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Welcome tracyclements.

I once did an informal poll of all the counselor people I knew. Out of 6, not one had even heard of CPTSD. My psychologist friend knows all about it.

It makes me really mad that my ex, who had CPTSD, could never find the help she wanted.

OOTS is an excellent place to share and listen. You may indeed be the only person who can help yourself, but I think you will get some pretty good support and knowledge here.

p.s. I love the irony in your post. And eff on bureaucrats!

I'm so sorry, TR. Alcoholism thrown into your situation tremendously complicates things.

Please remember emotions exist for a reason. In this case to warn us of difficulties ahead, that things are not right.  Your reactions are completely normal, and, yes, you are getting triggered yourself. It's the warning mechanism to avoid further conflict. But it is extremely ineffective.

Lots of people will tell you that you cannot make her get help. Sad, but true. You can probably help in a lot of ways.

Hi again, TR.

Yes, I know that resentment well. I used the word reciprocity when trying to explain what I needed.

Two things:

1. I discovered OOTS and Pete Walker about 9 months after she left. I bought his book, read it in one day and underlined behaviors I recognized. A few weeks later when I accidentally found out where she was living, I dropped it off at her front door. My last act of kindness to her? I have no idea if she has done anything with it.

But how about buying the book and giving it to her minus the underlines? That way, it's more of an invitation to consider rather than a full frontal attack.

2. If I had to be with my ex,  I would find the time to act the role of the nurturing mother. Arm around her shoulder, soothing talk, understanding and listening, not only acknowledging her feelings, but saying stuff like " I know you're scared, honey, but I'm here.. You're safe now. After all, it was her PD mother that put her on this road. I figure It would be like finally filling up the windshield washer fluid in your car after it's been empty for so long. It's not that I didn't do it, but not every day. I didn't bring the emotive mother into the conversation, just normal adult talk. When she would come home from work, she would talk about stuff that made her mad at work, but I treated her like an adult and just carried on with making dinner for example. In reality, the fearful child was raging inside because she had been triggered, but I didn't know, I couldn't see it. And she never revealed it. That's how she protected herself as a child. I was often sitting next to her and in retrospect I had no clue she was raging inside. My little quirks added to that rage. I thought she was just annoyed the way couples get with each other.

Anyway, of course you feel like you failed. Unconditional love isn't supposed to be this hard.

Lol, rain again, it's only because I've had 4 years to think about it.

And thanks for your kind words too. I feel hugged.

So, tough road, I'll offer encouragement by saying that if my ex and I knew about cptsd before she entered crisis amygdala splitting zone, she and I might just might have been able to work through this.

Because after over 40 years of dealing with the consequences of her trauma, she really wanted help,  and learning about cptsd would have allowed us to ask the right questions.

Keep posting and educating yourself. That's where hope lies.

Dear tough road,

I also am the ex of a cptsd person. She took all of her trauma out on me. She wanted me to behave in proscribed ways because she didn't want to get triggered. Her T's, as far as I can tell, never heard of CPTSD and therefore could never correctly diagnose and treat the both of us. I sat through therapy sessions with her and JADEd my way through them. It was exhausting. The T only heard that my "anger" was the problem. In the last year of our relationship, ex picked on me constantly and her behavior and her thinking spiraled out of control. And yes, she saw me as a monster she had to leave with no contact.

We were a couple for nearly 20 years. It's been 4 years since she abandoned me like a dog she didn't want anymore. Like your partner, there was no empathy and complete coldness. The no contact after all those years has emotionally killed me. I think that is part of her ability to "split," if that's the right term for it. From her point of view, she had to kill all her love for me so she could leave without it being her fault.

Her plan, as she briefly told me, in starting over reminded me of a newly minted college graduate off to discover the world, make tons of new friends, find utter fulfillment in every neat thing she did. Except she was over 60 with the full plate of physical issues that many with cptsd have.

Thanks to this forum, I learned that there are traumas she was unable to talk about. In some ways, her behavior toward me was her nonverbal child trying to say what happened to her or what she was forced to feel, if that makes sense.

I have no idea how this will turn out for you. I come here to this forum to remind myself to have empathy for her. I hope by learning about cptsd you will see a path to taking care of yourself.

Someone Who knew about abuse  once said that boring, stable, and nonthreatening was a sign of a "normal" person. And its opposite, I.e., drama, controversy, and bullying was a sign of someone to avoid.

