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I met up with an old friend about a week ago out of nowhere and we had a great time.  He and I get along really well and have very similar senses of humor.  He comes from a foster home and has had to deal with all kinds of abandonment and abuse himself and it is also quite difficult for him to function at the same time, so we get each other in a deep way. 

Seeing him though I realized how isolated I have been for the last couple years.  I had to move to North Carolina from Florida a couple years ago because I wasn't able to function down there and ended up in a situation where I was living out of my car and had to move to NC to live with my Mom to get back on my feet, although I'm not sure I've ever actually been on my feet to begin with. 

I have a night job as a night auditor in a hotel which is great as far as stress goes, but I see very few people because of it.  I also uber on the side to make up for the low pay at the hotel, and this is actually helpful for me socially as I get to talk to people but not for too long. 

But I realized I feel like I've been in a prison of fear for quite some time and I'm tired of it.  Although even if I'm around people as you guys know, it doesn't mean it's going to be easy or even possible for me to really open up and form deep relationships with people.  Not to mention the fact that I tend to attract emotionally unhealthy or dysfunctional people anyway, so I am always even more distrusting with people because of that. 

I wish there was a cptsd support group face to face so we could be amongst each other and practice opening up emotionally little by little.  I don't know maybe I'll see about starting something like that in my area. 

I am hopeful however because I've started to learn and practice effective communication techniques and assertiveness (why this isn't taught to children in schools I have no idea) and I think this will help me to be able to connect with people more. 

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've been here, I've been really busy trying to put together a business for myself that works with my cptsd and also allows me to stop working low paying jobs for stress reasons. 

My life has felt so incredibly difficult, painful, and frustratingly complicated the entire time due to this cptsd from narcissistic abuse.  I'm honestly worn out.  I would have loved nothing more than to be able to finish college like a normal person and be in a nice career with a wife and family.  I don't know, maybe my cptsd is my destiny. 

I've found some great resources for healing from cptsd mainly other people who have endured narcissistic abuse or personality disordered abuse, and Inner Integration with Meredith Miller which has been helping a lot. 

I'm finding myself tired of not only being isolated socially but of also attracting unhealthy people into my life, being a codependent as well, like more narcissists or just emotionally unhealthy people in general.  So it's kind of like my isolation and lack of trusting people is actually the right thing to do because of the type of people I attract, but now I recognize more clearly how important it is for me to work on my self healing and self care.

My business I'm creating is designed to help others with cptsd and emotional abuse (not doing any advertising here just saying what I'm doing lol), so I'm excited about that.  Spreading awareness of how to heal from cptsd and narcissistic abuse I feel is a large part of my life path and I'm looking forward to getting it going. 

I'm going to try to be more consistent with my visits to this page from now on and to connect with more people.  I'd love to talk with anyone who's interested btw!  Until next time.

After reading Pete Walker's book, CPTSD from surviving to thriving, it sounded like it is largely possible to recover from cptsd and live somewhat normal lives.  It even sounded like Pete himself was able to recover to a degree that it seemed like he really wasn't hindered by cptsd anymore.  But in my own experience with how difficult it is for me to open up to people and function in society, I wonder if it's really possible to fully recover. 

Has anyone here ever been to one of those retreats that they call large group awareness training sessions?  Some of the more well known ones are things like Tony Robbins, Landmark, Gratitude, and there are others.  They are supposed to get you to be able to open up and face your fears of intimacy while at the same time finding your personal power to lead life the way you'd like.  Anyway I've been to a couple and it was WAYYYYY to much for me.  At the time I didn't know about cptsd and no one in these training sessions knew about it either because they didn't bring it up.  But it was almost impossible for me to open up completely in front of all these strangers and exhibit full range emotions.  I mean I was like literally frozen in there, and I kept being told I wasn't 'doing it right' which led to me feeling greater shame about myself. 

But after learning about cptsd I almost don't think things like that are good for people who have been severely traumatized.  I don't know.  Some people say it's just a matter of facing your fears and getting over it, but I've tried to face many of my fears and it just seems like my cptsd symptoms never go away.  Being able to be fully self expressive and trust people intimately is something that just feels impossible to me. 

Anyway I'm rambling a bit, but does anyone think it's possible to really get over cptsd?  And how are you supposed to do so if you don't have proper support from friends and family and you're struggling on your own just to keep your head above water?

