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Bit of a biggie for me. Major epihany, which rarely happens in C-PTSD, imho.

So... I was investigating ADHD for the youngest daughter here. The more I read, the more the lightbulbs switched on. After about an hour of investigating I was in no doubt that I had it, or rather have it. At that point everything fell into place.

Firstly, I've always been massivly creative but useless at pratical cognitive tasks. I can create anything, in any media, but give me maths and my mind just runs for the hills. Attention span has always been goldfish like.

I was bullied extensivly by my brother over these traits and school, and life after was an endless exercise in work arounds. But I did find workarounds and to a large extent, I thrived because the positive side of ADHD helped me. But the negative aspects have dogged me very badly.

When the trauma period began unfolding my concentration, which had been an issue I'd largely overcome by my 40s, collapsed. This made work a major struggle further adding to my looming breakdown. Reading about adhd I saw that you are 4 times more likely to develop PTSD if you have it. Well there's a thing.
I think my ADHD and the trauma joined hands and away we went.

But... adhd was never picked up by my counsellors, by family, by freinds, or most importantly by me. It wasnt picked up by me because I'd learned to bury the shame I'd had because of the bullying and blank it out. I just couldnt see it. I filed ADHD as something other people had and passed my own traits off as a failure of charecter, or a laziness.

Well, finally I think I have my answers.

A diagnosis will be a long way off because health service backlogs are horrendous, but I'll put my hat in the ring for now and let it wait. Treatment I have two minds about because I'm feeling such a huge relief about it I think I can function ok. It just gives me this permission to drop this toxic shame I'd had rammed into me, specifically by my brother but additionally through partners and work over the years.

But there's a positive spin  to all this too. I've still managed to do some pretty cool things DESPITE adhd and the abuse it enabled. I've certainly done way more than my abusive sibling even with adhd and C-ptsd, partly because of the benefits adhd brings, but also because the coping mechanisms I created gave me strengths to push forward into life with.

Since this all emerged my mindset has been utterly different. My background stress levels have noticably dropped and I've been a lot kinder to myself. I'd clearly been thrashing myself along trying to compensate for something I had no reason to feel bad about. I wasnt lazy, attention seeking or unproductive, I was just wired up differently, and I really did not deserve the abuse it triggered. I made mistakes by the bucket load because I didnt know why I was the way I was and I didn't know how to master it for myself and instead, was being bent out of shape trying to appease my detractors. Money was a real disaster for me. I was a financial abusers dream. I lost cash to partners throughout my life and couldnt hold on to money for the life of me. Aged 60 I have nothing behind me whatsoever which makes me sick just typing it.

So, as my head clears, the world suddenly feels very different. Life at home feels a lot easier suddenly now that my hypervigillance is on holiday. Sound sensitivity is waaaay down. I'm resting my head more, seemingly because I'm not trying frantically to push through my adhd and ptsd to achieve the impossible. I've certainly achieved amazing things in spite of the rolling banks of brain fog that I've endured but it really is time to take a break from the struggle. My job is enough for the moment, I don't need all the side hustles I created, and felt the need to add to.

C-PTSD and ADHD share a LOT of symptoms, with me I think they were crazed dance partners that spiralled each other upwards. I couldn't see the ADHD because the trauma was masking it, but now, finally, it's blindingly obvious. It answers so much.

So for now, no big plans, I'll ease into the new frame of mind and see where it goes. I've enough on to feel secure, successful even, so no new ventures. I need to enjoy home a lot more. I was feeling it was blocking me from achieving the impossible every day, which is mad frankly.

It's time to rest.

Another of these 'ere brain dumps.

So, progress in fits and starts, but it IS progress.

Just coming down from a relapse. Causes... Let me see.

