Where do I belong?

[Dalloway]

Thank you, Aphotic, it means a lot knowing that there are people who understand. In my life there are only three, maybe four people (on better days) who do, but here everyone seem to know what am I talking about. 

[Cascade]

Hi Dalloway,
Yes, it's hard for me, too, to try to find myself.  My goal is to accept and integrate my trauma into my new life and my new self, whatever that means.  I certainly don't need the weight of all of it.  There's a lot to peel off, rip off, shrug off, etc.  But I also feel like my past is what made me, for better or worse, and I need to start loving myself.  So I can love, accept, and integrate what's helpful.
   -Cascade

[Dalloway]

My goal is to accept and integrate my trauma into my new life and my new self, whatever that means.

But I also feel like my past is what made me, for better or worse, and I need to start loving myself. 

Yes, there´s no one who doesn´t have any past at all. Some of us suffered more, some less, but I don´t want to see myself and my life only as a negative consequence of someone´s bad behavior.

[Papa Coco]

Dalloaway,

I absolutely resonate with your search for your authentic self. It's one of the most confusing aspects of Complex PTSD. They likely chose the word "complex" because it defines the complexity around how we were slowly, methodically, given this lifelong confusion of wondering who we are. It also speaks to the complexity of the myriad symptoms we have, that we can't attach directly to trauma. It also references the complexity of our healing journeys. Normal PTSD is when a person knows who they are, then has a traumatic experience, and changes. They know who they were. They know what caused the rift. They know how their reactions are tied to it. They know what they are in therapy for. To be traumatized by a slow process of gaslighting from birth gives us NO history before the trauma. We don't know who we were born to be, so we don't know what parts of our personalities are trauma versus authentic self.

The complexity of our treatments means that we might get some help from some aspects of our trauma disorder through each of the various things we do to heal. No one cure exists, but many helpful treatments chip away at the ice block until we start to feel strong again.

I want to say this to you though: By reading your posts, and your reactions to others, and your gratitude to everyone who responds to you, I feel pretty darn sure that whatever your authentic self is, it is steeped in kindness, compassion, and gentleness. Bad people can't say nice things the way you do. So, as you toss around your personality attributes, wondering which are trauma and which are authentic, know this: Kindness is absolutely part of your authentic self. I'm so very glad to read your posts and your responses to the others because I can feel your kind compassion through your words.

So, I hope I'm giving you one sturdy building block that you can use to start building your authentic self with. No matter what else you are, kindness and goodness are already part of that self.

[Dalloway]

Papa Coco, thank you very much for your kind words, validating my struggles with looking for "myself" means a lot to me. I like the idea of slowly building your authentic self, because -- as you also mentioned -- we, people with CPTSD don´t really have anything to return to, no basic knowledge of the self, no safe haven we were excluded from. It gives me hope that even though I feel the void and the emptiness sometimes, this blank space can serve as a place to build something beautiful on.

Lately I´ve been experiencing something that Susan Jeffers describes in her book Feel the fear and do it anyway, as "divine homesickness" -- the feeling of not belonging anywhere, of not having any roots or safe ground beneath my feet, as a result of the loss of the authentic self. This feeling was my loyal companion all my life and I always thought that it´s impossible to find myself because I never really existed. But I´m starting to believe that I can slowly build a bridge and incorporate all the things I learn along the way and all the best qualities -- kindness, compassion, gratitude -- that I need to build that bridge to meet myself somewhere in the process.

So thank you again, your kindness radiates from every word of yours and this kindness fills my heart with hope and joy. 

[Desert Flower]

This thread, this search for the authentic self and this feeling of not knowing where you are/belong, just now reminded me of something Haruki Murikami wrote in his book 'Sputnik Sweetheart' and that I wrote down a long time ago. For me, it also has to do with change and growth, not being able to hold on anymore to the coping styles I had, even if they were unhealthy, at least they were familiar. In order to be able to grow. I hope you don't mind my sharing. It goes like this:

"- I think most people live in a fiction. The biggest problem right now is that you don't know what sort of fiction you're dealing with. You don't know the plot; the style's not set. The only thing you do know is the main character's name. Nevertheless, this new fiction is reinventing who you are. Give it time, it'll take you under it's wing and you may very well catch a glimpse of a new world. But you're not there yet, which leaves you in a precarious position.

- I understand what you mean by precarious. Sometimes I feel so - I don't know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going.

- Like a little lost sputnik?"

- Haruki Murikami -

[Dalloway]

Holding on to something that´s familiar, even if it´s unhealthy -- I feel it. Thank you for sharing this with me.