• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Sufferer New With Questions

Status
Not open for further replies.

mermu83

New Here
Hi everyone. Not 100% sure where to start so I'm just going to jump in. I grew up with a psychopath for a mother. I always knew on a gut level there was something about her that I didn't like, I just didn't know what it was. I survived 17 years with her until my parents divorced and I went to live with my dad. I went through several years of therapy with different therapists. I was doing a lot better, emotionally, until I got really sick. I'd finally gotten to a place where I actually liked myself, felt freed from the past and wanted to explore life.

Then I went through a decade of medical hell, floating from one doctor to the next. Getting sicker and sicker, but being told I was either crazy, faking it or getting misdiagnosed. I finally got diagnosed with severe neuro Lyme, bartonella and babesia. And I got to experience a new form of trauma...where the infections hijacked my brain and nervous system to the point where I wasn't in any control of my thoughts and emotions. Its been 2.5 years, and I'm doing better now. When I was a kid, at least I could trust myself. But now I don't even have that anymore. Its very disheartening...all the work I went through before has been undone, and I'm in a worse place now with my trust issues than I was before.

I also recovered a very troubling memory of something my mother did to me. Since I knew she was 'bad', I never really had much connection to her. And being who she was, she thought the solution was to subject me to attachment therapy...the bad, basically torture kind. Now that I remember this, I don't feel at all comfortable seeing a therapist. Even thinking about a therapist's office is stressful. I know if I don't feel safe, there's no point in pursuing it.

Are there any ways to heal from trauma without a therapist? Its more the being in an office that's an issue...though even the idea of a therapist is a bit of a stressor too.

I'm also semi-clueless when it comes to human interactions. Which comes from shutting myself away in my own world of school and books. Any ideas on how to deal with this?

Out of curiosity, why is there a tag for 'sufferer' not 'survivor'? I've always thought of myself as someone who's survived abuse not as someone who suffers from PTSD.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Welcome to the forums :)

Out of curiosity, why is there a tag for 'sufferer' not 'survivor'? I've always thought of myself as someone who's survived abuse not as someone who suffers from PTSD.

I would posit that not all PTSD comes from having survived something. While CritA Trauma = Life or Death, it's not always your death that's on the table. Similarly, while a person may have survived trauma -past tense- since PTSD is life long, you'd have to die to survive PTSD? ;)
 
Hi and welcome to the forum! :)

The tags are just to identify who has PTSD, who supports those with PTSD, and those who are here for other reasons, i.e. Health professionals and researchers, for example.

I think it is possible to heal trauma to a degree on ones own, but I don't think it's possible to get maximum benefit via this route. On your own, healing will take a huge amount of discipline and drive-----even more than if you reach out for professional help (which is indeed saying a lot). And, processing of trauma is not possible on your own as this is something that requires input from another person.

Have you been reading any self help types of books on healing trauma?

I understand why you don't want to see a therapist. Would online therapy be an option?

:hug:
 
I guess I'm doomed then. "Sufferer" to me implies being doomed. At least a "survivor" has survived the trauma itself. Though then again, I was completely delusional when I thought life could get better. Yes, things got better for a while...and then they got even worse.

I've read self help books and I've done therapy in the past. Doesn't do me much good now, since I don't remember anything I learned. Didn't know there was such a thing as online therapy. Probably couldn't afford it anyway.

I used to be able to trust people. Then we moved here and I had horrible experiences with multiple people. From the girl I was friends with until I found out she abused animals, to the one who had severe mental health issues and made death threats against me when she went off her meds. And the soulless, heartless doctors. If that's what life is, why should I participate? I'm better off doing what I am, alone.
 
@mermu83 Welcome!

PTSD doesn't mean that anyone is "doomed" or that life won't get better. There are times the symptoms and a person's own mental and emotional state can make it seem that way, but it can get better and honestly a lot better. A good therapist doesn't fix anything, but they give their client the tools and guidance to help themselves heal. It really is up to the individual to try to see what works and honestly, what works and what doesn't changes over time and varies from individual to individual. Personally, I would prefer the label "thriver" as ultimately that is the goal.
 
