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Sufferer 8 years since my diagnose, still not getting better. hi btw !

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Meeeh

New Here
Hello everyone.
Sorry for the wall of text you are about to read, or not. But this is me.
Im a 30 year old male from Norway. Currently i cant hold a job, and my life is a mess.
Not sure how, but i have managed to keep a relationship for the last 6 years. (previous record was 9 months) But things are starting to take its toll.. so well see.

I suffer from cPTSD and MDD. Symptoms of cPTSD started around 16 years ago with nightmares every night, anexiety for sleep and general anexiety when at a felt loss of control.
I was diagnosed with cPTSD 8 years ago and have been in a weekly treatment program since then.

I grew up in a military family with my stephfather beeing an officer (cmdr).
And i was physically and mentally abused along with my mother for serveral years during my childhood. I would guess between the age of 7 and 14y. Only in an adult age i discovered the true reason behind why this happened. My mother had an affair while my stephfather was on duty. And i had to pay the cost for that and continue to pay the cost for that 23 years later.

During my childhood i have experienced:
• Beeing lifted and shaken by the ears so my ears tore.
• I have been kicked down the stairs.
• Beeing beaten and watched my mother beeing beaten with objects.
• Been told how useless i am, told i dont belong and nothing i ever did was good enough.
• And anything negative that happened in the house was automaticly my fault.
(The most ridiculous was me beeing blamed and physically punished for my younger half-brothers defiance and boundary testing when he was a small child. It was my fault for trying to turn my brother against my stephfather.. my brother was 6.. i was 11..)

When i was 14years old i started fighting back in defence of my younger brother. During the next years we had many fist fights, and by the age of 16 i was mean and keen enough to knock the sob out cold for the first time. The fighting continued.. And the year i turned 18 was the last time we fought. He threw a drinking glass at my mother holding my new born sister. The glass rained over both my mother and my sister and i grabbed the man in pure rage and dragged him to the railings of the stairs and held him over the edge, and i told him one more time and i will drop you head first and i hope you break your neck in the fall..

So that should be it then, after 11 years of living with constant violence i won in the end.. Unfortuneatly i havent had a good nights sleep since i was 14. Nightmares every night.. i cant get more than 2-3 hours on the eyes at most. I tend to stay awake for 25-30 hours or more before i am exhausted enough to get dreamless sleep. But when i wake im always in physical pain for the first 20-30 minutes. In regards to having a normal day\night cycle thats something that feels like is never going to happen for me. I have a very hard time just trying to plan out sleep before a schedueled apointment or meeting. So its usually 50\50 if i make the meeting or not.
I am jumpy when ever i hear an unexpected noise.. automaticly trying to pinpoint the source and identify is this a threat yay or nay? and then act accordingly to fight\flight or to pour mental resources into dampening the adrenaline reaction.
And i have anger issues.. deep anger issues. A wrong word in the wrong setting and ill send my phone flying in the wall, or break stuff instantly. Usually i know whats happening based on the stress level so i can be a bit ahead of sending stuff flying but not always, i try my best to remove my self from that situation before i can be triggered. But i dont think im able to feel joy or happyness nor sadness. Most of the time i feel nothing at all and use logic to read situations. But behind the void of nothingness is a big sphere filled with anger, bitterness and agressiveness.
I cant drink either, i just turn into a drunken avatar of rage, trying to pick fights, so best to stay away.

I often feel that i dont belong in society, im not made for this type of life. I see everyone around me finding joy in small things.. A sports team or a brand, hobbies or interests.
But i cant connect, i dont feel the hype for anything really. I just exist and i watch the world from the sidelines.. and the years just pass me by. And i dont feel better at all, i have times where im better, and then its back to square one. When it comes to medication i have tried so many brands and chemistries but they dont seem to work very well. And recently i have become immune to sleeping tablets. So cant use those anymore either.

Am i alone ? or is there anyone here that understands how much this is starting to take a toll on me ? It feels like its not much left of me. I have lived in a hell batteling my mind and my surroundings for over 20 years and im only 30.. How long is it going to take before i find a place in this world where i belong ? Is there truly light in the end of the tunnel and everything turns out okay in the end ? PTSD is truly a hellish state of mind.. And this is my version of it.
This is me. Thanks for reading.
 
