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So today I was doing a relaxation meditation. It was really relaxing and helpful but suddenly at the end, I woke up from dozing & remembered something new. From a long time ago. I am new to the forum and recently posted about some of the experiences I have had & whether they might be "bad enough" to cause c-ptsd. Anyway I just remembered something else. When I was in Year 11 (and I think the end of year 10 too) a 21 year old man "made friends" with me and my girlfriends. He used to take us out in his car, which impressed us as we weren't old enough to drive. He drove us to the beach and we got burgers and stuff. Anyway I thought he was my "friend" and gradually we spent more time alone in his car. I know he also spent time alone with another girl who was 14. I remember my mum saying he was a pedophile (yet she didn't stop me from going out in his car, just screamed this at me one day when I got home). Turns out I think she was right as I just remembered some stuff from those late night "drives" with him. Not full sexual intercourse but some other stuff. Maybe I was groomed? I'm not sure how old I was but I am thinking this happened from age 15-16. Maybe a "grey area" as the age of consent here is 16. Weird that I blocked this until now. I remember now how wrong and disgusting it felt at the time.

Does anyone else struggle with emotional flashbacks when they feel pressured to spend time with family? I think it happens to me whenever I make plans to see my mother and/or siblings. I posted on here for the first time the other day alluding to how I am realising now that I was emotionally neglected and perhaps abused by my mother. My whole family feels like a complicated, toxic mess at times. But they want contact with me. Sometimes I make excuses but other times I arrange to see them but when it comes to it I just can't go, so I usually cancel the day before. This afternoon I just cancelled a lunch with them and my brother sent me a horrible text, basically saying "what a surprise, have a nice life...", like he has had enough. I was already feeling so hyper-vigilant and anxious, which is why I politely and apologetically cancelled the plans (I didn't tell them why though). Reading that text from my brother left me suddenly feeling like I am the problem and the emotions bubbling inside me also contained SO MUCH rage. The feeling is so intense that I often end up thinking/saying "I just want to die" and getting into an argument with my boyfriend. In times like this I feel so helpless and like the emotions in my body are unbearable. I could just explode. Eventually it passes and gives way to numbness and exhaustion. It can take me days to get back on track sometimes as I feel so out of it and drained. Is this an EF?

Hi, I'm just learning about C-PTSD and am new here. I came across some stuff on C-PTSD online yesterday after googling how I was feeling . Yesterday afternoon I was full of rage, despair, emptiness and self-loathing that was triggered by something minor - my boyfriend inviting his family around at short notice when I was feeling low, without asking me first. We ended up in a huge argument because I got so stressed about them coming around and he ended up saying "You don't like people" and for some reason that pressed all my buttons and my inner thoughts about how I am a "freak" who belongs nowhere. I felt like a hurt and angry child and behaved that way too. I am ashamed and exhausted today and not even able to go to work as I feel so weird and drained.

Some of my experiences are below - could they be enough to trigger C-PTSD? They don't seem that bad to me but I can relate to the symptoms so any thoughts/advice welcome...

I don't consider myself as being abused as a child. I was smacked when I was naughty (this was "normal" in the late 80s/early 90s I guess) and I always felt that there was something wrong with me as my mum always called me "drama queen" or "prima donna" in an unkind way. My parents both had difficult childhoods (my Dad was physically and emotionally abused and neglected) and had their own issues, I think my mum was very distracted by the issues in their relationship throughout my childhood. My parents were inappropriate in their language and I remember my Dad calling my brother a "little c**t" when my brother broke his foot at an activity centre. I also remember my mum saying to my sister that she was a "fat cow". But overall they were okay and probably seemed "normal" to others. I was never sexually abused or anything. My mum hit me in the face once when I was 15  (albeit so hard I saw stars) but it was because I was home late and I think she saw me as "acting out" as when I got home all my belongings were in trash bags/bin bags and she hit me in the face. But she was immediately sorry and I wasn't thrown out of the house or anything, I think she was just angry. She developed a drinking problem and anger issues after my Dad left her when I was 14. She used to share inappropriate stuff with me around that time (like about how my Dad had an STD). I found out around that time that my Dad also had a secret child, who was 2 years old, a result of an affair. My Mum really struggled at this time, she managed to work but she drank a lot of red wine in the evenings and used to fly into rages about the smallest thing. She would barge into my room screaming when I was sleeping because she couldn't find a hairbrush for example. I remember feeling anxious a lot and her footsteps would make me panic as sometimes she would look so full of rage. Anyway soon after that our house flooded (twice in a row) and we lost everything. The water was up to my waist. All memories, clothes, photo albums destroyed. This didn't help my Mum at all and my Dad was out of the picture for the most part then, busy with his new son. We moved a lot. I started smoking weed all the time. I didn't go to school and used to get bronchitis as I smoked all day, but nobody seemed to notice. I hung around with "troublemakers". A 17 year old boy had sex with me when I was 15 (I wasn't expecting it as I had gone to sleep upstairs by myself after drinking too much) and I can only remember tiny parts of that. I developed anorexia a few years later. I was in serious car accident (the car rolled on to its roof) and ended up with whiplash. Then I developed a cocaine addiction in addition to worsening anorexia at uni. I started getting severe episodes of depression then. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship  for 18 months with a very controlling and angry guy when I was 23. He used to say horrible things like "you are beautiful on the outside but disgusting on the inside" and he would hack my emails and accuse me of cheating on him and other things all the time, even though I wasn't. Luckily his visa expired and he had to leave the country and this led to us breaking up! After that I was still troubled but things were okay. Then one of my boyfriends forced me to have sex with him and that affected me a lot although at the time I didn't see it as rape. There are probably other things in my life I could mention but those are the things that spring to mind right now!

Now in my early thirties I really struggle in my relationships. I have frequent depressive episodes and feel anxious a lot. I get migraines and neck pain. My relationship with my mum is complex and I find it easier not to have contact with her, but she finds this too hard so I try to see her occasionally (once or twice a year). I actually get on very well with my Dad as he has taken responsibility for his mistakes and has been a good father to me in recent years, even though he wasn't when I was a child. I often feel different from other people and I always end up isolating myself. I don't have anyone to turn to when I feel like this, I have a few close female friends but I don't really turn to them when I feel low. To be honest most of the time I only see my boyfriend and his family every two weeks. In my job I am able to emotionally support others yet secretly in my own personal life there is a lot of loneliness and struggle. My boyfriend doesn't really "get" why I don't like being around his family all the time but the whole concept of family is a pretty weird one for me. His family are very civilised and never talk of emotions  (very different to my background) and meet for family dinners weekly. I know I should be grateful that they want to include me, but I find it difficult to cope with and often feel "judged", even though that may not be the case. So like yesterday I get very anxious about "family time" especially if it's unexpected and I am having  a bad day mood-wise. My boyfriend gets frustrated and I understand why - I guess it's "normal" to spend time with family and I don't want to stop him from enjoying this. His family should be able to come to our house without giving much notice, I feel like I am the problem here, why do I get so anxious? I feel like there is something wrong with me.

Wow, reading this back it's like a stream of consciousness! I suppose I want to know whether I am just being melodramatic (a "drama queen" as my Mum would say!) or whether it is possible that I could suffer from C-PTSD? Even thought I was never abused.

P.S I posted this in the "childhood" C-PTSD section as my problems seem to stem from childhood events, I hope that's right.