An introduction

[Marko]

Hi all,

I came across this forum recently as I feel the need to be around people who are dedicated to healing their cPTSD and not resigned to some belief that they have to live with it forever. I've done a lot of work and have made some great progress over the last 3 years after finding a wonderful therapist. I'm a bit nervous coming out into the open here as I have some social anxiety but I think this will be good for me as I've learnt the only way to overcome fear is to go through it in a safe and supportive environment. It's great to come across a community of people who are courageous enough to face their suffering in a world that too often pretends it doesn't exist.

I grew up in a highly dysfunctional family with a narcissistic mother and alcoholic father who both had depression/anxiety/rage issues - of course this was just the way it was and was considered 'normal'. As well as chronic anxiety and depressive episodes I spent the first 20 years of my adult life with multiple substance addictions which I finally beat 8 years ago and have recently been getting off psychiatric medication which has also been a 20 year stint. I'm at a tiny dose of the last medication now and taking the last bit very slowly, but very nearly there. I've done a lot of therapy and started healing properly about 6 years ago when I discovered Somatic Experiencing and I have recently been working with the Comprehensive Resource Model and Integral Somatic Psychology which have proven to be incredibly effective at facilitating the access to and healing of deep and very old emotional pain.

What I have learnt and focus much of my attention on now is that the feeling of this massive reservoir of unfelt emotion that sits in my body and subconscious mind is the way to liberation from my painful past. The aforementioned coping strategies that I've used along the way are no longer serving me and whilst I still have considerable challenges I am now strong and skilful enough to be able to work through this emotion in a carefully resourced manner with each passing week bringing a deeper sense of calm, more connection to self and appreciation of the beauty and simple things in life. I'm not sure that I will ever get to a point where everything is 'OK', but I believe I will continue to heal and grow in ways that I could not possibly have imagined had I not had my difficult childhood.

Thanks for letting me be part of this community and I hope I can both benefit from and contribute to!

[woodsgnome]

  Hi, Marko.

I was sorry to hear of your rough ride in life so far, but encouraged to note how open to finding a new perspective on how things can improve for you. That seems a good approach to take regarding OOTS -- as not just a place of learning about the hazards of cPTSD, but how to approach it differently, starting with that most elusive quality -- hope.

That's easier said than done, of course; but at least here you're likely to draw the support and understanding you deserve.
.

[BeeKeeper]

Welcome Marko! 

You've certainly done a lot of work and addressed your issues. Those same issues affect everyone here, including myself. I agree with your assessment of

feeling of this massive reservoir of unfelt emotion that sits in my body and subconscious mind is the way to liberation from my painful past.

It's such a high bar to set, and the words alone seem very liberating, but the experience itself is whoa....stop the world, I wanna get off. But whatever the experience, I still believe in this particular thought, and still strive to make it through those times of feeling.

I wish that for you also. Glad you decided to take the risk here and write. I hope to see more.

[Armee]

Welcome! 

I'm glad you've found the courage to join us. And you've done some incredible work healing. I feel encouraged to hear about your success with the somatic work and would love to hear more.

[Marko]

Thank you very much for the warm replies all, I am glad I took this risk 

I'm glad to see that you see hope in my post woodsgnome. I do have that alongside determination, both of which I am very grateful for, and I'm not sure where these are from but they are certainly from beyond the trauma! I think we all have these otherwise we wouldn't be here looking for answers.

Beekeeper, this is a very common experience of mine, haha 'whoa....stop the world, I wanna get off', or at least it used to be. My therapist and I mainly work in the Comprehensive Resource Model these days. It utilises layers of resources (breathwork, body awareness and vizulisation amongst many others) which provide a sense of safety and belonging during emotional processing which is really effective in avoiding the aforementioned overwhelm and allowing the emotion to be fully processed and become part of 'the past'. I have learnt the hard way though that if I am not adequately resourced it can hurt, a lot, for days afterwards! Ive found it to be a 2 pronged approach of building safety and feeling what you couldn't previously feel, both of which have equal importance.

