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Topics - flyingfree

#1
Hi all,

After being single for a couple of years I've recently got into a new relationship. The man I'm dating is lovely - kind, caring, sensitive. He knows about my c-ptsd stuff and isn't put off by it.
The problem is that I am finding being in a new relationship triggering. I've been having EF's to my relationship with my ex partner who was emotionally abusive. I was with him for 5 years, but the first year was the worst in terms of the amount of abuse he inflicted on me. Now that I'm in that new phase with someone else, I'm being reminded of that new phase with my ex and all the traumatic stuff that happened. I don't think I realised how much it had traumatised me until now. I did talk to my counsellor about it and she said that it's a matter of slowly learning to trust and replacing the bad memories with good ones. She also told me to ground myself by remembering how good I feel around my new partner. This advice was good and grounding myself has been helping, but lately I've been having anxiety about the past which I think is an EF.

My current man has admitted to me recently that he's struggling with some issues from his past (not FOO but some bad experiences) and he is looking into counselling for it. As a result he gets a little down sometimes. That's not a problem for me as I'm happy to be there for him, and about 90% of the time he is fine. We still have lots of fun together and really enjoy each others' company, so it's not having a huge effect, and he certainly doesn't take it out on me. This weekend we're going away on a well deserved break and I'm looking forward to it, but triggers galore....

My ex partner, in the first year of our relationship, became badly depressed and did take it all out on me - rages, silent treatments, basically just terrible behaviour that left me walking on eggshells. We went on a holiday together and he spent the entire time emotionally abusing me and being absolutely horrendous to me. I was his captive audience, basically, and there was 'no escape'.

I know logically that my new man wouldn't treat me like this, but I'm scared all the same. I know it's an EF in the sense that I'm being reminded of all the emotions I felt when I was with my ex. I just don't know how to conquer this. I don't want to screw this relationship up because of the past, and I'm a little fearful of telling my new guy about all this stuff too because I basically have this idea that if I share too much, he'll be like 'oh god, she's a headcase' and run. ugh.

Thoughts? Similar experiences?
#2
I've had some peace from EF's for a while...I went through a really good period, probably a couple of months, where I was doing very well and didn't seem to have any EF's at all.

Over the xmas period I had a hoover from NM in a xmas card delivered by enDad. I read the note, put it away and duly ignored it for most of my holiday break (about 3 weeks).
Then I had a counselling session about it and realised how much I felt about it - including guilt. I was pretty gutted but still felt alright afterwards.
In addition to this, I got a new social media account (not FB) and my PDex almost immediately started following me. This freaked me out and I blocked him. I have him blocked on every other medium possible (FB, Twitter, emails) and it didn't even occur to me that he would be on this other one.

Anyway...once I started back at work, I had more time to think, and an old symptom came back - vivid dreams, about my FOO and about my ex. I started to feel worse and worse. I had a partcularly bad one a couple of days ago, and it sent me into a tailspin. Basically, I got to work, felt like I was totally exhausted/zombie, then decided to borrow an absent coworker's office for the day because I couldn't cope being around people.
Then this woman at work who has it in for me started grilling me about a minor mistake I made and insinuated I had used a work entitlement for personal purposes. This upset me immensely, I dealt with it calmly (gave her the info needed, then forwarded the email thread onto my manager, who was taken aback at her behaviour), then spent the rest of the day in high anxiety, scared I'd run into her or she'd accuse me outright of fraudulent behaviour.

I had a weird run in with a stressed out friend/coworker, which shot me into the anxiety stratosphere. I drank in the evening to alleviate the anxiety, but....it was only a temporary fix and I was a mess this morning. Then realised duh...the extreme feeling of emotions flooding my body was probably an EF, triggered by the dream, then worsened by the work and friend triggers.

I'm now back in the absent coworkers office, after telling work friend what is going on and explaining why I'm isolating myself. She was supportive and offered to hang out with me over the weekend if I need distraction. I had a bit of a cry over the hoover and the associated feelings.

I feel calmer now, but the thought of being around any of my work colleagues still freaks me out, and I'm having waves of nausea. I think the realisation that there have been quite a few minor triggers which have 'set me off' but I failed to deal with them at the time...and now I'm in this place of out of control anxiety and emotions. I hate this so much; it's like my brain is a prison.

The only comfort I have is when I'm feeling better, I'll look back at this and think 'it's ok flyingfree, you always come out of it'.