1. Lack of personal space and time. Young un is back from Uni, has raging ADHD and is feeling the lack of her own age group. She's not happy, needs a job that can get her her own place, and there's a heap of attitude. Proper in-our-faces stuff. She's not a bad kid, but she's noisier than a drunk howler monkey and is a classic tiktok generation airhead. My poor head is just overwhelmed, and she's there all the time. There's just no downtime, no space to think, and my coping mechanisms have been obliterated. I'm irritable and resentful, which is not like me. The entitlement is ringing all my bells, and I'm right back there in my trauma period, losing battles I really need to win. Try as I might, the only way to deal with it is to just accept that my life is on hold til someone is silly enough to give her a job. It doesn't wash well. I gave up 13 years of my life to deal with other people's lack of logic, and I really don't want to do it again. There are signs she's getting closer to sorting herself out, so there's hope. But yeah... for recovery... awful.

2. Just turned 60. Didn't expect the emotions with that. The loss of the best years is the thing. What a wasted life. Sheesh. I think I need to feel it to forget it but the waste.... argghhh. Not just those 13 years but all the years before that, even the good ones. Indigestable for a while. All you can do is shrug and try and steer the ship by the bows. Just not worth the mood. But it will go when it goes. I sincerely want to move on, but it's a * of a thing to just write off a life or to pick over the house fire trying to pull keepsakes from the ashes. The good is glued to the bad. Good memories pop into your head like picnics with a backdrop of impending hurricanes. Desperately sad to think how I didn't have a clue what was coming. I knew both my partner's family and mine were toxic, but I never imagined the way they'd rip us apart and trash us. Recently I've been mulling the injustice thing, which I thought I'd put away. My sibling is still out there. There's no contact, but his influence on me appears in so many forms. I self-sabotage, keep a low profile, and avoid mutual connections, and his poisonous view of me lurks like sediment at the bottle of a fine wine. You know it's there, so your pour slower, you tense for the last sips. Do I have to wait for him to die before I'm free of that...? man alive. Tough. Enough already. So, yeah... sixty. I want to live. It's time.

3. Physiology. The body has its own agenda I'm afraid, and the production of cortisol and adrenalin is a law unto itself. The triggers are not always obvious, but they nonetheless cause floods of gunk that warp my judgement, make me hard to be around and scream at me to just pull the plug on my life and run. Talked to the doc about this, and my dissociative tendencies and the plan is to send me off to a specialist NHS PTSD unit, most likely for EMDR. I think it's a good idea. Let's see. It's certainly not going on its own, and I'm sick of trying to work through it. I CAN work through it, but it's a zombie walk if I'm honest. I don't want that anymore... has to go. Will let you know.

4. Relationships. It's very clear to me now that I chose to be in a relationship when maybe... maybe... I shouldn't have. If you were in a fire, you don't get a job in a blast furnace. It's a real trial at times. Some of it is me, some of it is the past, but some is classic stuff... boundaries, personal freedoms, personal space. Where is it C-PTSD and where is it real battles that need to be sorted, like they do in any relationship? I find this hard. Really hard. I had the four most important people in my life batter me into the ground, day by day, week by week, year after year and every fibre of me is on alert to stop that ever happening again.

People are flawed, they have good and bad days, and even the best of people will push the boundaries if the conditions are right (or wrong). But when are you simply making the same mistakes again? The abuse I suffered started small, little gates gently closing, then being locked behind me, my escape routes blocked with a gentle click and not a slamming door. Then it ramped up, the proverbial burning frog, unaware that the dial on the hob is heading towards destruction. So, now, I overreact. Even then, I feel like I'm letting things slip. I just can't see it objectively and my view of things, especially when my cortisol levels are coming over the sea wall, is utterly unreliable. But my partner has been amazing, and she shows total loyalty and in her own, admittedly firey, way, she's fully supportive. I ought to be OK.

But I'm distant. Locked in a defensive posture, I just don't trust ANYONE.

