Accept and Advance: CPTSD as a blessing

Started by Skier Anonymous, November 22, 2017, 12:07:32 AM

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Skier Anonymous

Background: Accepting childhood trauma and CPTSD while recovering from career-ending physical injuries as an adult. Told through the perspective of an internationally-sponsored big mountain and backcountry skier and competitive endurance cyclist, intended to offer hope to others during the process of acceptance.
Essay 1/3 so far, The Motto of Champions, January 2015:

I remember hearing the Motto of Champions while recovering from shoulder surgery back in high school: "If you are hurt, you can suck it up. If you are injured, you can rebound and return bigger and better...continuing to inspire". Three winters ago I injured my right leg in a side-country skiing crash and have needed surgery and long-term rehab for my back, hip, and knee. Well behind in my recovery and still significantly uncomfortable, the doubts have become louder and I can start to feel them now. As an athlete I've learned that only I can fully understand the depth of my own character, only I know how deep I can go. But right now I'm hearing from every direction that I should give up on wanting that life back, why ask for more after getting knocked down like this? Aren't I able to see that my body needs to stop? Shouldn't I be pursuing a more 'normal' path at this point? I have never questioned why I want to continue doing what I love, and my answer to everyone that this is life, no, retreat and no surrender from the person I aspire to be. Our dreams are always changing, but it's crucial that we never stop having them because dreams are what carry us through the experience called life...

This injury is simply the most recent great thing that has happened to me, and it's the anticipation of the next great thing to come that gets me out of bed each day with almost too much enthusiasm. I get asked frequently how I'm able to be so positive all the time and it comes down to self-belief, which we all receive opportunities to gain. Recently, I made the necessary journey inward to finally accept my darkest and most painful demons, sexual assault by two fellow male classmates that I saw on a daily basis in our small school for the following five years. I'll say that I'm really proud of sparing everyone else from the pain of that experience, especially at such a young age. I've done a great job of giving to those around me, now I get to take care of myself as well. Sure life is nowhere close to fair, there's no controlling what comes, and there's certainly no forgetting of certain life moments. I can finally accept that bad things happen to good people, and I'm still the first one to say good things happen to good people too. So for me, the blessing of that experience is that I will forever have the strength and perspective to be giving my best to the world around me, and also to myself.

I lived with this injury for three years before it became too much, and I only say that to make the point that whatever physical pain this injury has caused me is nothing compared to emotional/mental pain that I've dealt with. This injury has given me the time and opportunity to finally accept the physical consequences of fighting those truths for so long, my body has sustained a lot of damage in running from my past. Any survivor, any athlete can tell you about physical or mental pain, I know a lot about both and trust me the physical stuff doesn't even begin to compare to the mental. So yeah, I may be broke, temporarily removed from my passions, away from my home, and trapped in a body that makes life feel like * on Earth. But understand that is all irrelevant to a person who understands their mental capacity as well as I do, I know I have the ability to overcome any challenge that life will throw at me, I have to always be able to answer the bell. That's the nature of the beast and that resides in all of us, we will always rebound and return better than before, continuing to inspire.

I wish I could tell everyone the plain truth as to how I've gained my perspective and the uncontainable passion for life that I have. It started simply from being able to appreciate every day that I'm alive and a certain something is not happening to me, and that is why my worst experience is also my biggest blessing, aside from my family and friends. The truth is that there are everyday hurdles in life and then there are big and real problems and evils and while this perspective has certainly been gained through a very evil, accepting it leaves me absolutely fearless and bulletproof for the road ahead. I'm excited to re-gain my health and I'm excited to be able to enjoy my passions again because I know that I can. I'm a blessed man to be the person I was before this injury, and I'm blessed to have only been made better by this life-changing injury and the challenges it has brought me. I was as capable as anyone of doing good things as before this injury, and while I've been challenged and pushed to even greater limits, I continue to rebound and return better than before, continuing to inspire...

Kat

Curious to know what CPTSD symptoms you've struggled with specifically and how you've overcome them.

