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How have you survived employment with CPTSD? I was in my PhD, went to in-patient treatment in the summer, came back and took medical leave from my program, and I could go back in August and restart my second year, but my therapist doesn't think I should go back to that stressful lifestyle.

Meanwhile, I have to pay the bills and keep healthcare, so I got a retail job and some online freelancing writing jobs. I have no idea what to do. I feel like if I don't go back to school I may regret it for the rest of my life and if I do go back I may regret it for the rest of my life. I barely know the new, healing me. I have no idea how to proceed. I don't know how to pull self confidence up to make this decision.

@Ancientsoul This really resonated with me. I am glad to see that you are back and I think you are very brave to set boundaries with your sister. I recently disentangled myself from joint property with family and I refused to let my family keep abusing me financially. I had to consult with different attorneys We are here for you and you are worth fighting back!

My apologies for the insanely belated reply. I am having a difficult night and found myself back on this amazing forum. Thanks for the support, everyone.
@woodsgnome Thanks for your kind words. I definitely need to share my story more than ever. I feel I need to be heard and I need to hear others' stories. I really like my therapist and I feel like she's saving my life. She is really amazing at treating trauma. As for PHD, I am on medical leave, and I don't know if I'll be going back. It's an incredibly stressful lifestyle that I don't feel I have the energy for. Doing good things for myself can be really hard. I think I've made a lot of progress 😊
@sanmagic7 Thank you! 😊 I am really lucky to have this support system. Been trying to take much better care of myself nowadays. Hoping I can keep it up especially since I am distraught about possibly leaving my PhD.
@Andyman73 Thank you for your kind words. I am so sorry to hear about your pain and the memories you are getting back. It is not easy to say the least. I am having a difficult night and I know what you mean by taking little peeks from time to time. I think tonight I looked at it too closely and now I can't sleep.
If it's okay, I'd like to ask a question. It can be rhetorical if you'd like. How do you deal with the memories coming back and feeling like maybe you are making it up but deep down you know you're not?

@Boatsetsailrose That is an amazing exercise. Thank you so much for sharing. My apologies for being MIA. Having a tough night and thought to come here.

@Boatsetsailrose Apologies for the belated reply. I've been on an international trip for school. I'm so glad to hear that the reply was a helpful reminder. Thanks again for sharing. Actually, logging on today and getting the same reminder was super helpful. Been having a really hard time today with negative rumination. I've been away for a week and at an international conference, so I've been struggling this whole time with inadequacy. I just started with my new therapist, so I hope to discuss it with her when I get back home. Wishing you the best!

@Boatsetsailrose I am glad to hear that tapping is helpful for you. I haven't been using it as much this past week, but I hope to do so in the future. Thank you for sharing what you and your therapist talked about regarding the negative critic. What you are saying really resonoates with me (about it being a weak part trying to gain power from another part). That is a very interesting angle. I think it will be helpful for me. I am also on an anti dep med. Thanks again for your comment. It feels to amazing to talk to others whose stories ring true.

@sanmagic7 I'm glad I'm here, too! Thank you for the love and hugs as well. This website is really a gem during a really hard time.

@Boatsetsailrose Thank you! I am glad to hear that you do not get the panic attacks as much as before. Thank you so much for sharing. I am learning some techniques from my therapist on how to ground myself and regulate my nervous system. Have you done tapping? That's what we went over during the last session. I have been trying to focus on grounding meditations.
I really like your point about panic hitting its peak and always going away. I think that's how I started to feel yesterday. I realized that even if I can't prevent every panic attack, I know that I will be safe eventually. Especially since I have been working on letting go of the toxic people who were deeply ingrained in my life.
As for the critical voice in my head, I have started to do some more self compassion. It was really hard in the beginning as I didn't believe that I deserved it. During my first session my therapist said that I am the most important, and I've been trying to tell myself that.
I am fortunate enough to have therapeutic support. I just started with a new therapist and I think things are going to progress faster now that I am in the right type of treatment. My past therapist didn't specialize in dissociation.
Thanks. I appreciate your kind words. It is hard to see myself in that light as a fighter, because I have internalized so much negative feedback and emotional abuse.
Your response means a lot!