I've never understood this one.  You know, the whole don't blame your parents thing.  Or rather, I think it's probably the opposite.  I don't think people who say this type of thing really understand what it's like to have lived with and been raised by abusive and unavailable parents. 

For me whenever I tried to talk to someone about what was going on with my Mom or parents and tried to explain how I felt, somehow the conversation always got turned to how I shouldn't blame my parents.  Frankly, it just never made any sense to me.  I mean in my mind, when you have someone who commits a crime, yeah they get blamed.  Of course my parents should be blamed.  But for me the core issue was, why are we focusing on whether my parents should or shouldn't be blamed when I'm in an intense amount of inner pain from the abuse I've endured and need to be healed?  Why isn't my healing, my wellbeing, and how I feel not the main priority here?

I'm one person who holds nothing but contempt for my parents, but I also want to heal.  And I have been learning how to heal pretty much half of my life at this point and have been making some progress.  But has anyone ever had experiences like this where you are trying to express how you are feeling and what's going on with you, only to find that once again you are being shut down and your feelings invalidated and denied by someone you're speaking to, AND in defense of the abuser?  To me it just seems like total insanity. 

Hi all,

So I thought it might be a good idea for me to start a recovery journal/journal in general to be able to get my feelings out there and share my process of recovery.  This is my first post and I'm not exactly sure what 'can' and 'can't' be posted in here, I would just like to keep a daily journal anyway regardless if I'm talking about recovery.

So it's February 23rd 2018 and I'm feeling angry, irritated, alone and fed up.  I'm 31 years old and rent a room from someone and I have no contact with my family, as they are quite abusive and toxic and don't do anything for my wellbeing. 

I have very little money as it's difficult for me to hold down a major career esque type of job and so I work two low paying jobs that allow me to have little stress and little interaction with others. 

I have no support emotionally or financially and have few friends so I definitely fall into the frozen and isolated category of those with cptsd.  I am working my recovery and have some tools I'm using to do so, but it's hard when I'm having to work around the clock and almost have no days off just to keep my head above water. 

Out of the storm is a huge help for me.  I found it as a result of discovering out of the fog and feeling a huge relief at finally knowing what is going on with my mother.  I am the scapegoat of my mother and family and so they all see me as just some troubled guy who has no respect or something. 

But the fact is I'm generally reserved and quiet, I've always gotten good grades in school until I had a nervous breakdown in high school due to the high levels of stress at home and at school and not realizing how insanely high the abuse was that was going on in my home.  And I've also been solutions minded you know.  I've always been interested in learning how to heal emotionally and in regard to spiritual growth.  My family really hated that too because they are the type of people that love to blame others but never take responsibility for their own behavior. 

I'm currently working on a couple of online businesses that I found were helpful for people with cptsd (not advertising my business in here just mentioning I'm working on one) and so I'm excited about the opportunity that this is affording me to be able to feel like a 'real person' who is contributing to society you know.  I've always felt like such a loser because I've been held back in so many areas by cptsd. 

But of course once I learned about cptsd and what it is I started to take it easy on myself more and have some more patience and compassion with myself and in where I am in my life right now. 

Honestly at this point in time all I want is to have a decent income coming in so I can focus even more on my healing and in being on my own completely (not having roommates or renting rooms from anyone).

I just want to focus on healing and growing in love and joy and processing through all my emotions buried inside, along with learning how to have healthy intimate relationships with people and not being so isolated.  I have absolutely no interest in ever seeing any member of my family ever again as it's honestly been nothing but * and chaos my whole life.  I just want peace and quiet and to enjoy the rest of my life. 

Currently I work at night and don't have a girlfriend or any kids so it's really just me trying to survive in the world, and hopefully one day soon start to thrive. 

Grateful for this forum and community, until tomorrow. 

Honestly, I am SO angry.  There is so much anger in me it's unbelievable.  I mean honestly, and I say this having done all kinds of emotional processing work, grieving work, inner child work.....you name it.  Forgiveness.  But it's still there. 

It feels like a never ending well of anger and rage.  Now, I can control myself and you'd never know it if you met me.  But I find everything that has happened to me in my life, everything I struggle with as a result of it, and everything around me to be infuriating. 

People infuriate me, noises infuriate me, chaos infuriates me, God infuriates me.  Stupidity lol. 

I'm working on it of course as far as releasing it properly goes, but does anyone find they struggle with anger because of cptsd?

