Sharing recovery successes and experiences

[Chartery]

What's written below is something I wrote 4-5 months ago with the intention of posting it here but I got too shy.  I expect that there are other threads in this forum where this belongs and if so I apologise to the moderators for this duplication but I am hoping this reignites some sharing of 'what has worked for me' in peoples recovery journeys.  Please note that this will likely be more beneficial to those fairly early on in their recovery journey but I am hoping that no matter where you are that you can share some things that worked for you:

Here is an account of my recovery so far, in the hopes that some of it may be useful for others struggling through some of the obstacles, concepts and experiences in their CPTSD recovery journey. 

These are the key concepts that were important for me:

- Stifling the Inner Critic and gaining a grip on the negative thought patterns ingrained in my psyche
- Understanding and working with the Inner Child
- Emotional Flashback understanding
- Self Compassion

For those of you familiar with Pete Walker's CPTSD book you can already guess that this has been the corner stone for me in recovery successes.  I've read the book at least twice to completion and have read several sections four or more times in order to find more 'nuggets' of gold or to further ingrain and understand a concept.  In addition to Mr. Walker's book I researched many more websites and watched tons of YouTube videos related to CPTSD.  I found all of it helpful and sometimes it might be just one simple concept from a resource that resonated with me or reinforced the concepts that Mr Walker writes about.  It seems to me that most of the methods of treating CPTSD share the concept of getting to the Inner Child, grieving and being self Compassionate.

Inner Critic

Simply understanding that I had an inner critic was new to me and when I told myself how bad I sucked fifteen times a day (sometimes whenever I passed a mirror) this was my inner critic.  Wow!  And you can change how this inner critic speaks - Double Wow!!  I quickly began to notice how it was speaking to me and either changed the narrative of the critic to something more compassionate (like instead of, ' you suck', to 'you have gone through a lot and we need to work on some things').  Instant relief - halleluiah.  At this point I was thinking I had most of it figured out - Wrong.  This was just the start.  I've come to realize how many ways the critic attacks and works with Emotional Flashbacks to spiral me down into the despair of depression.  The term 'mindfulness' was difficult for me to understand in the beginning and I think I would prefer another term or simply, 'paying attention to how you are thinking and what you are saying to yourself'.  Anyway, I understand it now and being mindful of my critic in addition to what I am feeling is a necessary too for me to work on all of these concepts. 

Another thing I have noticed with the Inner Critic is that I am far more adept at nullifying the inner critic attacks when I have proper rest.  If I start the day tired, it's far more difficult for me to use my energy in a mindful way and my mind can become a playground for the inner critic.  This one can be difficult to deal with because good rest comes very hard for many of us.  Keep plowing as best you can on days like this.

Inner Child

Over the last year I have had numerous breakdowns.  Some of them so ripe with anguish that the pain and noises that came out of me would scare the crap out of everyone and probably scare away an attacking great white shark.  What I didn't realize for many of these in the beginning is that it was my Inner Child crying out for attention.  I had a couple of more breakdowns early in my recovery and after I had some knowledge that going through this process was possibly necessary to make contact with the inner child and release the bottled up emotional pain.  What a surprise I got when what I thought was the end of another breakdown my sadness morphed into immense anger and rage.  It came out so fiercely that it amazed me.  It wasn't words, it was a primal yell, over and over again from the depths of my soul.  This yell was fully directed at my Narcissistic mother and then on to my Narcissistic separated wife.  When it ended there was such relief and the most amazing feeling of peace and contentedness washed over me.  I was starting to get My Voice back and I realized I was standing up for myself (My Inner Child was being protected by me! - the start of an ever growing relationship.  That night I had a dream (tearing up as a write this) where I was standing up for myself in a very grounded and articulated way (no fear) to my father about something trivial and got to the point where he understood me and agreed with me.  I knew he now looked at me as an equal adult and I could see some remorse on his face.  I woke up to a day of full joy.  Tears of joy flowed out of me for a full half hour as I drove to my favourite spot in the world and I had the most amazing hour of just saying thank you to everyone and everything around me.  An unbelievable day.  I have it all figured out now.  Wrong.  Only a couple of days later I would find myself depressed doing my nightly psychotherapy walk around the town in which I live trying to figure out what was still angering me.  At the next opportunity when I was alone and starting to feel sad (like tears might be coming) I go to my bed to see if I can do it again.  Yup, the sadness comes easily and as soon as the anguish subsides a bit more rage comes out and this time it's fully directed at the Inner Critic.  My wordless rage demanding that he leave.  (As a note to the reader, it's been my experience that this needs to be done all alone in a comfortable space.  I know I wouldn't get to this raging anger if I thought someone could hear me.  And I'm sure if someone heard me they would run to the local authorities and have me expedited to the Looney Bin or find some religious authority to perform an exorcism.)  Again there was much relief.  I remain as constantly mindful as possible to the inner critic attacks and try and snuff him out at the earliest sign I catch of him doing his dirty deeds. 

