Differentiating Complex Trauma

[Kintsugi]

Starry, I am sorry that you have been invalidating by those around you. That is certainly not anybody's goal here. I would personally love to hear how it is you connect to CPTSD, because reading about other people's connections makes me feel less and less alone. Take care.
(((Starry-night)))

 

[starry-night]

Thank you.

It's something that my OT helped me start thinking about. I'm able to describe things through other people's eyes really well (including the person who basically held me prisoner).

I know that to survive I had to do this, to try and work out what the rules were, and do it really quickly to try and stay one step ahead and try and deflect the worst of it.

I had no rights at all: no right to food, water, sleep, clothes, any contact with the outside world, no right to have an opinion of my own, to have any hopes and dreams of my own. It was like living with a tyrant, a tyrant who thought he was god (he did actually call himself this).

And now, it's like my whole identity is tied up with this other person. I really don't know who I am. It's like there's a big empty space in the centre of me, where there should be me. And it's like the bits of me have been shoved into the very corners of my soul.

And I don't know where it's reasonable for me to stop and for someone else to begin. I'm petrified that if I actually manage to express how I feel to someone else, that it's going to be seen as unreasonable and the other person will get angry with me ('god' told me that f I ever made him angry he would kill me, and he showed me what he would use. I'm very, very good at dealing with angry people, in that nobody can ever stay angry with me).

Do you know what I'm trying to describe?

 

[scott_1971_h]

And now, it's like my whole identity is tied up with this other person. I really don't know who I am. It's like there's a big empty space in the centre of me, where there should be me. And it's like the bits of me have been shoved into the very corners of my soul.

Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me but I could be wrong. You had to identify with your captor to survive. And now the captor has gone and yes, that does mean there's a big hole in your identity (not 'you' but just your identity).
Scott

 

[starry-night]

I'm not sure about the SS thing...I certainly had to have empathy for him, but no positive feelings. None at all. I would never have defended him, ever.

I gave him what he wanted, in every sense of the word, including pretending he was God. But it was an act. That's what he wanted from me, and that's what I did to 1) stay alive 2) get away.