New here - a little about me

[tink1382]

Hi!
I have just found this forum whilst searching for some more information/help with my difficulties. Following a MASSIVE amount of stress and loss during 2013, a 'final straw' that Christmas shattered my feeling of safety and i've been having massive difficulties ever since. I was having panic attacks at work, curling in a ball in my bosses office shaking and crying. TERROR. NOT SAFE. In August last year i was urged to take time off work as i was falling to pieces on them regularly and was clearly unwell. In December a psychiatric nurse suggested C-PTSD. She couldn't diagnose me as its not an officially recognised disorder yet but suggested i was suffering from that. I hadn't heard of C-PTSD before and bought the book C-PTSD from surviving to thriving. I also read all i could find online. Reading about it made me so excited. It fitted me and my difficulties exactly! I had 'a thing' i wasn't just broken and crazy!! I am RACING with memories and feelings and need. Emotions flying all over the place. Every trauma from the past surfaced at once and i felt all the feelings and memories. I can't hold it in, my ability to be professional and adult and coping has gone completely. I feel a  hideous feeling of being out of control. I have been in and out of mental health services since i was 11 (im now 32) with anxiety, suicidal thoughts and intent, severe anorexia... and see now that that may all have been aspects of C-PTSD. All the different ways i tried to manage my hurt. I feel there are three parts to myself. There is a child who is TERRIFIED and DESPERATE, a raging mess part who is self destructive, critical and frightening and there is a wise adult part who can be there for others, be clever and calm and rational and who until lately has provided a strong professional front. The adult is far back now. The child is screaming for help and the messy bit is giving me * for being such a mess and having need.
So that is maybe me in brief. I hope i haven't written too much 

[lightbeneaththeearth]

tink,
I do believe that there is hope and not just hope but strong hope for the wise adult part to pull all of those other parts together. It seemed hopeless to me until recently I started learn that I could separate myself from the spiral of guilt. I was so afraid of the pain of knowing I've messed up, and that I've hurt people that whenever a certain person in my would hit one of those guilt buttons, I would collapse and do almost whatever they wanted. I've learned recently to step outside of the pain and let other people own their disappointment in me and stick with my decision. That's not such a big step for a healthy person, but it's a big step for me that lets me know that it is possible for me to take control. Your struggles, I'm sure, are different. But there is real hope.

[Indigochild]

Hi tink1382

I am so glad you have found this forum and i do hope you find it helpful.
Have you thought of seeing a therapist? Maybe right now your not ready....
I have just gone on the waiting list to see a therapist. Your story is very similar to mine...I think there comes a time, weather you are ready or not to face it, when trauma comes out, as the body is ready to release it.

I completely understand about not feeling safe and feeling terrified.
Cptsd also made me feel relief. 
I have realised too, recently that there are two parts of myself. The child part that I have talked to since being a child, to comfort myself i guess..perhaps trying to be a parent that i never had...who knows. I used to make my dolls talk back to me as a child, but perhaps the dolls voices was the voice i needed to hear from my parents, thus maybe i was trying to be my own parent. Ive never thought of it as three parts but makes a lot of sense.

If you havent yet, i recommend *The Tao of fully feeling- Harvesting forgiveness out of blame* by Pete Walker. Very good book and explains a lot.

Im sorry that know one knew what was actually happening with you. It seems mental health services don't seem to guess cptsd. 

*The adult is far back now. The child is screaming for help and the messy bit is giving me * for being such a mess and having need*. this sounds to me like your inner critic. The book explains about that.

Take care...

[tink1382]

Hi,
Thank you both so much for your responses.
lightbeneaththeearth what you shared is very encouraging. It sounds like you have made a huge leap by managing to separate yourself from other peoples' feelings and reactions. I hope you are really proud of yourself for working to get to this point. It is certainly a huge thing.
Indigochild I have not read the book you mention, but do own Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving which i think is amazing. Have you read that one?  I am not currently in therapy but have had several years of it at different times of crisis in the past. There doesn't seem to be much talking therapy on offer these days on the NHS, i am on a LONG waiting list to see someone from the trauma team. I can't afford to go private. I do have the issue that my enormous mother need means that i attach to therapists STRONGLY straight away and it makes life fairly torturous every second im not in that one hour a week with them. I often wonder whether the distress of attaching so strongly and then inevitably loosing each professional outways any good done in the years of therapy!? I am asking for help and accepting everything i get offered - so far drugs and recovery college courses.