Messages

What is crazy is you start to reanalyze your whole life, understanding yourself because of CPTSD.   It gives me a sense of peace, of course I don't want to be labeled a victim, but I do want to orient myself with what has actually happened to me. 

Being lied about abuse really sucks, especially when it comes from a parent figure.  At the very least I understand my emotions with a CPTSD narrative, when I really didn't at all before.  Hopefully that leads to more peace and freedom and self control.  Who knows.  But reading other stories and being able to share mine is cathartic.

Thanks for taking the time, wishing you well.

So when I analyze my life I think of 'the good times' when I had the energy to be hyper vigilant and the now times when I am so overwhelmed I can barely function.

At the very least when I was hyper vigilant I was functional and doing things.  Now it is just sleep.  Sleep, paranoia, and whenever someone walks behind me a chill runs down my spine.

My transition from hyper vigilance to just overwhelmed and nonfunctional was pretty awful.  During the transition I blamed myself for my life choices and felt that I was choosing to be lazy.  If I could just manifest the energy I could do what everyone else was doing.  So when I resigned myself I thought it was a choice, a thought process, a fault.  I was in complete denial of anything being mentally wrong with me.  And because I denied my mental health condition, everything was my personal responsibility.

When I resigned I became so overwhelmed by vigilance that was when I was my most suicidal.  When I wasn't paranoid I was sleeping.  When I couldn't be my vigilant self any more, I started to change to be so inactive and depressed that I couldn't keep up with everyone else.  When I would compare my value to everyone else's , my value seemed to plummet.

I really wish I could have told myself back then 'don't blame yourself it isn't your fault'.  I know that is so cliche.  But I really wish I could have communicated that with myself.  It can be really hard to get that idea across because people sometimes think you are just patronizing them.  To overcome the self blame much faster than I have, I would have told myself my life story, compared it to others, recognized that it was fundamentally different.  Recognized that the physical and emotional abuse put me in a different category mentally than other people.  It changed me, and that stress is something I deal with every day that many people do not even recognize.

Wow, this poem really reflects how a person can lose their own identity through trauma.  It makes so much sense to me.  Thank you for your expression!

I feel like I understand this poetry so much, and it is a strange kind of comfort knowing others have survived it.  Thank you for your expression and I hope it empowers you.

I know you knew and you denied it anyway.

I know you hurt me to manipulate me and denied it anyway.

I know you pretend to care when others are around.

I know you don't care when it was just you an me.

I know you exacerbated my insecurities to your advantage.

Knowing you know and knowing you can't admit it is impossible for me to grasp.

Knowing you were suppose to teach me honesty is ironic.

I know you aren't honest, but you try to obtain the reputation of honesty.

I know I learned unconscious resentment by your behavior, but I won't let that define me.

I know I will change myself as best I can independent of your actions.

I know you know and deny it.

The word irretrievably hit hard, I always think of the word indelible but I feel like those words mean the exact same thing in this CPTSD context.

I mean what do you do when you are hurt in such a way?  How do you empower yourself to overcome something that you can never forget?

I truly feel your pain, and I hope our solidarity helps.

Wishing you well.

Truly I appreciate the responses.  Sometimes I think what happened to me was so disgusting it literally overwhelms the people I tell the story to. 

I appreciate that.  Someone told me 'hurt people hurt people' and 'healed people can heal people'.  I want to heal myself and others so bad!
Wishing you well.

First of all numbness is so normal to me it is hard for me even to imagine what it would be like to have a normal emotional dynamic like 'normal people' do.  Knowing that numbness isn't normal is just big for me to accept.  Hah (im laughing out of anxiety), but here is my theory on my own emotional development.

Emotional and physical child abuse between the ages of 4 and 7.  How I dealt with it was being emotionally numb.  I don't think I did this conscientiously but one way or another I dulled my emotions which became second nature to me.  Something that has always stuck with me is that when emotions would get too intense I would freak out.  Classic example were rollercoasters or turbulence on an airplane.  Those experiences would turn on my emotions and I would go back to my trauma and be completely overwhelmed. 

