Sufferer Cptsd And Chronic Pain

[Hope4Now]

Hi Franciemarnie. I'm glad I'm here too with you all!!! I finally feel like I'm hearing from people who get this stuff!

I get the need to get the energy out before meditating. My therapist just went to a training on somatic stuff and when he came back he had me moving around the office when I started shaking. It actually worked to calm the shaking stuff! So, I have been experimenting with really simple, subtle yoga. I went to a place in boston that does trauma-sensitive yoga and they gave me a DVD (it is too far for me to drive there regularly). Have been experimenting with it because the movement seems to help release some of the toxic energy. But I can't do most of the positions because of my pain and loss of flexibility (sigh, I used to be a decent athlete 2 years ago...had just gotten a new bicycle when all this started). The Kundalini thing--if it is true, and my experience was so intensely real and visceral that I think it is--is supposed to be a great thing only if you are ready for it. Apparently, though, it can release before you're ready and wreak havoc in your mind and body. I am pretty sure this is what jolted me into awareness of myself.

I too have had lots of symptoms of this since childhood...just that nobody including me knew. As an adult I did a couple rounds of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds (especially after a year of panic attacks), but I didn't like how they made me feel. Somehow, as painful as all these flashbacks are, I think maybe it is good to be processing them in order to get better. (That's the hopeful part of me talking). I am doing a homeopathic over-the-counter med that's sort of helpful for calming down if I can remember to take it.

Whoa!! I thought this was gone - all the full blown symptoms. Nyet. They were just sitting there doing their nails.

I love the way you put this!

Thanks for being here!!

 

[Hope4Now]

I just wanted to add my voice as another "similar sufferer".

Hi and thank you. I am sort of afraid that maybe this will happen to me too. I have real issues with sex and sexuality...always have and they're complicated in my current relationship and with gender identity issues from when I was very young...and I have no recollection of ever having been sexually abused. But every day more and more memories of my childhood are emerging. I will try to find your post about your experience so I can read it. thanks for sharing.

 

[franciemarnie]

I so identify with you. I love hearing how your T has you walking around shaking it out. Me too. I get a cold feeling in my chest first and then I know it's coming and I am up on my feet shaking it loose. That expedites it beautifully.

I am glad you didn't go the meds route if only because it is a pain to get off. But sometimes when it works it can be necessary to function for a while.

They didn't even have the name for this (PTSD) when we were kids. That made my experience of life so terribly puzzling and demoralizing.

I tried learning yoga but I couldn't literally hear what to do and get feedback because of severe hearing loss. I even tried one on one but it was a no go. I guess it wasn't meant to be. At least not yet.

I have read also that the Kundalini can be too powerful if a person isn't ready once it's unleashed. But the healing energy is maybe lying dormant and you are pulling it up as needed. Just thinking out loud.

It's sunny and mild today. 40's mild. So glad. Going to get out and walk and take in that pranic energy!

 

[Bedbug]

real issues with sex and sexuality

The only person I have ever even kissed is my husband. I met him aged 27.

gender identity issues from when I was very young

Me too. I'm female and so was my abuser. I hated my own sexuality. I thought I must be a male trapped in my female body, which I completely rejected and despised. I am becoming more comfortable now.

I sincerely hope you were not sexually abused in addition to the other abuse you have already recalled.

 

[Hope4Now]

Me too. I'm female and so was my abuser. I hated my own sexuality. I thought I must be a male trapped in my female body, which I completely rejected and despised. I am becoming more comfortable now. I sincerely hope you were not sexually abused in addition to the other abuse you have already recalled.

Yes. Same experience hating my sexuality. Puberty was traumatic because I couldn't fool myself into thinking I was a boy anymore. (although I did suddenly embrace it as I got older and had lots of relationships until I finally met my husband when I was in my late twenties). And I don't much trust women, still. The one woman I trust deeply happens to be a very masculine gay woman who also has cptsd (but doesn't know it yet). The sexual part of my relationships has always been notoriously unfulfilling though. I think I hurt a lot of men over the years by leaving when we got too close. I feel badly about that now. One of these old boyfriends just died suddenly last week, and I've been thinking a lot about how I hurt people by letting them get a little close then running away. How I have managed to be married for 20 years, I don't know. Though, much as I love him, I have a spouse who, though heterosexual, is extremely feminine shall we say, and wow that triggers me in weird ways all the time. But that's a whole other story. Don't feel like I can talk about the sex stuff with anyone. In fact, this is the first time I've said anything at all about my husband. Scary.

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - you asked about the kicking back thing. I don't feel comfortable talking about what I mean in detail. It is not something I have written about and can barely face myself at present. I will try to say enough, but forgive me if it doesn't make sense.

From the start of the onset of my CPTSD, I have had a very powerful sense of my legs wanting to draw up into my hips (in fact they were doing just that in as far as they could). This was coupled with a need to curl up in a foetal position, which you describe. Allied with it all came very unpleasant pains in various parts of my body. My body was telling me what had happened to me when I was attacked, if you like, and was describing what I had tried to do to protect myself as a baby, a little girl and again when I was 20. The legs up into the hips thing was causing me a lot of pain in my sacral area (one of my legs ended up 'the wrong way round' as I described it) and I had pain going down my legs - sciatica-like - as well as pain in my ovarian region caused by a shortening psoas due to tension.

