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Thank you very much. That's a very good description for my boss, haha...narc.

Thank you, it is good to have this community and reminder that the diagnosis is valid.

I'm trying to find a therapist.

I contacted one and asked them if they have experience working with Complex PTSD/CPTSD. They responded that they didn't know what I meant because CPTSD "doesn't actually qualify as a diagnosis."

Feeling very invalidated and concerned. A doctor diagnosed me already, so I know she's wrong.

I can definitely relate to this.

Even though I have two degrees, three internships, and two certifications, the last time I got a raise I felt like I didn't deserve it, it was too much and soon they would figure out that I wasn't worth it. I went through a whole period where I was struggling with imposter syndrome at work. Every time I would get promoted, I would feel like I had to work that much harder to prove that I was worth the promotion. But it's silly because they didn't promote me based solely on what they thought I would do in the future, they promoted me based on what I had done in the past and how I had proven to be worthy.

I had the same problem in school. Whenever I would finish a year of school, even if I got straight As, I would think to myself, this is temporary, this year was just unusually easy and next year the real work begins. It will be twice as hard, three times as hard, four times as hard and you will fail. I convinced myself that the level of difficulty in life just always, constantly increases and eventually I would reach my maximum ability.

Well, it's been almost 15 years since I entered the professional world, and my predictions/self-sabotage haven't come true. I think for me, it had a lot to do with my fears of what other people are thinking and that I can't trust them. I felt that people only said nice things and promoted me because they were nice, and it wasn't a reflection of my abilities. I didn't trust them to be honest with me about whether or not I was a good performer. If I got a good performance review, I thought it was because the manager just didn't have the guts to give me real, candid feedback.

But after going to support group for awhile and getting therapy, my eyes started to open to the things I was saying to myself, the voices in my head. I started to notice more that I was actually capable, and sometimes more capable than those around me, and that's why I got promoted or got raises. I'm still afraid of failing, afraid that it's all a house of cards and I'll knock it down somehow. But at least, like 60% of the time, I can suppress those voices.

I just want to preface this post with - I hope it doesn't make anyone think I'm ungrateful for having a job. I was talking to a friend recently who has bipolar disorder, and how we both hold full-time jobs and feel like we're odd because we're able to do this. Like "high functioning" or whatever, which is not really a good term. Neither of us feel comfortable talking in our local support groups about the challenges we face at work because our jobs are different from those around us. In the sexual assault support groups I've gone to, usually the majority of attendees were recently raped and are going through crisis. As a result, they often are struggling to hold a job or have taken measures to postpone work like FMLA or leaving work and finding temporary housing, and that kind of thing. For my friend and I, it feels selfish to talk about our work problems in front of people who maybe can't or don't have a job at the moment.

Now that that's said...

I've been having a really hard time with triggers at work lately. Because of the things I've learned about boundaries since going to therapy and support group, I know that my boss has horrible boundaries and is narcissistic and abusive. My workplace is toxic and I hate it, but I need my job. I'm the sole breadwinner, so it's not an option to quit unless I have another offer elsewhere.

My boss really messes with my mind, they are one of those bosses who will systematically destroy you if you get on their wrong side. I once had a conversation with them in which they gossiped about 14 separate individuals in the span of 2 hours. I've always had extremely strong ethics and one of my core values is honesty and truth. Someone like this who is two-faced and who I can't trust just really puts my entire core self on edge. Being on edge 24/7 for the last 2 years has seriously harmed my mental health and the progress I was making in my healing journey before I took this job.

I feel like maybe I could cope with the triggers of professional life if I wasn't constantly scraping the bottom of my mental health barrel because of this boss. For example, I work in development and they frequently use the word "grooming" to describe the process they follow in a recurring meeting. I hate this. I seriously have tried so many times to explain to them that the word is not right, it doesn't mean what they want it to mean, and even the organization they got the word from admitted the mistake and chose a different word ("refinement"). But despite that, everyone just loves to use this word. Every time I hear it I'm reminded of what I experienced and my FOO and abuser. These constant reminders of abuse make it so hard to focus on work.

To make matters worse, I work with mostly men, and mostly disrespectful, aggressive and sexist men. I have had to grow a really thick skin while working here because I'm a manager, so I have to protect my team, stand up for myself and them, and also manage men who poor performers in my own team.

Sometimes I think maybe I'm just not cut out for the job I'm doing. I want to change careers but I have no idea what I want to do or what I'm qualified to do besides what I'm already doing. I feel trapped and hopeless and helpless.

When I realised in my 30's I'd never heal fast enough to be able to have children, I felt robbed then. It's not that I desperately wanted children, but I realised the after-effects of cptsd from childhood meant that having children wouldn't even be an option.

Sometimes when I'm triggered, I sort of recreate what was done to me (to myself - nobody else involved) and that's the extent of sexual activity. I suppose libido gets in there. Tbh there are lots of words about sex, anatomy etc that I should know but I always forget what they mean or don't bother to find out. Whole topic is kind of a blank.

Gosh I relate to this so much. I knew from very early on that I never wanted kids, but it wasn't until I got older that I realized *why* I didn't want kids, that it was largely due to my CPTSD. It was the physical pain and the fear of pain and trauma, that I didn't want to hurt my kids if I had them, fear of being just like my abuser, fear that "if you've been abused you will abuse in turn" as they say, that even if I could get up the courage to go through pregnancy and childbirth, I couldn't power through the pain of sex anyway. When I realized that my trauma had robbed me of my own childhood as well as the desire to have a family, I definitely felt robbed.

