Messages

My partner wanted time to himself. This triggered me. I have neglect and abandonment trauma from childhood. The trauma response was and still is strong.

I tried to deal with it and focus on the present world, that my partner needs time for his own mental health, but a day extra got added on to our time apart when I wasn't expecting it.

I feel like I have fallen into a severe depression and ongoing trauma response state. I can't feel warmth or love. I feel everything has ended, is ending and it's just happening in slow motion.

My partner is frustrated and hurt, because I can't recognise him. He keeps telling me that what I am experiencing isn't real, that 'everything is ok' and I feel angrier and angrier, and like I'm going insane, because it feels real to me. I feel like he is gone, like he left me, and I feel dead inside.

I can't stop crying and I haven't been looking after myself very well this week. I feel frightened and out of control. I also can't advise my partner what to do at the moment. I feel very lost.

  I feel aware that this week I have been very full of thought and asking loads of questions etc.

Also, is it at all healthy to seek parenting in any form in others?

This might sound like such an odd question, but I feel muddled over the past few days, trying to understand who other people are in my life to me and in context to my healing and journey of recovery.

My therapist said to me last week that I may need to grieve for the loss of a parent that I didn't have, as well as a childhood I didn't have (Maybe that is why I've felt so incredibly rubbish all week) and with this has come a sense of disorientation in my understanding of the people around me.

For instance, if I grieve the loss of parent in my life then who, or what, is a partner - if not a rescuer, or a fixer or a 'parent'?

Being blurred on this before now might explain why I have had problems in long term relationships, when I start to trigger and everything becomes incredibly convoluted and unclear between me and a partner. Maybe I am seeking a parent? Therefore unresolved grief gets worked out via the partner, which suddenly seems so unfair on them and also impossible.

And friends. I have sought a level of nurture at times that could also be me seeking parenting, and I am aware that people have at times stopped messaging back, probably because the need is overwhelming. I do feel embarrassed to admit that, although, I can understand why I would have done this and I feel compassion for myself as someone throughout life looking for a family and parenting.

However, in accepting the lack of parent, it means there is so much room for new types of relationships, and possibly protecting my relationships from that pressured dynamic and 'narrative resolution role play'...

I'd be really interested to hear other people's views on what they see as a healthy relationship with a partner, a friend and maybe even a therapist.

And does anyone else have experience of this kind of mental shift, in regards to how grieving having a parent can redefine relationships?

Just got triggered again. Felt like I was relaxing after days and partner put on something to do watch that made me feel uncomfortable and then had a disturbing scene showing parental abuse. Not good. Feels so tiring.

Last night, on day 3 of major symptoms following a trigger and concurrent breakdown of functioning, I drank a herb tea mix with: Passion flower, lime flower and chamomile. It seemed to take the edge off and I felt relaxed afterwards, and pleasantly sleepy. Which makes a change from the twitchy overtired kind of exhausted I've been for days.

I used to make herb tea mixtures years ago, and am going to go to the herb shop later to buy some ingredients.

Am thinking to create specific treatment strategies for the different stages of my trauma response symptoms:

• shock (straight after trigger)
• dissociation, disorientation, de-realisation
• confusion and cognitive fogginess
• exhaustion and over-tiredness
• hyper-vigilance and anxiety
• tension headaches and occular migraines
• aching body (usually from where I've been hunched up and very still for days)

I reckon looking at these as stages ongoing might be helpful. They all have a different impact, even though they are vastly related.

Hi all. I’m wondering whether anyone does or has successfully use herbal and natural remedies to manage their CPTSD symptoms? If so, please can you tell me what you use and what symptoms they help?

Last night, on day 3 of major symptoms following a trigger and concurrent breakdown of functioning, I drank a herb tea mix with: Passion flower, lime flower and chamomile. It seemed to take the edge off and I felt relaxed afterwards, and pleasantly sleepy. Which makes a change from the twitchy overtired kind of exhausted I’ve been for days.

I used to make herb tea mixtures years ago, and am going to go to the herb shop later to buy some ingredients.