Skier Anonymous

#2
Hi Kat,
Great questions, thank you for asking! We become what we dream. Hopes become dreams and dreams become reality, so I started dreaming about overcoming CPTSD and goal by goal I am living that dream. At the core of my understanding and perspective is the overriding fact that PTSD/CPTSD are treatable stress DISORDERS, and not classified as MENTAL ILLNESSES, they are both always treatable no matter what! And while suicide continues to occur, that while we can't ever stop others from hurting themselves, we should always be encouraging each other that these disorders are always treatable, regardless of how badly they affect us. We need to be encouraging each other to be willing to take the first step towards acceptance, it's all do-able after that first and hardest step. 1) "Can I?", 2) "Will I?", 3) "I Must!" Accept and advance, accept and conquer/crush/move forward positively!!
To answer your two questions, here are my symptoms and how I overcome...
1)   Symptoms/causes:
Symptoms - In the research I've done, a medical expert cannot currently diagnose a patient with CPTSD, although it appears to be in the works. Those who endure complex trauma during early childhood are more prone to long-term and enduring consequences – CPTSD. CPTSD seems to be currently classified as PTSD along with either depression, dissociative/depersonalization disorder (recurrent out of body feelings), or personality disorders (avoidance, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, anti-social, paranoid, etc). I was diagnosed with PTSD three years ago but in continuing to learn about PTSD and the deeper I'm able to go with my therapist, the more we are led to believe that we can classify my disorder as CPTSD. Research on this website shows that CPTSD and PTSD share three symptoms: re-experiencing the trauma in the present, avoidance of traumatic reminders, and a persistent sense of threat. Additional symptoms of CPTSD include negative self-concept, disturbed relationships, and heightening sense of anger, joy, and sadness, all of what I've developed these additional symptoms despite having accomplished my dream of becoming a pro skier: I still hated myself despite accomplishing my dreams and finding the limits of my own mental and physical human capacity. CPTSD is also thought to be tied more closely to interpersonal experiences (deliberate human-caused experiences) while PTSD seems to be tied to impersonal experiences (car accidents, natural disasters, acts of God). In simple terms, CPTSD stems more from deliberate causation while PTSD is more commonly attributed to accidental causation. I'm certainly no medical expert, but from my own experience I would say that suppressing the trauma for 17 years before seeking help certainly contributed to the development of CPTSD symptoms that I have.
Causes of CPTSD (to help explain my symptoms):
- Childhood abuse resulting in recurring emotional, physical, mental stress: I was sexually assaulted by two male classmates shortly after entering a new, regional school at age 13. And I spent the next seventeen years proving to myself that I was too physically and mentally strong to let that happen ever again. I tried to become someone else, because I hated myself for eventually thinking that I didn't do enough to protect myself during the sexual assault. There are nightmares too, and sometimes I avoid going to sleep until I have the unhealthy thoughts off of my mind because we dream about what we think about all day. Those unhealthy motivations helped me become stronger and faster than my pro skiing colleagues, but have also resulted in a lot of physical injuries and I'm heading for my 5th surgery in my physical recovery from my time as a big mountain and backcountry ski athlete. Life as socially-avoidant adult while bouncing myself off of mountains at Mach Two was not a healthy or sustainable path, and I went as far as my body would take me before I finally accepted that truth and sought help for the stress.
- Exposure to traumatic experiences: I was bullied in middle and high school by my abusers and their friends for five years after the incident, and my high school class had 37 people in it, (I grew up in a town of less than 2,000 people). So the subsequent five years after the incident, I had to sit in class all day every day with my abusers and their friends, and not a single one of them ever forgot what happened to me. I was new to the regional middle/high school and was trying to make friends with the kids that ended up assaulting me, it became clear very fast that they didn't want me in their circle of friends, so I sought eventual friendship with a select few upper and lower classmen instead. One of my abusers committed suicide 5 years later, and long story short I had to go his funeral and hear my principal tell me to stop the string of young deaths as I had grown into a leader amongst my high school peers, (my closest friend died in a car accident the previous fall and I just lost another close friend to suicide last month), that was a lot to cumulatively handle at that age. My social life is still 100% impacted by the sexual assault and the bullying that followed, but I am friendly with everyone I am in contact with, while I can count my close friends on one hand and that's the way I like it. It's not wrong, its how I let myself be trusting in others because that is a huge part of managing the symptoms. My financial life is also still 100% affected by the trauma, it has been impossible to save money or get ahead on my debts mostly because I struggle to always remember to take care of myself and be planning for the rainy days and potholes that inevitably come.