@intothelight

My problem now is that I cannot see myself trusting a therapist at all..or even sitting in a therapist's office. I was hoping to find others here who've survived attachment therapy. How's someone supposed to heal when a therapist was complicit in torture sessions that took place in a therapist's office. If I don't feel safe, its just going to be a waste of time and money.

I'd be ok working with a professional in a different setting (not an office). Maybe outside somewhere. I've thought about equine therapy, but there's no one in my area who does it. I don't know if seeing a religious leader would be an alternative, since that's also something I'd be ok with. But I live in the middle of nowhere, and there's no one here. Driving also isn't an option now, because of my health issues.

Because of my health issues, I'm not financially independent. I also have my own horses and a business to run here. And none of that can move, at least not for another few years. So I'm stuck in a place with no options, except to do things myself. Except I'm not up to doing much reading.

Is there any way to deal with trauma without seeing a therapist in a therapist's office?
 
@mermu83 Personally, I am not that familiar with on-line therapy, but it might be worth checking out. My first therapist was pretty horrible and then I was lucky as the second one gave me enough information and guidance, that after about ten sessions I kind of went on my own. Honestly, a lot of what I have used I picked up here as a starting point and then expanded on it on my own. I too have horses and although it isn't equine therapy per se, just spending time with them is therapeutic in and of itself.
 
Forgive me for jumping in here. I probably don't have a lot to add, except that I started seeing a therapist for other reasons, but when PTSD kicked in, his encouragement and validation were a lifeline.

Sometimes I've wondered if I could have managed on my own, and possibly I could have found ways to deal with each flashback as it comes, or no hibernate from the anxiety and interacting outside my comfort zone, but now 4 yrs later, as has already been mentioned, I have the tools to use to help deal with the things that pop up.

I'm also epileptic which doesn't help and recently had a problem come up that took away driving for a bit. It meant not going to therapy sessions. He was more than willing to work with facetime or skype. Perhaps that might might be an option for you? I've done a couple of phone sessions, but face to face on skype or facetime worked better.

Would something like that work for you? You would have the chance to talk to someone but still in your environment.
 
Welcome to the forums :hug: I hope this place helps you. It's very useful because of the bulk amount of people who feel similar and understand. There is a lot of advice and support to be found here :) I hope that this amazing community helps you as much as it helped me, reading all the similar stories, and learning a lot along the way. Hugs if you accept :hug:
 
Yeah, so I tried talking to my dad a bit about what's bothering me. Feel completely hopeless and have completely lost all hope and have no dreams at all. Normally talking to him is helpful, but this time it wasn't. Though I don't know what I feel anymore, since I've had to shut everything down to survive. Can't do anything when I'm constantly giving into how sick I feel and how much pain I'm in, so its best to just ignore it all. And my dad ignores me when I'm not feeling well, so I'm totally on my own with this.

I really don't think there's anyone who can understand at all what I'm going through. There's the symptoms from chronic brain infections, so what I feel and think may or may not be caused by the infections...who knows what's real anymore. I also can't talk well sometimes...the connection between the brain and mouth doesn't work well. Its better than it was, but its still a problem. At its worse, I couldn't speak at all for months. At which point my sister repeatedly took financial and emotional advantage of me, and my dad left me to deal with her on my own. He really doesn't care at all. And then over a decade of being told I'm perfectly healthy by all the doctors I saw, so what's the point of seeing doctors? And the therapeutic torture sessions...who sits on a kid so they're in pain and can't breathe to get them to say what the therapist wants to hear anyway? And then being royally screwed over by a doctor I thought was good when I hurt my arm.

If I was healthy and didn't have a business to help him run (he can't do it alone...reliable employees don't exist here, had to close another business we had because of that), I'd totally take all my stuff and horses and get out of here. Reality is I can't survive on my own, so I just gotta suck it up and deal. Shut up and give up is the only option I have.
 
Is there anyone I can contact if I have a tech support issue? I want to unsubscribe from the weekly email, but the system won't let me. There's no tech support area, and it looks like the question I posted last night got deleted.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top