I am new to this forum. My trauma therapist provided this link. After reading many of the posts, I decided to register.
I am 76 years old, the survivor of religious and cult abuse. I am diagnosed with Complex PTSD, not that it matters. 63 years ago my 39-year old mother died in early November after a 14-day religious fast of "purification." The fast was supposed to last 40 days! My father, a renegade fanatical Mormon who believed he was the "Bright Light", was incarcerated in a mental institution with "schizophrenia" after the police were unable to prove he had killed her. My mother's tragic death made front page headlines. My brother and two sisters were orphaned, our house sold and bulldozed for apartments, and we were sent to live with my maternal uncle and his wife and 4 kids.
Long story short, I was never the same after that. I have struggled in career and relationships my entire life and by age 28, suffered a massive nervous breakdown that resulted in me recreating all this by becoming trapped in a new age cult run by a meglmanical abusive guru. It took 12 years to escape and flee to Hawaii. It's classic so I won't bore you with details.
Suffice it to say that every Christmas season, I experience an anniversary traumatic reaction of overwhelming depression, rage, insomnia, nightmares, dysregulation, helplessness and hopelessness, isolation and shame. You can count on it. Every year. No matter how much therapy, how much work, how much praying and shamanic interventions, how many astrological or psychic readings, there it is again. Only this year I finally know that the question is not "Whats Wrong With Me?" but rather, "What Happened To Me?" I know now that I'm having a somatic implicit memory all split up from the explicit ones and they are cascading through the body as if the trauma just happened. The amygdala knows no time and when gets triggered the cerebral cortex of reasoning and logic completely disconnects and goes offline.
I do a lot of somatic interventions now as opposed to trying to think my way out of it: tapping on chest, yoga, walking, cross tapping, foot stamping, cold showers, chanting, breath work, even 1 M homeopathic aconite. Flower remedies. Whatever works even 10 percent of the time. I still am way too isolated. Despite my fear of groups, I know deep down it is community repair that is going to make a difference. Trauma has caused me to hide and I'd like to get out of that loop.
Thanks so much for providing this forum and for allowing me to be a part of it.
I am 76 years old, the survivor of religious and cult abuse. I am diagnosed with Complex PTSD, not that it matters. 63 years ago my 39-year old mother died in early November after a 14-day religious fast of "purification." The fast was supposed to last 40 days! My father, a renegade fanatical Mormon who believed he was the "Bright Light", was incarcerated in a mental institution with "schizophrenia" after the police were unable to prove he had killed her. My mother's tragic death made front page headlines. My brother and two sisters were orphaned, our house sold and bulldozed for apartments, and we were sent to live with my maternal uncle and his wife and 4 kids.
Long story short, I was never the same after that. I have struggled in career and relationships my entire life and by age 28, suffered a massive nervous breakdown that resulted in me recreating all this by becoming trapped in a new age cult run by a meglmanical abusive guru. It took 12 years to escape and flee to Hawaii. It's classic so I won't bore you with details.
Suffice it to say that every Christmas season, I experience an anniversary traumatic reaction of overwhelming depression, rage, insomnia, nightmares, dysregulation, helplessness and hopelessness, isolation and shame. You can count on it. Every year. No matter how much therapy, how much work, how much praying and shamanic interventions, how many astrological or psychic readings, there it is again. Only this year I finally know that the question is not "Whats Wrong With Me?" but rather, "What Happened To Me?" I know now that I'm having a somatic implicit memory all split up from the explicit ones and they are cascading through the body as if the trauma just happened. The amygdala knows no time and when gets triggered the cerebral cortex of reasoning and logic completely disconnects and goes offline.
I do a lot of somatic interventions now as opposed to trying to think my way out of it: tapping on chest, yoga, walking, cross tapping, foot stamping, cold showers, chanting, breath work, even 1 M homeopathic aconite. Flower remedies. Whatever works even 10 percent of the time. I still am way too isolated. Despite my fear of groups, I know deep down it is community repair that is going to make a difference. Trauma has caused me to hide and I'd like to get out of that loop.
Thanks so much for providing this forum and for allowing me to be a part of it.