You know from what I've been reading about in regards to cptsd, toxic inner shame is a corner stone of the affliction.  Shame is a strange one for me because honestly for the longest time I was always sort of hazy on what exactly the word meant in relation to what I was feeling.  You know, like the actual feeling of shame itself, it took me a while to realize that I have been living in intense shame my whole life and didn't even realize it. 

So being 'seen' by people and the intense fear of attack, rejection, ridicule etc I now believe was connected directly to having a bunch of shame come up for me or perhaps even an emotional flashback.  Maybe they are one in the same thing.  But recently I've been realizing that as I've avoided many social interactions and opening up over the years, combined with not knowing how to open up intimately with others or to fully express myself due to intense fear of a paralyzing emotional flashback popping up, that I am now over ashamed about being emotionally stunted. 

You know, like on the inside I'm emotionally equivalent to a child and I try my hardest not to let anyone see it.  Can anyone relate to this as well?  I guess since we're sort of all in this together in this support forum with cptsd, I'll open up a bit with you all.  As a 31 year old male in relation to females, I find that I am attracted to them but there is also a need in general for the love and attention that I did not get from my mother in relation to them.  So like my interest in relationships with women is in part to try to indirectly get my emotional needs met. I'm realizing this more and becoming more aware of it, and so I hide that part of myself as much as I can too.  Honestly I avoid relationships like the plague because I don't want to be seen/I don't want to hurt anyone due to my emotional unavailability anyway, but a large part of my shame is feeling like I'm not really a 'man'. 

In other words and to sum it all up, I guess you could say that I really feel like a big child emotionally.  I do desire that intimacy and connection with others, but there is also a neediness that is hard to stop if I open up those flood gates you know what I mean.  I know it's the fact that I never received any love or adoration from my mother at all, and while I'm working on getting my emotional needs met in healthy ways, how long is it going to take for me to age emotionally to catch up to what my actual age is?

Honestly I really hate this cptsd garbage.  I don't know, maybe it happened for a reason.  Any thoughts on this particular subject would be appreciated, thanks everyone.

Hi all,

So one major issue cptsd has beset me with is trouble functioning in the way of a career/jobs/school the whole nine yards.  To this day I still work multiple low paying jobs just to get by.  Does anyone else struggle with this?  I'm working on putting together an online business which is coming along nicely so that I can work from home and also work anywhere I'd like to live and focus on my healing and recovery, but I've always had such a hard time in this area and feel kind of hopeless.  Also, has anyone found an area of work that really works with having cptsd?

Hi, my name is Justin and I'm relatively new here to the forum.  I'm honestly really happy to have learned about cptsd and that there are SOME places at least for support and community.  I developed cptsd in childhood and honestly all the therapists doctors healers and gurus I went to looking for help never mentioned anything like cptsd to me, or even that perhaps I had been severely traumatized and abused as a child. 

Anyway, as happy as I am to learn about cptsd, and as eager as I am to recover, after reading Peter Walkers book I feel rather overwhelmed and a little bit hopeless.  Because I am primarily a freeze type with cptsd, I have spent most of my life in avoidance, hiding and isolation to the point where my social skills aren't so hot.  I mean I can do it, I can talk to people and so forth but it's always sort of a mask and the whole experience is very draining for me and I find myself counting the minutes before I can make my escape.  Also because of my constant state of shock fear and confusion growing up I isolated in my room and didn't learn a lot of things so my reservoir of things to talk about isn't so hot either.  Believe it or not as a male I avoided things like sports music and cars because the loud noises and tons of people were extremely triggering for me.  Honestly after learning about cptsd everything makes so much sense now. 

I know I need to connect with others, and learning about emotional flashbacks and how to manage them is very helpful, but it's so incredibly difficult that I find I don't want to lol.  I'm also very interested in spirituality and meditation, so when it comes to things like seclusion I can take that to the next level.  I've had a few girlfriends in my life but nothing serious, and I can never 'do it' you know?  Connecting with others in a real and intimate way is something I've never been able to to do, and I always end up pushing the girl away. 

I have had to go no contact with my abusive family and so I am alone and have no support system.  Honestly it really sucks and it's hard to go on like this.  I get so angry that I have to deal with cptsd and now I have to go through all this recovery just to get to a somewhat 'normal' place that I just say screw it sometimes. 

Anyway, at least I know now what I'm struggling with and how to get through it.  Having cptsd is hard enough but the freeze element of it makes it even tougher to get through the inner emotional ice wall that I have developed. 