Am thinking to create specific treatment strategies for the different stages of my trauma response symptoms:

• shock (straight after trigger)
• dissociation, disorientation, de-realisation
• confusion and cognitive fogginess
• exhaustion and over-tiredness
• hyper-vigilance and anxiety
• tension headaches and occular migraines
• aching body (usually from where I’ve been hunched up and very still for days)

Sending my thoughts to everyone affected by trauma x

Today is Friday, I was triggered on Tuesday morning. Today I feel better. I went for a walk with my partner which is the first time I've been out and about for a couple of days. The light wasn't processing properly, and I feel like I can't focus when this happens. I think it is a cognitive hangover, not related to my eyesight. Everything is visually scatty, but also I feel scatty as well. Despite making it out I felt very tired and my head was low. With the foggy cognition stuff going on I felt quite unsure of things and wished I was home quickly. I wanted my partner to hold my hand, which after a while they did, and my tears flowed at this point. I struggled to vocalise but said quietly that I feel so tired of it all. That is what I feel today. A lot clearer and better, but still affected and fairly low. Tired and sore. It is still, however, such a relief to feel that the worse has passed. My therapist has advised me to imagine where I am on a scale of 0-10, 0 being absolutely okay, and 10 being absolutely not okay. Yesterday I was 10 on the scale, this morning I am probably 3-5. When resting I feel 3, when communicating and out in the world I feel 5, mostly due to exhaustion I think.

Today I have thought that I go into a regressed state when I get triggered. I can’t pinpoint how old I am, and don’t know how I would work this out tbh, as I don’t actually remember feeling this extreme state of despondency very much when I was younger, despite experiencing trauma from 0-18yrs old (plus into adulthood). I guess I was a good problem solver, and was also busy caring for and parenting others.

It’s like the re-experiencing of trauma in adulthood causes a reaction where I can quite suddenly no longer make all my (forced) self-parent choices. I lose my self-parent. Today I felt clearly that I lose my autonomy.

I have to wait for quite a while as I tend to extreme basics, sometimes over days very slowly, before I regain my autonomous, skilled self-parent.

In intimate relationships, people who address this regressed state in a parental way have been very soothing for me. I struggle to identify my needs, even my need for food and water becomes distorted. I usually can’t make choices and decisions and don’t know how I feel. A lot of thoughts swim around and I feel stuck, frozen and frightened.

I have a few friends who have laid me down with a blanket, given me water and told me to rest. Some have helped me with basic tasks, tidying or making me food. I find this so incredibly healing.

Is it unhealthy to feel so helped by this, and to want this sort of help?

Hi all.

I have started seeing a good therapist. I feel like we are making progress however am finding it very difficult this week following a deep session after intense triggering earlier that day.

We are going into all areas and I feel comfortable with this, but compared to how I normally handle being triggered and dissociation, this time I feel intensely confused, and am struggling with intensity of emotion, intensity of dissociation and some very disorienting internal conflicts.

My therapist is telling me I need to experience the unresolved feelings from my childhood. Not fix them, not escape them, but feel them. They have said that I deserved better and that it is sad that I spent so long learning that my feelings didn't matter, with my space and world being invaded all the time. I agree with all of this and I feel acknowledged.

During this period of symptoms I am struggling to understand 'what to do'. As if given permission, I am definitely staying with my feelings more than usual, which is incredibly uncomfortable.  I feel tired, depressed, confused and have been upset for days.

I am trying to communicate with my partner, however this is a huge struggle. My partner feels worried that I am annoyed at what they are doing and not doing, whereas more than anything I feel scared and am frightened to need help, to want help and to be let down. We have talked about this.

Today I thought that dissociation is accompanied with (or maybe just is) a type of regression. Where I was forced to look after myself and others so young, I have a strong head on my shoulders. With dissociation I lose my internal voice that parents me and tells me how to problem solve. This terrifies me, and I have to rest and wait til I can problem solve again, and help myself feel a bit better, regaining my internal parent voice.