I think I was terribly naive before, I just didn't think people could, or would, sink to the self-serving indifference to the discomfort of others I eventually witnessed. I NEEDED that changed, I was a sitting duck for exploitation. What I couldn't believe then, or now, is that the numbers would be so against me. I didn't have one angel among the devils, I was outnumbered, outgunned and out of my depth. It changes you... as it should, but it's changed me too much, way too much. My view of people, compounded by politics and public life which I think is at an absolute low point, is at rock bottom. It needs work, because it isn't realistic. You can't have such a polarised viewpoint. Angels to devils. People are never perfect and rarely... rarely, are they utterly demonic. Our abusers are not super-villains, they are pathetic shambling excuses, trivial morons and clumsy selfish narcissists who's major crime is their idiocy. They are scared of the light. It's tragic if we become equally averse to the best in people.

But being in relationships while you try to learn relationships again is tough. Work experience in bomb disposal can be short-lived. A friend of mine says that are actually five horsemen of the apocalypse, war, famine, plague conquest and.... relationships. He has a point.

But you have to try.

There is an addition to the 'none of it is your fault' concept.

The thing about the situations we found ourselves in is that we were often pushed into behaviours that were something we were never expecting, nor were we equipped to deal with them. We were thrown the most curved of balls, forcing us to fight to make sense of the behaviour of others and to find new fast ways to adapt our own behaviour to keep things on an even keel. Ironically, we then made mistakes, inevitable misjudgement, and we got things wrong.

It's taken me a long time to understand this, but anything we did, and I mean ANYTHING, would never have happened if we had not been so severely tested. The fault always lies with source of the situation, not with those coping with that situation. It's an important thing it thinks because, and I know this applies to me, when we are forced to act out of character, we are left riddled with doubt, saddled with regret and poisoned by guilt. When the good are pushed too hard, anything remotely self-preserving can feel like a total contradiction.

Narcissistic abusers know this only too well. They sense the doubt, the discomfort and the confusion and they signpost it to humiliate and scapegoat their victims. I've seen this so much. You can see it now, with Russian and Ukraine, the attacked have to be cleaner, purer and fault free because anything less is a gift to the attacker. The attacker does not need to worry about this because the expectation of decency is an irrelevence to them. If Ukraine fires a missile to shoot down an incoming attack and that missile goes wide and lands on a school, that tragedy is as surely the attacker's fault as if they fired the missile themselves.

We do the best we can, but to be perfect in imperfect and surreal conditions is a big ask.

Hi Suffersilence

Good to have you here. Like minds are so important with C-PTSD, safe place and all that.

Beating C-PTSD is all about knowing what it is, how it works, why it works and who made it happen. Sounds simple enough, but untangling the story of your mind when all you have to do it with is the same mind can be daunting.

The big breakthroughs for me came with understanding that the effects I were experiencing are natural responses to unnatural stimuli. No one should be saying or doing what they do, but sadly, it happens. Even sadder, it happened to us, often for years on end. On the receiving end of these abuses, the mind tries to cope in the short-term, but as most of these abuses go on over prolonged periods, the wheels come off... and stay off. Stress hormones we might be glad of in an emergency, become habitual and marinate the mind causing changes in the brain's physical structure. It gets harder and harder to switch off fear responses, threats are everywhere, and even once the abuser has gone, the mind continues to play it out, because now, it is configured to do little else.

That's the bad news, the good news is that the brain will recover if it is given a chance. Neuroplasticty is our friend! Be good to yourself, gen up on the reasons why and, in time, the brain will return to a normal balance between logic and caution.

None of it is your fault. It's horrible, grievous, no question, but you are not alone. Give it time, space, and forgiveness.

None of us are born ready to cope with abuse in all its many forms. The level of abuse will change, the sensitivity of the individual will also change, there is no map, no measure of how justified the response is; that is for you to measure alone. You are what YOU feel.

Others, sadly, even today with the increasing understanding of mental health, will judge you badly or inaccurately for your responses and symptoms. This can really hurt. For me, this maybe hurt most of all. We need understanding as much as we need food and water, but hanging on for justified validation invites a world of hurt. People just don't... or won't. What matters is that YOU work out the rights and wrongs for yourself or through the help of a decent professional. Seek the friendships of those who do not make these glib assessments of you. If people consistently hurt you and block your recovery, let them go. Put your recovery first. It doesn't matter if it seems cold or calculating to some, it is about your survival at the end of the day.

