Gathered all the pieces,struggling to put them back together

[phoenixbetty]

Hello everyone!  This is my first time posting on this forum. Thank you in advance to all who have chosen to share their experiences living with CPTSD and offering advice to help others reaching out for help. It's encouraging and deeply touching to read.

I discovered I have CPTSD almost two years ago after I sunk into a deep depression. It was the final straw on this depression diagnosis. I realized that the clinical diagnosis I had been given of anxiety and clinical depression was simply incomplete at the very least. No matter how much progress I made in life, no matter how much I had going for me, I'd always end up back in the emotional abyss.

I'm 33 now and I have a work history with lots of gaps due to bouts of depression and other symptoms of CPTSD. I'm currently unemployed, single and living at home with my mom. This is not how imagined my life would have turned out. I'm educated, have a high IQ,attractive and generally a warm and loving person. Yet everything in my life seems to end up a disaster: relationships,jobs,etc.

I dream of having a family of my own and I'm afraid that this may not be possible given my track record and continuing CPTSD symptoms. It's discouraging and saddening to recall the causes of my CPTSD and to see how I'm still paying for the abusers transgressions. I don't want to see myself as a victim because I know it's not helpful. I just feel heartbroken as I learn the full scope of CPTSD and the impact it's had on my life.

I worry that I have so much to learn and unlearn that I won't be recovered enough in time to have a family and the kind of life I dream of. Is CPTSD a kind of prison sentence? If so, how do I break free in time to really live my life?

I appreciate your support.

[Blueberry]

Hello Phoenixbetty, Welcome to the forum 

I can relate to a lot of what you wrote. After a lot of therapy, I'd say that not everything ends up a disaster any more. Though there are days and then there are other days.... But the lows aren't so low or long any more.

[Kat]

Hey there!

You said you don't want to see yourself as a victim because it's not helpful.  The sad truth is that you are a victim.  I'm a victim.  The fact that you were abused should not reflect negatively on you.  It was not your fault.  I know what you're saying, where you're coming from, but I think it's important to own your truth.  At any rate, it's been helpful to me to start self-identifying as a victim.  Along the same lines, I'll sometimes say to my therapist that I'm "just feeling sorry for myself."  Her response is always, "You should feel sorry for yourself.  You were deeply hurt."  That helps take away some of the shame I feel at times.

One foot at a time...

[Blackbird]

Sorry, Kat, I have to disagree a bit. Although I agree we were victims, and because I have extreme bouts of depression as well, I also identify in not liking being labeled as a victim anymore. The learned helplessness that comes with it it's incredibly hard to overcome. Took me a long time to get out of that hole and realize that I'm in control of my thoughts, my life, and I bear the responsibility of my actions, even in having Bipolar disorder which can mean losing touch with reality for periods of time. But that only gave me more endurance to be responsible for my life. Something that having BP taught me though, is that is perfectly okay to have depression, it's usually triggered by something and that something is what we should look at. Depression is often called an illness, but I think it's a symptom, it can be a symptom of a myriad of things, in our case, CPTSD.

Phoenixbetty, I'm also living at my mother's house, so you're not alone. I'm just 3 years younger than you and struggle with the same, like time is running out. But it's still possible to overcome this, I'm sure of it.

[phoenixbetty]

Thank you all for your kind words and support. 

Blackbird thank you for mentioning the link between a victim mindset and the learned helplessness. This is the reason I no longer define myself as a victim, although I acknowledge that I was a victim when I experienced abuse as a child. When I'm in an emotional flashback, I find that reminding myself that I'm an adult now and capable of taking action to protect myself and ultimately take full responsibility for my life really helps bring me back to the present.

I too believe that it is possible to overcome this. However, the more I learn about CPTSD and truly how complex it is, the more I realize what a trek it will be. Two years ago, I climbed Mt. Fuji overnight and reached the summit at sunrise. It took 8 hours to complete the climb and I can recall just how tempted I was to quit approaching the last 2 hours of the climb.  I can liken this temptation to quit right before reaching the summit to making progress in CPTSD recovery. Just when I'm about to experience a breakthrough in recovery, the temptation to quit sneaks up without fail.

Have any of you experienced this? If so, how do you persuade yourself to keep going?

Thanks in advance

[Blueberry]

oh, do I ever know the temptation to quit! Or conversely just the difficulty of getting up in the morning and keeping on going. I've found that fighting it is generally not helpful. Sometimes I do need to lie about for a bit in bed or get up and not do much in order for whatever is going on in my subconscience to come to the surface, then I can sometimes work with that.

For years I had a voice that said something like the best plan is to give up life. Eventually a therapist suggested I tell the voice that that's how it seemed in my childhood but there are different options now that I am an adult. That helped. Now it's very rare that the voice makes itself heard.

