Eureka - it's not in my head it's real!!

[sweetsixty]

Sorry I've only just seen this last response, it's not been a good month

I'm still working on it every day too and this book was another breakthrough.

I'm 60 and very angry I lost most of my life and my health to this. It's soul destroying. Sorry but I'm not having a positive day today. 

[Dyess]

Sorry your day isn't going well. Maybe it's this time of year, too stressful and triggering. Just hang on and hopefully a new year will bring better days.

[Kizzie]

BIG  Sweet Sixty.  I will turn 60 in 2016 so I can relate to finding out about CPTSD later in life and being angry over how much I have lost.  If it's any help I used (and use) that anger to keep my distance from my PD FOO lest the guilt I am so well trained in creeps back in (difficult when my M is 86 and failing), and to go after what I need to to recover (e.g., I got a prescription for cannabis that really helps with the pain of my OA which I didn't quite notice creeping up on me because the majority of time I was just trying to survive emotionally).

This Christmas was hard in that I realized after an EF and some abandonment depression that I have not been as present with my H and S because of my CPTSD for fear of losing them.  That makes me really angry as I don't think I understood that as clearly as I did this Christmas.  But I can't go back, I can't get those moments when I could have been so much more connected except for the weight of trauma constantly inserting its presence in all areas of my life. 

I am determined to use that anger to be more present now and in the future, it's all I can do. It's hard and sad and totally unfair though I know.  Perhaps by sharing here it will defuel some of that or at least direct it toward making things better now that we do know what we're up against   

[dollyvee]

Just bumping this thread because it's a good and important one! My ACE score is 7 too and I think my only saving grace right now is that my FOO gm was melodramatic about her health so I've been pretty concerned about what's going on physically with me since my early 20s.

Funnily enough it was in 2015 that I discovered Bessel Van Der Kolk and started to piece together that trauma was also in my body and not just in my mind and that foods I was eating was having a big impact on my mood as well as body. I'm just starting to piece together what's actually going on in terms of disrupted methylation cycles, genetics, and trauma. The hope for me is that by working with the epigenetic changes that might have occurred, I can minimize the way trauma is impacting my physical self. The methylation cycle is responsible for physiological and neurological changes, creating neurotransmitters etc and can have lasting effects on mood, mind in the same way an SSRI does. Given the complexity of the chemical pathways though and other genes that come into play downstream, it's not a simple one size fits all solution.

I also don't think that all our mood states etc necessarily relate back to the trauma itself we experienced not to discredit or minimize what anyone else has experienced, these are just my own thoughts. We are given an epigenetic blueprint when we are born (cf Mark Wolynn - It Doesn't Start With You) that has all the inherited trauma which came before us. So, we may already be inheriting faulty methylation pathways at birth and to this we add continued trauma, likely exposure to chemicals etc, gender and any positive mitigating influences. Infections and viruses can also create chronic inflammation (as does stress) which then create cytokines/histamines that can cross the blood brain barrier. Nutrition also plays a big factor as well. In a neglectful and/or NPD household, the child's nutritional and/or health needs might not be the first priority. So, we as children, might already be in a "deficient" state when we're experiencing the trauma and maybe this also impacts our understanding of it, relation to people etc? To me, it's the continuing interaction between the physical and psychological which lead to certain outcomes as these two things "work off of each other" as in the graph below.

Tracing this back to a single gene or one thing is problematic as it seems the studies are hard to replicate across larger groups apparently. For instance there are 10 (?) studies linking bipolar disorder to different clusters of genes each time, similar but not exactly the same.

This is an interesting study on the eipgenetic effects of childhood trauma:
The Biological Effects of Childhood Trauma
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3968319/ 

This is a bit long, and maybe should start another thread but can see the relation between the two.

[Blueberry]

Got reading this old thread, and bingo!

It's the craziest thing. I was so in my head and battling all the emotional and cognitive stuff, I did not really see the physical deterioration, just managed it ... and never looked ahead to what would happen if I did not get on top of it. How did this happen?

 C.P.T.S.D.  ...... that's what happened.   

So here I am having gotten through the worst of my CPTSD to a place where I am moving forward, clear headed and not battling demons on a daily basis. Except sadly I can't actually move forward very well anymore.  

I'm only 53 and having trouble with my knees, though I've had trouble with my feet almost all my life. So it's a wake-up call for me to pay more attention to my physical not just the emotional. I had a GP appt today where I got a referral to a orthopedic doc and made another longer appt with said GP who has additional training in skin problems, of which I have a few. So at least I am beginning to get on with this sort of stuff. During inpatient stay too, but since I got home - physiotherapy exercises? Not so much. But again, I know that very well too. Doing things regularly is very difficult for me, practising, keeping going - very difficult. Mixed up with cptsd. Even if I join some low-level exercise class, I stop going after a while. The fact that I've registered for it and spent money doesn't help at all. Yesterday I sheltered somewhere during a heavy shower, had nothing to do but wait around so I did a few leg exercises. At home I always have things to do so am mostly 'on the run' from any kind of exercises.

Thanks for those links sweetsixty, I'll be checking them out.