The world doesn't have to be a hostile place anymore.

Freedom starts now.

So...

leaving C-PTSD behind is a series of loops and curves. Some lead you back, some go to fresh insights but so many just waste time.

Right now I know I'm ready to start living again but have become mired in all the wrong things. Colds, flu, more covid, Christmas, Christmas costs, a dismal wet winter and too much work, I feel close to a new way of life, but miles away at the same time.

I'm certain my C-PtSD is skewing my judgement. Have I made new mistakes? Should I cut and run... but then I realise I'm missing the kindness and warmth I get shown and I have to put down the parachute.

I'm loved, no question... but it feels so alien at times. I lost a happy life to forces outside my control, and in a relatively short space of time. Part of me is still there. The disorientation is immense. I want it to go but if I'm tired, distressed or ill, up it comes.

Too many of us here at home too. Lots of young person drama, too much. I can't distance it from real deep drama. I had so much of that, I see the threats to the future everywhere. It's very tough.

Lack of privacy, quiet, contemplation...

really tough.

Things should improve shortly, but yeah... for now.

Tough.

So... after a bit f turbulence, I've noticed a major uplift in my recovery.

I think there has to be a depressive stage as the C-PTSD lifts where you are effectivly mourning the life you would have had without the trauma. Looking back now it's very clear that life would have been very different and i think I've had a patch where the anger at my family and partner for the unecessary pain and trouble that they dragged me into left a real sense of loss.

Well finally that seems to be lifting. It may be in part down to my medication, but I do also think that I've passed the period of resignation and loss and am able to finally face forward into the rest of my life, warts and all.

Time makes a huge difference, of course, but its much more about squaring things away and letting go of a need for vindication. I know that will never happen, and whilst I've understood that for a while, I don't think I'd made my peace with it until now. People are fading from view, and I'm ready to let them go, not because I've failed in anyway, but because I owe it to my present to populate my life with new actors and new landscapes.

Also, the sheer effort I put into getting out of trouble financially and materially is showing fruit. Lockdown definitly delayed this and contributed to that awful feeling of being becalmed while the fresh water ran out, but now the sails are strating to fill with the breeze my flapping wings have made over the last 5 years.

This has meant I can ease off and do a bit of self-care finally. Surviving c-ptsd is an epic drain of health and energy and frankly, I'm amazed things are not worse bodily. I was dog tired. But now I have a wave of little windfalls coming in and uplifting shoots of green in the ash field.

Go me.

C-PTSD does go, truly it does. If you play it right there will be rewards too. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Yes... well for me yes.

Moving on means letting go, but letting go leaves huge unfinished business. Part of me wants justice so badly it keeps me rooted in the past and the people who put me here keep on wounding me.

There will be no public reckoning. Justice will not be seen to be, and I have to heal invisibly from the community I want to sitness my journey. I learn this again and again but it fails to go deep enough.

Closure ends TV dramas, but it rarely happens in reality.

Thought I'd take a rare chance to sit quietly and write down some thoughts. Good to do once in a while.

A lot better than of late as I settle a few issues down.

My medication is undeniably helping though I had to drop the dose by half once they settled in as the fatigue was a bit counter-productive. They make me very prone to negative results with alcohol, however, which is a mixed blessing. Now it just needs 3 small beers, and the next day I'm all over the place with fatigue and headaches. Getting used to zero alcohol is going to be a challenge; we shall see.

I seem to be reconciling the loss of old friends as a by-product to my trauma and aftermath. Hey, ho... what can you do? I think I'm accepting this finally. It's tragic, but it happened, and no amount of hand ringing by me can make it any different. I have also come to realise the love I have now from people, something I've been a bit blind to if I'm honest. My workmates are solid friends, even more so given that they all know the story. Yes there have been a few moments where I tested that for them, but they've stood by me as I've recovered and are still there.. more than I can say for my older friends who have largely dropped me.