My entire life I would anticipate how my parents or others would feel and live vicariously through them.  If they seemed happy I would act happy, if they seemed  sad I would try to console them.  If they were angry I would do anything I could think of to alleviate their anger.  As long as they earnestly knew I was trying in some way, it was harder for them to punish me.  That was my hyper vigilant response to my trauma.  Regulating other people's emotions and numbing my own.

Once I was older and I was around a lot of normal people.  They didn't need their emotions regulated.  Most people seem to be able to regulate their own emotions, but that was my only real ability.  That was all I was orient towards.  As I grew older I felt more and more useless because I could not succeed in school.  To do that you need to have a memory.  And all I know is my memory has always been horrible, because I have never truly reconciled the most influential experiences in my life.  I have either been in denial of my childhood abuse, or just trying to anticipate and 'mind read' other people to circumvent extreme feelings.

Only now when I recognize these things do actual memories come into my mind, and none of them are good.  Just thinking about my true memories now the first thing that comes up is how when I was in the 1st grade my teacher would say to me 'it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, so you should smile because it is easier.' 

I can't remember positive experiences in my childhood.  No that isn't true.  When my family came into money when I was around 8 years old.  My mother did buy me a playstation for Christmas.  That started my addiction to video games, and numbing myself with them.  I remember playing the game 'Twisted Metal' over and over again.

After the age of 8 I was addicted to tv and video games.  I remember up into my early adult years I would laugh only if other people were laughing, it didn't matter if I knew the joke or not.  And people would call me out on it.  I would laugh at inappropriate times and people would know 'I didn't get the joke'.  And people would ask me 'why are you laughing?  What are you laughing at?'

At the mental hospital as apart of my diagnosis 'laughs at inappropriate times.'  I would try so desperately to get along, I just would pretend to have emotions like everyone else, when I had none.

I truly believe I was generally raised by television and video games.  The neglect was so extreme that I remember watching a commercial while 15 or so, and there were commercials about watching too much tv.  'You shouldn't watch more than 2 hours a day'. and I was watching 8 hours a day.  Through my entire middle school and high school career.

And it wasn't like I understood what I was watching.  I remember only watching shows that other people watched because I wanted to get along.  I would misquote things or didn't understand what was actually 'funny' about the tv show.  TV and video games were just an escape from my parents.  They must have encouraged me to be addicted in some way because the more addicted I was the less they would have to take care of me.  Just neglect.

In as much as imitation of my father goes, my father does have legitimate PTSD from his mother dying when he was 13 or so.  So my role model was someone that didn't know how to handle his emotions.  I believe my father numbed his emotions too and I imitated him.

Once I started to attend college, that was when I first became suicidal.  My suicidal thoughts repeated over and over again day in day out.  I started to see a therapist.  All they gave me were analogies from their own life that helped them to help themselves.  They didn't understand me at all.  I could communicate with them and with THEIR emotional needs, but they could not communicate with me and mine. 

Because I was so afraid of my parents, instead of graduating from my university (with poor grades, Cs get degrees), I told myself.  'I won't graduate.  My parents will ask me why, and I will tell them I am suicidal and they will help me.'

4 years go by.  I haven't graduated.  I go to therapy.  I cry in therapy painfully over and over again.  My parents don't ask me why I haven't graduated.  My entire life up until this point I have been idolizing my parents.  I wanted to believe what they taught me was love.  I admired my step-father's success as a lawyer.  I thought I would do anything for them and they would do anything for me.

This was not the case.  It took me years and years to recognize this.  It took me years and years to utter a single negative word about my parents.  And when I did, I felt like crying, not in a cathartic way, but overwhelming crying that just felt like pain.  Therapists would sit there and nod , and have no idea what was going on. 

After 4 years of not graduating my unconscious fear of my mother and step-father still persisted.  All I thought about was myself negatively through their eyes.  How I was a failure, how much money they spent, how much I had wasted, how successful all of my friends from high school were...  Negative intrusive thoughts overwhelmed me day in and day out.  At the time I could link any idea, or associate any idea back to myself to criticize myself.  All my friends from high school were succeeding or had jobs or degrees.

