Pete walker book

[arpy1]

amen to that a hundred times, stillhere. i am definitely in the cptsi camp not the cptsd camp.

[EverPure]

Actually the use of the word disorder didn't bother me at all. Everyone knows that PTSD is a result of trauma not a result of character. So I was fine with it. I read the entire book in less than 24hrs. Triggering? Yep. But then anything that forces you to admit that actually you have been traumatised and in a fairly major way is always confronting. I was still teetering on the brink of denial about that until I read this book. Then suddenly all the weird little pieces of my life fell into place and I can no longer put my head in the sand and pretend everything is okay. Right there someone has explained the forces at work in my life to a T and linked it to trauma.

The mind tricks us all the time, but the body does not lie. The good things that came out of this book for me were....

- Anger rages are a normal response to trauma
- Self berating didn't mean I was possessed, it's a result of a child's ego in arrested development. I didn't really consider the possession possibility...
- All my physical symptoms of life threatening fear episodes have a cause. They don't just come out of nowhere and my body isn't malfunctioning when it happens.
- Hypervigilance and paranoia didn't mean I was going crazy. It's a symptom.
- Being unable to trust humanity is normal after trauma.
- My intense feelings of anhedonia, fatigue, lethargy and helplessness all had a cause. They weren't just negative thinking I'd slipped into or picked up from other people.
- None of these problems were actually my fault and I'd done extremely well just to live with them to date.
- I now had some idea of what my struggle actually is. Instead of flailing around in the dark wondering why I had all these disconnected symptoms that no mental health professional would actually take seriously or connect to a meaningful diagnosis.

Seriously this book is great.

[A_Girl_You_Dont_Know]

- Self berating didn't mean I was possessed, it's a result of a child's ego in arrested development. I didn't really consider the possession possibility...

I actually agree with everything you said but this...I need an embarrassed face. I sort of considered this a possibility. I am a Christian and no one could explain the critics to me so up until just prior to reading the book I've been struggling to label them. Mine even has a name, X. This part of the book was an enlightening moment of relief and painful washing of ignorance as I FINALLY understood and had to grieve no one else could give me a name for it. Therapists would just ignore it because it didn't fit; the same way they would ignore the emerging of my inner child. It's like all the pieces were there but it was just ignored. Finally I understand but im not sure which is worse: this or ignorance because this really hurts.

[EverPure]

This part of the book was an enlightening moment of relief and painful washing of ignorance as I FINALLY understood and had to grieve no one else could give me a name for it. Therapists would just ignore it because it didn't fit; the same way they would ignore the emerging of my inner child. It's like all the pieces were there but it was just ignored. Finally I understand but im not sure which is worse: this or ignorance because this really hurts.

I agree the inner critic is something many therapists miss. Or think it unimportant and unrelated. It helped me so much to see it as the core of the problem and needing to tackle it as the main priority rather than the anxiety symptoms which had been the focus of my therapy to date.