Messages

Hi light
It's ok with me if you replace 'excuses' with 'reasons'. And then you can say that you give compassion to yourself because you understand the reasons why. And then there's no need for reasons anyway to give compassion to yourself. You won't do bad things if you don't berate yourself, you will do bad things against yourself if you berate yourself.

This is why I like Pete Walker's book so much. My way into cptsd went along with an extensive brainwashing. After this, it seemed crazy to think, feel, behave normally. Confusing people is a means to enslave people. It helps me very much to see someone say that my crazy thoughts are actually normal.

Hi spot
Your story is quite mind blowing. My situation is different, no marriage, no children. But your post makes me think of myself. Different circumstances, same pattern. Especially when you write about leaving your parents' home, having hope, first marriage, second marriage, and it still doesn't work out. Getting away from my parents did help me. But I've been carrying the scars of my abuse with me ever since. They have influenced the way I relate to other people. I turned away from people who were good to me because I was scared, and I got hurt again by people who were not so good to me. My insecurity kept showing. For some people this was an invitation to take advantage of me. So in a sense, I think that I contributed to my own misery. But that was because I didn't know better. When I look at the meanness that was thrown at me, I understand. I'm trying to accept, and I'm trying to learn to love myself. No one is worthless, I was just made to feel that I was.

Did you fail because of what was done to you - likely - did you fail because you were worthless and didn't deserve anything better - definitely not. My challenge is to understand this, and to feel it, every day. I think it's the same for you.

I wish you good luck and a strong heart. Thanks for sharing your story.

Hi all, I'm glad to be here. I found out about cptsd about a year ago, from Pete Walker's website www.pete-walker.com. I'm also reading his book about cptsd. After many trials and errors, I think this is finally the right explanation for what's been happening to me. Before knowing about cptsd, I was very desperate. I was thinking this would never stop, I would never find out about what was going wrong with my life, could never explain it. And most of all, I was thinking I could never get better, because so many attempts had made some way, but it all seemed to end up in the same old despair. Well, I still am desperate. But with many of these concepts, I've seen that I can get better after all. For example, I was thinking my everyday fear of people would never go away. But when I learned more about it, it actually went away, most of the time. As far as I can tell, my cptsd comes from severe emotional abuse by my mother. It's not a physical form of violence, and this made it very hard for me to get to see it for what it was. I was never mistreated physically by my parents, but in my youth, I was sometimes beaten every day with looks, words, emotional terror... No marks, but scars for a lifetime. I'm 41 years old. I feel I don't want to live like this anymore. But living differently is not so easy. I guess I'm not telling anything new to most of you.
So I'm looking forward to exchange some messages with you. Kind regards to all you survivors.