The SE work was incredibly useful Armee and led me towards working in modalities that incorporate relational aspects, body awareness and spirituality, and for me its this combination that is leading me steadily towards healing.
Earlier this year my therapist taught me a technique from Integral Somatic Psychology which deals with pre and peri natal trauma, ie trauma suffered at any time before you were born. At this early age it can have a significant impact on the patterns you set up for emotional regulation and can be a contributing factor in emotional overwhelm later in life. Pre and peri natal trauma can happen if the mother is under stress whilst pregnant, and may include things like domestic abuse, sudden death in the family and being born during WW2. The technique involves feeling both the sensation of and emotion of usually fear, rage or shame whilst regulating the body. The idea is to move the emotional energy away from the central nervous system and out into as much of the body as possible which increases your emotional capacity and therefore leads to less overwhelm etc. It really works but isn't the most fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon! Here's a link to the modality: https://integralsomaticpsychology.com

[woodsgnome]

Marko, you spoke of some things that seem to come
"from beyond the trauma!" And you added: "I think we all have these otherwise we wouldn't be here looking for answers."

I'll echo that notion. So many times I've been at the point of giving up trying to make any sense of any of this junk left over from times past. Why I always seem to emerge on the other side of hopelessness isn't readily apparent, either. Yet it happens, like some surprise that we were too overwhelmed to notice.

Reminds me of the title of a song I love: "There's a Light Beyond These Woods" (composed and sung by Nanci Griffith).  Though the song's theme is friendship, not necessarily trauma, for me at least it speaks to the elusive hope/light we might still find. Every time that light seems to fade, it reappears. Therein lies the mystery of hope; against all odds.  May hope continue to somehow/someway keep hovering over your journey.

[Hope67]

Hi Marko,
Welcome to the forum 
Hope 

[Larry]

Hi Marko

[Kizzie]

Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS Marko    Glad you took the risk to join and post.

I was interested to see you've done some pre and peri natal therapy, that's not something I've seen or read much about so I'd welcome any info about your experiences.

It escapes most people that many of us were conceived in and born into trauma and that is our normal. We don't return to the person we were, rather we have to learn in our body, mind & heart/soul what it means to not live in trauma so multiple modalities do seem to be key with us. Tks for sharing about your therapy experiences, I look forward to hearing more.

[Marko]

Thanks Kizzie 🙂

It's a very pertinant point you have made, and something I think is one of the bigger challenges in healing from complex PTSD as opposed to normal PTSD. My friend had a car accident some years back and had a 3 year recovery from broken limbs and some accompanying PTSD. I have been trying to explain to him that his recovery enabled him to return to 'himself' which is a concept that is alien to me and those of us with cPTSD. We have no reference, we don't know what it is to feel safe in our skin and around others and to magic up this feeling/state is not easy. But, going back to what woodsgnome and I discussed earlier in this thread, I think that within us, however obscured and elusive, this does exist, and our task in healing is to keep finding this place, growing it and learning to live there whilst deconstructing the trauma that hides it and prevents access to it.

I had no idea pre and perinatal trauma existed until late last year when my T regressed me back to my Core Self, which is a timeless state that exists beyond any trauma - its one of the more spiritual aspects of CRM and is another discussion but is useful to have access to. During the process, as she counted back from my current age right through to conception various points were encountered where there was obvious trauma, indicated by a sometimes violent bodily reaction, with the strongest of those being the prenatal period. A couple of months later she excitedly informed me that she had just finished the Pre and Perinatal training which is part Raja Selvam's Integral Somatic Psychology who was her advanced Somatic Experiencing trainer some years before. So she taught me technique and we spent the next couple of sessions practising it. It's actually relatively straight forward and once learnt is something that can be done on your own. I'm really not pushing anybody's products here but he is offering this training as a series of videos on his website which are intended as additional training for therapists but if you've had some somatic therapy experience you'd be able to pick it up.

