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Sufferer Greetings - what has helped you?

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Trauma_Queen

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I am 40(f) and have been struggling with C-PTSD for almost my entire life. For the last 16 years, I have been on/off medications (currently off) and in/out of traditional therapy (currently in). The various medications did not make much of a difference and the therapy has been only a bit better than the meds. I struggle to aptly describe what I have been going through, but it's almost like traditional therapies/meds will never help my situation. I am interested to know what has helped others, if you care to share.

My background contains a mix of traumatic experiences that have led to my main coping strategy - extreme distrust of everyone. I am married and do trust my husband, but no one else. This distrust has created an isolating environment where I am scared of everything and everyone. I don't like leaving the house, I don't want to socialize with friends and I am just a big, ol' miserable person. Most of my therapy experiences have seemed invalidating and I really don't know where to turn to. Self-help books only help so much and I really hope I can find something soon that will pull me out of this perpetual funk.
 
Welcome to the forum!

I lived extremely isolated for a long period when I was at my most unwell. It sucks. For me, I found that getting involved in life again, without 'trusting' people, was extremely helpful. I don't actually need to trust people to participate in life, you know?

From there, practicing being in life slowly built me a life that is now worth living.

There was a tonne of therapy involved as well, obviously. And I use medication to help manage my symptoms. But I'm nowhere near as isolated as I used to be, and it is heaps better:)
 
hello tq. welcome to the forum. sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here.

gentle empathy on the trust issues. learning how, when and where to trust been a long, confusing battle for me. works in progress. at present, i am coping by trusting people to be human, complete with contradictions, dichotomies, flaws, germs, nasty smells and an infinite variety of detractors, especially here at the tail end (i hope) of the covidic era. after the covidic powers declared social distancing to be a good thing, i find myself more reluctant than ever to close the social distances.

still. . . before the masked madness, i had accumulated considerable evidence that there was considerable innovation, kindness and compassion to be found among the contradictions and dichotomies of the human condition and a wealth of reasons to go fishing for those qualities. i was new to this area when corona crowned and am currently pretty isolated and regressed to the social distances i learned as a child prostitute.

dare i trust again? ? ? questioning with you. . .
 
I extend trust at times, but deep down I expect to be betrayed eventually and so I keep my distance from people mostly. I don't wanna be like this, but it's difficult when you've had so few people in your life that have ever been trustworthy. I have one such person in my life, a dear friend. I am thankful. I'm still learning about trust and so I can't help you there, but I have always had a fascination with truth and the seeking of it. Self-help books can help, but they only go so far. Eventually something more philosophical and perhaps spiritual is needed to come to anything approximating a peace. I don't fully have that yet, but these things have helped me profoundly and so, if you're that way inclined, I would recommend being open minded to such things. I wish you well :)
 
Welcome!
I am interested to know what has helped others, if you care to share.
If I trust myself, it doesn’t matter how much or how little I trust anyone else. Trusting myself & my own judgement, however, is very strongly tied to how symptomatic I am. So there’s that.

One of the best ways I know of to lower my over all symptoms? Stress Cup / Stress management. Which is one of those “so simple” things that it’s so difficult it becomes an artform.


If you read nothing else on this forum? DO read ^this^.

Again, welcome.
 
Welcome! For me the most helpful thing has been art therapy. I don't mean just doing art on your own, I mean going to an actual art therapist. My art therapist really helped me process my trauma through art. She saw things in my art that I missed that helped me understand myself better. You don't have to be good at art to benefit from an art therapist. It's about the process, not the finished art product. Most of what I made wouldn't be things I would want to hang up on a wall.
 
This was one of the most blatantly honest and helpful resources I've ever found. Therapists are tied to a bunch of liability drivel that drives me insane - just tell me the effing truth - so when I did all the reports on this website and found my main issues, I brought those into therapy and now we're somewhere valuable. And my therapist is engaged, not just spouting off route dogma. And I'm like a dog on a bone on this - I don't care how hard it is.... I am the fnking queen of doing what's hard. Road less traveled? Get it.

 
I am 40(f) and have been struggling with C-PTSD for almost my entire life. For the last 16 years, I have been on/off medications (currently off) and in/out of traditional therapy (currently in).
What changed my life from suffering excruciating of CPTSD for 60 years I learned from watching "HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND". It is a docuseries on Netflix. It actually works. It saved my life!!!
 
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