I wanted to know if anyone here has trouble connecting with others and or in having intimate relationships with others.  I feel so invisible like I'm alive and part of a community but not really.  I work at night as well to give my nerves a break, so it's a very lonely world (although I do like to be alone for the most part).  I'm also underemployed as I was never able to complete a four year university due to intense emotional flashbacks in school settings and panic attacks I'd have and that has made my life extremely limited and narrow.  I honestly hate this and frankly wish I was never born if I was just going to end up with something like this and with no family support or love.  My Mom and sister live 15 minutes away from me but because of how abusive they are and the fact that they don't respect my boundaries, I spent Christmas alone in a cafe with a chicken salad sandwich and some coffee.  In fact I spent all the holidays alone.  And I can do it you know I'm used to it, but it's hard and I'm honestly sad. 

I'm looking to go to some coda meetings in the area to at least start to open up and have some intimate and vulnerable conversations with people, and some other spiritual groups in the area. 

Can anyone relate to this type of thing with connecting with others?

I've never actually been able to nail down whether was more bpd or npd, but the things I hear discussed in here nail her behavior to a T.  My life growing up with my mother and to this day is that she is a highstrung, type A, officially bipolar/adhd diagnosed person with some major personality disorder traits going on.  She is in a constant state of hysteria, catastrophizing everything, and constantly picking and starting fights with people in her close life and then when they react or stick up for themselves in some way, she flips that around and rejects the person in some way, shames them, and scapegoats them by calling her friends and other family members to tell them how bad I was or my sister was, further alienating us from those who might otherwise love and care for us. 

I've always been curious as to how all the people she has called to pretend to be a victim with all these years haven't seen a pattern with my mother.  First my father was the problem, then it was me when he left the house, then it was her various boyfriends, then it was my sister.  It's never my mother who is the problem here, and somehow these people in her life can't seem to put 2 and 2 together. 

My personal strategy, since it seems like nothing can ever please my mother, is to be quiet and do nothing to attempt to prevent any possible problems from happening.  This passed Sunday I texted her to ask her if I could come over to her house to visit with her and my sister as I was trying to respect her boundaries, and she said sure.  But when I got there and sat down and started chatting with my sister, my Mom starts complaining that she can't get her work done on her computer because of the noise we're making, even though we were just having a basic conversation.  So I said, ok, would you like us to not talk at all, and she said no that what we were talking about was stupid and because of how stupid it was she couldn't concentrate.  Then she starts yelling at us about how she shouldn't have to go to her room in her own house to get some work done.  Now, you might be thinking, if she had so much work to be done and needed so much quiet, why didn't she tell me before I came over?  Why didn't she say hey, I've got a lot of work to do so coming over tonight wouldn't be such a good idea.  Whether she has work to do or not, it's her responsibility to do what's necessary to make sure it gets done.  It's no one else's fault if she 'can't get her work done'. 

Then when it's time for dinner she stands over our shoulders watching us pour stew into a bowl, and then yells out that we are making a mess if some of the soup falls off the spoon as we're pouring it.  Then she somehow takes the fact that there's this colossal mess in the kitchen (which there wasn't) to try to justify why she can't get all her work done.  The craziest part about that scene was that some soup fell off the spoon I was using to pour the stew into my bowl.....INTO the pot that the stew was in.  There literally WAS no mess. 

Then as I sit down to eat and my sister goes in to get some, the window in the kitchen is open and one of the neighbors is taking out their trash.  My mother asks my sister if she heard someone taking out the trash and apparently my sister didn't hear her or answer in time so my mother yells at her to answer her when she's talking to her.  My sister responds that she said yes and then somehow my mom was able to squeeze an entire fight out of that.  Then she changes the subject to how my sister needs to let my Mom know when the air in her tires is low so she can go get them filled, and when my sister asked how she knew the tires needed air, my Mother responded that the car told her.  Uhhhhh.....what.  So first of all it's like if the car told you what difference does it make if your daughter or anyone else tells you, and then she didn't even actually go put air in the tires.  Again, everything is an attack on our mother but she never has to take any responsibility for herself. 

So the craziness continues and I hear my sister getting bullied and decided that I would step in and take the brunt of it, so I told my mother to knock it off and stop starting fights and attacking us.  That there were no problems here except for her and she just needed to stop.  So that got her focus onto me which caused her to come over to me and tell me that I needed to shut up and that this was her house and she could talk to us however she wanted to talk to us.  I told her it was her house but that doesn't give her the right to constantly attack people and start fights.  So then she tells me to leave and that she wants her key to the house back. 

