Welcome to the board GB..... I am so sorry you're struggling right now..... There are several members here who struggle with complex trauma..... I'm glad that you're here...... Big hug.....xo

Hi, GB. Welcome to DS. I'm not a Christian, but healing prayers offered all the same. The struggle you are describing doesn't discriminate. ^It^ can attack any faith. There are, indeed, many of us here who struggle with complex trauma and we are stronger for sharing the load, honestly, up close and personal, in ways no mainstream community can hope to understand. Personally, I wouldn't wish this understanding on anybody, but since we are stuck with it. . . We get by with a little help from our friends.

Prayers in progress, GB. Hope you find healing companionship here.

Hi, GB. Before kidney failure ended my work as a hospital chaplain, I got to support fellow Christians and people of all faiths every day who were trauma survivors in my ER in Chicago. It seemed to be a common theme that all of their religions came from compassion to the suffering.

Yet over time people of all religions that I met told me in the ER when I prayed with them that eventually their congregations in all religions had become clubby. They all said all of their congregations of all faiths needed to be reminded of that original purpose. They said that even when speaking of their own Christianity, which is ironic since it is the one faith in which God suffers directly and its symbol, the cross, is a reminder of a tool and a place of suffering overcome.

So we're glad you found us. As arfie says above, we're here to return to intentional compassion in healing companionship with one another, to walking the walk more than talking the talk. Prayers in progress.

I will pray for your full healing. As a child of God, one day you will be made whole. In the meantime we take our brokenness and offer it to Him and to others so they find empathy and compassion in us. Church can be tough (I know from experience) because there are people there at varying levels of maturity. I know it's not always easy, but look up, not at them. And when you want to cut just think of the Lord right there in your room. He wants to place salve on your wounds, not give you more. Hugs.

gentle hugs, GB

first, wow - good for you for getting yourself into that program, hugs that had to take some major guts to do that!!

i have complex PTSD too. i know how alone it can make a person feel. i hope you can tell that you are not alone here - a lot of us have it too and understand what you might feel like.

i even know what it feels like to be at church and feel alone : ( i'm so sorry. please come here and talk with us. it helps me so much to come here. i do, almost every day and i have done, almost every day for about four years.

i'm almost sixty now, but i grew up without nurture and for the most part no acceptance or love. i was abandoned, neglected nearly to death as an infant - we have some things in common.

sometimes i come on here and make a sillypost - you may have seen one of them. it helps me to laugh and sometimes others laugh with me - or i laugh with others.

most of the time though, we talk about what is going on with us, what might be difficult right now in our lives.

a great place somebody shared with me that i have liked a lot is www.pete-walker.com

he is a therapist or PHd by now, i'm not sure, but he grew up w/ CPTSD. he knows it inside and out.

sometimes i've gone to the website and it was too much information for me. then! i went a different time and it was easy for me to read. i guess it just depends - at least for me.

there are a lot of tips there.

you don't need to go there for them, but if sometime you feel like looking around for information, that's a good place to look.

gentle hugs, i'm glad you found us, Lilly