Messages

Thank you for your replies.
I have an understanding GP who has run a battery of blood tests and I'm technically quite healthy if you look at bloodwork.
According to the clock I'm getting "normal" amounts of sleep but when my nights are full of unpleasant dreams and nightmares night after night I am already tired when I get up in the morning.
What do you mean by other aspects of a healthy lifestyle LTLTR? Do you mean diet exercise etc?
I go to the gym twice a week and I feel so worn out afterwards that I usually need to sleep in the afternoon to make it through the day. I eat healthy food, just a bit more than I should.

I understand why I am exhausted so much of the time. It's really hard to manage it though. I have a family and a job that need my energy but I'm worn out by lunch time and need to go to bed to sleep.
It's depressing being so exhausted all the time.
How do you manage it?

One thing I struggle with is feeling inferior to others, especially when there's a perceived power or financial status difference.
I grew up poor and due to my upbringing and circumstances I have not been able to improve my financial situation hugely. I avoid visiting "well to do" suburbs because I feel like I don't belong. I imagine that my clothing and appearance must make me stick out like a sore thumb and people consider me to be an outsider.
I see friends posting on social media about how fit and healthy they are and my brain automatically goes to that place of feeling less than them because I don't measure up to that standard.
I hate being like this because deep down I know that it's what's inside that really matters. I hate feeling poor but it's true. I'm still wearing clothing that I've had for up to nine years.
Is this a common thing for others with C-PTSD? How do I change?

Has anyone here achieved justice via court means for their abuse?
Does it help bring healing and closure?
My abuser was just charged by the police for his abuse of me.

When I was a child, I was depressed and suicidal. I escaped from reality by going to bed and sleeping during the day. I slept for hours. I was exhausted all the time.
Now, as an adult, I still do this without consciously deciding to escape. Today I received some bad financial news and I suddenly felt depressed and exhausted. I wanted to curl up in bed and sleep but I had to go to work. I drove to work in a zoned out state like the car was taking me and I was just turning the steering wheel.

I'm worried that I'm going to lose progress or not cope by myself when my therapist is away on 6wks leave soon.
What do people do when their therapist is away?

I've been in regular trauma informed therapy for a year now. At first I felt that I was making progress and I left appointments with a feeling of having achieved something most of the time. The last couple of months I feel that I've plateaued. The last bad patch really rocked me and I felt the worst that I have felt in a very long time.
I want to keep getting better. I want to deal with my past and not just when it's currently affecting me negatively, but work away at it constantly.
I told my therapist how I am feeling.
Is it normal to plateau?

I want revenge on those who have hurt me. I am angry at them for turning me into this messed up person.
Is that wrong??

Why can't I cry when I am sad, depressed, grieving, feeling internal emotional pain?

Yes, I have reconnected with my mother and in light of how the cult treated me, I didn't find it hard to understand her side of the story and forgive her part in my abuse because she is genuinely remorseful. However, the separation of ten years was too much to recover a loving relationship despite our efforts. We have an amicable relationship and I'm OK with that.

I am a cult survivor. I grew up in a strict religious cult. There was little contact with the outside world and we were homeschooled to control our education and avoid outside influences. Our dress was required to be very modest (how I hate that word!) and it was a patriarchal society. We read the bible twice a day. There were twice weekly meetings, in our own homes.
Physical punishment was frequent and severe. My mum escaped from the cult and tried to take us kids with her but she was stopped by the elders. We were taught to hate her and she was destroyed by superior finances and tenacity in the family court till she gave up trying to see us. I was affected terribly, especially being an adolescent at the time. I tasted my first experience of depression, SI and the brutality of the cult. When they learned of my depression and SI, they berated me for it because only god gives life and takes away life. No help was sought for me.
We grew up reading of a vengeful god and jesus' return and I was terrified into baptism as a teenager.
I became an adult and a number of stressful events culminated in my depression and SI returning. This time, although I was still living under my father's roof, I took myself to my Dr and started on medication and seeing a psychologist. I knew it would have been frowned upon by the cult. I was really struggling and in the first signs of PTSD, I was being triggered by everything in the family home in relation to my mother. I sought my father's permission to move in with an older couple who I had befriended while I was volunteering in the community. They had experience with helping people with mental illness and offered me a safe place to try to heal. The cult believed that unmarried women must remain under their father's roof bc he represented the intermediary between her and god. My father reluctantly agreed and I moved in with the couple. I was in every other way still the same, attending bible meetings, reading my bible, meet my father in the mornings to carpool to work in the city. Then the cult found out that I was living away from home. I explained why and that it was with my father's permission. I didn't fear because I had done nothing wrong. However at the next meeting, the baptised men and women refused to fellowship me, one by one, for not living under my father's roof. I looked across the room to my father for help but he said nothing. He continued to do nothing after the meeting when they started talking to me and telling me that I should stop taking medication and seeing a psychologist and come home and that I had a lack of faith in god, not mental illness.
At the end of the meeting, I fled to my car and drove to my friends' place where I was safe. At this point I was faced with an impossible choice. I had been publicly shunned and shamed and my father was too cowardly to stand up for me. There was no possibility of stopping medication and seeing my psychologist. I had to leave the cult. Yet it was the only world I knew. I was utterly overwhelmed by the situation and could sleep or think except for SI. I admitted myself to hospital the next morning. I was unable to function and collapsed into bed with the mercy of sleeping pills to stop the pain for a while. I was in hospital for a week. When I didn't turn up to carpool to work, my father never called me. He apparently went home to wait for me to come to him. When he learned where I was, he never visited me.
I never went back to the cult or my father's home.
That's the short story. There's so much more but suffice to say that I have C-PTSD as a result.