My therapist explained to me that I would need to complete the actions I had tried and failed to enact, whilst I being attacked. If you know the work of Peter Levine, 'Waking the Tiger', etc., you will know what I am talking about. I did do an exercise with my therapist, but this is what I cannot talk about. It was devastating to me because of what it brought up and what ensued. But the end result is that I still have got to do the completion by kicking out in the opposite direction to the traumatic muscle tension, effectively pushing my abusers/rapist away. It is a process of releasing the traumatic energy, and reclaiming my personal space and power/agency. I hope that makes sense.

Btw, Peter Levine would say shaking is good and to let yourself do it, as it rebalances your natural state, being something that animals do automatically after being attacked.

 

[Hope4Now]

Echo, I'm sorry to have asked you a question that made you uncomfortable, and VERY grateful that you have described some of what you're talking about. I am SO SORRY you had a devastating experience with your therapist. Sending DEEP COMPASSION your way. Maybe you/your body just wasn't ready to process it completely yet and you need to let yourself take time and give yourself some gentle space?

you asked about the kicking back thing.

This leg/hip thing is exactly the kind of thing that happens to me. Hip gets displaced, psoas (both sides) spasms. Compulsion to go into fetal position, except now that position is increasingly painful to be in even though that's what my body's inclination is, so I'm left having to lie on my back (very vulnerable) or on my stomach (safer but not comfortable).

I'm familiar with Peter Levine's work. In fact, I'm trying to use his new book on Healing Pain to help me but not having too much success. I can't find anybody local who does the kind of work he describes (somatic experiencing), but my therapist's approach (Internal Family Systems Therapy) has a somatic piece underlying all of it. Levine is really good. I also like Pete Walker, but he doesn't talk much about the pain/ptsd connection.


And yes...I'm trying to let myself just shake. My therapist says I need to listen to what these physical things are telling me they need. LOL. I told him they speak a different language than I do. And it's like the tower of babel in my body there are so many different kinds of pain and shakes and jolts. Maybe from all different traumas in my life? The main one, though, is like yours. Uh Oh for me as I don't remember any physical abuse or attack. Guess maybe I have that flashback yet to look forward to.

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - I sincerely hope you don't have to go there. But if you do, the tremendous shock does recede. I am hesitant to say too much, because it gets me too wired up when I'm having to face another big challenge right now, but I also don't feel it is right to suggest to you that your experience is the same, or to trigger you into something. Take it easy and let you body's wisdom show you what it wants to show you, in the order it wants to do so.

My therapist works with sensorimotor therapy which is just right for me. Trauma-focussed CBT and the like is said to be too brutal for me, with CPTSD - that may be the same for you, I don't know. She thinks it will be a very long time before I can cope with EMDR. I am very shocked to see other people here and their therapists going straight into EMDR, but we are each different and some people have one distinct trauma. We get to chose the short straw with multiple traumas, and emotional abuse goes very deep, not that it is a competition in any way, shape or form. I hope you find someone very soon.

 

[Hope4Now]

Echo, Thanks.

She thinks it will be a very long time before I can cope with EMDR.

Yes, EMDR seems to be the big thing now. Probably because it is supposed to be fast and effective, so fits so well with our fast moving culture that craves quick fixes. I do keep getting frustrated with my therapist because he keeps saying we need to slow things down...but the more I read about ptsd and cptsd, (and I read a lot of academic stuff as well as popular stuff) the more I am learning about how easy it is for therapists to re-traumatize their clients by moving too fast. So, yeah, I guess folks like you and me are in for the long haul.
Peace.

 

[greenleaf]

Yes, moving too fast isn't too helpful; I think part of the therapy I did 15+ years ago was somewhat reinforcing dissociation (I talked through traumatic events a lot, researched stuff a ton, though the state of research was less advanced.) Functional dissociation, more like numbing and not being inside emotions connected to old events, than total spacing out. But it didn't get past a certain level, and now I'm dealing with more of the actual emotions (which seems more connected with physical tension and problems than the dissociation did.) There are lots of pluses, though, with being able to connect more with people, that I never had a clue that I could do. Hang in there.

 

[EvenStrongerNow]

You're not making it up and it's not your fault. It's real and you are not even in the same realm with weakness.

 

[BLHutch]

Anyone have success stories with chronic pain or managing emotional flashbacks?

I don't have a success story for you, but I guess I can say that I am a fellow traveler down this road. I have degenerative disc disease which effects the lower two levels of my spine. This causes burning pain down my legs with numbness mixed in every now and then. And to make things really fun, every so often it feels like someone is sticking my foot in a blender. The funny thing is that my back really doesn't hurt that much. It is all in my legs. I have PTSD too, brought on by experiencing numerous traumatic incidents in my previous career.

I don't take anything for the PTSD. I found that Lyrica does help with the pain in the legs. I've been on it for almost a year now at a 225mg per day dose. I take three pills a day and if I accidentally miss one, I can feel it. So that tells me that it must be doing something. The only problem is that short term memory loss is one of the side effects which when coupled with the short term memory loss that comes with PTSD, it is a wonder I can remember anything. Thank God for sticky notes.