It's easy to lose faith in times like this. I have no idea what lies ahead for our future. I feel like a turtle pulled into a shell.

But because I was a teenager in the 1960's and a bit too young to get involved in the great causes of that era, I do not hesitate now to let people know exactly where I stand when various subjects come up. As politely and respectfully as I can be.

It hurts me to know that friends and family have been so taken in by his abusive notions. I've gone NC with the worst of them. All I can do is stand firm in my morality and never be swayed into thinking this man will ever do anything good.

When his abusive notions pop up in countries around the world, it's like fleas, but way worse.

I just want to weigh in about the idea that only psychiatrists and other mental health professionals can diagnose a PD.

I am a math and science person thanks to my older brother who let me use his microscope, telescope, chemistry set, etc when we were kids.

He also let me use his various field guides. So now many decades after university, I still use field  guides to stars, trees, birds, seashells, insects, etc you get the picture, right? I have a bookshelf full of them.

I see no difference between the DSM and field guides. The field guides let amateurs go out and identify the trees in their backyard or the birds they see on vacation. Birders like me keep a "life list" based on my identification from my field guide.

You guys see where this is going. The DSM is written in straightforward language that any reasonably educated person can understand. Might they get an id wrong? Sure. Of course.

But when so many of us familiar with the DSM recognize Trump as a raging narc, well. It's like my birder companions on a hike pointing to a winged creature and nodding as one, "Yep, blue jay!"

Hi BeHealthy.  Yes, the bard of Avon knew a lot about people.  I have been lucky to have been nothing else but myself, as far as I can tell.  Or as imperfectly close as one can get.  I honestly can't say how I got like that.  Except that the first 10 years of my life were pretty pleasant as part of a loving family.

My cptsd ex, I guess, had no idea what authentic self was for her., although she used that phrase frequently.  Her reasons for leaving were all over the map.  Frankly, her leaving may have been because either she was trying to figure out who she really was, or bc she didn't like who she was, with all her self-imposed guilt/ shame /inadequacy.  Shedding 20 years of her life like a snake sheds its skin.

Another thread on this forum talked about changing one's name.  I was married briefly and just could not wear that new last name.  I was me, first name last name, and not someone else.  My cptsd ex, however, had three different surnames and uses her middle name as her first, plus she used to invent names for her guardian angels or for her airy self.  ( I now suspect that her airy, body-less self was a consequence of her dissociation, or her longing to be separate from earth.)

But I'm grateful for OOTS for helping me understand those w CPTSD or just people in general.  I hate that she walked out on us, but I am wiser and, I like to think, kinder bc I know how it feels to be abused.

Thanks for your generous compliments, as well as how to alter photo size.

Now if I could only find some robotic hummingbirds . . .

Yay!

Maybe?

[attachment deleted by admin]

So I am still trying to figure out how to reduce photo size to 128kb . . .  In the meantime, I am glad to have provoked an impulse to break boundaries.   Bheart, you could always frame the cover and hang it somewhere.  A still life w butterflies might work in your bedroom.

I too feel good about my bedroom.  I never ever put this much effort into making a place beautiful. 

Thanks for that link, bheart.

Yep, my ex could write a "how to" bait and bash.  And baiting sometimes included gaslighting.  But relevant to this forum, I could see and feel it coming--all that power and control she exerted to make her point, which usually was that I was a flawed human. 

So why is it that I miss her???

A pretty still life there.

I got my mom's furniture after she passed in 2013.  The bed frame, couch, chair, end tables are 1940's maple but needed major refinishing.  So about the time I finished the bed frame, ex ran out in early 2014.  I needed something to keep me sane, so decided to turn my messy bedroom into something better. 

I have 3 Heade prints that I framed myself, plus acquired a print of New Zealand birds, and framed that beautifully, IMHO.  The paint is a gray green sage like color.  I just finished the built in closet and laying a new gray laminate floor.  Next up is the floor molding.  I will replace the cheap bifold closet doors with wood sliding doors.

I tried to attach a photo and will, once I post this.  But my failed first attempt wiped out all I typed. 

Thanks for asking as I am proud of doing something creative that I did not think I could do.  Not the sawing and nailing, but the color matching etc.

I hope you enjoy your still life.  Much better than an EF.

We were in D.C. specifically to see the Vermeer show.  But the Heade painting on exhibit at the National Gallery seems to be Vermeer-like to me.  But I was drawn to it bc it seems so lush.   

Anyway,  dividing and repotting is always prone to errors, ime.  Good luck next time!