One last note on the sadness and angering is that for me sadness and tears always came easily to me and I did not ever know why.  Now I Know it's the unloved inner child screaming out and I think the sadness was blocking my anger.  It seems to me that this could be related to the four F's (Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn) model that Mr Walker teaches.  I am a Freeze/Fawn type and therefore more in touch with my sadness than my anger.  It might be that if you are more of a Fight/Flight type you are more in touch with your anger and less in touch with your sadness.  Perhaps your anger defence is blocking you from your sadness.  I haven't seen it anywhere yet but maybe if there was a way to anger out until sadness finally came you could get to the tears that I read quite often people have difficulty summoning up.  Please take what I say as an uneducated opinion here and elsewhere, as I do not have  experience or education outside of my own to rely on with this stuff.

Emotional Flashbacks (EF)

I found this concept really difficult in the beginning but I think I have a better grasp of it now.  There seems to be a wide range in size and severity of EF's.  It seems to me when you are in a depressed and despairing state of mind that can last for hours, days, weeks, months or years you are in an EF that is flashing back to the abandonment of the Inner Child.  There simply isn't any hope and survival is hardly worth fighting for.  That's a large scale EF that to me isn't just about the past.  There is also a present day reality about how hard is to function and get through a day that it's improbable that we can get to the point where we can say, I'm in an EF and things aren't so bad.  It's my experience that my current reality is not great and there are practical limitations to expecting things to work out positively for me.  Chiseling away at a large scale flashback is hard work and when they are big I focus on the inner critic and try and identify the negative programs and subterfuge he's running.  Chipping away at this can be hard work, but I can bring myself some satisfaction identifying and beating down the inner critic which automatically makes me feel a little better and at the same time reminds me that the road is hard and these setbacks are difficult to deal with but even small successes can kick-start more positive thinking and I might find myself out of a deeply depressive state in a couple of hours rather than a day or two.
A smaller scale EF that I have always dealt with is simple emoting.  This can be speaking to someone I am not perfectly comfortable with or even writing an email.  I start to shake and worry about what I am going to write or say.  What I've realized is that this is definitely an EF that goes back to my childhood where my schoolwork was always criticized and never good enough, and when most of my non-family-conforming thinking was quickly dismissed as wrong thinking - end of story.

Self Compassion

Unwavering self compassion is proving to be an essential piece of my recovery progress.  It wasn't something I worked on in the beginning at all but as I started to gain some traction (and get some results) with the concepts mentioned above I would go back to Mr. Walkers book or search other websites for other things to work on and I started to work on it.  When you are an unemployed father of three (shared custody) with very limited financial resources and no motivation to look for work because it's all too frightening to deal with and you know you are not healthy enough to go at it - It's GODDAMN HARD to be self compassionate.  And true to the nature of my 'Freeze' response, I self medicate frequently when I need to take a break from all the thinking and pain.  All grounds for the Inner Critic to bomb away with the Toxic Shame incorporated into my psyche from my childhood.   At first I started to be self compassionate about my situation and give myself affirmations where I thought they could actually apply.  For instance it might be, 'It's OK that I didn't get the garbage out this week.  It's not the end of the world and things like this happen to people in my condition.'  This started to help and I began using self compassion in lots of similar small ways and the more I used it the more opportunities to use it came into my awareness.  This was providing even more relief.  I kept up this work and went back to the 'book'  and it said 'Unconditionally Self Compassionate', and I'm thinking, 'yeah, but I'm blameworthy here too.'.  Well, I decided that I would give it a try and what I realized is that it was my now supportive inner voice (not the critic) guiding me and did that ever help.  I forgave myself for my situation and my shortcomings and fully put the blame back on the rightful owners (abusers).  I'm happy to say that this has provided even more relief and when used fully and unconditionally with the other tools noted above I am experiencing moments, hours and days of contentedness I have never known.  I have moments and days in a row now where I can see that I am getting through this and I get glimpses of who I am going to be.  They are adding up and I am excited to get there. 

It's definitely two steps forward and one step back for me but the strides of my steps forward are getting bigger and I hope sharing this might help someone with their recovery.

[Three Roses]

Thanks for writing this, I got a lot from it!

[Chartery]

Awesome - thanks Three Roses for the feedback.