Bon Jour dear Outofthestormers!

[FlowerTigressX]

My life never worked. Found out last September I had travelled through it with CPTSD on my back. Nope, nobody told me. Had to read Pete Walker's fine book to diagnose myself. Well, then everything made sense, finally (including getting misdiagnosed, again and again and again). Was so shocked I had to spend eight weeks in Thailand. Yes, I recommend that! Came back and got mown under by flashbacks. Took me more weeks to realize this. But now at least I have words for stuff!!

Am sixty now, duh. Late-ish to start my Recovery. Ideally I will stumble across a survivor who is also a c-trauma informed therapist. In my country not a chance - we lag roughly 30 years behind in trauma research. Am thinking about changing the country for a bit to get the professional support I need. Am also thinking about a big fat heist to afford this. Quoting "hope is the thing with feathers bla" will only result in my bingeing the birdie.

Also - contrasts are everything - am veeeery glad I found you guys! 

[Bermuda]

Well, I'm glad you found us too. I think a lot of us here are self-diagnosed for various reasons. I am so bad at these things so I will just stop while I'm ahead!

Welcome to the forum.

[NarcKiddo]

Welcome! Sorry you have to be here, of course. But I'm glad you found us.

I'm not diagnosed with C-PTSD. I'm not even truly self-diagnosed as I shy away from diagnoses. But so much of what I have read about C-PTSD resonates that I feel I am in the right place here.

I'm in my mid 50s and it took me until my 40s to start properly realising something might actually be wrong. I'm currently reading "Mother Hunger" by Kelly McDaniel and she said most of her clients come to her in later years. "Identifying maternal abuse doesn't happen until later in life. It's as if we are protected from knowing until we are truly ready to know." I found this quote comforting, because part of me has been feeling quite foolish for taking so long to wake up.

See you round the boards. 

[Papa Coco]

Welcome to the forum,

I too discovered PTSD and C-PTSD later in life. I was 40 when I was diagnosed with PTSD, but struggled with why I had it because I had never been in a train crash or a war or a house fire or any traumatic event that could cause PTSD. The diagnosis required a near death experience.  Then in my fifties, people started understanding C-PTSD, and all the pieces fit.

PTSD wasn't understood when we were younger.  And Complex PTSD is just now being understood, diagnosed and treated. So, for a lot of us, we are older now when the help has arrived. Also, as a young man, I had a family to raise, a career to build, a mortgage to pay. I was always looking forward and trying to ignore the past. I had to "buckle up and hit the bricks." Part of our survivalist nature is to get up and walk off the pain so we can survive and keep moving forward in life. As I've aged, and my family is raised, and I've crossed over the career stressors, I have time to look back and reflect now. Time to lick my wounds now. I can look back with the wisdom of a long life and see the path I've lived. As a 63-year-old I have a lot of clear hindsight to examine. Hindsight is showing me that I was carrying a burden that I should never have had to carry. As I raised my own kids kindlier and more respectfully than I was raised, I see where my parents and older siblings chose to bully me to unnecessarily make my life a living obstacle course. One that they didn't have the right to do to me just because I was kind and small and easy to bully.

People didn't talk about narcissism when I was younger, so I didn't know what it was. They didn't talk openly about gaslighting, so I didn't know what it was. The whole world is waking up to these things now. Most people who have Complex PTSD can tie much of their abuse to having been gaslit by narcissists. Now we know that. We, the general population didn't understand any of that until only the last decade on earth. Now we have a new spotlight on an old problem and we can see it so clearly now. To me, Pete Walker is a hero. His book is a game changer.

One issue we're having as a global society is that the population of victims of gaslighting and narcissism is growing faster than the population of therapists who are trained to understand and treat it. The good news is that there are so many new venues for us to work with. This forum is one of my favorites. Until more therapists come onto the scene, we have new books popping up all over the place. Support groups like this forum are coming to the surface.

I'm sorry you have had to endure a life of C-PTSD, but very glad you found this forum. I hope that we, together as a community are able to help each other while the world of therapy becomes more available to us in its time.

[Kizzie]

Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS FlowerTigree, glad you found us.   

Pete Walker's book was the first CPTSD book I read too and wow, it was an eye opener to say the least. I think he's so relatable because he's a therapist who is also a relational trauma survivor. He just seemed to get it. 

Love what you said about a heist to pay for recovery - it's the sad truth, Treatment is expensive and there aren't a lot of knowledgeable therapists around at the moment.  I just found one this year and I've been looking since 2014!  As Papa Coco wrote fortunately the world seems to be waking up to complex trauma so hopefully things will change sooner rather than later.  I'm in my mid-60's too so I feel the clock ticking.

Again welcome and we do get it here so post away when you feel comfortable 

[FlowerTigressX]

I thank you for the welcome and the insights from the bottom (of my heart).