that no one has seen before and they have no idea what's about to happen next. 

And you know, my fear of anything is completely stripped from me.  I don't have any fear of death, and I regret being born into the world I was and I have nothing to lose. 

Sometimes I wonder if I isolate to stay away from people as well. 

I think that there are certainly ways of coping with such things, but you know, cptsd is a certain degree of permanent damage that we now have to deal with and cope with.  And for me I have lost my entire family as well as my ability to interact normally in the world which has been a huge hindrance for me.  So I don't think there will ever come a time when everything is perfectly fine.  I don't think there will ever come a time where some of this stuff that I've been through will cross my mind and I won't be somewhat perturbed by it. 

And for God's sakes, cptsd is barely even in the DSM so for those people who have told us to just 'move on', how are we supposed to do that when most of the mental health field doesn't even know what's wrong with us, let alone how to heal from it?

Honestly, I am SO angry.  There is so much anger in me it's unbelievable.  I mean honestly, and I say this having done all kinds of emotional processing work, grieving work, inner child work.....you name it.  Forgiveness.  But it's still there. 

It feels like a never ending well of anger and rage.  Now, I can control myself and you'd never know it if you met me.  But I find everything that has happened to me in my life, everything I struggle with as a result of it, and everything around me to be infuriating. 

People infuriate me, noises infuriate me, chaos infuriates me, God infuriates me.  Stupidity lol. 

I'm working on it of course as far as releasing it properly goes, but does anyone find they struggle with anger because of cptsd?

@sanmagic7

You know I've worked with many therapists of varying degrees in the past, but none of them were worth a damn, and I mean it.  The truth is at this stage in the game and in both having cptsd and learning methods of coping/healing from it I have gone way beyond what the vast majority of therapists are capable of or even taught in schools.  It's a shame, it shouldn't be that way.  Maybe it's time for a psycho/emotional revolution in the mental health field. 

So I'm currently not seeing a therapist but after reading Pete Walkers work about finding a 'good enough' therapist specifically for relational healing and one who understands trauma and cptsd, I am interested in ultimately finding a good enough relational therapist.  At the moment I have very little money and no insurance and no time to go traipsing around creation hunting for a therapist who actually knows what they're doing lol.  But I'll get there eventually I imagine.  Maybe I'll share some of the things that have been a great help to me in healing and managing my cptsd here at some point.

@woodsgnome

Yeah it does feel like everything is broken and has to be rebuilt from the ground up, from scratch.  Not only that, but with little to no help from others, and many times trying to do it blind folded or in the dark. 

I've rebuilt a lot of myself and in doing so it gave me a very intricate and in depth understanding of my self and 'the' self at the same time, for which I am grateful.   But if I had a choice to go through all of this over again I wouldn't do it. 

You know from what I've been reading about in regards to cptsd, toxic inner shame is a corner stone of the affliction.  Shame is a strange one for me because honestly for the longest time I was always sort of hazy on what exactly the word meant in relation to what I was feeling.  You know, like the actual feeling of shame itself, it took me a while to realize that I have been living in intense shame my whole life and didn't even realize it. 

So being 'seen' by people and the intense fear of attack, rejection, ridicule etc I now believe was connected directly to having a bunch of shame come up for me or perhaps even an emotional flashback.  Maybe they are one in the same thing.  But recently I've been realizing that as I've avoided many social interactions and opening up over the years, combined with not knowing how to open up intimately with others or to fully express myself due to intense fear of a paralyzing emotional flashback popping up, that I am now over ashamed about being emotionally stunted. 

You know, like on the inside I'm emotionally equivalent to a child and I try my hardest not to let anyone see it.  Can anyone relate to this as well?  I guess since we're sort of all in this together in this support forum with cptsd, I'll open up a bit with you all.  As a 31 year old male in relation to females, I find that I am attracted to them but there is also a need in general for the love and attention that I did not get from my mother in relation to them.  So like my interest in relationships with women is in part to try to indirectly get my emotional needs met. I'm realizing this more and becoming more aware of it, and so I hide that part of myself as much as I can too.  Honestly I avoid relationships like the plague because I don't want to be seen/I don't want to hurt anyone due to my emotional unavailability anyway, but a large part of my shame is feeling like I'm not really a 'man'. 

In other words and to sum it all up, I guess you could say that I really feel like a big child emotionally.  I do desire that intimacy and connection with others, but there is also a neediness that is hard to stop if I open up those flood gates you know what I mean.  I know it's the fact that I never received any love or adoration from my mother at all, and while I'm working on getting my emotional needs met in healthy ways, how long is it going to take for me to age emotionally to catch up to what my actual age is?

Honestly I really hate this cptsd garbage.  I don't know, maybe it happened for a reason.  Any thoughts on this particular subject would be appreciated, thanks everyone.

Thanks everyone for your replies, this helped a lot. 

It's amazing to me to find out I am not alone with these things, and I feel so much better about my situation/have more self compassion. 

You all are very inspirational to me as well, I relate to pretty much everything anyone says here.  I am currently working as a night auditor in a hotel which, although the pay isn't so hot, is fantastic for my cptsd and being able to heal.  I see maybe 4 or 5 people a night and have the whole night to be alone and to do personal work on top of my work at the hotel. 

I also uber on the side which is great because I can work as much or as little as I like, and it allows me to get some socializing in without having to go too deep with people and let them in to close. 

You know I was surfing around on the web looking up good careers for people with ptsd/cptsd and I found a site that talks about earning money online through affiliate marketing for one.  Has anyone heard of this or tried it before?  I looked more into it and it looks really interesting.  I definitely like the idea of being able to set myself up to earn passive income on the side if I ever need to take some time for myself just to recover. 

My business idea is that I am in the process of creating a personal healing/empowerment course that's online that I created as a result of having to help myself heal from cptsd.  I realized that other people might be able to benefit from it also and put it together.  Also because I really like self empowerment workshops and things like Tony Robbins, but I've tried a couple in person and due to my freeze type cptsd it was almost impossible to really open up and make some progress.  I mean it was like going from 0 to 1000 mph all in one weekend.  I realized that having cptsd and other people with other issues might like to benefit from something like this without having to be in a huge room with hundreds or even thousands of people they've never met before, so that's what I'm putting together. 

Btw is there any way to reply directly to particular comments on these threads???

Hi all,

So one major issue cptsd has beset me with is trouble functioning in the way of a career/jobs/school the whole nine yards.  To this day I still work multiple low paying jobs just to get by.  Does anyone else struggle with this?  I'm working on putting together an online business which is coming along nicely so that I can work from home and also work anywhere I'd like to live and focus on my healing and recovery, but I've always had such a hard time in this area and feel kind of hopeless.  Also, has anyone found an area of work that really works with having cptsd?