2) How I've overcome:
ACCEPTING ALL NECESSARY TRUTHS ABOUT MYSELF AND THE WORLD AROUND ME!! For me, it's the cumulation of certain truths that I've needed to accept given my own unique experiences and symptoms. The sum of truths that need to be accepted are unique to each person's individual set of experiences and symptoms, so the truths that have set me free won't necessarily be the cumulative truths to help other OVERCOME their own CPTSD, but I joined this website to help others so I'll list every truth I can think of that has helped me. I'd love to further discuss or explain any of these to help you accept them as they are all drawn from science and our deepest human understanding of knowledge (the last one is the sum of all the others, the most fully encompassing truth of all):
1)   We overcome by accepting, only through accepting bad experiences will we ever "OVERCOME" them. They will run your life until you become willing to admit and face them. FACT!
2)   Acceptance can be described as a three-step process: "Can I accept this?", "Will I accept this?", and finally "I MUST accept this, I can and I will!"  Once you observe yourself accept your worst life experience(s), you will see yourself grow accepting of all the other imperfections in this realm.
3)   Through acceptance comes change. Can we change our mind/body/spirit, the intangibles that make us who we are? No. But we can always re-condition how we process our thoughts to be able to make the necessary and constant improvements that need to be made as life changes.
4)   Life is not fair, not even close. It's as hard as a truth to accept, but doing so will fully facilitate overcoming CPTSD. You have to accept this one, don't avoid it because there's no overcoming without accepting this plain and simple truth. Although evil does exist, the world is a good place. Everything is always alright, even when it feels that its not. Just as the world is always exposing its imperfections, we are always learning how to solve or overcome them. Nothing gets solved until it becomes apparent as a problem...FACT!
5)   Negativity breeds negativity and positivity breeds positivity. If you want to get your life to a better place, you have to first believe/accept that you will. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Nothing great has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm". Believe in yourself and your dreams, approach your goals with enthusiasm.
6)   When you have love, you have a will. And with a will, there is always a way...FACT!!
7)   We're only afraid of doing something until we're not, there is nothing to fear but the illusion of fear itself. The more you accept, the more resilient and fearless you become!
8)    Big injuries require big recoveries: mentally, spiritually, and physically!! The harder the experience is to accept, the better we are made by finally and fully accepting it, the stronger we become. I love this one, these experiences just teach us to live and fight with everything we've got. In truth, they are only ensuring that life shows us our fullest mental/physical/spiritual capacities. We were selected because life knew that we would be able to overcome it, drive that one into your own personal philosophy!
9)   We HAVE to always be willing to do whatever we need to for ourselves: we have to know in our minds and our hearts that we can always manage whatever life puts on our plate, no matter what. That level of self-assuredness NEEDS to be a goal, it's a big part of "overcoming" the inevitable symptoms. Life can bring me any experience, and I'm going to the find the blessing in it.
10)   These experiences that ruin our lives are BLESSINGS. Took me a few sessions to accept this one, but I've become the warrior I am in part because of my worst life experiences. Strength and love are critical components of a healthy lifestyle, and the tougher the experience that you can accept, the more love and the more strength you acquire to go give out to the world. I.E. the better you are made! Count your blessings and be willing to find the blessing in everything around you, good and bad. Even if something bad is occurring in our world, by recognizing and accepting it, we become capable of effecting and changing those bad things.
11)   Day by day and goal by goal we become what we dream. Hopes become dreams and dreams become reality. We follow the thoughts that are in our heads all day and night, that's how our brains work. Feeling pessimistic or narcissistic is no way to experience life, although us sufferers are living proof that both those evils do exist. Naturally, we let these experiences and feelings consume us until we reach point where we're sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's when we reach all the down and realize our full potential and start crawling out of the dark and towards the light, out of the valley and onto the next peak. Hopes and dreams are what allows the process of acceptance to occur and take full effect: "Can I", "Will I", "I Must, I can and will!"