I'm also slipping more into accepting my new relationships. There have been times, many times, when I've wanted to run. It felt alien, an intrusion, like wearing someone else's clothes. It still does a bit. But less so. Mourning a lost life while being in a new one and not showing it has been a tall order, and I'm really surprised that my partner has kept with me. It made me unloving, distant and angry, feeling misunderstood and unable to give anyone what they needed from me. I felt savagely betrayed, unready for trust and commitment.

Key to getting past this has been to let the past go, and only as that has crept in have I been able to get anything from the present.

Letting the past go is so easily said, but so very hard. The past, for better of worse, is all we have, and it takes an unrealistically perfect present to distract from both the best and the worst of what came before. I guess I had to accept how I was obstructing the present, pushing too hard to recreate conditions that could never be reformed in my new life. Loss of the good is hard in C-PTSD. Those rubies in the dust torture you, hinting endlessly at what-ifs that are long past making real.

The dust... well I'm getting that squared away. My main protagonist, the one responsible for 80% of the trauma I went through is still alive. Surprising, really given his ripeness for a heart attack. Fading now is my desperation for him to finally go, to feel what it is like without his malign presence out there, wishing me ill. He's just one man, lost in the crowds, a menace to no one but himself, strangled by his own narcissistic hands. So much narcissistic abuse is done without the monster being there at all, as the poor victim self-sabotages or demonstrates with the attacker In their own head. Enough of that.

Somehow in all that has happened, I kept up employment, dod better than before even, keeping my own income for once and reaping rewards from the panicked driver to overcome my swan dive into trauma. But it's starting to feel a bit much now. Nothing felt like it was enough, somehow, and yet I've pulled a colony of rabbits out of this tired old hat. It's time to ease off. This I'm finding very hard. It feels crazy to talk of taking my foot off the accelerator, but if I don't then I'm gonna crash and burn. I'm hearing the advice there finally.

You can beat C-PTSD. But you have to cut those people away now, for good or you will be just postponing the job til later. It hurts, but your new life can't ever happen while the old life plays out. What is wrong is wrong, and no one should have to live with any form of abuse, especially that which deforms who you were meant to be.

Be free.

Touched that I've hit some chords for peeps here. It means a lot that someone gets it, doesn't it?

It's very healthy to mind dump like this, I used to do it more in here, but then I got stupid busy and the time just vanished. Will do more, it's an important valve.

Reality 7.
C-PTSD and relationships is a minefield. But it's not just my mindfield. I know that many of us here know these same effects only too well and it's vital to understand that these effects are just that... effects. Lockdown and it's ambiguous aftermath placed our symptoms on a colllision course with a sea of triggers and these have yet to approach pre-pandemic equilibriums. But the symptoms are harsh and very destructive. I can find myself hating on my partner simply because I just can't get the space to recover. It's very unfair on her. I keep it under control but it's exhausting. It manifests as a desire to change her, to somehow remove all the miniscule niggles to give me peace. It's not reasonable and I know it, but can I switch it off? No. Something deep inside me needs to switch off, to surrender. That's not to say she is without fault, but we all have built in annoyances ready to drive people nuts. I am riddled with them after all. There's just no time to rest. I am being asked for the kind of attention I can't or dont give myself.
It's amplified by the fact that my late partner, before the drink and family transformed her, was the love of my life... totally. We were matched and happy, the only time I've ever been truly happy. It's a cruel bar to be set. These days my flashbacks are all of good things and somehow, that's worse. I have to learn to see things in the now, unemcumbered by comparrisons or the fear of repeating disasters.

I just want to shape my life a little better but I feel penned in, overwhelmed, all my coping mechanisms stuffed full of trivia.

