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You all got me re-thinking my own experiences in school.  Although I have three older sisters, I was terrified of going to kindergarten.  I held onto the chain-link fence that encircled the kindergarten room and would not let go.  My mother ended up dragging me home muttering about what a stubborn brat I was.  I also cried all through grade school.  EVERYTHING made me cry. Teachers had me pegged as "sensitive."  My therapist has suggested I finally felt safe enough to cry when I was at school. 

Because my father was a teacher, it was understood we would do well in school and go on to college.  I can also see though that I have always attempted to be perfect because I believed it would make my borderline mother ok.  She told us that if only we weren't such irresponsible little brats, things would be better and I believed her.  On the other hand, she would accuse us of having "swollen heads" or of being "too big for our breeches" if we did too well at anything.  My sister told me that she threw a race in track in high school because she didn't think she was supposed to win. 

I think teachers should have been a bit suspicious of all my crying.  They might have been.  My first-grade teacher used to stop by our house to chat with my mother.  I just figured it was because she had taught a couple of my other sisters as well.  Now I wonder if she was checking up on things.  I was clothed in hand-me-downs in elementary, but so were the rest of the kids.  But in high school, I think someone should have maybe noticed that I wore the same white shorts and purple sweater and a pair of sneakers with holes worn in the soles all winter.  I did ask my high school English teacher years after I graduated if she had suspected anything amiss.  She said no and she had trained as a social worker, so...
Anyhow, thank you all so much. Your responses have been so helpful to me. 

Thank you all for your responses.  I am taking it all in right now.  I will respond more thoughtfully later, but I wanted to let you all know how much I appreciate you! 

Hi all!

It's been a while since I've been here.  As some of you may recall, I started a master's in education program with a concentration in trauma and resilience in the educational setting.  It is heartening to know that more and more schools are becoming trauma-informed and changing practices.

Through my studies, I am learning about all the ways trauma can affect the developing brain and how this affects learning and behavior.  There is a lot of focus on cognitive deficiencies and acting out behaviors.

While I suffer from complex-ptsd and a dissociative disorder, I do not fit the descriptions of the trauma-affected students I am studying.  I was a very good student academically and behaviorally. I was social and somewhat popular, so I wasn't necessarily struggling with social skills.  I do recall having trouble regulating my emotions.

I am curious to know of others' experiences in school.  Were you the student who was withdrawn and disengaged?  Did you have poor attendance?  Drop out?  Were you the student who acted out, disrupting class and getting into trouble?  Did you struggle with your studies or excel or were you an average student? 

So far, there has been no mention of trauma-affected students who excel in school.  I suspect many of you did well in school and would not have been suspected of suffering trauma.  Just curious.

Be well,
Kat

What an insightful connection you've made, James.  One of the most difficult things about suffering from C-PTSD is not being seen and truly known.  I have done tons of hard work to heal, and I have suffered enormously, but none of it is ever acknowledged because to acknowledge all I have done would be to admit that something very bad happened in my past.  People do not want to know about that.  It's too scary.  So, yes, I can see how burnout fits in here--"a disconnect between effort and reward, where the energy in is being wasted..." 

Be well.

Bravo, Sunny!

Hi Snookie,

I just wanted to second Kizzie's recommendation.  I made huge progress after finding the Janina Fisher book and sharing it with my T.  I also see a somatic experiencing therapist (she was trained by and still does some work with Peter Levine who wrote Waking the Tiger).  She's been a godsend as well. The work we do has more to do with regulating the nervous system, but I've found that I do not get triggered as often or as easily and I usually bounce back more quickly.

Wishing you all the best,
Kat 

Hello all!

It's been a while since I last posted.  I just thought I'd share the fact that baby steps are being taken to address trauma in the educational environment.  I'll soon be going to a two day training on trauma and resilience in the classroom.  I'm also in an online master's program where the concentration is trauma and resilience in the educational setting.  I was surprised and thrilled to see such a program exists.  I'm on the second course right now, so we haven't gotten to the courses for our concentrations.  I'll have to come back, and share what those are like.

I think Elphanigh's response pretty much covers it.  A friend who is a therapist once suggested I think about becoming a therapist.  However, I know that my boundaries are simply not strong enough...yet.  I see the work of a therapist as something sacred, and as such, it's something I would loathe to mess up.  It's just too important.

Following up on what Kizzie said.  I mentioned in my post that I revisited certain events multiple times and gained a different insight each time.  At first, I would relay an event much as I would relay a breakfast order at a diner--no emotion attached.  Each time, however, I got closer to the emotion of it until I finally could grieve it, feel its full impact, and move on.