Sorry for the brain dump. I just desperately needed to share in a group that understands.
#3
Since going NC with NM, I have been having dreams every single night, either about my dysfunctional family, or specifically about NM. Some of these are straight up nightmares; other times, they are just dreams about my situation (ie. not being able to attend family events because of NC with NM, past situations showing the dynamics of Nfamily).

Often the nightmares are an old trauma re-playing, but me having reactions true to who I am now (ie. becoming angry, standing up for myself, seeing the injustice in the situation). Either way they're traumatic and I usually wake up and have to have a big cry, either then or if I have to get up, later in the day.

Last night I had dreams throughout the night; I remember at one point waking up and I was shaking violently for some reason. Unfortunately I don't remember the content of the dream. I wasn't cold or anything, just quivering. I then fell asleep, dreamt some more about NM trying to violate my NC (common theme of my dreams lately, which is weird because she has dropped me like a hot potato since NC), then woke up again.

Anyway...this is doing my head in a bit. It's tiring and it's making me very emotional. I can see the good in it - that I am processing trauma and grieving it - but I really want just one night of really good sleep. Has anyone experienced this? Does it ever get better??

#4
RE - Re-experiencing Trauma / Toxic Shame and EF's
June 18, 2015, 11:49:19 PM
I got hit with a whopper of an EF yesterday due to a work situation. It fired up that old 'failure' schema, and threw me back in time to when I was around 16 years old and feeling totally hopeless and useless, emotionally neglected and abandoned by my parents, and completely overwhelmed by trying to cope with everything on my own.

Some of the thoughts that came up were

'You're a failure.'
'You're useless.'
'You're weak.'
'You will never find anyone to love you.'

I think the strongest feeling though, was what Pete Walker describes as 'Toxic Shame'. I felt like I was revolting, disgusting, worthless, a nothing, and I had this urge to isolate myself and just curl into a ball and cry. Before that, I didn't know what to 'name' that emotion. Now I know what it is.

It's quite frightening, to feel so out of control. I think the worst thing is, I knew it was a flashback, but the emotions were still all there, trying to rule me. It was quite hard to fight that, to ignore my vicious inner critic which was telling me all of those things above and more.

Just thought I'd share....
#5
My c-ptsd symptoms had eased up a bit, but now I seem to be getting 'worse' again.

A couple of things. Firstly, my PDex and I broke up around a year ago. I am NC with him, but recently he tried to contact me, yet again (he did so through an avenue I hadn't even thought of to block). It's just so frustrating...he treated me so badly, cheated on me, and made what could have been a kind-of amicable breakup into a nightmare. I just can't believe he still seems to think we can be 'friends'.

I'm having some really bad flashbacks to the emotional abuse that he inflicted on me and a lot of anger about it too. Partly angry at him, partly angry at NM because her abuse groomed me to end up with a man like that. And partly me, for being 'weak' and going back to him after we broke up due to the abuse, because I couldn't bear to be alone.

I just got a warning for calling him a name on OOTF forum, and that upset me a lot too. I feel so embarrassed about it, not realising it was a breach of guidelines. I'm just so angry at him and unfortunately I am a 'sweary' person so it just came out.

In addition to that, today I got feedback on a piece of work at my job, and I just have so much to change and fix on it. It's SO frustrating. It's just triggering my rage, and worse, that feeling that I'm useless at everything. I think I'm in a bit of an EF, one where I feel like I'm useless and can't do anything right. And while this job thing is frustrating, the level of rage I feel is off the charts about it.

I just get these feelings like, what do I do with all of this? How do I ever heal from all of this? The abuse that my NM inflicted? the consequences in the form of the relationship with my ex?

And worse, I feel like I'm behaving pathetically, like a victim. I don't want to feel this way.
#6
Lately I've been having very vivid dreams, annoyingly so (I feel like I'm not getting rest). Sometimes they're about work, sometimes about my PDex (who I don't generally think about during the day??), and sometimes about my NM/Dysfunctional FOO.

In addition to this, lately I've been having the worst feeling of waking up in the early hours - between 3 and 5am - feeling absolutely terrified, scared and alone, with this sick, scared feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's awful. It's not always related to the dreams I'm having (to my knowledge) as I don't dream every night. It just seems to be happening. I have to calm myself and cuddle a soft toy, etc. to get back to sleep. The feeling isn't related to my current life, that's for sure. It's definitely something from the past rearing up.