Reality 8.
Medication comes at a price. After some initial sucess at contolling some sharp deppressions, my new meds have become a hindrance. But maybe that's down to me. I'm struggling against them, trying to be this creative powerhouse and burning myself out. It's a dilemna. If I fight this without meds I could be suffering uneccessarily, with them I could be numbing myself to a standstill. It's a choice. I'm lowering the dose. Let's see.

Reality 9.
I was a normal guy, faced with abnormal stress for a prolongued period and it did damage. It's an injury and like most injuries, it heals at the speed it heals. I can't timetable this no matter how much I want to.

Reality 10.
I do alright considering. It's something you, know, to have this thing, this C-PTSD, and to still be here. It's a ghastly condition, overwhelming, but I didn't bow out, I didn't fold and I didnt fade away. I'm still here. But holding out, surviving... it has a price. You configure your whole self to it at the expense of simple life things. I always think of the poor sailors in WW2 who were picked up from hours or even days in the sea, unable to stop treading water even when they'd been given rum and placed in a warm dry bunk. That's us, locked in our cabins, still swimming in a sea we've pulled ourselves out of. But it's still a major achievement whether anyone feels inclined to recognise it or not. C-PTSD is crippling. It warps your judgement, obliterates sentimentality, love, trust, calm... it sets you up to dissapear in that vast ocean, alone. But we didn't go quietly into the night. We are still here. There may be strengths that come with it, insights and power. Nature is like that, there is always a ruby somewhere amongst the wreckage. We just have to retrieve our lessons and learn when and where to let go. But there IS time for something approaching pride, just for still being here.

Reality 11.
Loosing people... yeah... a hard, hard pill to swallow. The simple truth is that whether I like it or not, what I went through made me hard to be around. Fair weather friends went first, followed by the people who liked to think other people's tragedies made them appear stronger. Finally there was those who took sides they didn't understand, trying to sum up my personal disaster along gender or other lines. Sadly, I think the conditions helped all that to happen. The ground had been long prepared. We were cut off, hidden from view, narratives warped by alcohol and stress. It wasn't an objective catasrophe. I wore my heart on my sleeve but that meant I looked like I was trying too hard, damning myself as I made my case. Whatever... I lost people. I lost nearly everyone. I left the area, I had to start again, but yeah... it was a social disaster. I can't fix that now. Or can I? I dunno, I am leaving some doors ajar. Not every bridge is burnt out. But I can't and won't unsuccessfully solicit help again. It was a heartbreaking and pointless process before, I can't do it again. I musn't try and explain, balance or justify, it drives people away and it reinforces the negatives that have been spread. I needed people, they didn't deliver. End of. I have to put that one in a box.

Reality 12.
It's now or never. It really is tho. This has all gone on far too long. It's time to smash through these roadblocks and make a life with what I have. Ben Folds... always good for these things.

I know that you're in there
I can see you
You're saying you're ok
I don't believe you
And now that the gig is off
The spell is broken
The fat lady sung
The president has spoken
These days that you were waiting for
Will come and go
Like any day
Just another day
There's never gonna be a moment of truth for you
While the world is watching
All you need is the thing you forgotten
And that's to learn to live with what you are
So freak out if you wanna
And I'll still be here
Don't call me for years and when you do
Yeah, I'll still be here
I'm not saying the effort is a waste of time - but I
Just love you for the things you couldn't change
Though you've tried
These hours of confusion they will soon expire
Like everything
Does
Sometimes
Everything you've ever wanted
Floats above
He's sticking out his tongue and laughing
While everything
Anyone can ever need
Is down below
Waiting for you
To know this
There's never gonna be a moment of truth for you
While the world is watching
All you need is the thing you've forgotten
And that's to learn to live with what you are
You got to learn to live with what you
You got to learn to live with what you
Are

He's not wrong

so...

I think I have to accept some realities here because I'm driving myself into a wall.

Reality 1.
I have a partner who really loves me and has put up with a huge amount from me as I've recovered. Her kids love and respect me and her friends and family like and respect me. These things are what I wanted. Also what I needed.