While negativity shaped most of the acceptance process, positivity is ultimately what's carried me to the end goal of accepting CPTSD as only a great blessing, the process wasn't 'overcome' until I arrived at that perspective. I still sometimes lose sleep over what happened to me way back when and I get overwhelmed thinking about all of the consequences that have developed as a direct result of that experience, its shaped my entire life whether I like it or not. That said, I would never trade it for anything and I want that perspective and strength for as many of my fellow sufferers as possible: we become what we dream!!

Kat


Skier Anonymous

Let me know anything I can or offer, I can't help but to be a dreamer and I'll help anyone get there who needs it

Skier Anonymous

This was my second essay during my process of acceptance, from September 2016, 21 months after my first essay:

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead!
It was dark in there for a long time. The shades in the condo would have blocked out all of the natural light had it not been for the skylight. It had happened for the second time in seven months following hip surgery and it would happen again a year later; sciatic nerve pain from two degenerative disks in my back that paralyzed the right half of my body and left me in relentless amounts of pain, in complete doubt of ever returning to my life in the mountains. The stresses and the bills had piled up over the previous year between surgery, missing work, moving home, imaging, office visits, chiropractic work, physical and massage therapy. I was broken and broke, unable to find that highly-motivated person within me that I've always been. The color in my face completely disappeared and I woke up each morning pissed off that I had to live through another day. I was angry because I felt like I gave every ounce of myself to what I love and did it for the people I love most, but in return I had wound up broken and dismissed from the ranks of my dreams. Skiing hard while ignoring the mounting pains had proven to be an unsustainable path and the self-defeating need to keep proving myself hinted to others of deeper, underlying issues.

After succumbing to the mental and physical realities and laying in the dark for months last fall, I finally gave into my family's urging to start working with a therapist. By stepping back and finally putting all of my energy into myself, I found the time and space that I needed to go inward for some serious self-reflection. It was in those darkest and rawest hours that I faced the gritty, truthful questions that most of us tend to avoid. I confronted and accepted the truths that I had spent the last seventeen years of my life running from a horrible life experience and that my body had sustained major and consequential physical damage in the process. I spent my time in cognitive behavioral therapy completely inside of my own world, I was only present within my heart and my mind and the two were busy making sense of my entire life up to now and accepting where they were going to take me from here. It was rehabilitation and recovery on all levels and in every sense, the weight finally came off my shoulders and almost immediately those around me saw a changed person. And not the high-energy kid that I had been before, but the man that I was now: wiser, balanced, and more capable.

The results have been very self-rewarding, they don't come easily but they only deepen my strength and self-belief. Physical progress continues to be slower that I'd like, but the mental perspective and awareness gained have allowed me to stay the course no matter how long this process takes. The body still wants to move and the engine still wants to go, but the mental approach is entirely different now, the motivations are healthy now and thus the capability is limitless. Rebuilding a slightly older and abused body has introduced balance, patience, and self-care to my list of priorities, and there is this growing feeling that the ride is going to get a lot deeper from here. And I can't help but to know possible returning to mountains is for me, I know that with a fully healthy body I am exactly the man for the job. Because the man I aspire to be can do anything for anyone in this world, that is what my dreams are all about. There's an endlessness as to how good of a person I can become, there is never a finish line to say the mastery is complete or that any single potential has been fully realized. I can handle getting knocked down a million times because I can learn and grow from that, it's quitting on myself that I will not ever accept.

I continue to understand that life is a game of survive and advance, or accept and advance as I prefer to word it. There is no limit as to how deep we may need to go within ourselves and there is never any choice but to keep going, we always have to answer the bell no matter what. Life and love can a heavy load sometimes, but the richness of our life experience depends hugely on our ability to experience something, accept it whether it's good or bad, and keep pushing forward in the most positive way possible. "Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide": envy of other results in losing sight of what you have, and pretending to be anyone other than yourself is simply not a path worth following. So I continue to accept the blessed experiences that life has brought me and all of the positive and negatives consequences and truths that continue to come. I know exactly who I am and I know everywhere I'm going from here. Ambition without perspective certainly proved to be a killer. But the more I'm willing to accept, the more of each I gain. Accepting the best and the worst is the key, and after that life only becomes more and more worth it, until you can't shut it off and you loathe going to bed like I do. Goal by goal, we become what we dream. Enjoying the ride back to full health, then I'll sleep when I'm dead...

Three Roses

#6
I'd like to read your posts but they're much too difficult to tackle. Too long, which is why I'm guessing not many people are responding.

As stated in our Guidelines, try just a few paragraphs, and break the paragraphs up with a double space. More info here: http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=1616.0

You said:
Quoteall do-able after that first and hardest step. 1) "Can I?", 2) "Will I?", 3) "I Must!" Accept and advance, accept and conquer/crush/move forward positively!!

