Messages

Thanks Woodsgnome.

Unfortunately I am still in contact with my FOO and, while my friends know I have CPTSD, they don't connect it to my f or m (I like your abbreviations). So I have the facade of pretending that my young life was normal in a "family" sense and abnormal outwith it. It was, in reality, both. The "DNA donors" made me smile - thanks for that. Perhaps I need to have the courage to tell my friends the truth but this awful disorder leaves me feeling obligated to play along/not say anything - just how it was when I was a child. Like you, I don't recognise my FOO as my family. I have my own and we do love one another. I feel guilty that their love for me cannot eradicate the past - I feel I am letting them down and they genuinely care and love me. And I them.

Cheers

Pilgrim

Hi

This is something I struggle with daily - what name do I give to "my parents" who caused my CPTSD (childhood development)? I mean in the context of talking with people eg what do your parents do/live/are they alive etc. "Parent" infers, to me, caring etc so I feel I am still (many decades later) under control when I use the term. I thought about "biological parents" but then that suggests I was either adopted or brought up in care.  I was "raised" in the same house until adulthood by the 2 people who created me. Even "mother" and "father" is still too suggestive of a degree of caring but it's my default term - when people refer to them as my "mum" or "dad" I just stand there silently thinking just how far from the norm and truth that feels. I can't imagine referring to them by their names - that gives me the total creeps.

What do others use?

Thanks.

Pilgrim

Thanks for the life raft - I'll ask at my next session what happens when we reach the magical number 10. There was alluding to re-assessing things but also that a break would be necessary. Break? - does that, in reality, mean the crack I will simply fall through. I've started reading "Complex-PTSD: from surviving to thriving". I think I might get more out of the book.

Hi. I know I'm not in the best of places at the moment so I may be very over-sensitive but when my psychologist told me this week quite strongly that we will be having 10 sessions on a particular therapy (we've seen each other about 5 times so far and my psychologist wants to press on ahead as we are having "mission drift") I just felt "oh no, now I have 10 weeks to get better and shoe-horning a complex condition  into a "1 size fits all" therapy doesn't fill me with confidence". I appreciate that I'm getting help and I always approach things with an open mind because I do want to get better but I've been shoved into other "1 size fits all" therapies and when the promised panacea doesn't work I feel even more like a failure. It's like more trauma. I feel it just never seems to end. I hid my mental health problems for so long and then finally plucked up the courage to confront them - got misdiagnosed first and then therapy for a condition I didn't have (and that therapy didn't work) and I sometimes wish I had just kept it all hidden and stopped existing. I'm trying, desperately, not to close my mind to this but I already feel worse - like I've been a bad child not staying on topic and wasting the psychologist's time. I'm sinking, drowning - and I don't even have it in me anymore to wave.

thanks for the replies. Just in such a dark place at the moment.

1 of my children said they weren't that well off doing their Further Education. Apart from the basic student loan, I cover all accommodation costs, utility bills, mobile phone, spotify, travel card, leaving £50 per week for food and anything else. I'm medically retired. Please be honest with me, is this too little? Based in Scotland. I'm falling apart and when i heard that have just disappeared down a black hole. I do the same for another child at uni - parity for both. i just feel why don't i just shuffle off this mortal coil and then they can have more money. Thanks.

well I am back to eat humble pie - I got a very understanding reply. So sorry, it was just me. Trusting is so difficult but that's a bit of a lame excuse.

Cheers.

Pilgrim

Hi.
I know I am struggling at the moment - physically and mentally. So if it is just me please tell me. But I read a Facebook post from a friend's partner extolling the suicidal to reach out and then going on about how bad she felt over her brother's suicide 3 decades ago and what more could she have done. I felt so sorry that she felt that way that I PM'd her to try and explain that when you are a determined suicide nothing may work. I wasn't looking for her sympathy or anything like that. The response to  my PM - deafening silence. We have corresponded before so I am not a total stranger. I am struggling with feelings of revulsion at this person - pouring their heart out on FB but when met with it up close appears a sham. We aren't this year's must have fashion accessory - oh quick let me get on  the bandwagon of pretending to be an understanding person, yet in reality recoiling like the vast majority of people. These types of people do more harm than good. Was the post really about helping those with a mental health disorder or just a piece of look at how understanding I appear? This person doesn't have mental health issues. We put up with a lot in our daily struggles. I have genuine friends who see past my mental health issues (but without ignoring them), don't leap up and down on FB saying how wonderful they are at understanding but they genuinely are wonderful. We really don't need this type of thing. It sickens me to my soul.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

Cheers

Pilgrim

So sorry to hear. Get out of that job! Wishing you all the best.

