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It speaks volumes doesn't it that we have 6 pages about physical issues and will likely fill another 5 or more?

I know I am having difficulty accepting that aging is making my body very unhappy and I have a laundry list of things that plague me.  It's especially hard knowing that my CPTSD played a BIG role in this and that medical doctors and mental health practitioners don't seem to get this, at least that's been my experience.

I've written a piece about this for Section III of the anthology we're writing and I'm going to be working on a project with the Complex Trauma SIG in the New Year to get more about Complex Trauma in medical school education if we can.  My son is in year 3 and had one three hour class, that's it.   

It's coming (winter) so thought these amazing pictures might ease the pain a little - https://www.boredpanda.com/winter-wonderland-photography-stanley-aryanto/

[Instructions from Paige the producer]

Hi All:

I had a request from North Carolina University Public Radio for some participants for a podcast they are putting together about Complex PTSD.  It's a great way to spread the word and you can do so anonymously, just include that you are a member of OOTS please.  The instructions are below - seems fairly painless! Recording should be no more than 3 minutes long please.

If you have any questions you can email me at l.herod@yahoo.ca or the producer Paige at pmiranda@unc.edu:

Instructions from Paige the producer

Voice memos can be completely anonymous, folks can use a pseudonym. 

The details are below, but please let me know if I can clarify things further.

Here are the two prompts we have:

1) When did you realize that you had complex PTSD or experienced complex trauma? 
2) What has been one thing that has helped you the most in your healing journey?

To record, we have a virtual mailbox called Speakpipe, and here's the link: https://www.speakpipe.com/msg/s/254474/352/mq2z90ht9cqqbsil

There's an orange "Play" button that has the prompts again and instructions, and then there's an orange "Reply" button to share your response.

We would love to collect all voice memos by next Wednesday, Oct. 18th if possible.

Thank you again for your interest and please let me know if you or any OOTS members have additional questions. 

Warmly,

Paige

So in my group therapy session this week, our T said she has been seeing more about trauma causing "acquired neurodiversity".  I've just started poking around about it but was wondering if anyone had heard this in reference to what happens to our brains due to trauma?

[submitted by Friday, October 6th]

OOTS members are writing a book and we're inviting you to submit your story! We are focusing on bringing our experiences and realities to light as well as educating about Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Complex Relational Trauma Response (CPTSD/CRTR), from the point of view of survivors. The main audience for the book will be survivors and therapists, but will also be helpful for family/friends, medical providers, teachers, and others. Our goal in writing the book is to help survivors recognize that they have experienced trauma and to recognize potential symptoms of CPTSD/CRTR; to encourage survivors to seek out trauma-informed approaches to healing; and to educate mental health and medical providers on symptoms and the need for trauma-informed treatment and care. The book will have three main sections: 1) An anthology or our individual stories, told in our own voices, about the circumstances that led to CPTSD; 2) A section that describes CPTSD and relational trauma and the impact on our lives in terms of symptoms, relationships, and quality of life; and 3) A section that discusses what we need to heal. 

Please note that anything you submit can be anonymous; that is, if you do not want to use your real name you may use your forum name or another pseudonym. However, when submitting your story for consideration, please include your forum name so we know who you are and let us know what name you want to use for publication. 

We especially want to hear from male survivors, survivors from different countries and cultures, and marginalized groups such as BIPOC, disabled people, LBGTQIA+. Our trauma affects all parts of our lives, and that intersectionality deserves to be heard. We'd also like stories from members who developed CPTSD as adults (e.g., due to domestic violence, sexual abuse, etc).

At this time, we are looking for stories of your lived experience of CPTSD for the anthology section of the book: our individual stores, told in our own voices, of how we developed CPTSD. At a later date we will also seek short contributions for the other sections of the book as well. You do not need to submit an individual story to submit contributions to the other sections.

As on the forum, we ask that you do not include swear words or overly graphic details. Due to space limitations, stories should be approximately 1000 to 4000 words in length, and should be submitted by Friday, October 6th. We recognize that writing our trauma stories is a daunting task. If you find it difficult to edit your story to fit the word count guidelines, or to finish by the due date, please reach out to us and we can help provide some editorial suggestions. Above all, be gentle with yourself and take care. 

