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Hi everyone,

I'm not really sure what I'm going to write but I feel like whatever it is it'll help me to write it out and know you all are reading it.

The last few days have been challenging as I've been digging into long standing pains around childhood abuse and neglect and the impact this has had on me throughout my life.

It's a long story but it involves some flare ups of strong emotion (fear, anger, shame, hatred, blame) which have been overpowering me at times and lead me to project my childhood wounds onto my partner and get very moody/angry. It's not nice for her and I'm sorry for the hurt I cause her through that.

The memory that keeps coming back to me from childhood is of my sister being angry with me (I don't know why) and running out of the room, a spider running over my foot (I was too young to know it as a spider, I just remember registering it as a 'thing' and was curious about it) then my dad bursting in absolutely furious and hitting me to the ground. I have a vague memory of crying on the floor and that's all I remember.

That memory keeps coming up and though the sickness of our culture keeps telling me to "grow up and get over it" I can also feel that part of me crying out for help. So I've been going into it and really feeling him and talking to him. As I write I can feel these feelings. The feeling of terror, of a shaking inside, a contracted terror that I experience being triggered numerous times every day especially when I'm around people I don't know, or even thinking about people or seeing them on a screen, or, now that I think about it, even with people I know very well and who have never hurt me. And under the fear there is sadness. The sadness of what I've lost in life because of the suffocating impact of this fear. That I feel isolated and unable to connect with people and live in a very frequent state of worry/dread. I feel sad for myself that this has been my life and I wish for myself that this had never been the case. I can really feel this sadness, which is rare for me. The thick, tar of sadness morphed into hopelessness and despair where I feel like life has no meaning and I'm just waiting for the time to run out so I can leave this place (to allay any concerns I am not actively suicidal though I do go into suicidal ideation at times of severe stress). I rarely allow myself real time in this thick sadness and now that I do it feels sweet.

I'm sad that this has been my life. And sad that I had parents that were unable to love and projected their own wounds into me. I'm sad that we live in a culture so sick that it denies us our healthy emotional lives and forces us into desperate denial of our humanity. I'm sad and it feels good. I'm sad and I feel compassion for myself and for all who suffer this pain. I'm sad for my dad and the horror of his internal experience that led him to do these things to me, my mum and my siblings. I'm sad for his parents, who treated him so cruelly that my child self saw him as a monster. I'm sad for the pain they must have held for so long that they could be so sick.

I write this and I feel sad and I feel sweet relief and joy. Thank God that I am actually feeling how I feel. I feel alive within my pain and thank God for daring to feel. Thank God for my partner who encourages me to feel my way through all of this. Thank God for Pete Walker and the many great feeling people who our era who act as lighthouses to guide us sensitives as we dare to feel. Thank God my body hasn't forgotten this pain so that this day would come where I would finally look at it, feel it and know I am capable and worthy of truly feeling.

I'm breaking in my sadness and feel the pain of it and thank God I actually feel happy.

I'm smiling now, as if you were to look at me you would see a broken man yet inside I feel free and am rejoicing.

Good luck to you all on your journey into feeling.

Thank you so much for this guys. It's a huge relief to feel heard and that you understand in your own experience. I'm sorry that you do, for your sake, it's a grave injustice that you understand this, and also I'm deeply grateful so that I am not suffering in this alone as I did for so many years.

I feel the bitter sweet sadness and relief of shared pain. You have my compassion and in saying this I realise I have compassion for myself too. What I and you have gone through is horrific and wrong and I honour myself and you for your bravery in facing such overwhelming difficulty.

Saylor I relate to your comments about competing against others at school and the unfairness of it. My partner (who also has Cptsd) and I call it our invisible wound and it's something I'm in the process of coming to terms with. I failed my first degree at uni because I was unable to go to lectures because the gaps where people chatted with each other casually were so overwhelming for me. I had no understanding of what was happening and just felt overcome with a nameless dread and left the lecture theatre to go sit in my room and play computer games. Looking back, I was crippled by a wound as significant as any physical disability and struggled in the dark unaided by family, friends and society who were blind to the cruelty inflicted on me. In my heart is a fury that can burn this ignorance to ashes. I can feel it in my eyes like lasers. My healthy self-protection is coming back to me...with interest.

In answer to your question about Pete Walker I'm very glad to say I have found his work and have been working with it for a month or two. He is a true gem and I am so grateful he is who he is. His story gives me hope that deep suffering can be transmuted into growth, wisdom and healing for ourselves and the collective.

I'm feeling alive as I write this. I feel alive in the shared suffering we endure and the light of reclaiming my past and replacing the injuries back with those who created them e.g. my family.

Respect to you all as you work through these challenges.

FFT

Hi everyone,

I'm having a challenging day today. I'm feeling broken and am feeling my usual withdrawal mechanisms kicking in. A part of me doesn't want to write or share this, but I feel in another, more balanced part of me that it's a good idea.

I was abused and neglected by my family of origin. They crushed my ability to trust my own feelings, thoughts and desires. I often find myself feeling powerless and going along with what other people say just to avoid the possibility of angering them and facing their harsh judgement and criticism of me (as my family of origin did). I project my past onto them and then sell my true self in the present to avoid the fearful past that still lives in me.

