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After talking to an e-therapist for the last few months, we both agreed I would be a good candidate for EMDR.  I've actually seen much progress since being validated at the start of this therapy about my childhood trauma and how it affects my present life. I just feel I need something a bit more progressive. I feel like I was lost for 22 years with a slight idea of why I am the way I am but no course of action.  Simple learning about CPTSD has helped me tremendously.  I honestly think that's when a light bulb went off in me and recovery was activated.  I've been in and out of therapy and on and off meds several times, and I never felt like I was recovering because it was always addressing depression instead of my inner child.  Granted, there are times I feel anguished about this struggle.  Knowing there is a problem and accepting it are two different things.  Accepting this mental illness is the biggest gift I can give to myself because that is where the healing begins.  Whenever I feel anguish about my mental condition, I tell myself this is growing pain.  I have progressed.  Other people have noticed a change in me.  I attribute this to Christ empowering me to do the work to heal.

Back to the main issue,  I am getting a consultation for EMDR next week.  I've been blessed with some extra funds which I am investing into myself.  This therapy will be paid all out of pocket.  It's ironic that this money stems from the first event in my childhood  that begun the 10 years of trauma.  I'm breaking the cycle while life comes around full circle in the most bewildering way.  I will post more about my experience here in the following months.

As I go through this journey of good days where the past is barely a whisper in my ear to today when I can hear the child inside me whimpering and aching, I realize what terrifies me is that I do not know what lies for me on the other side of recovery.  I don't know how deeply I can transform myself and consequently, my life.  Depression has been my major symptom with CTPSD, and I sometimes cling to it because it is has been my most steadfast partner for 20 odd years.  It is what I know will be.  It is what was there through all the grief and abandonment.  It never left me while people I loved did.  I don't know how I will live without it, yet there are things I crave more in this life than the stifling reassurance that I am ill...some days more ill than other days.  It holds me back and keeps others out of my life due to my own insecurities and my lack of expressing myself productively in interpersonal settings.

I was doing alright for a while, but a new relationship is making me face so many things about myself since I am now aware and mindful about how my childhood affects my relationships with men.  I do not know how to communicate with them.  Assertiveness is something I barely grasp.  When he babies me, I panic because I don't remember ever being treated like a princess.  I was never special.  This all feels like a setback, but at least now I can talk to my therapist about navigating my relationship healthily and learn the skills I never did growing up.

I had a dream where the wind was pushing so much rain through an open window.  Yet, in the way dreams are strange and give hints to our subconscious, I knew and felt the rain was my internal crying.  I closed it and woke up in my lover's arms.  That dream made me realize how much there is this crying going on inside of me, but also showed me that I can control it.  Oh I feel there is so much terrifying hope in my life, but so much sadness.  It's like "every silver lining has a touch of grey."

A couple months ago I sort of had an epiphany when a frequent patron who I wait on as a server in a restaurant told me I'm worried about something while nothing is really wrong.  This was in a friendly way and this customer has always been motivational and supportive of me, so it wasn't taken offensively.  Later, I was thinking about it.  I am in this constant state of worry even though my life is probably the best it has been in a while.  Sure, there are things I'd like to see better, but there has not been any disasters or anything horrible for a while.  This was before I knew about CPTSD, but I had an epiphany that I am in this worry because I spent a good chunk of my childhood in anxiousness.  I've been worried for the last 20 plus years.  It's been my way of life.  Flash forward to today, and I was completely embarrassed by how apparent my lack of ease was to the man who did my nails.  I've been aware that sometimes it makes it hard for them to do my nails, but I never had this man before, and he sort of made it a big deal while the others usually were like, "woman, relax" in a joking way.  When he said something about me not liking him or being scared of him, I told him I'm always tense and that it wasn't him but me.  I felt so ashamed and actually just wanted to say I have PTSD so he would shut up about it.  Yet, there were so many people there, and that probably would have embarrassed me more by admitting that.  One solution to this would to not get my nails done anymore, but I'm not bowing out from something I like to do for myself because of some kind of survival habit I picked up from my bad childhood.  I feel like this worry is so ingrained in me that it literally affects my body.  I figure that this will lessen over time.  I am currently in therapy to heal the trauma that has happened in my life.  Yet, does anybody have suggestions on how to deal with the tension in the meantime or how to relax when I get my nails done?  Thanks!