Some more stuff happened but I finally had to say you know what, I just have to move on from this.  It's really sad that I can't just go have dinner at my Mom's house with my sister on Sunday night for a few hours out of the week without my Mom starting some kind of fight and constantly yelling and fighting with people.  I can't allow myself to be abused and have the life sucked out of me just because 'she's my mother'.  So I've explained to my sister that I have to go NC and it's crazy because I live 15 minutes away from my Mom, but won't be able to do things like go over for the holidays or anything like that.  But my heart and soul feel so much better being away from her.  I'm starting to choose me and what's best for my own well being, even though it's hard mentally because you believe that you have some kind of obligation or something to your parents regardless of how they act toward you.  But I'm realizing that I can't control her behavior, that none of this is my fault, and that I have to make my own well being my obligation.  If my own mother can't exist in harmony in my life with my well being, not only is there something wrong with that but I've got to go. 

Anyway, wanted to write this for myself with people who understand and can relate, but also so others know they are not alone if they have beyond crazy and toxic families. 

I just recently, within the last couple of months, learned about cptsd.  And it's only been about 4 years since I've learned about the concept of emotional abuse itself.  Believe it or not I really didn't even know what emotional abuse was.  I always had this idea in the back of my mind that my emotions were meaningless and it didn't really matter if they were being trampled on by my mother or different family members.  After all, sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.  Well, it turns out emotional abuse can be even more hurtful, painful, and damaging then even physical abuse. 

When it came to my mother, who definitely fits the definition and characteristics of someone with a personality disorder, although I can't tell if it's BPD or NPD exactly, she didn't hit me very often and we had food on the table and a roof over our heads so I thought everything was fine.  But looking back, and especially after I learned about emotional abuse, I realized just how extremely abusive my mother actually was. 

Out of the fog helped me to understand these behavior patterns in people, as well as to be able to verbalize exactly what was going on with my experience with my mother with all the terms on the site.  As a child I would be brought to therapists and I knew something was wrong with my mother but had no idea how to verbalize it.  Now I do, and I'm so thankful to learn that I'm not crazy.

But essentially my mother was a type A, high strung person, officially diagnosed bipolar with adhd.  My experiences with her, however, fit far more in line with personality disorders.  She was constantly catastrophizing everything and treating me like I was some kind of criminal (I was a quiet and withdrawn kid who got good grades in school and pretty much holed myself up in my room to get away from the chaos in the house), and that I was constantly under some kind of interrogation.

It honestly felt like my mother just hated me.  I always had people around me telling me how much my mother loved me, but it always confused me because I constantly felt hated, despised, and like some kind of burden.  She would flip out randomly and attack me verbally and emotionally, starting fights (baiting) to try to get me to react and then if I did to try to get her away from me, she'd take me yelling back or becoming angry and withdrawn and go around telling other family members and friends how I was.  This served to really alienate me from anyone else who might have otherwise been sympathetic to me and my situation. 

My mother was extremely angry, extremely belittling, condescending, blaming, and a perfect chaos manufacturer.  Living with her was like walking on eggshells, or landmines, and you never knew where to step that wouldn't set her off.  I was hit on multiple occasions of course, but I always had this idea that since I was a male and my mom was a female, that it wasn't that bad and I could just kind of take it.  And when she'd hit me it wasn't like a spanking for discipline purposes.  It was like she was taking out all her stress and anger out on me and hitting me wherever she wanted however hard she wanted.  One time when I was a teenager she started trying to hit me for no reason and I started blocking her and she actually told me to stop blocking her so she could hit me.  I told her if there was a problem we could talk about it, and that there was no need for her to hit me for any reason at all.

I was never allowed to express myself, my thoughts or feelings and was always shut down and torn down if I did.  My mother loved to talk and talk in circles without ever finishing and not letting anyone else speak.  When I learned about emotional abuse I honestly just cried and cried and cried because my inner self was indeed extremely neglected, extremely unloved and extremely abused.  It's kind of like I don't have a family as they are all toxic and either alcoholics, narcissists, or some other personality disordered variation. 