[TRIGGER WARNING - GRAPHIC DETAILS ABOUT PHYSICAL/EMOTIONAL ABUSE]

HI

I'd like to ask people a question but want to first say

TRIGGER WARNING - GRAPHIC DETAILS ABOUT PHYSICAL/EMOTIONAL ABUSE




I'm a child of the Northern Ireland Troubles and an abusive upbringing. I would like to ask fellow sufferers whether I can say that I've been tortured - I don't like to lie and don't want to over-egg things that happened to me. Numerous things happened to me growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and I'd like to share a couple of incidents to see if "torture" is the right  and truthful word for me to use. I'd also like to stress that I never had or never will have any truck with terrorism or religious bigotry.

During the annual p*** up on Easter Monday I gave a policeman the fingers just as an impulsive childish drink fueled gesture. I was 15 (and I'm female). At the time the police were called the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). I was duly arrested. At the police station I was told to face the wall while I was searched. My hair was grabbed and my face bashed into the wall. I was led away to one of those portable cells (like G4S today). On the way I struggled with a couple of policemen taking me there. I was put on the ground in a kneeling position - so on knees, calves parallel to the ground. One policeman walked behind me, stood on my calves, bent my arms up behind my back and then started to lift me off the ground while still standing on my calves. Other male colleagues just looked on and laughed. With soaring pain in shoulder I was taken off to portable cells with every other cell full of men. Once they heard a female was on board well the threats etc got worse. Eventually (and I mean eventually) 2 female officers came and took me to a cell in the police station. Only then was my dad contacted. I'm still left with lasting pain in my shoulder. Bailed out of the hospital when I went to get it checked out 2 days later as I think the doc was going to get police involved when I said how I had come by it. So never got any x-rays etc done - just ran out of A&E.

Another incident - stole a toaster. Early hours of morning arrested. In the cell I was kicking the door and swearing. A male inspector and female PC arrived to get me to stop kicking and swearing. The Inspector pushed me up against the wall, I bite him. We slid to the floor with him sitting astride me on my chest. He started swinging my hands to hit me in the face. When not working as well as he would like put his hands round my throat, told the WPC to get help, she stamped on my stomach on way to get it, came back with 2 or may be 3 male colleagues and another WPC. Both male and female PCs searched me - unzipping pockets, stuffing hands in, pulling top off (did have T-shirt on though). Left sitting in a T-shirt, jeans, no socks, no top, no bedding, no glass in barred window and in depths of winter. When male detective came to interview me in the morning he went nuts over my condition. Demanding blankets, hot sweet tea, practically attached me to a radiator, fed me as many fags as I wanted. I fessed up - never denied it anyway when they originally came for me. I was 16.

Can I truthfully say I've been tortured - or is that insulting others far worse off than what I got.

Really appreciate views - always struggled with how to describe those things. Torture just seems too big a word for me to describe what happened to me.

Thanks.

Pilgrim

[TRIGGER WARNING]

Hi Peeps

Thanks for your words and Ah hopefully we'll meet up in the horrid forest and turn it into a National Park. The diagnosis of C-PTSD didn't make any difference to my FND. On that side of things I am going to make a public petition to the Scottish Parliament for more money to go into researching it and making sure that GPs, paramedics and A&E staff know about it. These are the people who chose to go into an area of medicine where you don't know what will walk in through your door and so they have a duty to keep their knowledge base wide. The pain of being in an FND seizure and being unable to move, speak etc and hear health professionals describing your seizures as "pseudo" and some saying worse things (faking etc) just kicks you where your C-PTSD really doesn't need it. TRIGGER WARNING

I was physically assaulted by a paramedic on duty when I took a seizure which paralysed my legs. He demanded that (and I'm female) as I had walked into the hospital I could walk back to the ambulance and get in. I was an in-patient at a psychiatric unit at the time and had self harmed and had been taken to the hospital for stitches. My complaint was upheld by the Scottish Ambulance Authority who have apologised profusely. I don't know whether to press charges. I am actually a lawyer (lol) but have been told that pursuing things could worsen my mental health. It's such a quandary - leave it alone or not. But we've all been in that dilemma haven't we and been made to stay silent. I don't want to silence myself but i also want some peace. But enough of my low mood. I don't wish anyone to have a bad time here. Sorry if I have. Honestly I'm normally really funny and a wicked gallows sense of humour - I'm Northern Irish.
Cheers
Pilgrim

