• 💖 [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 Back at square one with childhood trauma.

Status
Not open for further replies.

Pink Freud

Learning
Hello everyone,
my life has been a series of traumas and life crises with little silver linings in between. My people are all crazy. Father alcoholic, who liked to hit, mother schizophrenic to the point of batshit crazy, older sibling with strong narcissistic tendencies to put it politely. The rest is no better. I left home at 16 and performed a parentdectomy on my life. More specifically, I removed the entire family and everyone attached.
After my father passed away three years ago, they crept back into my life. I'm a people-pleaser and the thought of having a family like everyone else was so tempting, so I let them. If you need advice on boundary issues, I highly recommend asking someone else. Now I know how naive I was, thinking people could change over 15 years. Turned out they didn't one bit.
With hard work and effort I had managed to build a life out of the ruins my family provided me with for my adult life. I had to catch up on education, healthy relationships and life basics in general... Apart from my desastrous CV and daily struggles the trauma wounds could heal a bit over time. I had a couple of rounds of therapy and was on every type of drug the market had to offer. But after my family was not only the main actor of my nightmares anymore, but also a supporting actor again in the life that I had built for myself, all wounds opened up again.
Recently I had to have another parentdectomy. Right now I'm trying to get by from one day to the next with symptom and trigger management. I hate to admit but most days I'm failing. I'm triggered left and right, up and down, anxiety is going through the roof, I'm fighting passive suicidal ideation on a daily basis, depression at it's worst, chronic despair and all the other effed up stuff.
I lost all of my close friends due to Covid, some tin foil and a failing symptom management on my part because I lost the person I became to be and who they got to know me as. There were also friends who weren't in my inner circle but with rising symptoms I subtracted myself from their lives as well. Isolating is what I do when things get really bad. I can't get back into therapy and am trying to put a self-therapy together for myself right now so I won't drown. I'm trying to put it off as catastrophizing but honestly I think it is as bad as it looks to me at the moment.
 
hello pink freud. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here.

ah, the recovery 3 step. . . one step forward, two steps back. . .
as painfully frustrating as setbacks are, they are not quite the same as starting from square one. if you managed to recover once, the next round is easier for having the many clues that you gleaned from your first go-round. i like to think of my own recovery as a spiral staircase. yes, i keep revisiting the same heartaches over and over, but with each go-round, my perspective is just far enough different to change bits and pieces. if i keep on stepping, before i know it, i find myself on a whole new level.

but that is me and every case is unique. . .

steadying support while you find your next step.
welcome aboard.
 
I can't get back into therapy and am trying to put a self-therapy together for myself right now

I did this as well for many years as I was unable to find a civilian therapist trained to discuss my issues. There actually is benefit to conducting this process on your own.

At least for me, I was able to get to a place that when I did find helpful therapy I had a clear foundation and goal for what I wanted out of it. To process my trauma emotionally & understand baseline emotions. To obtain income. To connect with my community & family, engage with my real life & leave my room.

Before then I would see therapists and they'd be like "so, what do you want?" and my answer would be like, "I want to regurgitate horrible traumatic shit." And they'd be like, "no, for your life?" And I'd be like, "what the f*ck does that have to do with anything?" Heh.

There are some basic worksheets and YouTube videos out there that explain how to do the process of narrative exposure, DBT & CBT. And in the Trauma Diaries section of this website, the pinned post by Anthony explains a pretty decent facsimile of the general idea of narrative exposure.
 
Recently I had to have another parentdectomy.
yeah, I get that. You too have found some humor in a totally foreign to normal situation. I hear people that lose a child say "we aren't designed to bury our children" and we all hear that and agree, it isn't a thing we could ever get used to. We all go through life thinking we will be burying our parents some day. But when they are so unhealthy that we have to give up on them and shut them out? We aren't designed to do that either. Sorry for your loss.
 
I did this as well for many years as I was unable to find a civilian therapist trained to discuss my issues. There actually is benefit to conducting this process on your own.
The barriers for finding any therapist are huge. Finding someone who is actually trained for trauma is impossible - let alone CPTSD. Finding someone who I feel comfortable with and who will listen to what I need and what works for me is completely out of the picture.
Right now it seems equally impossible that I can do anything on my own that is of any help. Thank you for your encouragement.

Before then I would see therapists and they'd be like "so, what do you want?" and my answer would be like, "I want to regurgitate horrible traumatic shit." And they'd be like, "no, for your life?" And I'd be like, "what the f*ck does that have to do with anything?" Heh.
I know what I want for my life and I'm trying so f*cking hard but feel like I'm failing no matter how hard I try or what I do. I'm in my late 30s and got my bachelor's degree this year. I spent twice as long as most people do to achieve normal things like that in their early 20s. Besides the fact that my CV is a bunch of gaps and precarious jobs it doesn't mean anything to me because of that. I'm trying to also get a master's degree. Classes are starting this month and I don't know how I will be able do it. Unlike most students I have to work a job that barely pays my bills. With the job and classes it will be around 60 hours workload per week while I'm highly symptomatic.
 