Does anyone else experience night sweating on venlafaxine? I sweat a great deal at night, more so in the warmer months. Some nights I wake up in a pool of sweat, my sheets and pillow drenched and wet to touch.
My Dr has run a battery of tests to rule out any other cause and we have concluded that it's a medication side effect.
I could change anti depressant medication but I am afraid of the withdrawals and destabilisation during the process. Also who knows what side effects the next drug might cause? I've weaned off venlafaxine in years gone by and it's horrific.

When I was a teenager, and was facing my worst trauma, I started to pull out my eyelashes and eyebrows. I don't really know why I started but once I started, it was very hard to stop.
I have struggled to stop doing this on and off into my adulthood and can go for ages not doing it but then start again.
Why do we self harm? It has never been associated with SI although I've experienced SI as well over the years.

Yes, day naps for me are free of nightmares.
I struggle with nightmares, a lot. Some of my nightmares feature people, places, situations from my past abuses. Others are a mish mash of life experiences with danger and scary themes within the narrative.
I have always had vivid and detailed dreams and remember nightmares on a regular basis since I was a child. I remember the emotional hangover even when I was a child, feeling distressed and affected by the nightmares the next day, as if the nightmares had really happened. I can cope with a nightmare here and there but when they come night after night without a break, I struggle. I am in a constant state of hyperarousal and feel anxious about going to bed at night for fear of what I will dream. Then I run out of energy to keep going in this state and crash to hypoarousal.
My Dr has given me a script for amitriptyline which I can take an hour before bed. It helps me sleep more solidly through the night rather than waking constantly. It also changes the sleep pattern to less REM sleep so that I can get a break from the nightmares. I don't take them every night. I take them when I'm struggling with nightmares over and over again to break the cycle. I feel dopey and uncoordinated the next morning though which is not pleasant or suitable for if I'm doing an early work shift the next day.

I started doing yoga again, especially because Dr Bessel van der Kolk writes that it is helpful. While I find it helpful, especially the focus on deep breathing, the perfectionist in me struggles with not being able to do the poses "right" because my body is bigger and less flexible. And as I have learned to quiet my thoughts in the relaxation pose at the end, I have found that the inner mind holds stuff that I don't want to see. The instructor encourages us to turn the focus inwards rather than out, looking for what's inside our minds. On one occasion as she asked us to notice how our bodies feel after the practice, my brain replied that I feel terrible inside. I caught a glimpse of the true self inside, the unguarded me that is hurting. The guarded me keeps up the happy, in-control facade to the world. But when I saw that inner reality, I felt suddenly sad and hurting. Then the next class, the instructor was talking about the 8 arms of yoga practice which involve things like ethical behaviour, the physical practice, the awareness of the breath, meditation and aiming for a state of enlightenment. I escaped an abusive religious cult. The words she spoke sounded like religion and I had a strong urge to get up and run away. I stayed though and did the class and I'm glad I did but it took so much strength to overcome that urge.
I've finished the yoga beginner's course and next term it will be regular classes without discussion on yoga philosophy. I hope that I can get back to enjoying the practice and celebrate my body's achievements and not be freaked out by my internal feelings.