Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
Hi. I've just learned about the term Complex PTSD reading this site---first stuff I've read in over 10 years on my PTSD, ever since reading "I Can't Get Over It" back in about 1997-8.
Many traumas since at least age "womb" - no details necessary. Just wanted to say I had heard something years ago in my mid-30s about getting help for a certain "repurcution" of my traumas back then, and the therapist said if I didn't do it while then in my middle 30s, I'd be definitely dealing with it in Menopause, late 40s or 50s...what a prophecy to hear...and now I'm living it at almost age 56 (my pic is of me 9 months prior to being strangled at my bedside by an intruder who came in through the bathroom window at 5:52a.m. 8/15/80).
If you can recall the exact time & date, there's also that Anniversary Date thing my therapist now tells me is very common. So, I've just gotten past the huge Anni-date that I've now lived/er-re-lived for 30 years.
I get so sick of getting overly excited or upset about the least little thing & having no one to talk to. Like tonight, I found yet another physical problem (a lump of arthritis or a cyst has popped up on a finger joint -ugh). My very abusive husband died of Lung Cancer in 2001, and I've already lost the home, almost all the life insurance money, and I've been disabled physically & of course, emotionally, for 14 years now.
When do you ever quit feeling like there's no reason to exist? How do you find a purpose to life? I feel so lost & alone.
Been in therapy with a wonderful trauma therapist now for a year almost. We finally are tapping in to my 4 year old little frightened girl who retreated into a corner all those years. It's odd to me, the sort of hypnosis that gets done. I don't have big gaps in memory (except for alcoholic black-outs and usual getting old forgetting the trivial past evens), but I sure can remember dates, times and certain events like they were yesterday.
Does anyone ever really move on when they've had over 25 traumas?
Many traumas since at least age "womb" - no details necessary. Just wanted to say I had heard something years ago in my mid-30s about getting help for a certain "repurcution" of my traumas back then, and the therapist said if I didn't do it while then in my middle 30s, I'd be definitely dealing with it in Menopause, late 40s or 50s...what a prophecy to hear...and now I'm living it at almost age 56 (my pic is of me 9 months prior to being strangled at my bedside by an intruder who came in through the bathroom window at 5:52a.m. 8/15/80).
If you can recall the exact time & date, there's also that Anniversary Date thing my therapist now tells me is very common. So, I've just gotten past the huge Anni-date that I've now lived/er-re-lived for 30 years.
I get so sick of getting overly excited or upset about the least little thing & having no one to talk to. Like tonight, I found yet another physical problem (a lump of arthritis or a cyst has popped up on a finger joint -ugh). My very abusive husband died of Lung Cancer in 2001, and I've already lost the home, almost all the life insurance money, and I've been disabled physically & of course, emotionally, for 14 years now.
When do you ever quit feeling like there's no reason to exist? How do you find a purpose to life? I feel so lost & alone.
Been in therapy with a wonderful trauma therapist now for a year almost. We finally are tapping in to my 4 year old little frightened girl who retreated into a corner all those years. It's odd to me, the sort of hypnosis that gets done. I don't have big gaps in memory (except for alcoholic black-outs and usual getting old forgetting the trivial past evens), but I sure can remember dates, times and certain events like they were yesterday.
Does anyone ever really move on when they've had over 25 traumas?
I'm not too savy about all this, but i do have the diagnosis, i've asked the docs i have seen the same question i too have pre-natal trauma.....
I know a lot of people are going to disagree here, but i'm just quoting every doc i spoke to.
"No, you do not, you learn to cope"
One doc even told me "In your next life, you're actually doing well".
Not trying to be the bearer of bad news, just what i been told.
The good news is now they got all kinds of ways to teach people to cope.
Coping implies carrying it...integrating implies joining the repressed emotional pain with the recallable memory (that only returns the more and more you do this type of work...you'll be surprised) and releasing the energy that was forced-to-be-repressed all those years ago.