I think that persuading myself to keep going is not just about that moment just before a breakthrough in recovery but in self-care as much of the time as possible. This helps cement in me the idea that it is worth doing this for me. I'm worth the work and effort I put into myself, into my recovery. For along time I worked a lot with inner children. I could manage to keep going sometimes for them. I would picture them, all these little Blueberries, and want to take care of them. I often didn't actually have the energy to do so but at least I wanted to. That helped me not self-destruct at least.

Then there is also the idea that it's not really me who wants to give up and not progress. Rather that's something out of the super unhealthy family dynamics I grew up in and the role I took on there.

Also I have found rewards a good way to keep going. Sometimes these are rewards for my inner children like using stickers or colouring books and sometimes rewards for my Adult. Also self-praise is very important. Some of that I do on here. And giving myself breaks, consciously allowing breaks before I'm about to collapse. So I don't collapse so much any more. If you feel as if you're about to collapse physically, it's hard to keep going with something really strenuous like ahem healing, so it's been important to me to learn to recognise my own limits and take breaks early enough on.

BTW how did you keep going for the final 2 hours of your climb? Maybe there was some useful self-talk going on there which you could tell us about and/or use yourself.

[Kat]

Saying that you didn't want to see yourself as a victim was such a small part of your overall message, and I don't mean to turn the conversation away from your main concerns that you won't be able to recover quickly enough to live the life you dream of, but I also feel a need to clarify my point. 

The definition of victim is simply:  "a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action."  Unfortunately, it's gained a negative connotation because of the way people have used the term.  What you do with the label is what matters.  It's not meant to be used as an excuse to not do the hard work of recovery or as a means to gain other people's sympathy which you then use to become/stay helpless. 

For me, for a long, long time I experienced the symptoms of CPTSD as things wrong with me.  This caused me great frustration, self-loathing, and shame because I couldn't just handle life the way others could.  Once I saw that all of those symptoms were a result of having been a victim, that is being caused by someone NOT me, then I was able to give myself a huge break. 

In my opinion, there's not really a link between victim mindset and learned helplessness.  There's victim and then there's the learned helplessness mindset.  Unfortunately, some people use the fact that they were a victim to not move beyond learned helplessness.

Anyhow, how about just "survivor"?  Maybe that's a less loaded word for us...

[Blackbird]

Survivor fits me best  Maybe others feel better with victim, is not my place to say what word one should describe themselves as. I appreciate your insight, Kat.

And yes phoenixbetty, I do feel the need to quit all the time. Especially when I making progress, means it's hurting somewhere and that I need to heal and release that burden in some way.

My T said my injured parts carry burdens, that is one of my goals to release those burdens one at a time. I need to find a way, though, I'm still pretty lost. He mentioned a ritual of sorts, but I feel I would feel too weird doing it. I have no idea how I'm going to release them, but they will be released eventually, even if it is with a ritual. He said that if I played the part of the person doing the ritual, my burdened parts would "catch" the deed and release it in their own way... I'm still pretty skeptical, but he has had success with this before so who am I to judge? 

[Blueberry]

The definition of victim is simply:  "a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action."  Unfortunately, it's gained a negative connotation because of the way people have used the term.  What you do with the label is what matters.  It's not meant to be used as an excuse to not do the hard work of recovery or as a means to gain other people's sympathy which you then use to become/stay helpless. 

For me, for a long, long time I experienced the symptoms of CPTSD as things wrong with me.  This caused me great frustration, self-loathing, and shame because I couldn't just handle life the way others could.  Once I saw that all of those symptoms were a result of having been a victim, that is being caused by someone NOT me, then I was able to give myself a huge break. 

Anyhow, how about just "survivor"?  Maybe that's a less loaded word for us...

I actually understood your original post about being a victim and also your T saying you should feel sorry for yourself. I've been told that before, also that self-compassion is really important for healing.

Buuuuut when I say to myself that I'm a victim I have an image of me small and cowering and when I say I'm a survivor I'm standing up full of energy, my arms stretched up towards the sky. It feels so much more powerful. These images come spontaneously. I feel empowered by thinking of myself as a survivor. I was a victim in my family growing up but I've moved on from there. The survivor is the new me who keeps on growing emotionally. In your post too you mention "having been a victim". It's in the past. I'm sure you're a survivor now too! I'm glad that seeing yourself as having been victimised enabled you to stop self-loathing. That's the most important thing, however it is we manage that.

Definitions of words change in the minds of people before they change in dictionaries. I used to resist that myself but it didn't work. I can't fight the whole world or control how word usage changes.

[Three Roses]

I think it's important that we each use the terminology that makes us feel the most healthy and focused on healing. Accepting that I was a victim was an important step for me, but it doesn't define me. As I heal and grow, I become more the person I truly am, focusing less on what was done to me or what people have thought of me, and learning to define myself.

[Kat]

Blueberry, thanks for pointing out that I used the past tense.  I, personally, find affirmation from saying I was a victim of child abuse.  But, you're right, I don't think I'd ever use it in the present tense: I am a victim of child abuse.  I'm sticking with survivor.