It was honestly like *.  And my mother was very good at becoming a completely different person in public and at work to make any issues I was having with her make it seem like I was just some crazy ungrateful kid.  Looking back I remember teachers in school asking me if everything was ok at different times and I of course said oh yeah of course, not really knowing what they were talking about.  Looking back I can see that I was extremely withdrawn and isolated, and probably looked like I was in a great deal of pain.  I was. 

When I learned about emotional abuse, and then later about extreme low self esteem, and then most recently about cptsd, it felt like angels were pouring love onto my extremely damaged and burned emotional self after being unattended to my whole life.  I felt such great relief at knowing what this was and that I was not crazy.  That all the difficulty I've had in life, and in functioning in life was very much due to me having cptsd, to me having intense emotional flashbacks when being around any people at all (if I can't trust the people who are supposed to love me the most, how can I possibly trust a world of strangers?). 

According to the book CPTSD from Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker, I fit the freeze type to a T.  In fact, frozen is a perfect word to describe my emotional state most of my life.  Someone would ask me how I felt and I honestly didn't even know.  I really think I was frozen in a state of shock terror and confusion constantly. 

I have been someone who has been extremely withdrawn and isolated to the point where I didn't develop properly emotionally or socially.  My ability to connect with people intimately and genuinely is severely compromised because I don't trust people as it is, but I realized that when I am in situations where intimacy and openness is called for I seize up and have intense emotional flashbacks.  I didn't even know what emotional flashbacks were until I read Pete Walkers book.  It makes so much sense now. 

I lived in so much unbelievable terror and pain and being so avoidant made it extremely difficult for me to function in life that many times I just wanted to die.  I mean I had been in therapy since I was 6 as my parents got divorced and someone thought it would be a good idea for me to go so my Mom took me, thinking everything was my Father's fault.  But in all my years of therapy and looking for solutions, no one, and I mean NO ONE ever brought up cptsd or even emotional trauma as a possibility and how to heal from it.  So you know, I felt hopeless and permanently broken if I was reaching out to the professionals and they couldn't help me at all.  So suicide seemed like the only way out for real. 

Luckily I didn't give up on myself and now that I know about cptsd everything is so much clearer and I feel so much better.  I am able to practice self compassion with myself more knowing that I really was severely affected and damaged in my life, and that it wasn't my fault.  I do have severe emotional flashbacks and panic attacks that make it very difficult to function and connect with people, but I am learning and growing day by day. 

Growing up the way I did was like pure *.  They say * is a place of torment for the soul.  That's exactly how it felt.  And I was so confused because on the outside everything looked ok.  I had food and a roof over my head, so what did I have to complain about?  In fact, if someone offered me 1 million dollars on my 18th birthday to go back and relive what I experienced, I would decline it without thinking twice. 

I want to live now, I want to heal, and I want to share this information with others who are suffering from something similar.  Happy to know I'm not crazy, and happy that a place like this exists for support and healing. 

Blessings.

Hey all,

This is the start of my recovery journal.  I will say that I am ecstatic to learn about cptsd and that I have.  I am also happy I have found tools to be able to cope and heal from it. 

I'm angry that I developed this because of how intense the traumatic situations, the abuse and the neglect was in my household growing up.  I'm angry all the therapists and doctors I went to see over the years never brought up emotional trauma, cptsd, or how to heal from it.  If there's a problem with a child to the point where the child is brought to therapy, wouldn't abuse in the home be the first thing the therapist investigates?

I'm angry that this condition has kept me so isolated and so unable to connect with people in a real and genuine way, preventing me from having any real lasting successful intimate relationships.  I'm angry that I was a good student and a good person growing up and I was almost destroyed by my mother and father and their ineptitude and abusive/neglectful acts.  The amount of pain and struggle that I have had to go through is unreal looking back. 

But I am going to heal adequately now to allow me to lead a happy and fully life from here on out.  And no more abusers or bullies are going to be allowed in my life. 

Hi everybody,

First of all, let me just say how ecstatic I am to have discovered what cptsd is and how it affects one who has it.  I have struggled my entire life with this, not knowing what it is, and actively reaching out to therapists, doctors, healers, guides, you name it to try to find out what was wrong with me and no one ever brought up ctpsd or even trauma as a possible issue.  Maybe when you're a child and you're going to a therapist it can be a little touchy for the therapist to pry to discover if there is any abuse going on in the home and so they tend to shy away from it.  I don't know.

At any rate, when I learned about out of the fog I said oh my God THAT'S what's going on with my mother.  AND the experiences of living with someone who has a personality disorder, in this case apparently my mother, nailed my experiences to a T also.  But I still didn't know about CPTSD until recently.