I'm in my late 30s and got my bachelor's degree this year. I spent twice as long as most people do to achieve normal things like that in their early 20s.

I am 31 with a 9th grade education and zero income. I'm too disabled to go to school or work. I have tried and failed multiple times. Our society has a way of making people feel like shit for being disabled.

The whole, "you have to earn a living." I happen to think people shouldn't need to "earn" the right to be alive. You go at your own pace && achieve those milestones in the most comfortable way possible.

Don't let anyone make you feel like shit about it.
 
Yeah, our society is toxic and really f*cked up. Marx pretty much hits the nail on the head with his theory on alienation. We're alienated from our work, ourselves, each other and from nature. It didn't get any better since he wrote it.

I thought about trying to get a disability status. It's complicated and yet another failing system in my country and probably everywhere else when it comes to mental health. It would help me a lot with going at my own pace without losing my apartment. It would probably also help me stop trying so f*cking hard to be Miss Normal and beating myself up over not being normal. I feel like I'm always several steps behind and the blame is put on people's defective character. The result is guilt, shame, chronic despair...
 
It would probably also help me stop trying so f*cking hard to be Miss Normal and beating myself up over not being normal. I feel like I'm always several steps behind and the blame is put on people's defective character.

I'm in the process of applying for disability && have no idea if I will even get it. My psychologist says that it should be an open and shut case as I can barely cross the street without getting hit by a car because I'm so f*cking vegetative half the time.

I have no IRL friendships & zero income to the point that I am completely reliant on my mom. Sometimes I get my GST from the government that's about it. Social assistance told me to apply for EI when I quit my job (&& ergo do not qualify for EI). So it's just a shit-show.

The real culprit IMO is ableism. People claim that our society has advanced beyond killing disabled people openly in the streets but my country has actually legalized a form of medical assistance in dying that is nothing more than trussed up eugenics. One of the first & second cases? A disabled woman who begged the govt to give her assistive housing that accommodated her disabilities.

They refused. So applied to be euthanized and was killed. All the drs were outraged. There was zero legal precedent any longer to deny her because we now allow euthanasia for "mental health reasons." Which essentially means anyone who wants to die, can die. And who wants to die? Disabled people. Poor people. Homeless people. 2nd incidence? A vet with PTSD who was refused proper treatment.

It would mean more if we ever had any f*cking respect and accountability for treating disabled people with dignity and compassion in our culture but that is bullshit. Compassionate death my ass. This isn't compassion, it's telling people that you would rather kill them than offer the bare minimum of empathy and support. (&& yes of course people deserve to die on their own terms, but even these two cases clearly show that those individuals would have rathered live and be given support than die. That was just their only option to relieve their suffering.)

It's so wrapped up in "ohhh, what do you do for a living?" which is the first question every person asks when they meet you. Oh, what do I do? Well, I roll around on the floor like a rat, mostly. What do you do? Anyway most of this was definitely super ranty, sorry about that. But my point is that there's absolutely no legitimate reason for anyone who is struggling to feel bad about needing to take the extra time.

PTSD and disability are real and you deserve respect.
 
Haha, I love rants and cursey words!

I really hope you get it approved! You deserve it! First of all because you are a human being who struggles with mental health. Secondly because you come across as a gentle soul with a witty and likable personality.

As people we're nothing more than naked monkeys who lack a moral philosophy. The vast majority of us has never asked themselves what is right and what is wrong, what is good and evil. That's why I get ambivalent. I honestly don't want to be part of what we proudly call advanced society. But then again, I'm a naked monkey with a mammal brain that's wired for love, connection, belonging...
 
We all go through life thinking we will be burying our parents some day. But when they are so unhealthy that we have to give up on them and shut them out? We aren't designed to do that either. Sorry for your loss.
Cutting them off doesn't feel like a loss.
When I was informed that my father had died, I started crying and I realized that I was actually grieving. But it felt different from when I lost my dogs. I realized that I wasn't grieving my father but everything that I didn't have as a child or in adulthood because of him and the rest of this dysfunctional bunch of people.
It's similar with the rest of the family. I don't miss them, I don't want them in my life. What I'm grieving for is the loss of my Self, a sense of security, opportunities, chances and everything I didn't have because of them and everything that they did.

I could only see the difference because the loss of my dogs felt like losing a family member, friend and loved one. The death of my father didn't.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top