It's all right there. For everything you can remember, there is an associated emotional memory...filed away...in your subconscious memory.
I have done Breathwork which helped a whole lot and which opened me to the idea of Integration, by the way. I learned when I sobered up in AA in 1986 that "coping" is not what healing any kind of "illness" is about. Coping is ignoring and hoping it will go away, the way I see it - meaning, it's just not dealing with it.
Semantics, of course, as coping might mean something else to someone in another area of the world. Integration is exactly as Tigerpaws suggests. It is also what my Trauma specialist speaks of, using that very word, to help me see that the work we're going into now, is all about making sure each of my inner-entities are in agreement.
I am finding that I am having these inner dialogues, or perhaps mere realizations, that I kind of check in with each part of me to see which one is operating and in which order each one is responding to outside stimuli, or decisions that get made.
I don't get online here often. Thanks again for thinking of me.
Carrying trauma is a burden.
Integrating and discharging the unprocessed emotional components of memories is the key to releasing the "hungry dogs in your basement".
Repressed trauma is the silent scream of anxiety...and people are going to do what they must to escape the pain and anxiety of their trauma....be it alcohol, drugs (so called illegal and legal prescription varieties)...anger, rage, or perhaps fantasy disconnection from reality itself.
Either way, I appreciate your input very much, of course I do, for I am in a phase of development that seeks true healing and "a way out" of this nightmare.
I was thinking just before opening back up the laptop, as I watched a story on ABC News tonight about 5 years after Hurricane Katrina...when they spoke of how the children there are now excelling in their studies...wondering why did these events I encountered create in me such a seeming weakness? I wondered if I were constitutionally simply weak, seeking to wallow in this all these years that I have done so, rather than to rise above.
And what is it that allows one, in the face of similar/same trauma experiences, to rise above, and another to seemingly sink beneath, giving in to self-pity, self-loathing, and fear at such a deep level?
I do go back & forth on these thoughts throughout each of every day, now that I am in consistent treatment/therapy for this malady. I don't write for now about it, as I go about my week following therapy sessions, for it seems to all change by the time I am facing the next week's session. I make the most of them by staying in whatever "that now" brings once I enter his door.
He has also encouraged me to not get overwhelmed when in the thick of these feelings...to let them process, and to go revisit them later when I feel stronger, and to reassure myself, my other selves, that they will be allowed their place to be heard at his office in so many days away, etc.
Is this something you have heard is a beneficial method?
What i understood by that was that i would learn to not be so affected by the symptoms and yeah processing the truma..
Yeah the word integration sounds a lot better....thnk you for the info tiger, i wish all the professionals who never mentioned it would read this post. :)
Sometimes I feel mine really weren't so bad, compared to some who have lived as children with ritualistic abuse, etc. Then again, it doesn't matter...a child has no tools to deal with any trauma, no matter how great or small it might appear to someone outside it looking in. Only the child within knows to what extent they are traumatized. I feel the trauma is made a greater burden when no one is there to comfort the child or help the child understand what is going on while it is going on.
I was asked by all members of my family 3 years ago "why are you bringing that up NOW?" when I re-remembered about having turned in a murderer to the FBI when I was 15, and having to stand trial after depositions a few months later. It felt like an extra blow...
Family in my case is of no help in these matters.
I had been told to "move on" by the county prosecutor's office I had witnessed for on stand, when I sought to find out the disposition of the perp's release from prison. Was told he would be out in 78 or 79. I was attacked in my home 8/15/80. Could they be related? I am now seeking to find out if there is any possible relation, but this is an arduous journey and quite costly.
Is it worth it? YES, a resounding YES!
And no, my family could not possibly understand. I no longer expect them to, either. For this is my journey, though I need not go it alone any longer, as I go it weekly with Therapist Ralph. And most gratefuly so!
Funny i contacted a detective (child abuse) who old me in my case statue of limitations had run out.Then he added "Why now??"