Reality 2.
The past is distorting the present. It's making me fight myself and ultimatly my relationship because I am fighting too hard to compensate for events that were extreme and just plain wrong but which are no longer present.

Reality 3.
I have a good job which I can do even when I'm struggling. It pays well, it is a very nice environment with very nice people. I'm going down to 4 days a week no problem.

Reality 4.
I'm 59... nearly 60. I am tired. I can't summon energy I don't have to do all the things I want to do. Add an anti deppressant that makes me even more tired and I'm flattened. There's no getting round this. I'm tired and it's only going to get worse. I have to accept this and roll with it or I'll burn out... again. What I'm doing is recovering health and energy, then isntantly burning it off again and crashing out, then becoming deeply depressed because I can't keep it going. It's like having a flat phone and charging it to go out, but wanting to get going knowing that if you pull the cord it will die on you. I'm not letting it charge. My partner is not pushing me, my ex partner and my other antagonists are. That is unacceptable.

Reality 5.
Being multi skilled is a curse. I can do far too many things up to a level where I can sell them and make cash via online platforms. Does that mean I should? The answer is no... and this is a tough one for me. I feel I'm having to prove myself, make up for loss time, earn over the odds to put things right. But things are right. How much more right do they have to be? I have to scale back and accept this.

Reality 6.
What happened to me was wrong. It was extreme. I can't change that, I can't make people see it and I can't get justice. Closure can't happen unless it is internal. I have to let it go. There is never going to be a fair solution to my trauma, so I have to make my own. The judgement of others is a reality, but so is my right... MY RIGHT... to stop caring about this. I am not on trial. I was never on trial.

There are more... I'll ponder.

So, here I am. I've sorted 99% of the practicalities that needed fixing after my life exploded and yet I'm STILL fighting this thing.

Now it's all about relationships. I am just not coping with being in a relationship at all well. I just feel overwhelmed, constantly challenged and called-out, unable to think clearly if there's anyone within 20 feet of me.

I just can't separate my traumatic reactions from what I need to defend myself from genuinely. I swing from one to the other, trying frantically to keep a lid on my emotions, mangling my responses and either over or under-reacting to every nuanced up and down of domestic life.I just don't know.

A huge issue is my creative life. It was always such a safety valve, but I've actually done really well with it and given time I could easily scale up my successes. Instead I'm trapped in a small house overwhelmed by small talk and bickering teens. If I'm not there, I'm stuck on the hamster wheel at work. Headphones on, backpeddling through the day while my mind is tearing at the leash.

In theory... THEORY... it's due to change. In Jan I go part-time, I'm finally solvent, and beyond that I'm set to clear work altogether in a few years. I could do it earlier, my partner wants me to, but I'm wracked with doubts. I can't be creative around them all. I need proper peace and quiet to work, and I can't really talk about the C-PTSD anymore. I can't share about my ex, I can't share about how much I loved her before my family pushed her away from me and she drank herself to death. I can't talk about my sense of betrayal, shame and bewilderment. I need to be in the now.

The thing is, that even if you do square away the story, and you do separate yourself from the blame game and set out for your future, C-PTSD isn't just about that, it's about physical damage just as much if not more than the purely psychological. My physiology is just not OK. I get episodes where I'm all over the place. I get fantastically tired, my focus collapses and I have to drag myself through the day, then stay controlled in the evenings. There's just no end to it. I'm desperate to get back to my old life in some small measure. I can't have the life before it all went so wrong, but surely I can at least get back my creativity.

But there have been patches where it HAS gone. I've felt completely clear of it for months at a go, and then wham, it's back again. But I know it can go if the conditions are right. The problem is that the 2020s are all about the conditions not being right. There's just no plateau phase to anything.  Everything just ends up with me stuck in place, doing nothing but tread an increasingly muddy water.

