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Sufferer I'm new/severe complex trauma brain dump

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that_1_girl

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Hi everyone. Get ready for the new girl CPTSD brain dump, ADHD nonstop word vomit style. I am sorry if this is way too much. I’m terrible at intros.

I'm cisfemale (she/her) I have been asexual for the past 7 years due to a lot of childhood/adolescent trauma starting to come to light in my 30’s but before that I had a lot of unexplained trouble with romantic relationships and none lasted even a full 2 years. I was not in touch with my trauma and thought I just always picked people who were unattracted to me or that I was shameful and repulsive, and never realized until much later that the common denominator was ME and my extreme aversion to physical intimacy.

So that’s my adulthood, or part of it. Childhood was really not that bad (or so I thought), I was bullied in school and at home a lot (verbally, not physically) and my parents used food and force feeding as a method of abuse, but that was really the extent of my negative childhood memories for a very long time. I didn’t really consider myself an abused child until I was about 15. Most of the emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse I went through from age 2 - 18, I either didn’t remember or only remembered in horrific nightmares that started after I was sexually assaulted for the first time at 3 by a friend’s father. When I was 2 or 2 1/2 my mother started treating me as her confidante. By the time I was in kindergarten I was being regularly sexually abused by the therapist who my parents hired to help me after I mysteriously developed severe separation anxiety and nightmares/night terrors at the age of 3. I was in “therapy” with him for about a decade total but I took a break in fifth and sixth grade. I idealized my abuser and my parents because I was psychologically conditioned to. There was a strict family narrative that we were a healthy happy family, the very happiest family in town. I was alone for much of my childhood or felt alone at least because of the bullying and because I was an only child. I always looked to adults to be friends and support people because other kids didn’t like me and basically at home there were no other kids. That looking constantly to adults got me into a lot of trouble. I continued to struggle with anxiety from the age of 3 onward, which led to more and worse diagnoses in adolescence.

So I grew up and went away to college and became an expert self medicator. Struggled emotionally all through college Was diagnosed with psychosis shortly after college and was heavily medicated and frequently hospitalized for 13 years. 2 years ago I got new treatment providers and the diagnoses became CPTSD and ADHD. I’m now tapering off my antipsychotic and it is revealing a depth of anger, shame, and self hatred, and severe complex trauma and dissociative symptoms that I never knew were there. Actually it is starting to seem like it was the dissociative symptoms that fueled the schizophrenia misdiagnosis all along, which would explain why none of the meds helped and I continued getting worse and worse and needing to be more and more heavily sedated to be “manageable”.

Let me be clear: I am NOT psychotic and never was, except possibly briefly when I mixed recreational substances and psych meds. I was highly dissociative and had no language for it and the type of dissociation I experience (severe DP/DR with dissociative “parts”) can really make you feel like you’re watching yourself lose your mind. Unfortunately most of the treatment providers I have had in my entire 34 years of therapy have been ineffective if not overtly abusive either sexually (as a child) or psychologically and emotionally (as a teen and adult). Three different family therapists sat back and allowed my parents to scapegoat me and psychologically abuse me in front of them. And I allowed it because being conditioned from such a young age to idealize my parents and abusers, I just thought that was what family therapy was. Two of my individual therapists in my 20s and early 30s were overtly psychologically abusive and controlling of my thoughts and behavior, and refused to even consider the idea that I had been abused as a child/adolescent/into adulthood. I had many friends tell me they were harming me/not helping me and to get out of those situations but by then I just thought therapy was supposed to make you feel terrible (and they had both won my trust before becoming abusive) so I allowed myself to be coaxed back into trusting them on the few occasions I tried to leave. I didn’t actually leave the last one until he told me I had to go because he could not help me if I did not want to be helped. I left and found my own providers for the first time (instead of my parents finding them for me) at 34 or 35. I found support at a very affirming church among other places and actually found enough support to learn how to think for myself for the first time ever. There is still some financial control going on by my parents and it isn’t entirely cool, but I now have a wonderful team of 40-something-year-old female providers who are within 6-7 years of my own age and treat me like an intelligent human female who has an intense trauma history and who is the expert on my own self. I have been in regular talk therapy that actually helps for 2 1/2 years and effective trauma therapy on and off for 2 years. I’m at a crisis point right now with the med change and the severity of the dissociative symptoms and trauma symptoms. I’ll be around for a week or two at a minimum and then hopefully I’ll be getting into a complex trauma inpatient program for a month or so. I’m hoping to be in decent shape to go back to my regular life by September, but who knows.
 
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Welcome to the forum!

I now have a wonderful team of 40-something-year-old female providers who are within 6-7 years of my own age and treat me like an intelligent human female who has an intense trauma history and who is the expert on my own self.
This is so fantastic to read, having read your harrowing ordeal with trauma and family therapy, and it is so crucial. I’m so happy for you to have these resources in your journey.

Please do not fret about your writing style. I felt you were clear, comprehensive, and exceptionally concise, all things considered! My own thought vomit is pretty spectacularly stream of consciousness, and I have never had any trouble with members being unable to read me. I think you’ll find we have all types of voices and writing styles in this community.

I hope you find this resource as helpful as I have. I believe you will.
 
Welcome. Sorry you had it so bad and so much abuse by so many people who were supposed to be supportive and helpful, including your parents.

I hope you give yourself some credit for having something inside you that kept you hanging on until you could get real help. On your own. That takes a lot of courage with your history.