People don't get it, a lot of us a dissociated for 30 years suffering with self-ijury, depressions, self-destructive behaviours, yeah when we finally understand it, i don't know about others but a little justice would bring a bit of closure.
It was my childhood and majority of my life ruined due to their abuse and neglect.
kudos.
"Leave the past behind"
"Ignore it, it will go away"
Those are the words that are all too common...and are all too colloquial and all the more fatalistically wrong.
These words are said by people who are either ignorant to the process (count me among those till a few years ago) or they have found something else...i.e. alcohol...that works for them.
Two more words:
"You Can't"
Picture your memory as a chain. We link our memories throughout life...first grade, goes into second, and on into High School....as an example. Neighborhoods and friends you had, link to the new friends in the new neighborhood...
The chain lengthens...and gets heavier. The chain of memories are sometimes rusted away by time...but most often not.
Trauma, in our lives, can sometimes break apart segments of the chain...and we move along to rebuild...yet...at our feet...is that segment of chain...in which to trip and fall upon. Just because it was broken by trauma...doesn't mean it's not there.
For that part of our memory chains (of trauma and otherwise)...we string this along and carry it's weight. If you hold a chain by it's top link...and allow the remainder of the chain to droop downward...yet not touch the ground...and you shake the top part of the chain...just a little...what happens toward the bottom???
The shaking is much greater...than at the top.
The top links are what you can remember...the lower links are what you've repressed or what you'll have to remember through walking down through the memory links during therapy and journaling.
It is here that you begin to have things surface to your conscious and quasi-consciousness (via anxiety) that you hadn't thought of in years and years.
Think about this:
Where do painful memories go when you don't think about them?
They do NOT go away...they just go underground.
Our consciousness floats upon a sea of memory...good and bad.
People love the "leave the past behind" one...."yeah" block it, repress it, pretend it did not happen that will do "it"...IMAO.
People who do that only continue the cycle.
I cannot remain a victim to it. I've done tons more forgiveness work prior to doing the "real" work I am doing now on me! I was going around "forgiving them" and yet it wasn't really "taking" ... now, I am going in and finding out where I went at each phase of my life. WOW!
I'm astonished at how the truths about memory, and it's operation, work.
To speak of the seat of emotions and the processing of emotion by the limbic system of the brain has always fascinated me.
Autobiographical memory is but a small part of total memory.
Picture memory as a divided highway with the lanes going the same direction.
The lanes are divided by a concrete barrier. Autobiographical and Executive memory travels in one set of lanes...the Emotional and Physical memory travels in another set of lanes.
You are conscious of traveling along in one set of lanes...but, unbeknown to you...there are just as many activities co-occurring in the next lanes...on the other side of the barrier.
Physical memories? Absolutely! How do you sign your name? With what do you sign your name? Physical memory.
Physical memory tied to emotions? Absolutely! When something funny happens...what do you do...automatically?? You smile. A physical reaction to an emotional truth...inseparable.
Do you think there is an order to the "traffic" in these other lanes? Sure! Nowhere in your life...when something funny happens...do you frown and stomp the ground. These physical/emotional memories don't lose their cohesiveness or their order.
The physical memory is actually more accurate...as is the emotional memory...than the autobiographical and executive memory. Case in point...someone tickles you to to tears as a child...lets say...in the ribcage. 50 years later...soneone can "goose" your ribs...what happens??
The same thing as happened in childhood...same reaction...physically and emotionally...instantly...nothing lost by the years.
You can get upon a bicycle, after having not ridden in 25 years or more...and ride like the wind. Why? Because of physical memory.
You didn't realize there were parallel lanes to your life, did you?
With trauma...as in a multi-car pile up in the cognitive lanes of your mind...things may indeed stop...but, on the other side of the barrier of so called consciousness...things keep moving along.
This is one reason why, even from surgery under anesthesia, that a person can awaken in a frightened state...or an anxious child...can be suffering from birth trauma...though there be no cognitive memory of the event...because...the body remembers.