1 step forward, ? steps back..need support.

[Ferzak]

Hello All,

I have been working with Peter Walker for almost 1 year and also had a lot of therapy before then.  Although I don't like labels,  "CPTSD"  explained me like no other ever has and I now see this label as a shortcut for explaining my experience.

I feel as if I have made a great deal of progress and have a good understanding of myself and my triggers, however, this past 10 days has been awful.  I am on the verge of tears all of the time and feel that I am close to a break down.  A large part of it is that I feel very alone.  Very few people understand or are interested in understanding the experience of CPTSD. (and I work in the department of psychiatry at a big university!) It isn't that I want to turn my friends, and certainly not my coworkers, into therapists, but I long to connect with people on a deeper level and that involves that they know at least some of what I am going through.  It seems that everyone I know is not interested in going that deep (except when they have an issue!) and I have not met many new people who are interested in true self growth.  Of course, I am in a fairly conservative and very cliquey area of the country.  I am hoping to move west in the next couple of years and in a few months I will be able to retire.. although I will have to continue to work at least part-time.
anyway
Help!
How is it for others as far as support? the process of recovery? feeling alone?
Thanks all!

[woodsgnome]

This is spot on per my experiences, the most recent being just yesterday.

Yesterday a personable fellow in a "helping" profession (of all things!) stopped by to discuss a project we've decided to work on. I happened to have Walker's book lying around, and my acquaintance picked it up, and literally shrank back when I referred to it, and how it relates to my own journey (my visitor does know parts of my story). And he just shrugged and launched into "business". I felt hurt that he couldn't spare a moment to even lend the smallest acknowledgment...he's a major player in these parts and has a rep for being so helpful, and is, but he didn't want to touch my pain whatsoever. He calls me a friend but...well, you know.

Weird; I don't understand that at all. So your post dovetails precisely with my experience yesterday. I needed to lend my support to what you feel. At least here we're among friends.

There are very few I feel I can trust who will have a true empathy for this, and my recent visitor does it for a living! Huh? He was/is very nice, I helped him out when his wife died a while back, etc., ad infinitum; but he didn't seem to want to even acknowledge my journey in this. It wasn't like I was on my knees screaming help me out. But he didn't want to hear more and almost seemed flippant about it. Then of course my mind plays the "is it me" game and my emotions spiral downward into "I don't matter" mode. Back on my lonely trail, which I'm very good at anyway, being a "freeze" type. Fine...I'm by myself on this, always have been, it hurts, more of the same old. As you say, having a therapist is one thing, but locating a true friend is like looking for the needle in the haystack.

I don't have any solid suggestions for you, Ferzak, but just this sharing. It's sad but so typical--this reaction/non-reaction of others. And I'm coy about who I even tell in the first place--then afterwards, it's like I held up a sign saying "I have cptsd; I'm cursed, don't come near". People don't want to know. True, I have an "image" (I think) of being pretty self-assured, but when I drop the guard...go away, we don't want to know is what I sense.

So I'm back at point lonesome on this...but I need you to feel this:
                     

You are not alone. We are not alone.