When I would spend time with my friend's family they genuinely liked me and treated me well.  And after I left them I would break down crying in the car.  Now only knowing that they gave me true love, when my family never did.

To this day I play video games, (I don't watch tv very much, can't keep track of the plot).  But I don't play normal video games.  I play idle/clicker video games.  And the reason for this is because I never understood the games I ever played before.  I never understood how to play the quests or follow the game.  I would always play it my own way.  You see a clicker / idle video game is nothing more than pure escapism, like any drug.  It is the healthiest drug I can think of, but it is pure escapism. 

I play video games mindlessly to this very day, to escape, because reality has been too daunting.  This is what I have to change.  I have to get in touch with my feelings to over come my own past.  Slowly I am figuring it out.

I omitted several adult suicide attempt stories.  No need to think about those.

The journey out of the misery you describe has been full of pain, for sure; but maybe now you will find some equilibrium along with the discernment you've demonstrated by sharing these horrific -- along with some healing -- experiences. 

Yes I'm working on this so hard with my therapist.  I'm trying to get a narrative of my trauma so I don't get triggered by it.  It isn't easy and it is exhausting but I think it is really worth while.  Rereading my post is an inchoate mess, but emotions are like that.  I'm obviously no storyteller, but just remembering everything, the bad, the good, the bad again, it is just something I want to get over so badly.  Thank you for your response.

So I have been to a lot of therapy.  And eventually I just started white knuckling it.  Dredging up the worst of the worst memories I could think of and there were just layers and layers of them. 

Only after forcing the discomfort over and over in exhausting therapy sessions could I even begin to start to remember what happened to me as a child.  But like any skill it does get easier.

This story follows my therapy and how it unraveled.  So it starts when I was 26.

At age 26 I ended up in the  mental health hospital -- Due to extreme paranoia about my parents conspiring to kill me.  The triggering event was a calm dinner with my mother and step father.  I always did what ever my mother and step father wanted, I was obsequious (trained to be).  And this particular evening I believed they were trying to poison me.  I was a failure and disappointment and I was a problem in their life.  At the same time I didn't want to disappoint my mother and step father, out of unconscious fear, so I ate the food with the best facade of joyfulness I could muster.  Weeks after the dinner I became unhinged and went to the mental health hospital.  I stayed for over 40 days.  This is when my reflection begins.

The first layer of fear I dealt with was actually being at the mental health hospital.  You see I myself had a horrible stigma against people that went to the mental hospital.  So I was afraid of the people I was around and I was afraid of myself.  I was the least tolerant person for myself.  So unknowingly I facilitated the mental health stigma.  And it made me incredibly afraid of myself. It made me think I didn't understand myself.  I was so afraid I was just reactionary in the mental hospital.  I had no perspective.  I was just emotionally hijacked and the fear I had been living in my entire life was now focused on myself.  I am crazy, I am unstable, I am in a mental hospital, something is horrifically wrong with me.

A staff member in the mental hospital told me, 'it is ridiculous to think your parents would risk jail time, for the rest of their lives to poison you, you are having a delusion, you are paranoid and reacting out of fear.'(paraphrased) And I eventually agreed with her.  So I knew something was wrong with my mind, but I didn't know why...

I took this statement to heart.  I really did and I am grateful I did.  And this statement didn't make sense to me until I found out about CPTSD...

You see my parents independently of each other abused me from a very early age.  When I was alone with my mother at the age of 4 I just remember yelling and screaming, intimidation. And when she wasn't yelling, screaming, or intimidating me, she was neglecting me.  My earliest memories are horrible, and it makes sense because evolutionarily you are designed to remember threats.  If a threat is a caretaker that is when it gets complex...

My father and mother got divorced when I was 7 or so.  And when I was acting like a brat I was beaten to the point I blacked out.  Abuse is always two fold in my family.  There is the initial abuse, like the physical abuse, and then there is the intimidating and manipulation that comes afterwards.  My mother and father can smell my insecurity on me, and use it to manipulate me.  Out of fear I would do anything to appease either of my parents.  They knew this, they capitalized on this. And there are no truer words in my mind, I grew up my parent's *.  I would do anything they wanted me to do.  Out of fear which eventually became unconscious.  This unconscious fear was eventually labeled as 'love' when I was older.  And I ridiculously tried to recreate it in relationships....