It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking that such an innocent soul was crushed and made to be something so different to its own innate beauty. My own innate beauty. My own innate innocence. When I was a small child I remember answering the phone and curiously talking to the person on the other end. Suddenly my mum burst in and hit me without warning. She left me crying the bed while she continued on the phone as if nothing had happened. Then she left me and never spoke about it again. When I bring it up to her now she either gas lights me or says something like "well it was ok to hit kids back then, it's just what we did".

I can still feel the impact of her random act of violence. I was given harsh physical punishment for no reason at a time when I was developing my understanding of what my caregivers believe is ok and not ok. What am I meant to do with the physical information she gave me?! What was she telling me? "Don't answer the phone or I'll hit you? Don't talk to people or I'll hit you? Don't do what I don't want you to do even though I havent explained to you what that is?"

Christ, no wonder I second guess myself all the time and feel like I'm living inside a tomb of ice. I can't trust my thoughts, feelings or behaviours because any of them could bring the harshest punishment without any explanation. It makes me so angry!!!! How on earth can my mum be considered a parent?! How do we live in a society where these people are allowed to be parents?! Why isn't there a parenting test or a school to learn how to not ABUSE AND NEGLECT your CHILDREN!!!!!

This is where my rage should be focused. At my mum and my family for the abuse and neglect they pumped into me. Unfortunately today I was in this and unable to see it as clearly as I do now. So I projected it onto my partner and when she was being willful I saw it as being controlling and aggressive and then felt justified to fire my anger at her. Then I plunged down into despair and felt like everything was ending and hit my head against a wall because everything felt so intense. It's so unbelievably crap. That these people did such a bad job of raising me that I hold all this unprocessed rage that I then throw at my partner and myself. I hate them. I hate them for what they've done. I them and I'm right to hate them.

Part of me expects people here to try and minimise what they've done, say I'm making a big deal out of nothing and that I should just calm down and get over it. But I'm not over it. I'm absolutely furious. It's a disgrace that such people are allowed to be parents. It's absolutely disgusting that children are abused and neglected in our family homes. It sickens me. And it's right to be sickened by such disgusting behaviour. On days like today I want the whole world to burn.

Hi everyone,

My partner wrote an exquisite poem about embracing the fury of pain that I see as a call to arms for all those suffering within their trauma. I'd love to hear what you think of it and whether you resonate with it as much as I do:

"and such is the
boundless fury of my
pain. brushed off by
denial. tiny yet dense
within me, each grain of dismissal
impossible to grasp. to extract from
these limbs.
wordless, soundless. except for
the way my whole body
aches and convulses and responds
to this world. silently.
except for every breath within me,
every longing that I hold inside.
every terror I hold dear. yes,
such is the boundless
fury of my pain.
that telling you wasn't,
isn't enough.
that I must tell the
whole world."

!!!!!

Great job Blueberry!

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for the warm welcome! I'm looking forward to exploring the forum and learning more about myself and you all.

Wishing you well,

FFT

I had an epiphany yesterday that is significantly helping with my relational trauma response. While walking through a supermarket it suddenly dawned on me that my fear is constantly inaccurate. Fear is meant to let me know when I am in genuine danger, in risk of ACTUAL harm. However, no one has physically attacked me in years and it's rare that anyone even raises their voice while talking to me. I've been with my partner for 2 years and she hasn't abandoned me despite the repeated fears that she will. My fears are not true. 

Seeing this as the case it then dawned on me that my fears are actually evidence that I am safe. 99% of the time my fears arise while I am totally safe, so it's more appropriate to interpret my fear as a sign of my own safety. Since noticing this I've made a habit of checking in with myself to see if I'm feeling a subtle or exaggerated fear and to remind myself this fear is evidence that I am safe. 

The amazing realisation from doing this is the recognition that I am actually safe. I'm not in danger. 

I'm aware that it's early days with working with my emotions in this way and that it will take consistent energy on my part to retrain my relationship with my fear, however I am hopeful that this is a significant milestone for me. 

Wishing you well on your journey through recovery and beyond,

FfT

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and wanted to take a moment to introduce myself.

I'm 33 and realise now I've had some form of Cptsd for much of my life. I recently had interactions with therapists who said I likely had Cptsd but I dismissed this at the time, mostly I think because my sister has the same diagnosis and I wanted to distance myself from her, seeing having something 'wrong' with me as too shameful to handle.

Recently I've been reading up more about it (mostly in Pete Walker's book and on here) and see that I certainly have the symptoms of Cptsd though I oscillate between over and underempahsising how my childhood experiences led this to develop in me.

I feel like I've lived much of my life under a shadow that I am growing to see as the darkness of unprocessed emotional trauma from childhood abuse and neglect. I get triggered numerous times a day and would say I live in some degree of emotional flashback around 70% of the time. It's exhausting and it's time for me to focus my rage into the creation of a healthy, boundaried self.

I'm glad to be here and sharing about this from the safety of my own space.