Right now my mind is screaming to be alone, but I know that it would probably be fatal. I just want some clear roads for a while. I feel like I'm back to hiding my feelings, losing control of my own time and life and being overwhelmed by the needs and demands of others. I'm feeling I got into a relationship when I wasn't thinking properly, and I didn't get the time I needed to find myself before it was tsunami'd back into old patterns of people pleasing and self-neglect.

I'm exhausted.

Not been on here in an age, simply no personal space in life these days.

Progress is still ongoing, tho with C-PTSD still lurking as per usual.

My big thing now has been dealing with successive waves of depression rather than the panics of old. I think this is a natural part of the recovery, you put out the house fire, but the smoke and water damage leave you with a ton of work. Realising how little of my old life I could bring with me is a brutal realism, it seems like lockdown emphasised the separation hugely, and I'm left with little more than 5% of my old friends. Mostly they have just drifted out of range, but many have been "got at" or have taken sides, and there's nothing much I can do about that now. It's a profound loss I feel constantly. I NEEDED these people.

I also let people go I shouldn't have. I went from needing desperately to talk to people to being very wary of it. I grew tired of that look in the eyes, the disconnect that came from trying to explain things that were so outrageous and unfair that you simply made yourself look useless and guilty of exaggeration, even though you weren't even close to doing them justice. So I stopped.

Recently I went onto a proper anti-depressant for the first time since 2015 and this time it did its job. But unless I live like a monk, it bites back, and during a very busy period of work, it's been struggling to hold back the doubts. I've been exhausted, and if I so much as glance at red wine, I'm on the floor. Life plans are on hold for now; my creative projects, always such a pressure valve, are gathering dust. It's tough. It's demoralising. When will it ever just stop?

On the plus side, I'm looking at gaining a part-time role, and that will really lift the pressure. Time to think, hopefully.

Lockdown was tough, grinding relationship engagement when I craved isolation, silence, and thought. But this would have been suicidal, I think, the relationship is good for me. My partner is loyal, fiercely so, pushing for my happiness and stability... realistic. But this illness craves that perpetual licking of wounds, the sort of introversion that kills relationships stone dead. I've held it off, talked myself down a million times, but I'm tired. I've lost the person I liked being, and I just can't find the peace I desperately need to track him down. The real me is like some WW2 Japanese soldier in the jungle, unaware the war is over, still fighting in rags three decades after everyone else went home.

From the outside, it looks like wallowing, living in the past, not wanting to heal, but it really isn't. Your brain is injured, your trust has gone... you simply can't think straight. Sometimes I feel I've totally got it licked, then wham, I'm back in the harness, pulling thirty tons of rock up a hill with a face like under-cooked ham.

I band I loved, still do... had a song which I think sums it up.

I am angry, I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it
This is a song from under the floorboards
This is a song from where the wall is cracked
My force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess I'm proud as * of that fact
I know the highest and the best
I accord them all due respect
But the brightest jewel inside of me
Glows with pleasure at my own stupidity
This is a song from under the floorboards
This is a song from where the wall is cracked
My force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess I'm proud as * of that fact
Used to make phantoms I could later chase
Images of all that could be desired
Then I got tired of counting all of these blessings
And then I just got tired
This is a song from under the floorboards
This is a song from where the wall is cracked
My force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess I'm proud as * of that fact
This is a song from under the floorboards
This is a song from where the wall is cracked
My force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess I'm proud as * of that fact

Then I just got tired. That's exactly where I am. The big thing now is deciding to sacrifice income for personal time. My partner wants me to do it, but I'm wary. Financial abuse was a huge part of my trauma, having my personal security blackmailed into oblivion by a manipulative alcoholic trapped between conflicting financial obligations as my income collapsed. Deep down, I feel that anything but acceleration and effort in work and income will end in disaster. It's very deep. Trusting what my partner is saying is a huge ask. But she's right, I will die at my desk if I don't ease off.

Just so emotionally tired. It's been a long, long road.

It will blow over....

It no doubt feels worse to me than it actually was. Sigh

Argghhh

I'm dreading monday now. I feel like I've been labled a nutcase, or intense.

Hate this.