I feel compelled to share

[Trace the Ace]

 
I have just joined today after being diagnosed a few weeks ago. My greatest compulsion is to share what I've been through. Do others experience this and also do you tell people about it who are in your life?

[radical]

Hi Trace the Ace

Good to have you here.

I have phases in which I try to tell some people.  I know how important it is to increase understanding of this condition in the community.  Sometimes I feel overexposed, unheard, misunderstood, and that I've made others uncomfortable and myself more vulnerable, so I make sure it is a conscious decision.

I think it is a very personal decision.  It can be liberating, but it can also come with a cost, so for me it is about the place I'm in, the people I'm talking to and the place I feel they are in.

I've found this community to be warmly supportive, I hope you do too.

Looking forward to hearing more from you

[Entropic]

I agree about phases. I think it's a way of trying to connect to people.

[solongStockholm]

Yes! I felt this way at first. But quickly learned that I only want to share with the most trustworthy individuals. I maybe told 3 people.

[Wife#2]

What I've chosen to do is to talk with people, draw them out, if you will. If they are private people, I don't share. If they are sharing people, I share. I kind of match their personality.

Some folks I've known most of my life and they only know of a few things that happened since we've been friends. I've talked about cPTSD with only one friend. We recognize it in our lives and in the lives of our spouses. We can talk in depth, though none of us are diagnosed.

[Candid]

My greatest compulsion is to share what I've been through.

Yes, it's a vital part of healing and that's what mainstream doesn't understand.

I can't tell you how many times I've regretted talking to people about what went on for me. It's so unfair, when the first questions new people ask are about family. I've learned to fudge it, because I can say where my FOO live, what they do/did, and so on. People with good-enough families want to know who we are, and the hardest thing for us is that in most cases we've had to invent ourselves without FOO input.

So I keep it minimal as long as I can, often squirming as people talk brightly and innocently about their own families. Worst are the people who've had an altercation with a parent that they've got over; they're never going to understand ours wasn't a single-issue disagreement, it was an attitude of hatred from the start.

I'm glad you've found our forum, Trace. You may well find, as I have, that 'telling' here resolves a lot of things for you, so you can go out into the real world without the need to say where you've been. When you have a squirm out there with people not-in-the-know, you can be mentally taking notes to tell us about it here. THIS is where people always understand.