I have in periods of my life been haunted by a very murky, non-specific sense of dread and darkness which is without words and has only a blurry visual element. It first appeared around the time of my father's death 20 years ago. I have come to learn that this is very early life trauma from the prenatal period and possibly a few years following when my developing brain was only capable of detecting a vague sense of 'something is not right/I am not safe/I am going die' with no meaning or rationale attached to it. Nevertheless my survival system, which of course was online from the moment of conception deemed it wise to store this information and it became the basis for my sense of the world from then on.

Doing the work, for me at least, goes something like this. Whilst lying or sitting an emotion either comes up or is inticed via words; usually fear, shame, rage or a sense of fragmentation. I then find the accompanying sensation in the body and often use a hand to support it, or I put my hands in one the positions Raja recommends to regulate the body. During this and at all times it is important to keep some attention on the actual emotion. I then additionally regulate my body using various movements which tend to come naturally whilst also toning which is the allowing of the body to make any noises it wishes to. Needless to say I tend to do this only when the house is empty! With some attention it is then possible to allow the emotional energy which will habitually be contained near to the CNS/core to flow into other areas of the body such as the limbs and head. I will experience quite strong electric shock sensations throughout various parts of the body, often followed by a strong sense of relief and release of tension throughout the whole system. I'll try to keep this up for 30 minutes or more which can be pretty hard, but is possible. Afterwards I am left with a sense of feeling somehow bigger, calmer and more present. I also notice that I am triggered by both internal and external events less frequently and with less intensity. I think in fact I am still being triggered but as there is more of my body available to handle the emotion before hitting overwhelm and dysregulation I don't experience the emotion as unpleasant so it tends to come and go without drama. I will add that I have an incredibly sensitive nervous system due to various factors and I have to be very careful that I don't overstep a very fine line with any type of trauma processing, this included. I think my NS is pretty unusual though and I believe for most people this work can be completed quite quickly, make a huge difference to the way you handle emotion and enable the processing of later trauma to be quicker and easier.

Sorry if that's a bit of rant.... I can get carried away with these things but I hope that's useful.

[Papa Coco]

Hey Marko,

Welcome to the forum!  I joined for similar reasons you did, I just needed someplace to open up and share with like-minded people.

C-PTSD is similar to PTSD, but different. I've tried opening up to people who got PTSD from wars, but the people I've opened up to had no respect for me. One x-friend who'd been traumatized in Desert Storm, actually told me "My friends and I don't respect people like you who say you have PTSD but didn't see what we saw." Don't think for a second I didn't go down a very deep rabbit hole of shame after that comment.

Like you refered to, people who's childhoods were so dysfunctional that we grew up traumatized have no reference point. Soldiers know who they were pre-war. They know what traumatized them. They know how they are different now. So they can pin their pain onto its source.  Us poor guys and girls grew up just thinking we were somehow parriahs on the face of humanity, inexplicably unable to handle stress for no apparent reason.

Being on THIS forum has been one of the top 5 best things I've done to aid in my own healing. I've been in therapy for almost 40 years just to keep myself on this side of suicide. In 2000 I was diagnosed with PTSD. When C-PTSD was coined, I adapted to it and learned even more. The introduction of forums like this are finally giving me a social network of people who understand me. It's SO refreshing!  I've found a lot of very intelligent, compassionate people on this site. I feel very welcome here.

I hope you find what you came here for, and I hope we can all stay connected for as long as we need each other.

 

[Marko]

Hey Papa Coco,

Thanks for your warm welcome and great post 😊 I can relate to some of your experiences being an HSP, ex addict and having been in therapy almost continuously for 20 years. I was just thinking to myself earlier how high the quality of the posts are here, full of insight and compassion. I find myself being touched on a daily basis by the authenticity, sensitivity and acumen expressed by others and having the opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences with others who understand and respond with interest is a real blessing and something I didn't realise I needed until now! The power of a caring, respectful community of like minded people cannot be underestimated 🙂