Welcome to the forum. So sorry for all that brings you here. I do not think you are alone at all in what you are experiencing and feeling. It is a long and hard process for change. For me has taken a huge combination of things...different therapists, EMDR, CBT, DBT, art...4 months of residential treatment, group....everyone is different and their path is different. I still struggle, but am able to say it is not quite as difficult as 3 years ago or 2 years ago, etc. As far as finding joy...this has been tough....i had to make it even smaller...was there anything in my day that made me smile or feel just a tad bit lighter and then try to grow it from there. Not sure if any of this helps, but just wanted to say there is hope. I hope that you find help and support here.
 
Hi. Thanks for sharing your story. You've found a great place to share and get information. A good place to start is the stress cup. You may want to show it to your girl too. It explains PTSD in a simple way. (Although we all know PTSD is anything but simple!)

You didn't mention if you were in therapy or not. You're reaching out here. Maybe it's time to take the plunge and find a good therapist too??

Read around the forums. Lots of information here. Share what you want and ask whatever questions you have. Someone will come along with an answer. Glad you're here!

✌ & ❤
 
Thanks for all the replies.
Yeah ill start with the stress cup and see what thats about.
And yes @LuckiLee i have been in Therapy for 8 years, but still no luck getting better. There are better periods and then there is the bad ones.
But the techniques used like CPT, EMDR, or Medication have not worked out to well.
The only technique so far that has worked was a 1 year group therapy course every Friday on a topic called Mentalization. That helped a lot in understanding others and gave me a different point of view on many things in life.

My treatment schedule forward is still seeing my therapist weekly + a 6 week stay at a regional PTSD Centre with treatment every day, thats in March. Then there is back home again and continue working with my local therapist, and in June im going for a 8 week stay at a more specialized national PTSD centre. So i have decided to go all inn on the treatments to get rid of this, or overcome some of it at least.

My greatest wish is to just be able to feel the world around me again or find a connection to the world, find stuff i like and not push everyone away. Maybe get a good nights sleep for once and feel rested.
 
You're definitely not alone. Here's at least one person who understands, from the US :)

I'm sorry you went through that, but happy you got out physically. Now time to work in the emotional and mental part of it.

And by the way, that's not a normal reaction to having been cheated on. A normal reaction would have been to be upset at the cheating spouse, yes, but not their step-children or other children, and not so violently that it causes permanent damage on you.

That's just a bad man right there...

Anyway, welcome :)
 
I've been doing therapy on and off for 29 years, starting in 1977. I'm seeing glimmers of hope and normal living here and there. I actually have nights where I sleep through the whole time and get a restful 9 to 10 or more hours of sleep without nightmares. And then I have the nights where I awaken from nightmares.

And hey, I've been married for 33 years this September to a guy who makes me laugh and cracks some of best jokes ever and deals with my PTSD as best he can.

Some people recover from PTSD and some people never do. They learn to live with it. Many factors go into determining which happens to each person. A one time trauma is more than likely to result in full recovery from PTSD. Again though it depends on the person and their childhood and their support system. I was reading about this yesterday on an Australian website written by a woman.

For myself, I suspect, based on my abuse-filled childhood, that I will have PTSD for the rest of my life. I will have good and bad days. I've achieved an amazing step recently doing something I never thought I'd ever do again. So there's more healing. I will always have my big number one trigger. That's never going away. And when it happens again, which is inevitable because it's part of the cycle of life, I will slide back into full blown PTSD. Yet now I have resources, relaxation/centering techniques, and this forum to lean on and get support. Finally, I have my trauma specialist therapist who has 25 years of experience with my type of abuse and torture and witnessing of murders. So I know when that trigger comes I won't slide into that dark hole and feel like I'm stuck again. I know the way out. And I'll trench out deep footholds, grab onto the sides, and pull myself out of the hole.

Anyway @Meeeh Welcome to the forum.
 
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