This is confusing with my partner. When they offer help I feel fear and anticipate rejection, probably because I was not offered help by the people around me. It is confusing. To accept help makes me vulnerable, and I also don't know what help I need, so am unable to guide.. it's very hit and miss and although we are learning my partner often  feels useless and criticised.

I feel super frightened because the help I crave is a lot more regressive than I care to admit. I crave someone to make safe choices for me, to help me be warm, make me food, give me water and maybe wipe my tears or help me in very basic ways. This is when I am so dissociated that I am twitching, staring into nothing, unable to speak, silent tears. This has been on and off for 3 days as I write this.

I do tend so say I should be alone, not because this is what I want, but because I feel safer. I feel scared of causing my partner harm through exposure to my state, which I fear might be confusing for them. I feel frustrated that I can't communicate my needs well enough, and when I try sometimes they can't understand them. I feel angry to depend on someone and want to avoid how let down and disappointed I become.

Something I am aware of this week is how frustrating all of this is. If I am supposed to sit with these emotions, then we will have to acknowledge as a partnership how frustrating it feels for both of us not to be able to easily fix it.

My partner wants to know if what they should and shouldn't do to help. Today I admitted how meeting basic needs of mine is the most helpful and they were very accepting of this. I feel confused about whether this is healthy or acceptable, as it feels very strange for me to say I need help with these things.

I also explained that when I am not well, to feel like they go out their way and put me first really helps, as this definitely breaks the cycle of me feeling in the past. This morning  there was an opportunity for them to put me first, and they didn't take it. It caused me so much upset. I feel guilty for placing my needs so highly. Is this wrong, I just don't know. I feel like I don't know up from down right now.

Bump!

Intrigued as to why no one has replied to this? Would love to hear more about others people's experience.

I get what I am going to describe as 'lingering feelings' ... Something upsets me and I don't know how to process it or resolve it. The feeling carries on inside me for a long while, sometimes days. This could be feelings of sadness/emotional hurt or anger. Sadness and hurt is often accompanied by physical shooting pain, which I understand to also be known as 'cortisol flooding', where I get pangs of electric shock style pain that shoots from my chest down to my fingers. I also get physical tightness and pain in my 'heart' and chest.

When this goes on it normally means I have been triggered, ie. something has hit one of my 'hot spots', or I have been wronged, perhaps a boundary overstepped or someone been mean or harsh with me. Or both. Often both! I often cannot discern between the two for quite some time, and I often find myself confused for days. I struggle to manage various uncomfortable emotions as they swirl around and as I try to piece together what is going on.

It results in a lot of time spent going through this rough process:
- passing through dissociative or numb states
- passing through dysregulated, unplaceable or 'cause-unknown' emotional pain and discomfort.
- through to reading/writing, starting to process externally my internal feelings (sometimes I talk to someone to help me with this bit. My partner is very helpful)
- through to working out the cause, which can often be the combo of actual emotional incident (eg. a meaningless critical remark) triggering previous emotional trauma (eg. relentless criticism from carers in childhood)
- then on to talking more about these causes and the factors, which I guess is my way of further cognitively processing the current situation and possibly grieving and acknowledging past trauma
- and possibly then on to asserting myself regarding the actually present day incident and it's affect on me to others involved (eg. Letting the person who criticised me know that this hurts and possible explaining why).

It takes me AGES!!!!

Something I realised about 5 years ago, when a therapist told me that 'my feelings matter too' (which was a shock to hear, but also a milestone revelation  ) was that in asserting my right to feelings and being treated well, I had to feel my feelings. And I realised I couldn't really feel them.

Affect dysregulation, to me, is often what I experience as a huge space of swirling emotions and sensations that happens between an emotional incident/impact and me working out what that on earth it was, and how I feel and think about it. 

I understand that the cause of this is due to having poor role modelling, a negative emotional environment and lack of encouragement in feeling my emotions, processing them and being allowed/able to express them whilst growing up. It means that now I do feel safe and supported enough to have emotions and to feel pain (what an odd victory!  ), I still struggle to understand my emotions feelings and can struggle to process them, and this can also feel very disorienting, confusing, painful and uncomfortable. It also takes me a long time.