This led to classic co-dependent relationships.  Girls that actually treated me well were rejected, girls that treated me horribly were accepted.

The only reason why I know I had unconsciously labeled my fear as love towards my parents as a child and growing up is because I discovered what true love actually was.   A woman from Peru loved me for who I was.  I met her on e-harmony and she had no mental health stigma that is so common in America.  At my most vulnerable a woman chose to love me for who I was, and it is probably the only reason why I have been able to heal.  She was so excited to be with me and completely accepted me for who I was, helped me through my insecurities and helped me to learn what love was.  That love is a stark contrast from any relationship I have with my parents.  Everything with my parents is transactional, while everything with my Peruvian friend loved me for who I was.

So via my mother verbal abuse, bullying and intimidation since I was 4 or 5.  When this wasn't going on it was neglect.
Via my father I was beat, and trained to blame myself for why he beat.  My father could just look at me a certain way and I would do whatever he wanted...

After the initial fear and insecurity was established both of my parents manipulated me relentlessly to make do whatever they wanted.  And because I am the youngest of 5 kids, they had very little interest in me.  My parents were genuinely overwhelmed with children while living in poverty with too many children.  So even when they had energy the last thing they would put attention into was their children, least of all their fifth.

My motto growing up was 'self taught or bust'.  And because I was not the smartest person in the world I failed a lot.  I embraced failing.  I wanted to succeed but I literally had no person to teach me to do that.

When I was in high school I had no idea how to treat people.  I treated people so badly on a field trip that they all ganged up on me.  They put * on my mouth while I was asleep.  And the rest of my high school career I was known as '* lip'.  You see bullying and abuse followed exactly the same pattern my parent's abuse did.  First there was the initial and temporary trauma: the actual * on my mouth.  Then the relentless fear that came afterwards when random people in school would run up to me to confirm whether or not the story was true.  I never got use to it.  And my 'friends' at the time even called me the nickname.

So eventually my fear of my parents extended to be afraid of people in my community, which eventually lead to feelings of worthlessness which I don't have to tell anyone what that leads to.

----------------------------------

I don't even know if this post makes any sense anymore, but referring back to the title, I was in denial of what happened to me for 30 years of  my life.  The fear my parents facilitated in my life from childhood was something I interpreted as love.  When I tried to deny what happened to me, what happened to me on the school field trip it was impossible.  Literal people through the gossip mill would randomly confront me with reality.  Maybe that is the only way I learned to actually confront reality.  The fear on top of fear of people confronting me brought me back?

My complex PTSD is complex.
---------------------------

tl;dr --> I only survived these experiences by forgiving my abusers.  All of them.  The righteous indignation I had towards my abusers never led me to a place that was socially acceptable.  Somehow , somewhere I learned to forgive, maybe as a defense mechanism.  This post is a reflection of my mess of a life but I am determined to get over it.  I am determined to find a way to integrate myself into society and move on.

I want to obtain my memory and do so many things.

My ex girlfriend who is one of my best friends is from Peru.  She says 'Aish' when she is frustrated kind of like it when people say 'sigh' or something.  I don't know why but I always found it endearing so I started to use it as a username for things.

I have been dealing with mental health issues for a very long time, diagnosed in 2013.  And I have never had an explanation that made sense to me before I found CPTSD.  I have said to myself and others my entire therapy , 'I don't want to blame people that hurt me I just want to understand why and fix myself as best I can.'  And hearing all of these other stories is extremely cathartic.  Here people are disconnected from their emotions , like me, people understanding their trauma here, and people helping each other.  I am just truly grateful to have found this place.

My story is my story and it is just a classic example of CPTSD.  I have explained my experiences before and therapists have felt sorry for me, but their pity never solved my problem.  There is no part of me that wants to be a victim or pitied.  I want to take control of my life and understand myself so I can accomplish more.  Already I feel like this community is helping me with that.

Hoping and wishing everyone well, thank you for having me.