Had no problem reading you and understanding what you were saying. You will find that we do understand, and will support you best we can as you continue on your healing journey. Glad you are here.
 
I’m at a crisis point right now with the med change and the severity of the dissociative symptoms and trauma symptoms. I’ll be around for a week or two at a minimum and then hopefully I’ll be getting into a complex trauma inpatient program for a month or so. I’m hoping to be in decent shape to go back to my regular life by September, but who knows.
well welcome. i apolegize that you are experiencing so much symptoms. and pain at the moment.

i am hopeful that it will improve for you as well. you will find this a place where you are not alone at all. and many of us can replete with what you had gone through. i regret that you had the experience of abuse from an individuel that was intended to have assisted you. that is so dameging to the trust of the process.

but it sounds like you have continued forward and kept trying even despite that. 👏
 
Seems like you’ve done a crazy lot. Happy to read you are in a safe place of friends and peers who you trust and who VALUE you. And that you have taken your own volition to follow your healing! That’s really big!! Welcome! We have all sorts of frenzy writing styles. 🙃
 
This is so fantastic to read, having read your harrowing ordeal with trauma and family therapy, and it is so crucial. I’m so happy for you to have these resources in your journey.
Hi, thanks. It was/is nice to be accepted here so quickly, although I still doubt that I belong. I just had a conversation with my “chosen mom” about how I didn’t believe any of the CSA stuff could possibly be real since my memory of the family friend’s house and the therapist’s office are mostly completely blank. I remember colors and specific emotions and a few very bizarre scenes in the form of mental “screenshots”. Beyond that I have circumstantial evidence that involves mysterious medical symptoms as a small child, and unexplained pain/discomfort as an adult that I have gotten checked out for probably half a dozen times, etc and been told I’m “fine.”

Welcome. Sorry you had it so bad and so much abuse by so many people who were supposed to be supportive and helpful, including your parents.

I hope you give yourself some credit for having something inside you that kept you hanging on until you could get real help. On your own. That takes a lot of courage with your history.

Had no problem reading you and understanding what you were saying. You will find that we do understand, and will support you best we can as you continue on your healing journey. Glad you are here.
Thanks for responding. I am currently in limbo because my therapist faxed the referral but the hospital didn’t receive two pages so she had to try again tomorrow. And then who knows how long the wait will be. If they even accept me, I am struggling to even accept that anything adverse happened in my childhood at all. I feel like I *must* be faking if I was able to share so much so fast. The sad thing is that’s only less than 50% of what seems to have probably happened. Also this seems to be the reason I am chronically a hot mess express. I’m so stuck in shame and self blame right now.
 
i am hopeful that it will improve for you as well. you will find this a place where you are not alone at all. and many of us can replete with what you had gone through. i regret that you had the experience of abuse from an individuel that was intended to have assisted you. that is so dameging to the trust of the process.
Thanks for replying. Sorry to take so long to get back to you. I was scoping out the site and trying to gauge what conversations are like here. Chronic trauma in the therapy room can mess you up for sure. Whether it’s perpetrated by the therapist or just in front of the therapist. Im honestly questioning everything as to whether any of my story is real and/or constitutes valid trauma. In a sad, stuck place tonight.

Seems like you’ve done a crazy lot. Happy to read you are in a safe place of friends and peers who you trust and who VALUE you. And that you have taken your own volition to follow your healing! That’s really big!! Welcome! We have all sorts of frenzy writing styles. 🙃
Thanks yea I’m in a big stuck place right now, can’t convince mysel that any of “it” is valid or even real. I would almost rather stay stuck and not know, not ever, and stay in my tiny little world than go to treatment and potentially remember things. Or equally bad if not worse was if I got myself all the way there and they said your trauma does not exist and turn around and go home. I’m not sure how long the drive is each way. Bah.
 
I would almost rather stay stuck and not know,
Remember these are 2 different things. And, idk if this will make sense, but what "knowing" means to you? Will probably change once you get into therapy work - most of which will (hopefully) not involve going into detail about your trauma.

For me? I know that I don't know a lot. And I'm now at a place (will I stay in this place? Idk!) where that's actually okay. I've had so much lousy therapy over the years that the memories I do have are contaminated for sure. And whatever I don't know? I'm happy for it to stay in whatever archive box my brain has stored it in, because that's actually working for me right now (it wasn't working for a long while there, but right now it is, and right now is all I have any control over).

So...that's okay. I know enough to understand much better than I used to about who I am, where I've been and (definitely the really important one) how to get to where I want to be.

When I started out? I felt very strongly that I had a right to know my own history. So I understand how compelling that is, and it's totally valid. But, then I got further into therapy, and understood how undeniably complex and shite human memory really is, and tbh, these days I kind of resent having to look back at all. I'm trying to focus on forwards, and what going forwards requires, in terms of accommodating this disability I have.

Welcome to the forum:)
 
You make some really good points. After the flashbacks I had today (somatic and emotional, no visual) I am pretty sure I “know” enough to go about getting unstuck. It’s the dissociative nature of my brain that concerns me because at any moment something random could set me off (what I do not know are my triggers, which may be important to figure out eventually), and I’ll be gone for hours or sometimes days. Thanks for the welcome, and thanks for the reminder that knowing everything exactly is not even possible let alone desirable. My very limited memories are definitely contaminated too due to 2 different therapists repeatedly denying any and all past trauma, and telling me I was making it all up for attention.
 
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