Topics

I joined the forum a while back and then I became pretty reclusive for the last few months. I don't have any friends but I always think of this place as a safe place even though I haven't visited in a while. I am making a new commitment to socializing more and that includes being around more. I hope you're all doing well and I'm looking forward to catching up with what's going on here. My heart aches for everyone with this disorder.

I got about halfway through Pete Walker's book when I took a break to read another book, understanding and treating dissociative disorders. I'm sort of at a standstill in that book for one reason and another. So just visiting here again remind me maybe it's a good time to go and finish Pete's book.

About 2 months ago I started taking an antipsychotic which helps a lot with my depersonalization disorder. But then it took me awhile to realize it also made me super depressed and I missed the connection for a while. So now I have stopped taking the anti psychotic and my depersonalization and anxiety is through the roof. But I'm not nearly as depressed so that's a good thing. I see the doctor in a couple weeks and I hope she will try a different antipsychotic which will help me with my DP hopefully.

In the meanwhile I'm just trying to get through this time and not be so terrified. I hope it's still the drug wearing off and I will feel better in a few days. Thank you for having me back again. I am going to try to stay in touch because I really need people. And I hope to be a good citizen of the forum for others also. Cheers

My Dr and I have been trying to formulate the right thing so that I can fall asleep within a few hours and sleep through the night and have fewer nightmares.  The primary problem in my mind is the Nightmares, they will haunt me the whole day because they are very upsetting.

Here's what I'm taking before bed that works **pretty well**:

200mg Gabapentin
1mg Klonapin
2mg Prazosin
50mg Metropolol

Before this, I was taking a LOT of Xanax before bed and I hated doing that; so over the last 5 months we've been trying different things and this works well but I'm pretty groggy for a few hours after I wake up.

I met with her yesterday and she was very excited about a new insomnia med called Belsomra, which works on the "waking up cycle" instead of the "falling asleep cycle."  From what she said, it keeps you from waking up when you get to that stage where you might.  It doesn't make you groggy or stumbly and you can't take too much.

I got some samples and last night I did fall asleep pretty quickly (in about 45 min).  After a few days I'm going to try dropping the Prazosin and/or Gabapentin to see if I can use the Belsomra with fewer things and if I'm more alert and awake the next day.

If anyone else has any experience with sleeping meds I'd love to hear it.  Now that I have something that at least works, I'm going to try to refine it.  I've tried all the Ambien, Lunesta, Triazolam... None of those work.  Anxiety/Beta Blockers have been the only thing that helps.  To me the problem seems like: I can't stop thinking and I keep thinking like a maniac all night long even when I do sleep, which translates into disturbing dreams while I'm sleeping.

Anyone else have sleeping problems?  I'll keep you updated on the Belsomra.  I'm really hopeful about it!

So much has happened since I spent a couple days just reading posts here.  I learned about self-referencing, and spent days practicing it.  I'm also reading PW's book and again, for every new thought I need to talk to myself about it, validate it, like... getting to recognize my inner critic.

So many times I've felt I wanted to share something with you all... and hey, there's a place for that!  So I'm making this journal.  I've done some journaling since I began to recover from chronic dissociation, just notes to myself.  I've thought about a blog and even started one, but I'd rather wait to do that until my thoughts aren't as raw.  This is the perfect place where I don't have to explain CPTSD, I can just talk about it.  Maybe someone will get something out of my ramblings, or be able to provide insight or comments on what's going on in this brain of mine.  Like the guidelines suggest, it will be a place I can return to and see how far I've come.

Just wanted to get it started

ever since I found the forum, I've been reading lots of posts and have an overwhelming feeling that I've been looking for years for you guys, & I finally found you. Like I knew my people were here somewhere, & I visited a lot of other places but I didn't find my people.

I've posted in response to a few threads, but I know I should also be communicating my own issues. I am working on my own issues and I'm in the middle of reading Pete walkers book.  but for so long I've been used to being alone, solving all my problems myself in my own head. I'm not really used to framing them to communicate them to someone else. I don't think it's a trust issue I think its a heavy self-reliance issue? Maybe it's a trust issue. I don't know.

anyway if I seem like I'm giving too much encouragement to others and not asking for enough at any time,  please let me know early if I'm doing anything inappropriate, & I will change. Because I don't ever want to lose you guys. I think what I'm trying to say is I'm having some sort of fear of not doing something I'm supposed to do to make sure that I fit into this community and be a good member of it. Because I can see that you all are like me, & I don't want to do anything wrong.oh boy I'm really rambling.when you long for someone to understand you for as long as I have, and then you find a bunch of people that obviously do, of course you get worried that maybe you will make a mistake or there's something you don't know but you're supposed to, right?alright I'm rapidly descending into self doubt but I'm going to take a leap of faith and post this anyway. Because I think you'll get it.

I think what I'm trying to say it I'm really glad to be here.

Hi all,

I've tried to whittle my story down and it's so long even when edited a lot...  So I'm just going to give a gist and you'll get to know more details as time goes on I'm sure.  I find myself here after checking out a lot of communities and finding that this one seems the most appropriate for me.  Thanks for having me and my heart aches for all of us here in this situation.  I want to give enough information that you know we know we understand where we are coming from.  If it is too much, I apologize in advance.