We will accept any OOTS member's writings, but please be aware the book is in the collection and planning phase, and we will not be able to include all stories due to space. If we do not use your story or a quote from it in the book, you are still welcome to have it published on the OOTS forum in the "Personal Stories" section of the web site if you wish.

Please PM Narc Kiddo or Cactus Flower on the forum if you would like to contribute or have a question. They will give you further information on format, etc. once you make contact.

I belong to ISTSS* and the theme of the convention this year in Nov is "Scalable Strategies to Address the Impact of Trauma Worldwide: Innovations and Implementation" - https://istss.org/am23/home?_zs=fkcmg1&_zl=pBuA9

The ISTSS 39th Annual Meeting will focus on innovative strategies can be used (and scaled up) to address the impact of traumatic stress on mental and physical health. In pursuit of this goal, we seek presentations examining scalable strategies and technological innovations for studying and treating PTSD. Furthermore, we seek presentations that cut across traditional diagnostic categories and adopt dimensional and multiple-levels-of-analysis approaches to understanding trauma-related psychopathology. Additionally, we are interested in research that addresses multimorbidity in the context of trauma. We welcome presentations that speak to the comorbidity of psychological conditions after trauma, as well as to the interplay of mental and physical health after traumatic events.

Hurrah!  My only complaint and it's big is they are still focused on PTSD, but they do tend to lump in Complex Trauma under PTSD (it's an international org but run mostly by Americans and since CPTSD is in the APA DSM under PTSD they are still sticking to it ). Hopefully they will have presenters on CT.

I actually just emailed the new CO-Chairs about this - as in why is this the case and what if anything should we be doing to get CT/CPTSD out there within the org?

*International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

Some really cool ideas from Bored Panda.  https://www.boredpanda.com/genius-design-ideas/

We have just added a section for journals that is private meaning only those I give permission to can see and post in the group.  The reason for this section is that some members are afraid of or are being stalked by their abuser(s), family, etc.  The public journals are not as safe in the sense that an accumulation of information can lead a determined person to recognize someone they are trying to find.  As such, we have this private section.  It is also for members who would feel more comfortable having their journals be more private.

In order to be given permission to join the private section you must have made an introductory post and at least 5 other posts on the forum. This allows me to get a sense of who you are and if it is safe to let you into that section. If you are allowed to join the section and give members reason to feel you are unsafe your access will be taken away.

Please post your request to join the group below. It may take a few days for access to be granted/denied as I will review your forum posts. 

Kizzie

 

Hi Everyone:

In another thread it came up that some members would be more comfortable having their journals in a private section of the forum.  I can set this up if there are some of you that would prefer your journals not to be read by the public. I can then move everything in your journal over to the private section. The only drawback is that you would not get as many responses/feedback.

If you would like me to set this up please let me know in a post below.

Kizzie

One of our members was involved in this book project which was just published: "Holes in Our Hearts: An Anthology of New Mexican Military Related Stories and Poetry".  While it is not focused specifically on trauma, it does include stories and poetry by serving members, veterans and family members that offer a unique look at military life, some of which are understandably traumatic.

Congratulations to Harper O'Connor for being chosen from a large group of stories to be included in the anthology. We are not including Harper's forum name to ensure continued privacy at OOTS, but did want to mark this accomplishment here.   

For more information about the book or to purchase it here are two links - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C6BWYS16/  or  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168378345-holes-in-our-hearts.     

Our trial Zoom group went really well, so much so that we are going to continue meeting indefinitely.  I am posting to find out of any other members on the forum are interested in being a part of another Zoom group. The group size that seems to work best is 8 members.  Our first group met for an hour every two weeks and that has worked well so we are going to continue with this arrangement. We would likely do something along the same lines with the second group but the group can decide if we get another 8 members who want to try it out. 

If you are interested in trying a Zoom group you can add your name here in a post, PM me or email me at l.herod@yahoo.ca. Please let me know where you live and your time zone. 

Kizzie

So in Canada July 1st is a big holiday -- Canada Day -- with parades and fireworks and so on. This year we got much more than we bargained for though. We don't get a lot of tornados here, but yesterday we got a pretty good one and very close to us. Fortunately we live in a rural part of the province so it mostly took out crops, some livestock and a few farm houses. Could have been way worse as it was really close to our town and two others as it made its way across the prairie.  No-one was injured or killed thankfully.  Very grateful it didn't do more damage than it did, especially with everyone outside for the day.  It formed really quickly.