Someone mentioned cptsd online that I was talking to and I never heard of it, so I looked it up and couldn't believe my eyes.  I came to out of the storm and found some reading material and quickly learned more.  I read Pete Walker's book CPTSD from Surviving to Thriving and felt like for the first time someone was speaking directly to my emotional self.  I am so relieved after all these years to discover what I've suffered with, as well as happy to have the tools to be able to heal form it. 

I have a lot to post on this topic in conjunction with my own experiences, but I'll leave this here for now.  I am just relieved to know that I can heal, but that it is a life long process.  Also, I'm happy to learn that what happened to me during my upbringing was not my fault, and that I am not crazy. 

Blessings,

Justin

Hi this is my first post in this support group.  I am a single 31 year old male and have been struggling with trauma and abuse my whole life living in a broken home with consistent domestic violence, but also with a mother who has some kind of personality disorder.  For those who don't know what it's like growing up with and dealing with someone with a personality disorder it is difficult to describe in a way that will convey the full experience, but rest assured it can be like *. 

That is why I was so thankful to have initially discovered out of the fog.  The symptoms described both of the person with a personality disorder and of the ones dealing with someone with a personality disorder were spot on.  What was more troubling for me, however, was that I have been going to different therapists, doctors and healers since I was 6 years old and none of them ever said anything about personality disorders or could see how withdrawn and in pain I was from the constant chaos and emotional and psychological abuse I endured as a child. 

It can make you feel completely alone and that you are crazy.  After all if your own family and mother try to make you think that their behavior is normal and ok and if doctors and therapists can't seem to spot what's going on or address the real issues, what is one supposed to do?  I lived and continue to live in something of a painful black hole where it's difficult for me to really connect with others in a genuine way. 

Through all my searching and interest in healing I only recently discovered the concept of complex post traumatic stress disorder.  And when I read the symptoms I had this liberating feeling of relief that said oh my God that's me.  One of my issues as a result of dealing with this is avoidance to the point where I don't really have a social life, I don't have a girlfriend or significant other, and my job is actually at night where I don't have to interact with too many people.  For so long I felt so bad that I simply had a social anxiety disorder, but I have since come to realize that for me it's more like my brain has linked people and human beings to intense pain and my nervous system is so overloaded and fried that that is the real reason it's difficult for me to be around people for too long.

Those who have dealt with abuse from someone with a personality disorder or something similar know that abuse and being attacked can come out of nowhere and for no reason at all.  You might try to constantly be on your best behavior and do and say all the right things to try to prevent being attacked or abused but it never seems to work.  And when the attacks are random and your brain really has no idea what causes the attacks and the abuse, it creates a situation in your mind where you might possibly be under threat of attack from anyone from any place at any time.  It is an extremely painful way to go through life, and being by myself and in my own thoughts gives my nervous system a break from the anxiety that I'm going to be attacked at any time for any reason. 

At this point I am learning to trust my own inner voice again and work on having self compassion with myself.  That yes I need to move on with my life, but the first and foremost important consideration for me is healing in a true and genuine way.  It's amazing to me how many people say things like, well you've just got to move on or don't blame your parents, all the while the pain and years of conditioning that you've endured is still with you.  The pain and the behavior patterns must be acknowledged and adequately healed in order to move on in a real way.  Otherwise people will 'move on' but with sort of suppressing their feelings and take on other unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

Coming this far and learning of this condition of cptsd is such a massive relief to me.  Many times I have struggled with suicidal thoughts due to the amount of pain I was in, the fact that I essentially have no family or support system as they are all toxic and abusive, and that it seemed like no matter where I turned in the mental health community no one was able to spot what was going on with me.  What is a person to do?  And honestly I'd really like to know why emotional and psychological trauma isn't more of the core focus in the mental health field rather than so called 'chemical imbalances'.  I've had doctors and other therapists try to diagnose me with different things and give me medication for it and not one of those medications ever made me feel better in the least, only made me feel numb or worse.  I believe the reason is because I am dealing with an intense stress disorder and not a chemical imbalance. 

Anyway, thanks for reading this and listening to my brief story.  I really would like to connect with as many people as I can here as I'm sure many of us understand and can relate to each other in some form or fashion and I'd really like to heal coupled with finding new friends and connections with people who really understand me.  Thank you.