Hi all,
I've been lurking for a long time and finally decided to jump in. It's an impressive forum (thank you) and I'm glad to have found it.
I'm a middle-aged survivor of childhood abuse that began as early as can I remember (I've been told there was already violence in the household before I was born), and lasted over a decade. My father was a hot-headed, disturbed man with a hair-trigger. He was seemingly angry about his responsibilities as a parent, in addition to whatever other issues he may have had, and he liberally took things out on my sibling and me, as kids. I both witnessed and received beatings regularly enough that the threat was ever-present. There was a sadistic-ish ritual that whomever he was going to be beating was usually made to participate in, the lead-up of which had the effect of magnifying and prolonging the terror felt, knowing that a beating was just around the corner. My father seemed to like that effect on us. The smallest infraction, e.g., breaking or losing some cheap item or other due to being a child still trying to develop motor coordination and a sense of taking care of property, would immediately cause him to go off on the "offender". No matter how trivial the matter at hand, there would always be (at least) a deafening explosion of verbal abuse, and often enough, it would end in having to be put through some kind of physical abuse, ritual or otherwise. Because yelling always preceded beatings, yelling itself became a trigger. I don't recall him often speaking to me in a non-yelling tone. There was some sexually inappropriate stuff (very sporadic and not very "extreme" in the grand scheme of things) going on, too.
I lived in constant fear as a child because of him, and never felt safe in the house. We were always walking on eggshells. My mother did nothing to protect me; I don't think she even soothed me. (I don't recall any such thing, but I dissociated a lot--still do--so who knows?) She later admitted that she had been worried that if she tried to intervene, he'd start beating her. She did, eventually, find the wherewithal to leave him, once it was discovered he'd been cheating. No more beatings after that.
I have experienced frequent suicidal ideation since I was a child (~8 yo), and it's never really gone away. (FWIW, I've never attempted and don't have any plans.) In a nutshell, I've never known what it's like to actively want to exist. It feels like there's been just too much pain in life, and it has only snowballed over the years (for reasons that I'm still trying to understand).
After decades of suffering post-traumatic-stress symptoms without realizing that I was injured by the early abuse and its repercussions (for a long time, I hadn't thought to investigate whether I had a problem), my quality of life and basic level of functionality have eroded considerably (and I'm exhausted). I was somewhat-recently diagnosed with PTSD, but I'm definitely experiencing CPTSD (also). Interestingly, my symptoms are much worse now, in middle age, than when I was younger, even though the worse of the trauma had already ended before I hit my teens. I wonder if that's common. I haven't been able to find a lot of data that speak directly to this. I just keep wondering why I could function (and I felt) better earlier in life than I do now.
So far, I haven't been able to benefit much from talk therapy. In my last (fairly recent) experience, the therapist was surprisingly dismissive and invalidating, to the point of coming across as almost hostile (and yet, she claimed to specialize in PTSD - ?!), so I'm currently very reluctant to go back to a therapist. I'm also finding myself in doubt as to how well talk therapy (alone) can really help with early-childhood-abuse CPTSD. I guess it's because it feels as though it's what I "am"*; i.e., like I never had the opportunity to be anything but traumatized because trauma was always there while my brain was developing. I guess this makes me feel like I need some approach that has the capacity to burrow more deeply into my brain, so I'm currently exploring what other therapeutic alternatives could be available for my situation. I'm interested in psychedelic-assisted therapy, since that seems to be a brute-force way to rewire the brain, which is what I think I need, but I don't have any way to access it where I am (and that's extremely frustrating). *BTW, what I mentioned above doesn't mean I'm defining myself in terms of CPTSD--just that it feels like it is so deeply programmed into me that it seems unreachable, and I'm wondering what kind of treatments could help, if any.
Sorry so long -- thanks for reading
I've been lurking for a long time and finally decided to jump in. It's an impressive forum (thank you) and I'm glad to have found it.
I'm a middle-aged survivor of childhood abuse that began as early as can I remember (I've been told there was already violence in the household before I was born), and lasted over a decade. My father was a hot-headed, disturbed man with a hair-trigger. He was seemingly angry about his responsibilities as a parent, in addition to whatever other issues he may have had, and he liberally took things out on my sibling and me, as kids. I both witnessed and received beatings regularly enough that the threat was ever-present. There was a sadistic-ish ritual that whomever he was going to be beating was usually made to participate in, the lead-up of which had the effect of magnifying and prolonging the terror felt, knowing that a beating was just around the corner. My father seemed to like that effect on us. The smallest infraction, e.g., breaking or losing some cheap item or other due to being a child still trying to develop motor coordination and a sense of taking care of property, would immediately cause him to go off on the "offender". No matter how trivial the matter at hand, there would always be (at least) a deafening explosion of verbal abuse, and often enough, it would end in having to be put through some kind of physical abuse, ritual or otherwise. Because yelling always preceded beatings, yelling itself became a trigger. I don't recall him often speaking to me in a non-yelling tone. There was some sexually inappropriate stuff (very sporadic and not very "extreme" in the grand scheme of things) going on, too.
I lived in constant fear as a child because of him, and never felt safe in the house. We were always walking on eggshells. My mother did nothing to protect me; I don't think she even soothed me. (I don't recall any such thing, but I dissociated a lot--still do--so who knows?) She later admitted that she had been worried that if she tried to intervene, he'd start beating her. She did, eventually, find the wherewithal to leave him, once it was discovered he'd been cheating. No more beatings after that.
I have experienced frequent suicidal ideation since I was a child (~8 yo), and it's never really gone away. (FWIW, I've never attempted and don't have any plans.) In a nutshell, I've never known what it's like to actively want to exist. It feels like there's been just too much pain in life, and it has only snowballed over the years (for reasons that I'm still trying to understand).
After decades of suffering post-traumatic-stress symptoms without realizing that I was injured by the early abuse and its repercussions (for a long time, I hadn't thought to investigate whether I had a problem), my quality of life and basic level of functionality have eroded considerably (and I'm exhausted). I was somewhat-recently diagnosed with PTSD, but I'm definitely experiencing CPTSD (also). Interestingly, my symptoms are much worse now, in middle age, than when I was younger, even though the worse of the trauma had already ended before I hit my teens. I wonder if that's common. I haven't been able to find a lot of data that speak directly to this. I just keep wondering why I could function (and I felt) better earlier in life than I do now.
So far, I haven't been able to benefit much from talk therapy. In my last (fairly recent) experience, the therapist was surprisingly dismissive and invalidating, to the point of coming across as almost hostile (and yet, she claimed to specialize in PTSD - ?!), so I'm currently very reluctant to go back to a therapist. I'm also finding myself in doubt as to how well talk therapy (alone) can really help with early-childhood-abuse CPTSD. I guess it's because it feels as though it's what I "am"*; i.e., like I never had the opportunity to be anything but traumatized because trauma was always there while my brain was developing. I guess this makes me feel like I need some approach that has the capacity to burrow more deeply into my brain, so I'm currently exploring what other therapeutic alternatives could be available for my situation. I'm interested in psychedelic-assisted therapy, since that seems to be a brute-force way to rewire the brain, which is what I think I need, but I don't have any way to access it where I am (and that's extremely frustrating). *BTW, what I mentioned above doesn't mean I'm defining myself in terms of CPTSD--just that it feels like it is so deeply programmed into me that it seems unreachable, and I'm wondering what kind of treatments could help, if any.
Sorry so long -- thanks for reading