Hi Everyone:  Our upgrade is mostly complete but there are a few glitches here and there that the IT fellow is fixing.  If you run into any please let me know at l.herod@yahoo.ca.  Please have patience, upgrading and updating always comes with a few bugs.

Tks for your understanding,

Kizzie

Dr. Judith Herman who was the first professional to identify Complex PTSD in her book "Trauma and Recovery" in the 1990's spoke about the power of community in the recovery of survivors.

Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon a feeling of connection with others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts her. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity.

Repeatedly in the testimony of survivors there comes a moment when a sense of connection is restored by another person's unaffected display of generosity. Something in herself that the victim believes to be irretrievably destroyed---faith, decency, courage---is reawakened by an example of common altruism. Mirrored in the actions of others, the survivor recognizes and reclaims a lost part of herself.

We believe this to be true, that we cannot recover or heal in isolation.  It is about belonging when we have never really belonged, of being understood, comforted, supported, all things absent from our lives that help us to deal with the impact of the trauma we experienced and know in the deepest parts of our selves that it was not us, it was what happened to us. 

Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books

In her new book Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice" Judith Herman invites the community and others to simply ask survivors what they want from their abuser and society at large. As per the article "What Should Justice Look Like for Trauma Survivors? Ask Them" , basically it comes down to "Acknowledgment, apology and amends."  Seems simple enough but most of us have not had any of these in our lives. Herman calls for the things we cherish most in our recovery but do not expect to receive.  Maybe it's time we started thinking we can get these for ourselves, that there is a way for others to make amends and repair the harm done to us. 

The effects of trauma are indeed just that—effects of an event [or events]—and as such are causally related to the trauma and not to the harmed individual. .... when psychology and mental health professionals draw that causal path incorrectly, when the field fails to place the dysfunction solidly on the shoulders of individual and societal wrongdoing, survivors of trauma .... end up shouldering the burden. This, in essence, is pathologizing—the assumption that because individuals exhibit certain sets of symptoms, they are themselves disordered.[/i]  From Rosenthal et al, (2016). Deconstructing disorder: An ordered reaction to a disordered environment. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 17(2).  As this article points out, we are not disordered; rather, we sustained lasting psychological and physical injuries due to the abuse/neglect of others.  These symptoms we develop are normal responses to an abnormal situation; that is, the ongoing abuse/neglect we were subjected to.  These responses allowed most, but not all, of us to survive.  It is important to our mental health and to how we are treated by professionals, government, the public and family that we accept this perspective rather than accept blame for our symptoms.

Complex relational trauma survivors, children especially, suffer ongoing abuse/neglect "behind closed doors" by those who do not want their illegal/immoral acts to be seen (e.g., parents, spouses, religious leaders, coaches).  This is different from those who traumatize and abuse/neglect others openly and in groups such as racists, religious persecutors, war makers, political autocrats/dictators.  Because our abuse/neglect is hidden/secret, it is easier to ignore and as a result we are not as well recognized/acknowledged as the very large group we are - complex relational trauma survivors.  As such, funding, research, services and treatment are lacking around the world.  It is why we must open the door and let our trauma be seen so we will be acknowledged by our communities, health services and governments.  It is the only way we will receive the treatment, services and support we all need. We need to take a page from the "#MeToo" movement which has shone a light on sexual abuse taking place behind closed doors and forced awareness of what is a prevalent but unacknowledged problem in society. We can also look to the Vietnam Veterans who organized and made people listen to the pain and suffering they were enduring and through their efforts PTSD was acknowledged and they began to receive the treatment, services and support they need. We must do the same for Complex PTSD.   

So we lost our avatars when the forum was upgraded so we'll have to upload them again.
 

In about two weeks the IT folks from OOTF will be upgrading our site.  They will give me notice of exactly when and I will post a notice on the front page of the forum in red to let everyone know.  It doesn't sound like there will be much if any disruption but I wanted to let you know in case there is.  It sounds like we will be getting a new look and upgraded features (but don't hold me to that  ).

This topic has been moved to Mother's/Father's Day.

https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=15209.0