I know I wouldn't be nearly as far along in the healing process as I am if I did not have a competent therapist on my side. 

But, you asked more specifically whether it's necessary for a person to have therapy in which they discuss the nature of their abuse.  That I'm not so sure of.  I know there was a good amount of the 14 years of therapy I've had so far where I was going over and over different aspects of the abuse, but I was gaining more and more insight each time.  (This was mostly having to do with a mother suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder and attempting to see how abnormal and damaging her treatment of her children was.) And then there was a long time in which I was gaining new clues about sexual abuse that I have no conscious recollections of.  And then it was like we knew enough.  There simply was no more need to go back and revisit the abuse.  Indeed, my therapist began to ask me to resist "going there" when it started to appear to be simply re-traumatizing and no longer helpful.

I have a sister who does not want to revisit any of the abuse.  She sees a therapist.  She doesn't tell me a lot, but she has mentioned in the past that she doesn't discuss the past a lot with her therapist.  They're going about things through a different route, and that works for her.

In addition to a psychotherapist, I see a somatic-experiencing therapist.  She had made it absolutely clear that we do not need to rehash the abuse or have me re-experience it in any way.  She does a lot of hands-on body work to support me.  Our work is mostly about me learning check in with my body and listen to what it's telling me.  She's getting me to trust that my emotions won't kill me while also getting my autonomic nervous system back in balance. 

I think it all comes down to how you want to approach things.  There are plenty of different modalities to choose from.  I know lots of folks get help though EMDR.  I haven't explored that option. I think you should trust yourself to know what is most helpful to you.

Best of luck.

I totally get the shallow breathing thing.  I work at a high school and was walking into our main building with a colleague one morning.  She began to cough and gasp for breath.  She asked what was in the air.  That's when I noticed a lot of kids covering their mouths and hustling out of the hall.  Someone had sprayed a bunch of pepper spray into the corridor.  I made it out the other side of the building and never noticed a thing.  Sometimes shallow breathing comes in handy, but mostly it's not a good thing.

As for grounding, I've always been told to feel the ground below my feet or to hold onto something solid to ground myself in the present.  It works for me.  I can see how following your breath could help, but if it just causes more distress because you're worried about feeling caged, then it seems it's just causing more trouble than it's worth.

I'm curious to know if your therapist offered any other suggestions besides breathing to help you ground yourself.

Welcome!  Glad you're here.

What an absolute nightmare!  I hate that they put you on both the 5150 and the 5250.  That makes me so angry.  Ugh...and then all the mistreatment with the meds etc.  It's easy to see why you're feeling so out of control.  I did the crisis hotline thing recently and had a similar experience.  No help.

Obviously, the whole event was retraumatizing.  It also sounds like it triggered some horrible emotional flashbacks.  Can you feel the part of you, the True you, that has been so strong and determined and gotten you through so much in your life?  I hope so.  If you can, hold onto that.  That part of you wants to live.  I know this sounds all rosy and sunshiny, but it's not meant to.  You're in a very serious, very dangerous situation right now and it hurts like *.  But I believe in you, in the True you.  That fighter has what it takes.  Please keep coming back.  It may help pass the time and remind you that you're not alone in this even if it feels like it.

Thanks Kizzie for reminding me (us) of the importance of good self-care.  I'm not sure where I read it, but someone, somewhere out there said something like you'll know you're healing when you are taking better care of yourself.  Since my tantrum was relatively short-lived, I'd say I'm healing.  Thanks to everyone for being here and giving much needed support.

Donna, I private messaged you before I read your post from today.  You'd asked about dealing with different parts.  I wasn't sure we were talking about the same thing, but I see now that we were--structural dissociation!  Yay.  Fun.  No, but it's so nice to hear others' stories about how they experience their parts and how they interact with them.

I've got an angry male teen part who tries to act tough to help protect my littler parts.  He's often frustrated that he's not strong enough to stand up to the adults who are hurting the little ones.  I asked him his name and he said it is John.  I thought, "Well, that's kind of boring. Can it at least be Jon without the h?"  I think at the back of my mind I felt I was making John up, so if I were, why couldn't I have come up with a cooler name, right?  Nope.  John.  I found that whole interaction/thought process funny.

A member of OOTS named Hope mentioned a book by Janina Fisher called Healing the Fractured Selves of Trauma Survivors that is an excellent source of information about structural dissociation and how it's best treated by Internal Family Systems-based therapy.  It's been a huge source of help to me.  Huge.  I highly recommend it if you haven't already read it.