Sufferer Hello

[jaccat]

Hello,
I've just found this forum through Pete Walker's book on complex PTSD. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I'm still suffering from PTSD due to my hugely disfunctional childhood. I naively thought I'd managed to put it behind me.
My mother was an alcoholic. She was violent, manipulative, dominating. My father's way of coping was to stay out of the house has much as possible and I saw little of him when I was younger. I'm the youngest of four siblings, by a way, and it's always been hard for me because while they were close to each other, to them I've always been the baby- too young to remember.
It doesn't help that all my mother's violence was aimed at the men in the family, while I being a girl, was mostly ignored.
I've been seeing a therapist for the last six months and am just beginning to feel like I'm getting somewhere. My mum died when I was 17, of a drug overdose- not so much suicide as attention seeking (it was something she did regularly), and my father died in the summer, from Alzheimer's. I had been caring for him, alone, up to the year before his death.
A lot of my memories of the past are hazy. I remember lying on the floor under my bed listening to my parent's fighting, but I've no memories of them fighting. I remember my brother trying to kill himself when he was 13 and I was 5, I remember my other brother locked in the garden with my mother one the phone pretending to ring social services to have us taken away. I remember enough, but even so I doubt myself.
I probably wouldn't be writing here if it hadn't been for Christmas. We've had a hard year. As well as dad dying, both my brother and sister have broken up with their partners because of the way they were treated when our dad died. My brothers unexpectedly turned up at my sisters house at Christmas, and the three of them seemed intent on getting drunk. Certainly my brothers struggle with alcohol. I don't drink at all.
Anyway, I don't know if I can say this, but one of my brothers got into a conversation with me about how isolated I am from them. I am, but I don't feel it's of my own making- I'd love to be closer to them but they all left, and left me to deal with my dad alone after my parents divorce when he wasn't capable of looking after himself let alone me. They don't even know me as a person, and from the outside I seem very different to them. But what really got to me was when we started talking about the past and he said that I 'took it personally', and what I had to do was learn to laugh at it. Then he tried to tell me mum was a really nice person underneath. I have no memories of her sober. Not one. And she really wasn't nice drunk, so him telling me I should like her- I can't do anything with that.
But it's been a fortnight and I'm still a mess. I feel like I've been running from that conversation ever since but it keeps catching up with me and when it does I get stuck in all the old thoughts, thinking I'm worthless, a fraud, unlike- able. I can't focus on anything for more than about twenty minutes and when I meet up ŵith people I keep thinking they're wondering why I'm there. I need to snap out of this.
Sorry it's a bit of an essay.
Jacqueline.

 

[intothelight]

@jaccat Welcome to the forum!

Everyone has different levels of tolerance and when there are several years between siblings, time, gender, and even birth order, can have a huge effect on each siblings experience within the family. If your brother sees things one way, that is his perspective and how you see things is yours. Doesn't mean there is anything wrong or incorrect about your experience or perception, so don't beat yourself up about it.

 

[Amalia]

Hi Jacqueline,

Welcome to the site, it's been a life saver for me, I hope you find it just as helpful. I was diagnosed a little over a year ago and have them further self diagnosed with complex ptsd as like you my symptoms go back to when I was tiny - I was selectively mute until I was 5 amongst other things. I completely get the concept of feeling a 'fraud' and worthless. It's two of the most damaging elements of the disorder I feel. I also have very very few memories of my childhood right up to adulthood. You are not alone, in the symptoms you suffer from, the feeling of not being understood by anyone due to the complexity of the condition and the no doubt profound effect it has had on your life. I'm glad you're making headway, as have I though it has also served to exacerbate the feelings of inadequacy and sorrow re what I have lost in my life as a result of ptsd. What you will find on here I hope, as I have, is the only place I've known where people can identify with who I am and my ongoing battle for the life I starting to believe I could deserve. It is sanity saving just to hear somebody say they get the same thing and or understand why.

I wish you all the best Jacqueline. Your strength has carried you this far; it will continue to serve you well :).

Amalia

 

[jaccat]

Thanks for your responses. I am trying to keep in mind that my brother just won't be capable of understanding what it was like for me, and he didn't mean to hurt me with what he said. And to be honest I have trouble understanding how he could find it in his heart to love our mother after the way she treated him.
I guess it doesn't help that I appear to be high-functioning on the outside. I was the first in my family to get a degree, I have a steady job, I've recently been promoted, from the outside things seem to be going well. Besides one very close friend people who know me have no comprehension of my background, and probably wouldn't be able to get their heads round it.
But away from work I am isolated, I regularly suffer nightmares, I am almost completely cut off from my own feelings and have been since I was a child. Only now am I beginning to understand how terrifying my childhood was.
I displayed symptoms of PTSD as a child- insomnia from a very young age, alongside regular vomiting at night, huge issues with food, unnatural quietness at school, depression, I even had full blown PTSD flashbacks where I would lose all sense of where I was. But all symptoms were put down to my 'difference', a belief all my family held, boosted by the fact that I was diagnosed with foetal alcohol syndrome at birth. Even though I have never displayed any of the symptoms.
My therapist is great. She's trying to get me to recognise what resilience I must have in me to have survived my childhood. I get that, but somehow I find it hard to make it mean anything to me.
I've been wondering if the way I'm feeling now is some kind of flashback. Normally I would work it out in my journal, but up until today I haven't even been able to write about it. I'm still trying to figure out what a c-PTSD flashback is.

 

[greenleaf]

Hello @jaccat, it is wonderful that you have found a good therapist, I think she's absolutely right that you are very resilient! Part of healing seems to often involve feeling a lot of emotions that we didn't have enough support to feel as a kid, when caregivers were as dysfunctional as you mention. So one thing to keep in mind, weird as this seems, is that feeling these terrible feelings shows strength and often progress on your part. Just keep working on getting good support from your T etc. though, would be my thought!

Also, if this brother is drinking, laughing at an alcoholic mother who was clearly extremely disordered and ended up offing herself as part of attention-seeking, I'd say he is very disordered himself, unfortunately. He likely has a long, long way to go in order to heal, and that is probably the only way he'll ever actually support you on these issues -- if he's willing to face his own negative emotions surrounding that. He may respond negatively if you hint at that too, denial can make people lash out at anything that disturbs the denial. He may have no idea how much emotion he is squashing. I'm just guessing as I'm not a professional but am drawing from vaguely similar personal experience. However, please try to look to healthy people for your support, not people unable/unwilling to name pain as pain. Your T is a great first step! Maybe you know other people who "feel healthy" to you, that you can spend more time with?

I wish I had a real brother too that could be "there"; mine shows no sign of healing himself, and it's been 30 years since we became "adults" (hah!) -- I think now that some ways that people coped as kids may make it even harder to heal as an adult... I do think of several authentically nice, empathic guys I know as brother-like now, though. They don't have a background to help me with trauma but that's not all of who I am, I try to share in other areas and that feels good though I have loads more work to do in connecting to people.

 

[jaccat]

Oh, I do know he's not facing half of what happened, no matter what he says. He's come a long way, he used to have major issues with rage and was always in trouble with the police, and most of that he has under control now. But he's far from normal. Just an example- he offered to have my sister's ex- kidnapped after their break up. He does these things for love of us, which is equally sweet and terrifying. (She refused his offer by the way).
I really want to be close to him. The two of us went through a lot together, even if he's inclined to paint me out of some of the memories. And I do love him. Which is why it hurts so much to see him not coping, and denying it.

 

[KP the nut]

Hi and welcome to the forum from a fellow Brit.

 

[Seasounds]

:)Hello and welcome! This forum is a great place. I hope you like it, too.:)