I'm new and here is my story (Trigger Warning)

[Miss T Rex]

Trigger Warning

I am 47 years old and have been struggling to recover from a lifetime of trauma.

I ripped my entire hand open on a nail when I was 4 years old. When I was 5, I witnessed a grisly fatal car accident, then later that year found my neighbor and adopted Grandfather dead in his yard. In the first grade my teacher used to shake me and lock me in a dark closet. The same year, I fell face first on the blacktop while running in from recess when a boy pushed a tire in front of me. My upper lip was torn almost off and I had to have it surgically put back together.

My mother is paranoid schizophrenic. She and my father divorced when I was 7 and my mother got custody of me and my 2 sisters. As a single Mother to us girls, she tried to kill us a lot. We saw too many terrifying and confusing things. We experienced horrifying traumas. My Mother had already been trying to kill me since I was a baby. I remember being a baby and how she set me out in the ocean and watched as the waves took me. My Sister rescued me.

I ran away from home at 12 and was put in a foster home. The father tried to french kiss us and put his hand up our nightgowns to wake us up. He also worked us like slaves. I ran away from the foster home at age 14 with a 28 year old abusive psychotic man. After a year of horror with him, I wound up on the streets experiencing many horrors as a teenage prostitute.

I was arrested, put in juvenile hall then returned home where, at 15 years old, I met my first husband. I spent many years of torture rape and imprisonment with him. The worst years of my life were with him, and I lost my identity.

I escaped at age 23, completely lost and numb. I've worked very hard to get where I am, but have had many additional relationships that were emotionally abusive.

I have CPTSD so bad now that I have non-epileptic seizures. At last, I have met the most loving gentle man and, at last, I have a healthy relationship, but now I'm falling apart with multiple triggers every day and seizures. I can't work and I'm a wreck.

I'm about to start medication in a week and I'm terrified. I'm fighting with everything I have.

[Kizzie]

Hi and a very warm welcome to OOTS Miss T-Rex   You have endured so much and yet here you are determined to recover - that takes a lot of courage. FWIW I think the name you have chosen is perfect because it's clear you are going to be ferocious in your recovery.   

Perhaps now that you have a loving relationship with a gentle person who cares, part of you knows it's time to recover and thus the EFs and feeling like you're falling apart.  As the barriers begin to come down, those parts of us that fought to keep us safe during the worst of times go on high alert thinking they have to protect us still, while other parts know the time is now to begin to deal with the pain.  It makes for quite the inner storm. 

That's what happened with me so I know how hard it can be even to make it through the day, a lot of us here do. Medication helped me tremendously.  I literally was hiding in my closet and drinking at one point things were so bad, and within about two weeks after starting it, I was able to get out in real life to the appointments I so badly needed (e.g., with a therapist, my GP). I hope you find the right med that will take things down a notch or two so that you can hear the positive parts better and let them get to work. Therapy and being here also helped me so much. 

Again, welcome and hope some of this helps.  Glad you found your way here   

[pawprint76]

Miss T Rex: I am sorry your life has been filled with such difficulty. Having a mother as you described only sets you up for worse trauma in life, as you discovered.

I hope you're able to find some peace with medication. I think you will find a great deal of relief. I only have my own experiences as reference, of course. The relief I've felt has been enormous. As a joke, I see people everyday who could use a little medicine! Just break up a pill in their coffee when they're not looking!

-Pawprint76

[Miss T Rex]

Update:
I am now on two types of medication that works very well with no ill side effects, and my seizures have stopped.  I am still unable to work due to triggers and social impairment, but I am recovering and my quality of life is so much better. I would like to add that nutrition plays a large role in mental health.

There is hope. Never give up.

[betterlane]

Hi Miss T Rex.  I've recently returned to this site so have just found your posts.

I have been often humbled by some of the stories that I have read as they make mine look so tame by comparison.  Yours is definitely one of them.

I hope that you continue to find some answers/relief/safety.

My demon also came in the form of my mother.  I continue to look for relief, and will probably continue for the rest of my life.  I work at it, achieve a level of peace and then some other obstacle presents itself.  Then I search for another method of relief.  I've been in therapy but it's effectiveness has waned.  I've recently started tapping and hired a coach.  It's dredged up more layers of crap (which is good). 

I believe in and trust my intuition.  I have had a deep belief for a while that my mother tried to kill me when I was very young.  She was a 19 y.o. single mother with me, living with her own BPD mother and 3 siblings in a 3 bedroom apartment in a housing project.  She had already had another child whom she had given up for adoption.  My father, who she later married and had 2 more children, was MIA until I was 2.  She was a beast to me, but never as bad to my brother and sister.

The other day I was watching a youtube tapping video and had an incredibly strong visceral reaction to someone else's story.  I sobbed violently, got very cold and spent the rest of the afternoon almost catatonic.  That's when that feeling that she had tried to kill me resurfaced.  I don't know my first memory with her, though my first memory with my father is very clear.  I have been researching different treatments and may try EMDR or hypnosis.

How and when were you aware of those early childhood memories?  Were they always there?  If not, when did they resurface and how?

I heard someone say, with regard to your mental/spiritual health, that you can't clean the house if you don't know where the dirt is.  I want to clean my house but don't know how to find the dirt.  I would be grateful for any guidance you can give.

I hope that you are continue to find relief - with meds, with meditation, with (carefully chosen) friends, with whatever gives you a measure of peace.   

[Kizzie]

Glad to hear life is improving T-Rex and as Betterlane suggested I really hope that continues for you 

[Danaus plexippus]

I'm new here too and don't know how to get started. I was not diagnosed with PTST till after 9/11. Your doc must be very proficient to have found the right meds on the first try. My doctors are still mixing it up but I thought I was getting better 'till I had what they call a bleed through episode. The doctors say it is normal. Meds won't cure me but my good days will outnumber my bad days. Good luck to you. Stay safe.

[Danaus plexippus]

On the subway ride home from my shrink yesterday I thought of you and remembered the day my mother woke me up at 1:00 am, held a gun to my head and interrogated me about something that I had no idea what she was talking about and so could give no satisfactory answer. This only made her more infuriated and she turned the gun on herself and asked if I wanted her to shoot. I said no and I don't remember what happened after that. For better or worse you seem to have a better memory than me. My meds make life easier to take but harder to deal with. I hope everything is going well with you. If the weather is nice where you are I hope you get outside. Lilacs are blooming in my neck of the urban sprawl. I don't have a garden of my own, but patients in a recovery program built a Sobriety Garden behind Belleview. I arrived early for my appointment yesterday so I took a walk and smelled the lilacs. Lilacs used to grow wild along the railroad tracks. My husband used to take me there and we would cut big bouquets and fill our apartment with the smell. I haven't gone back to the place where the lilacs grow wild since my husband died. I don't even know if the lilacs are still there. The days of wine and roses are distant days for me. You're young. I hope all good things for you.