For a long time my thoughts during any kind of intimacy were of the trauma and my worst fears. I think that when we are exposed so young, the only version of sex we know is the abuse and unhealthy sex. How can we fantasize about anything other than abuse? How can we control our body's reactions when we were conditioned and never knew another way of responding? I rarely fantasize about those things anymore, but I also rarely think about sex aside from worrying that I'll never have it. It helped me to read the book "Beginning to Heal" and to start reading "The Courage to Heal" because they explained how we shouldn't feel guilty about these kinds of coping mechanisms and the way our body responds. It didn't solve my problems, but I don't feel guilty about what I think about if I do think about sex anymore.

Very sorry to hear what you're going through LKC. It is really hard to be trying to get better and have your spouse not seem committed or confident that you can do it. I have had this problem too sometimes. I've had to tell my husband that there are times when I don't actually want him to be "honest" or to try to fix the problem, I just want to know someone is there and doesn't judge me. I just want him to say he understands, it will be okay, and he loves me. Setting some boundaries around challenging stuff helps me. I go to sexual assault support group every week and I'm emotionally exhausted every time. At first, if I would come home crying, my husband would be really worried and question if group was really a good thing for me, but he didn't understand what I was going through and why. After doing this for years and having marriage counseling, we've kind of learned some better communication. We still have a ways to go. Now when I come home, he waits for me to approach him if I want a hug or want to talk, he has dinner ready, he doesn't put any pressure on me, and we always eat ice cream.

I have thought about trying EMDR but haven't done it yet because I'm afraid I will react the same as you and many others have. I know though that you are normal and what you are experiencing is normal. I think it would be good if your husband was willing to try marriage counseling, if that's something you wanted to do together. It helped my husband a lot to understand what I was going through. One of the challenges of CPTSD is that you tend to hold it all inside and not share what's going on in your head. I'm a very private person, even with my husband. Marriage counseling brought us closer.

He also read a book for partners of CSA survivors, don't know if that's relevant for you.

Thank you everyone. It means a lot to me to know that at least a few people out there understand and I'm not going crazy. I haven't tried any physical therapy/sex therapy because I'm afraid it might traumatize me even more. I've heard stories about what the therapy entails and the idea of ever increasing sizes of therapeutic devices just makes me want to run away and hide forever. I also used to have to use some treatments for the lichen sclerosus, and seems to have put me in remission for now. The vulvodynia and pain was so bad that having a period was traumatic for me every single month. The severe pain coupled with my own trauma, I hated my body and life for that. I finally got a Mirena and it has helped significantly with that. I do still have nightmares sometimes about when the Mirena will stop being effective.

I feel similar to woodsgnome, I feel robbed of this aspect of my life sometimes. I feel like I'm in a glass house watching the whole world love sex and think it's this amazing awesome thing, and I just don't get it. It's like when everyone is in on an inside joke, and I'm the only one who doesn't get the joke, you know?

All I can do is keep focusing on my recovery in every other way besides sex and hope that maybe, someday, the sex will follow the rest of my healing.

Hi,

I have childhood amnesia to about age 12. From age 12 I have vivid memories of abuse. The abuser admitted the abuse before I cut off all contact, and my mom confirmed it started before age 12, but I have no ability to recall what happened, just severe body reactions. I have been going to a sexual assault support group for the last 2 months, and I went to another group for 2 years in the past.

I feel like in support groups, the one thing no one ever relates to me about is sex. In the groups I've gone to, many of the women are there for rape or DV that occurred in adulthood, and not for CSA. Many of them remember a time when sex was good. Many of them still have sex or want to have sex again and have a healthy libido.

I have never had penetrative sex in my accessible memory. I can't speak for before age 12, and I suspect that I was raped as a child in those years, and that the trauma was so severe I dissociated and that's why I can't remember my life. I don't know though.

But I feel pathetic. I've been married for 7 years and my husband is so sweet and supportive, but we've never had sex. I can't imagine how hard it is for him, but I have 0 interest in sex. I feel like I'm asexual. I feel like something is wrong with me. I've had doctors do tests and hormonally everything is normal. I have vulvodynia/vaginismus and lichen sclerosus though, and these cause me constant pain and make penetrative sex impossible even if I had libido.

I guess the point of me sharing all this is...am I the only one? I feel crazy.  I frequently look at my future and I don't see how I'll ever be able to have sex and I fear that a sexless marriage for the rest of our lives would drive my husband to divorce me eventually. How can anyone ask that of another person who is perfectly healthy sexually?

Do any of you have no interest in sex? Do you remember ever enjoying sex?

Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS Truus, glad you found your way here     

You mentioned being diagnosed with CPTSD, are you in treatment?

Thank you. I had been getting therapy for 3 years but relocated to another state and haven't found a new therapist since I got here about a year and a half ago. I have been going to a support group locally though for the last two months.

Now I understand what is meant by developing CPTSD in childhood or adulthood. For me, it was childhood. I didn't know it was CPTSD when I was going through the abuse throughout childhood, and when I got older I started to develop more and more symptoms like panic attacks and flashbacks and increasing isolation.

Hi,

I found this website and forum recently. I'm joining because I'm tired of feeling alone. I don't know where I'm at in healing, or how to move forward. I'm diagnosed CPTSD, severe depression, and generalized anxiety.

I've had ups and downs in dealing with my trauma. Right now I think I'm in a down. Just feel lately like there isn't any hope to solve some of my deeper issues, especially with some of the symptoms of CPTSD like memory loss and dissociation. It's like how do you fix things you can't even remember?

How do you know if you developed CPTSD in childhood or adulthood? This forum mentions this distinction.