I'm new to understanding CPTSD and how it could be affecting me.  One thing I have realized over the last few days is that I disassociate A LOT through daydreaming.  I was slightly aware that I did this but no doctor ever asked me if I did.  It always bugged me that I did it and then bam I'm reading the symptoms for CPTSD and it all made sense.  I mostly fantasize about interacting with others, romantic interests or am just in my head thinking about people.  I didn't do it when I was with my ex, but he was abusive and another person cannot be the solution to it.  I started disassociating this way as a kid while I was still in traumatic situations. I want to stop doing it and be present and believe my outer world can be the same or better than these daydreams. Lately I've been doing it a lot because I'm going through a bout of depression and coming to terms with how abusive my relationship was and trying to understand my traumatic childhood. I realized I was doing it just a bit ago and got upset but still had a fantasy of telling someone I do it and how I hate it.  I am new to this realization and am frustrated because when I realize I'm doing it while doing it, it's like an alarming reminder that it is a symptom from something I had no control over.  I know I should just back off of myself but I don't want to live in my head anymore. I want to really live.

Hi, my name is Robyn.  I came upon the discovery of CPSTD while I was looking for self-help books for traumatic childhood survivors.  For the last decade I've been diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety.  I recently was speculating if I have borderline personality disorder, but some of that didn't fit.  I've felt for a long time that there was more to my mental disorder than depression.  My withdrawal into fantasies and emotional flashbacks were something I knew was off but nobody and no material mentioned these symptoms.  I did think I had PTSD but those symptoms did not fit either.  In the last few weeks I've been talking with a counselor via betterhelp.com, and she helped me validate that yes, I did have a traumatic childhood.  I've tried many therapists and they all pushed aside the past even when I said I needed to talk about my childhood because I felt it plays a huge factor in how I think and live today. I'm so grateful that I finally found a therapist who engages me in the therapy that I want and need.  Yet, what now?  I finally recognize the trauma and it is a relief to know that there is a diagnose out there that describes what I endure.  When I was 8 my grandfather was senselessly and brutally murdered followed by two other deaths in my family.  My father was broken over the murder of his father and abandoned us when I was 10.  My mom remarried 2 years later to a man who verbally and physically abused me and she chose him over me when I ran away to my aunt and uncles when I was 16.  My older brother and sister both moved away during this time.  I had lost everything I knew and loved.  I knew I wasn't wanted at my aunt's but I had nowhere to go.  The helplessness I felt at the hands of others is something I can't shake.  It's like a track in my head, "I'm sorry.  I didn't know what to do.  I was a kid."  So, pretty much, I lived the last ten years of my childhood in grief, abandonment and shame.  Once I was 18, I got into drugs and completely was in denial about how damaged I was.  I knew I was hurting and embraced it without doing anything about it except partying and then finding myself crying wasted on the bathroom floor kicking the door.  I eventually got out of doing hard drugs and now I barely drink and never smoke marijuana, something I thought I would always do.  I've been clean from hard drugs for years now and haven't smoked in months.  I like being sober.  My romantic relationships have pretty much nonexistent or abusive.  I have a tendency to get involved with men who are only out to use me while I'm being earnest.  The only guys who would have treated me right I pushed away out of fear and shame of my past.  A few months ago I broke away from an extremely unhealthy relationship with a narcissistic alcoholic who used me so much for three years that I feel almost beyond empty with what he took from me emotionally, sexually, financially...pretty much in every way.  He was sexually abusive.  He raped me several times.  I don't know why I stayed...maybe out of hope, maybe out of denial.  I didn't want to believe someone I trusted would hurt me like that.  Why did I stay?  Because I think I have CPSTD and let people and circumstances into my life that confirm my warped self-worth.  Now I am ten years out of my traumatic childhood, and I know cannot live in this cycle of picking things in my life that will continue to hurt and devalue myself.  I have a 5 year old son and raise him all by myself.  He needs a better mother and I cannot let this illness to keep on stealing from me and him.  He cannot have  a stolen childhood like I did.  I think my family and some others have suspicions that I am unwell despite that I try to put on a front that I am ok.  And I am ok, I'm just not ok with the past yet.  I just don't know how to tell anyone that I have this hidden grief inside me, like a constantly weeping little girl.  I'm not even sure if I should tell anyone.  I do know that I am trying and this takes time.  The damage wasn't done in one day so I can't expect an easy fix.  I think therapy is helping me.  I also think volunteering for Crisis Text Line has helped me in feeling like I can help kids who felt as helpless as I did.  I can really tap into their feelings and help them navigate out of their overwhelming feelings.  So that's me in a nushell.