@Deep Blue Thank you! I'm glad to be here. It feels amazing to talk to people who empathize. It almost feels like we have a completely different lens of the world and our experiences. Thank you for reaching out!

I'm nervously posting this because I feel ready to start sharing my story with others and join an online community of support.

I was recently diagnosed with CPTSD as well as trauma-related dissociation. I realized a year ago that I had suffered long-term CSA from a relative from my pre-teen years into my mid 20s. I began to realize this after a series of unhealthy relationships in which my partners reminded me of my abuser. I recently reported the CSA to the authorities but don't yet know how I am going to move forward with pressing charges.

Recently, memories of other abuse is coming back to me. There's fragments of episodes of the CSA that I forgot about. There are emotional flashbacks that feel like I want someone to hit me and scream at me about how I ruin everything. There's a fragmented memory of me being assaulted on the college campus where I did my undergrad.

My therapist and I talked about the possibility that I suffered additional CSA from the age of 5 years old. Sometimes I dissociate into 5-year-old me, including one night I spent in the behavioral health unit at the hospital because of the stress of remembering the fragmented memory of being assaulted in college.

My panic attacks and emotional flashbacks are frequent and exhausting. It has made it difficult to complete day to day tasks related to the PhD program I am enrolled in. It makes it extremely difficult to set boundaries with people. If someone wants me to do something, I go into submission mode and give them what they want. This has also created challenges in my relationships with friends and my live-in partner who don't understand what I'm going through. Luckily they have all been very supportive and loving.

I'm hoping that beginning recovery means that I will start finding help and being able to start to heal from the underlying chronic trauma. I think I am finally ready to heal now that I have a support system and a loving FOC and I am distancing myself from my FOO. My mom is still very much a part of my life and that has brought me comfort.

It's important to me that I note that I am Latinx and I believe that there is a cyclical pattern of abuse in my FOO in which the youngest female in the family is the victim of CSA. A second pattern is the individuals in the family taking advantage of the financial security and well-being of the youngest female (asking to borrow money, emotional blackmail, isolation, etc.).

I hope that I can finish my PhD and support Latinx students in the future. I hope I can overcome the voice in my head that wants me to give up and submit. I hope I can pass my comps exam this summer. I am very fortunate that my PhD advisor agreed to give me a month's extension on both my exam as well as my first-year paper (both of which I have to pass to continue in the program).

I hope to hear from other members and I hope to be here to give support to others. The therapist in the hospital told me something  that really inspired me, and trust me, therapists say a lot of "inspiring" things that don't get through to me. He said that people recover from this and that I deserve the experience of healing. I hope that I can allow myself the healing I deserve.

This is my first time posting on OOTS. My therapist recommended finding an online community of people, because I've been feeling really isolated and like no one understands what goes on in my head.

I believe I developed CPTSD in childhood and that I experienced CSA, but I do not remember the details of what happened to me. I've always been extremely anxious, depressed, and "emotional."

There was more CSA by a relative whose family I had gone to live with. Meanwhile, my grandfather, who was one of my best friends, passed away. I believe that was when my abuser started grooming me. This continued up until adulthood when I moved away for college.

Now I am in grad school (which has its own challenges and stresses) and some memories are starting to come back. Being taken to a park and yelled at when I didn't want to take off my clothes for the camera. A dissociated memory of seeing myself being sexually assaulted on the college campus where I did undergrad. Along with the CSA was a lot of narcissistic and emotional abuse. This abuse now takes the form of a voice in my head that criticizes everything I say and do, making it hard to complete my day to day grad school work and hard to let myself enjoy time with my partner and any down time I get as a full time student.

I've been diagnosed with CPTSD and trauma-related dissociation. Due to the nature of my abuse, I feel numb and separate from my body. I was often body shamed by my abuser and my extended family. Even though I have made the decision to be estranged from most of my family, I still continue to have panic attacks and feel as though I am worthless.

Today, I had a panic attack  and then I just went numb. I felt this big weight in my chest and just wished all of the feeling in my body would stop. Then I felt phantom hands hitting me on my torso and I told myself I was a piece of s***. I think maybe I dissociated while being physically abused in addition to the CSA. 

I'm nervous to post this but excited to be a part of a community.