Hey there!

[dur8516]

Hey there, I wanted to go ahead and introduce myself a bit. I am 25 years old, and I have been jumping from counselor to counselor since I was about 16. It wasn't until this past year that a counselor suggested C-PTSD to me, and I just felt like the description just resonated with me as exactly what I was feeling. My family is a very old school Italian family that moved to the US years ago, but they still have a lot of old school beliefs that they tried incorporating into when they raised me. I guess you could say that my family loved the idea of me more than who I actually was as a person... because I didn't even know who that person was until I moved out(so how could they?).

I would say my problems mostly stemmed from my family never being happy with me when I was a child primarily-
Secondary- I would say my problems also stemmed from childhood neglect from both my family and friends... the only time anyone needed me was when they needed help... but I didn't get to play games with anyone or experience friendships like alot of other children my age.

I am just now coming to the terms with the fact that I am extremely emotionally stunted because I have had friends and relationships, and I have not been able to connect on an emotional level like a lot of other people my age do. I want to learn to deal with that better, and get advice from people who know what its like to have a family that was never emotional with them growing up!

Anyway, I look forward to talking to all of you! I am extremely excited to get to know people who genuinely understand what I am going through! Nice to meet you!

[Gromit]

 
I can relate to not being quite what my parents, or, at least, my mother, wanted. Or, at least, feeling that way.

Probably emotionally stunted too, never been great at making or keeping friends.

At least you are finding this out now, it has taken me rather longer to reach this point. The earlier the better, to recover & live a full life.

Welcome.

[Erebor]

  Hello dur, and welcome.  I'm glad you met a counselor who could point you in the right direction.

I must confess not being from a very Italian part of the world that I don't know what an old school Italian family looks like, but from what you described I'm guessing such families are harsh.

I am just now coming to the terms with the fact that I am extremely emotionally stunted because I have had friends and relationships, and I have not been able to connect on an emotional level like a lot of other people my age do.

I struggle with emotionally connecting with people too - I can form strong emotional connections very quickly because of the attachment issues my parents left me with, but the connections are shallow and disappear almost as fast, leaving me feeling indifferent, almost bored, overwhelmed, and/or disliking the person.  I used to worry sometimes that it meant I disliked people in general, but I think it's that I'm not in a place to build healthy connections that are authentic to who I am. My attachment disorder is running the show and until I get that sorted I'm not going to be able to become genuinely close to anyone.

If you haven't already come across it, Pete Walker's book 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving' and his guest blogposts on the Out of The Storm blog are some of the best resources available on CPTSD.

[dur8516]

Hello everyone! Thank You for your warm welcomes, I hope to hear from you more as I progress in my journey in recovery!
Thank you for your book suggestion erebor, I will have to take a look! My Italian family is more overbearing than anything else... I know they have whats best for me always in mind... but sometimes they don't realize that I don't need to be told what I'm doing wrong, and I need a little recognition for doing something good... It probably would have done wonders for my self esteem!
And Gromit, No judgement about the friends... I probably have about 3 good friends and I don't talk to any of them very frequently.

[Erebor]

You're very welcome! Both for the welcome and the book suggestion. Pete's books are talked about a lot on here. As a therapist with CPTSD himself, he's spent many years helping other survivors, and has a lot of insight. He's actually got a new guest blog post up on the Out of The Storm blog now, talking about some of his top 10 Practices for Navigating CPTSD.

That sounds like a very disheartening environment in the long run. As you say, we all need to have positive recognition. And not so positive (but non-abusive) recognition, too. Either one alone isn't much good.

I look forward to hearing from you as you travel along your road, too.  Like Gromit mentioned, I think it's great that you've reached this point early on in life, although I think from my own experience that no age feels 'soon enough' to learn about CPTSD (I'm a similar age and found out a bit younger than you did). It can be pretty exciting to discover you're not alone in the world anymore and your issues actually make sense!