I'm guessing it's some kind of EF, but I don't know why it's hitting me at that particular time, or why i'm waking up then....

Anyone else had a similar thing happen??
#7
Hi all,

My diagnosis of C-PTSD is quite recent so I think I'm being a bit impatient here but...

I feel like I'm basically struggling to survive some days, then other days I'm ok. Does anyone else experience this? Yesterday, the day after a heavy T session, my whole body felt like it was shutting down. I woke up and my body just felt heavy and sluggish. My eyes were burning. I was walking to work and my legs felt like lead. I was half-asleep all day, barely able to function. I should have just stayed home, but I thought once I had a coffee it would pass. But no amount of coffee, sugar, anything would make me feel better. I honestly felt like I was struggling to even function.

Today, I woke up and I felt ok. My focus is off, but compared to yesterday, I feel so much better. But, even on a good day, it's still a struggle. It's like my mind can only cope with so much, then it's like 'nope' and I switch off.

In addition to this, my memory is shot. I actually can't remember anything about Monday at all. It's bizarre. It's like that day didn't even happen. I have this problem with my childhood memories (huge blanks) but this is the first time that I've had days in recent memory seemingly disappear out of my brain as if they didn't exist. It's kind of scary.

I'm sure this will get better, but it's frustrating as * right now. The only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that this is necessary for my healing.
#8
Employment / C-PTSD affecting my job performance
May 14, 2015, 09:39:59 AM
So today I got feedback on a piece of work I handed in (a draft). Both my manager and my project manager are aware I'm dealing with issues with my family, although I haven't said anything about C-PTSD because I really don't think that technical word is going to help to explain. I have explained how badly I'm struggling to focus and how emotionally exhausted I am. Things have been much worse in the last few months, particularly the last month. The stress of trying to get the piece of work done pushed me over the edge, it was like I was coping before but now it's all just too much.

Anyway...basically, I'm really behind on where I should be. I spent the rest of the day locked in a meeting room on my own (at my own volition), doing planning work and struggling not to cry. I unfortunately dissolved into tears in the afternoon. All I could think is 'this is not me. I don't do crap work. This isn't me!'

I feel terrible. So embarrassed, guilty and humiliated. This is the first project of this kind I have done, and I want to prove myself. How the * do I do that when I feel like I'm wading through mud every day, trying to keep my head above water on others? And worse, I'm terrified they think I'm making it up or using it as an excuse for pissing around. But...this is me. I'm not like this normally. I have a master's degree. I'm a hard worker. Yet...I'm handing in work that isn't at all good enough.

Has anyone else had C-PTSD badly affect their job performance? What is your advice (aside from taking leave, which I don't want to do and will be difficult to do?)?
#9
I'm a poster over at OOTF. Initially I didn't think that C-PTSD applied to me, but as I've spent more time in counselling and have gone through the process of coming OOTF and also trying to exercise boundaries, it's come to light that I am suffering from some elements of C-PTSD.

I grew up with a covert narcissistic mother and enabling, workaholic absent father. I am still in contact with them, although I am LC/VLC with my NM as she is still abusive.

Her abuse was mainly emotional, although there were elements of physical abuse at times. I was emotionally parentified by my NM and forced to take on a 'spouse' type role from an early age. Counsellor, agony aunt, companion, and scapegoat all rolled into one. I feel like my childhood was robbed from me due to this. I feel like I was invisible, unless I was of use to her.

Family roles did move about a bit, but I was the scapegoat most of the time, and am currently a scapegoat to my NM. I have a GCbrother and my NM also sees my SIL as a GC and probably the 'daughter I never had'. She rubs her relationship with GCSIL in my face to try and make me jealous and get a reaction from me.

The main issues in my childhood were neglect and emotional abandonment. I feel like the most accurate descriptor would be to say that 'I wanted for nothing except for love, attention and acceptance for who I am, not what I do'. Generally, the only way to get attention was through achievements, so I have always been a high achiever.

I think the dawning realisation that I had C-PTSD was when I told my counsellor that I can't remember large patches of my childhood.
Then we talked about how some situations in my life seem to trigger off strong emotional reactions - terror, anger, sadness, feelings of intense rejection and abandoment, a desire to run away and hide. I now realise these are EF's.
I also 'zone out' easily - disassociation. I can lose hours in a day just staring into space, or lost in a dreamworld.

I'm currently going through a really rough patch, trying to process the reality of my neglectful, abusive childhood. I feel like it's taking all of my energy to fight through this every day.