This sounds a little like the "Just stop thinking about it" responses we talk about here that a lot of us get from the general population, and which most of us say we find at the least less than helpful and at worst further injuring.

Just my two cents worth. Thoughts from others?

Kizzie

#7
Skier, there are so many postings and only a certain amount of time  to read on a daily basis.  You can write as much as you'd like in your journal so I've moved your posts accordingly. Here it's accepted that members may write lengthier posts to work through something, get something off their chests, etc., and fellow members can choose to read or skip.  In other forums/sub-forums, however, if  you keep your posts shorter you'll find more members are likely to read them as TR suggests.

Also, while I am glad you have made  progress in your own recovery most people need to find their own path.  What works for you may not for them so best to share what helped you and leave readers to decide for themselves.     

One last suggestion is that members are more likely to read your posts if you are a member rather than a guest.

Blueberry

Thanks for your responses on here, 3Roses and Kizzie!

The posts sound (partially) like an advertisement for some great healing method, at least to me. Puts me off reading. And also - yeah, they're way too long especially when it's a new person you don't even know. I'll read longer posts from somebody I already know on the board, but from a new person: no, not likely.

sanmagic7

skier, it sounds to me like you've found a way that has worked for you, and i'm glad of that.

for me, it's a little too 'rah rah', 'fight the good fight', and 'move on'.  i've been struggling with my own symptoms for over 30 yrs., and none of that has even touched me or my recovery.   i've been to many recovery groups, am a therapist myself, and have participated in a lot of workshops and seminars.

i believe i have been accepted and encouraged here in exactly the way i've needed but never knew.  thanks for your perspective. 

AphoticAtramentous

I couldn't read too much of this because it reminds me a lot of the preachy stuff I was fed at Church. :\
Glad it's worked for you though! ^-^ Hope it helps someone else too.

QuoteThese experiences that ruin our lives are BLESSINGS
Not sure about that one. I wouldn't call my abusers a blessing, certainly not the things they've done to me as blessings either.  :disappear: What a real blessing would be is for me to be a 'normal' human being, with a functioning family and a healthy lifestyle. People say 'but that's boring', I'd much rather be bored than suffering how I am now. ^^"

Blueberry

Quote from: AphoticAtramentous on November 23, 2017, 12:17:19 PM
QuoteThese experiences that ruin our lives are BLESSINGS
Not sure about that one. I wouldn't call my abusers a blessing, certainly not the things they've done to me as blessings either. 

:yeahthat:

Skier Anon may have left the boards never to return after a spot of trolling or maybe Skier Anon is actually posting real stuff, Idk, but I'd be able to stomach the blessings quotation better if IME or IMHO were at least added.

woodsgnome

I had a weird feeling about reading these (albeit I didn't finish 'em). I've heard lots of sermons in my life, but...I didn't sense any commonality with ordinary people stuck in the wilderness with cptsd. Sorry; maybe it's just me, I've been wrong before.

But what it did do was remind me of a long-ago thread that was very heart-centered and from a member who's obviously walked the talk. It's also long but it resonates as sincere, personable, and wise. So I'll risk posting the link here and referring others to it if they'd like.

The link: http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=3046.msg18165#msg18165

Three Roses

#13
Thanks for sharing that, I'd not read it before.  :heythere:

I'll also say, I am glad that I let his posts stand as they were, as they are a great example of what is actually not helpful, even with the best of intentions. I wish him well in his recovery.

camille13512

Quote from: Blueberry on November 23, 2017, 12:25:03 PM
Quote from: AphoticAtramentous on November 23, 2017, 12:17:19 PM
QuoteThese experiences that ruin our lives are BLESSINGS
Not sure about that one. I wouldn't call my abusers a blessing, certainly not the things they've done to me as blessings either. 

:yeahthat:

I think this might be an example of how something works for one does not mean that it applies to the others. I'm glad that this worked for the anonymous guest, although my heart felt strained when I read the title and then this sentence inside the post. Any day of my life if I had been given the choice between this "blessing" and the absence of it, I would choose the latter. It is true that the past cannot be changed, and it is better to look at it the way it is instead of denial, but I think that is still quite different from viewing it as something positive when the negative effect is (at least for me) just impossible to ignore. Just my thought on this. I wish everyone would find peace one way or another on this journey.