Hi all,
Stumbled on this post with great relief. I am new to the C-PTSD diagnosis, as I recently went through a "breakthrough crisis" and have been flooded with overwhelming emotions that do not connect with any memory or context. I feel deep grief, fear and sadness, but there is no straight line from what I am feeling now, to what happened then (40+ years ago).
Just Me Here's post was so helpful. In my case, there are two overlapping traumas. The first is related to many years of relentless childhood bullying. This is my "bookcase" - to borrow JMH's analagy. I've always been aware of the bookcase, I just do not want to open any of the books. Indeed, I don't even like acknowledging that the bookcase is there.
The second trauma relates to being raised by a mother with (undiagnosed) Borderline Personality Disorder. She abused me for years and years with shunning, banishment, belittling, and blame. For those familiar with BPD, I was the all-bad child, the family scapegoat, labelled crazy, sensitive, etc etc. In this instance I have the vaguest sense of my relationship with her during my childhood years, but cannot remember anything much. Most of those years are a blank. No bookshelf. Just blankness. I can remember very clearly (and with much pain) the shunning and blame she dumps on me as an adult, but cannot connect these current behaviours with what went on in my childhood. I feel totally and completely disconnected from my childhood. Like my life began at about 20, when I emerged as a super anxious and then totally numbed out adult.
This blankness freaks me out.
I too am about to start EMDR. So, on the one hand I am kind of looking forward (well, you know what I mean) to glimpsing even some of my past so that I can at least connect the grief/anxiety/hyperarousal/insomnia (now) with the pain/fear/helplessness (then).
The road through this jungle of trauma seems very long and very hard at this point (the very beginning) of the journey....
