I was diagnosed with C-PTSD for the first time last year, and for the first time I believed it, in May 2011.
Like most people who put the C in PTSD, I was repeatedly (sadistically) sexually abused for about a year beginning when I was six, combined with various other unfortunate events--I am realizing now that perhaps the biggest of these was actually (rather than the abuse, which I think I have a fair handle on) the circumstances surrounding my grandfather's death when I was 7.
He was perhaps the only adult at the time who could really see and understand me. He had surgery in 1984 for a heart defect (the year before hospitals began routinely checking blood for HIV). They gave him 6 months, and he actually lived for 3 years. Three years that got rotten at the end--he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and I used to pretend I was other adult females of the family to avoid upsetting him when he couldn't tell who I was.
We said he had brain cancer because in the mid-80s, there was way too much paranoia and confusion and malice out there (even his church excommunicated him for having a 'gay man's disease' when he turned there for support).
Anyway, I think the intensity of that whole mess kind of encapsulates my thinking on a lot of things: the world is not a place of rainbows and unicorns, people do bad things to children (and other adults) deliberately, institutions (even helping ones) can't be trusted, supports will fail, hell, your own damn mind will fail.
And it certainly has :( Along with the rest of my generally troubled background, I also have trichophagia and several garden-variety OCDs. Very awkwardly--not sure if this helps my case or hurts it--I am something of a psych professional myself. I worked for years as a counselor in adolescent residential treatment and as a very urban teen librarian, so I have a pretty good handle on my own basics (various small-scale OCDs, trichophagia, multiple episodes of clinical depression--I was even diagnosed Borderline once, sheesh :( ).
I quit working with teens last year because I had the distinct (and accurate) impression that I was losing my mind and I wasn't sure anymore that I had the skills to help shepherd them to safe places. A friend got me a job that didn't involve young people at all, but I was unraveling, and I was fired.
It's a long, dark road I've been on since then. I am grateful to have found this site.
Like most people who put the C in PTSD, I was repeatedly (sadistically) sexually abused for about a year beginning when I was six, combined with various other unfortunate events--I am realizing now that perhaps the biggest of these was actually (rather than the abuse, which I think I have a fair handle on) the circumstances surrounding my grandfather's death when I was 7.
He was perhaps the only adult at the time who could really see and understand me. He had surgery in 1984 for a heart defect (the year before hospitals began routinely checking blood for HIV). They gave him 6 months, and he actually lived for 3 years. Three years that got rotten at the end--he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and I used to pretend I was other adult females of the family to avoid upsetting him when he couldn't tell who I was.
We said he had brain cancer because in the mid-80s, there was way too much paranoia and confusion and malice out there (even his church excommunicated him for having a 'gay man's disease' when he turned there for support).
Anyway, I think the intensity of that whole mess kind of encapsulates my thinking on a lot of things: the world is not a place of rainbows and unicorns, people do bad things to children (and other adults) deliberately, institutions (even helping ones) can't be trusted, supports will fail, hell, your own damn mind will fail.
And it certainly has :( Along with the rest of my generally troubled background, I also have trichophagia and several garden-variety OCDs. Very awkwardly--not sure if this helps my case or hurts it--I am something of a psych professional myself. I worked for years as a counselor in adolescent residential treatment and as a very urban teen librarian, so I have a pretty good handle on my own basics (various small-scale OCDs, trichophagia, multiple episodes of clinical depression--I was even diagnosed Borderline once, sheesh :( ).
I quit working with teens last year because I had the distinct (and accurate) impression that I was losing my mind and I wasn't sure anymore that I had the skills to help shepherd them to safe places. A friend got me a job that didn't involve young people at all, but I was unraveling, and I was fired.
It's a long, dark road I've been on since then. I am grateful to have found this site.