Sadly, I often judge myself harshly during this particular window of extreme discomfort (sending huge hugs to myself and others here  ) where I scorn myself for being 'over-sensitive', having 'emotional issues', 'disproportionately over-reacting'. I also fear that to have explored and then to assert my feelings will lead to punishment/abuse/further pain. Luckily, I am with a partner who is helping me a great deal through encouraging my feelings, understanding this takes time, and acting with love, patience and care when I do reach a conclusion, even when it means reflecting back something in their own behaviour. I feel so grateful to have found someone who helps me with this. It still causes me confusion, discomfort and fear, but I think eventually, as I continue to be supported with this, the time elapsed between impact and conclusion will gradually lessen.

I was about to start a post about this and then saw this thread.

I am struggling with this concept a bit, or rather struggling to comprehend what I can personally do to help myself with this.

Certain emotional incidents cause severe and harsh abandonment depression for me, and it is very consuming. I have read this article a number of time and I feel like I understand more about why I fall into that big dark whole but now I really really want a rope to help me climb out of it.

From the article I can't find much insight on how to help manage this on my own?

Wipe out days.
You know. When you’ve been triggered
And boom
It rolls on.
Plans fall apart
Tears fall more and again and
Breathing is still or jagged
All of the spectrum is experienced
Words are lost
Words are found
Words are tumbling
Time is lost.
A friend is frustrated
Trying to help
But I can’t meet their eyes
Nor the world right now
Outdoors is a strange place
Full of possibilities I can’t engage
And the light
Hurts my eyes

In my recover I am wondering... Is it worth exploring whether I have PTSD from recent trauma in last two years, experiencing violence and threat as an adult, as well as CPTSD from childhood events?

Does anyone have experience of or any information about the co-occurring and how fresh trauma can impact CPTSD?

Thanks to everyone who has commented on my journal and been very supportive. It is incredibly kind and I am sorry I am not more giving on this forum. I hope there is a flip point where I can give more.

Sometimes I don't write for a while because things are ticking along, and sometimes I don't write because things are too difficult to put it down. I am wondering what it is that makes me get the urge to write on here. I suppose it likely changes, however I do know that I often cannot find resources and discourses that explore the nuances of trauma at the hand of family and major people in ones life.

A few days ago me and other members of my family were criticised for 'not supporting' my brother who has been violent to three of my FOO, including me. This came in the form of being uninvited to a very close friend's wedding, as their family is now supporting him after he was forced by the police to leave my mums house, after he assaulted her.  He turned up hundred of miles away at the friends family home and they took him in, against our advice. We were very concerned as had asked the police to take him in when he next surfaced, however the family did not want that.

I know the lengths that I personally have gone to try and support this person, and I did represent myself and my mum in response to this criticism and to being uninvited, as well as wishing my old friend the best. I appreciate that the family are helping him and I think he is very lucky to have them. They say is making progress with them by engaging with doctors, something he would not entertain when mentioned by me, and they don't want me being there to undo this. They also said there is animosity because they are supporting him like a son, where his biological family are not. I explained that I no longer know how to support him and can't be involved with someone who is consistently and seriously violent towards me. The friend understood and we agreed that it is a very difficult situation.

I cried so much afterwards, feeling that I have already lost my brother and am now losing my oldest friends and their family, who have also been like family to me. I felt uncomfortable imagining them and other close friends together at Christmas, talking about the decision to uninvite me.

From what I understand my brother absolutely hates me. I have realised in the last few days that I am processing and recovering from two different periods in my life, and relating to two different, albeit related, sets of events. One of these is my childhood trauma in the family home, and one is the more recent trauma of my brother being violent towards me adulthood.

I started seeing a therapist at the end of last year. We had a few sessions however she has had to stop seeing me for 6 weeks due to family bereavement. Maybe when I go back I should talk to her about my brother. My CPTSD has been extremely bad, morbidly fearful,  panic filled and jumpy since incidents with my brother over the last few years.

Could it be that I have both CPTSD and PTSD, from these more recents attacks?