My mother is borderline.  She confessed something to me when I was 12 and then developed a psychotic delusional thing about me, that I would ruin her life with this information.  The confession was so graphic and horrifying and deadly, that I blocked it.  But she became terrified that I would tell someone.  My dad died when I was 13, and I didn't find out until the day after, no one prepared me and she disallowed us (me, brother, sister) to speak of it.  No service, buried ashes in front yard.  She set out to destroy my life by telling everyone horrible things about me.  Raped at 14, I was told never to tell her about it before I could get the first sentence out.  She treated me horribly for the next 2 years that I lived there, and I was in a trance - fully dissociated and shocked because of these things.  At 16 the day I graduated high school, with no idea this was coming, I came home and everything I owned was on the lawn and the doors were locked.  Thus began my adult life.

I worked, lived in various places, and in the next few years, there was another rape, pregnancy (gave baby up for adoption), drug-induced near death seizure, fire that destroyed where I was living and 3 pets, and some other stuff.  At 18 she told me to go to a lawyer's office to sign some papers and pick up a check for 18 thousand dollars.  I realized years later I signed away my rights to my fathers multi-million dollar estate.  My brother and sister went to college, got advanced degrees, had things like airplanes and trips to Europe, and every opportunity that a person could have.  That my father wanted for all of us.  Meanwhile I barely could afford to feed myself.  Every time we interacted, it ended with her berating me, scorning me, hating me.

I struggled with all the PTSD symptoms, migraines, panic, shame, emotional regulation, etc.  I tried to make sense and win my mother's love back.  I thought she hated me because I had fallen into self-medication and other "sinful" type stuff, I didn't know about all of her horrid past or the role this confession played until recently.  I longed for her to love me again and thought somewhere, on some level she was capable of it.  I know now that she made every effort, willfully to delete me from her family's life and in fact wished somehow I would die to save her from her own miserable * that lives in her head.

Eventually I became no contact.  All I knew is that every time I came back to her, she would s*** on me and it would take months to recover.  I couldn't afford that because I had to survive.  For the past 15 years, I've spoken to her a handful of times.  I have had a successful career and slowly as I learned that people are not all like her, I felt more "normal".  But still unbeknownst to me I was completely dissociated.  I made it work.  I drove a robot (my body) from somewhere inside my head.  It was physically painful and hard to do many things that seemed to come naturally to everyone else.

About 18 months ago she contacted me.  It was a nine-month attempt at a relationship that ended up being the worst interaction with her ever, but my adult self saw for the first time, and my therapist and husband were able to understand for the first time what I lived with.  She gave me false hope that she loved me, and it was very difficult but I tried so hard to make it work. But in the end it turned out that it was all about her.  My brother was getting married, she is very vain, and she contacted me to establish a relationship so that she could say something about me to people who asked at the wedding.  She got me to to meet her in Boston where she was having cosmetic surgery (told me it was medically necessary tho), so she would look beautiful for the wedding.  All the time taking extra care in making sure I never found out about the wedding, because I was not invited to this "secret wedding."  I could write alot about the drama and lies and evil in this whole secret wedding mess, but I won't bother.  In the end, the day after the wedding she told me about it, screamed and yelled at me about how awful I am,  how my daddy would have told her, to tell me to "f*** myself,"  how I hurt her over and over, and disowned a cousin from the family because in a round about way she is the reason I found out.

Through all of this misery we (therapist and I) began to understand her as BPD.  I read the book "Understanding the Borderline Mother."  I was amazed to see my mother described there in perfection.  I read about a girl who had "been dissociated for 12 months while a teenager."  The next day as I was walking to my car from class, I was thinking about this.  I had thought this before and thought it again:  "How could a person feel more disconnected from their body, than they already are?"  The second I thought it the lightbulb came on.  We're not supposed to feel that way.  I stopped and thought, cried out for help, and in a huge wave I personalized.  I couldn't drive, I felt heavy, all the sounds were loud and I felt like I was in a tunnel.  I felt the wind for the first time, my whole body tingled, and I felt as if there was matter in my head (my brain).  It lasted about 1.5 hours.  With the help of my therapist, I repersonalized over the next few weeks, and wrote thousands of entries in a journal about the experience.  It was glorious.  Seeing in 3D, hearing in stereo, feeling my own muscles, I could go on and on.  My older half sister put the missing puzzle piece together when she realized I didn't know about my mom's confession, and told me about it.  Mom had told her too, trying to figure out how to untell me, but my half-sister was so horrified as well that my mother also erased her from her life.

I was in a car accident and had a bad concussion which slowed down my healing for several months.  But now I am doing much better with the depersonalization disorder.  And now I am looking back at my life and reprocessing everything.  It's brutal but it's better than what I was doing before (caught in an existential time-loop of misery).  I have read lots of books and have a new understanding about my mother's illness and my own psychological problems.  I am trying very hard to move on.  I want to THRIVE.  I want to make good of my life, to help people, to be a good wife.  It's hard.  I still have nightmares, sleeping problems, emotional flashbacks.  I have a lot to give, but I need a lot of help too.  From trauma processing - to small things like how to keep my mind on track to clean my house.

From what I've seen there are people like me here and I look forward to getting to know you all better.  I'm so sorry for all you've been through and I know your struggle is monumental.  Thank you for accepting me.  For the first time in my life I am actively seeking out people who are like myself - before I couldn't fathom that anyone was like me.  Nice to meet you.