Hi

I'm new and in addition to C-PTSD also suffer from a very rare neurological disorder - Functional Neurological Disorder. If you have that one  alone it totally destroys your life - the symptoms are literally crippling. Me - I was lucky to get a double whammy. Is there anyone else out there with both? Just don't want to be the only unicorn in the horrible forest.
FND (Conversion) is in the mental disorders diagnostic manual and now also the neurological diagnostic manual. The mental health hypothesis is that past (and on-going) trauma cannot be dealt with by the person and so the brain tries to deal with it subconsciously in other ways by converting it into something "physical" (as if it isn't physical enough anyway).  FND  affects the neurological signals in the brain causing damaging and lasting physical impairments.  And that condition in itself affects your mental health even if you did not have any mental health issues before. Just layer upon layer of more trauma.
So please let me know if you're also in the same forest.
Thanks for reading.
Pilgrim

Hi
I'm very new here. But yep had the same problems earlier, although even wedding ring doesn't stop some people. I don't know what it is - is it supposed to be some sort of chat up line - you are the alof one and thus more attractive and so they try some amateur therapy to get some attention?  Hmm. Nope mate I'm just on constant hypervigilent mode and actually I'm trying to stop acting like a performing seal which I normally tend to do to try to hide things and now my "alofness" isn't working any better.  I've said different things - probably not repeatable. Now - I'm practicing silence. It's actually quite funny watching someone who thinks they can do this to you have to stand there and babble and shuffle their feet to fill the silence and then scuttle away. Try it. But I'd rather people wouldn't be so rude to have to make you try yet another tactic.  Cheers Pilgrim

Hi
I've been diagnosed with C-PTSD - abusive upbringing in NI during the Troubles. Just added to the other string about BPD and C-PTSD as I was misdiagnosed with BPD for years, suffered untold abuse/stigma by health professionals and even by staff when I was in psychiatric units for my own safety. Boy do in-patient staff really hate BPDers - so being repeatedly told that I was attention seeking (when actually I was just trying to get somewhere where there was no noise and roll up tight) just kept layering my C-PTSD. I also have a very rare neurological condition which is also very unknown by general health professionals who instead of trying to educate themselves about it, just go ah you're faking it. It's called Functional Neurological Disorder - you can find out more from FNDHope.org. I have FND (Conversion Disorder). There is believed to be some cross over with trauma so it is listed in the DSM V as a mental health disorder but this year they are also now going to put it into the Neurological Disorders Diagnostic Handbook. My Consultant Neurologist is one of the UK's specialists so I'm very lucky there (in a kind of weird sense). But for psychiatrists C-PTSD - it's like finding hen's teeth finding one who has experience in treating a person with the condition. My Consultant psychiatrist found me fascinating - I was his first ever such patient. He got the right diagnosis (for which I will be eternally grateful) but after 3.5 years letting someone in behind my barricades and showing them the rawest part he then just kicked me in it. After years of regular 1 - 1 monthly meetings that he considered necessary one day he just stopped any correspondence or appointments. Wouldn't respond to my GP who was desperately firefighting. I hadn't annoyed him or anything or ever been discourteous to him and if he had felt that he didn't need to see me as often then I would have accepted that. We finally had a last meeting (final because I was moving). I asked him why - he just sat apologising for nearly an hour. But it was all just too late and all I saw were words and to my shame I felt no pity for him - and that whole experience has just spiraled me downwards -left me berating myself for being so stupid and letting yet another person cast me aside like a take-away cup. I have moved and the doc has said I will definitely need another psychiatrist. Me - can I ever trust another one? I fear not. I just feel so ashamed of myself for being taken in and (I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules - sorry if have, I'll learn) I feel like I've betrayed the memory of a brave man I never knew - my great grandfather killed on the first day of the Somme. What would he think of my stupidity and cowardice? I have his army number tattooed on my arm - perhaps he'll be able to cope with me - I really do not mean to dishonour him.
But on a lighter note it's my birthday. Yeah - still waiting for my birthday card from Bruce Springsteen - I wish. But I've got a lovely family and for them to continue to genuinely love me after what I put them through is the best thing that anybody could give me. But hey Bruce a card would still be nice - I'm still buying your albums and rockin' at your concerts.
Cheers
Pilgrim 

Hi
I'm a newbie (oops I posted in the wrong section just a little while ago which is for those who developed C-PTSD in adulthood). Mine is from an abusive upbringing against the backdrop of the NI Troubles. Just like to say hello and say yes I had the same problem for years. I was misdiagnosed with BPD (which we all know is treated with utter contempt and stigma) and that was then changed to C-PTSD. While I know we would all not want C-PTSD the correct diagnosis was helpful - as an in-patient at times with the BPD tag the treatment and the units were straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; everything was seen as just attention seeking and health professionals just kept laying another layer upon layer. I also suffer from a very rare neurological disorder and its rareness is also damaging as health professionals just don't know what it is and just say you're faking symptoms. All that does is keep layering the C-PTSD. Trying to manage 2 misunderstood and life changing conditions is such a joy. But hey it's my birthday. Cheers Pilgrim