Sufferer Hi, Diagnosed With Ptsd Last Year And Feeling So Lonely.

[Amalia]

I always thought the fact that my relationships and a my potentially great friendships always failed because of me - because I was boring or moaney or not interesting enough. I know now it`s because of my past, PTSD, Panic Disorder and BPD.
I have tried desperately to access help repeatedly with little success. For mental health experts I am a success - high functioning, able to work, barely a drain on resources, and I haven`t killed myself yet.
I am on a waiting list of several months for group therapy.

I know I was very badly abused when I was very small, and was then severely mentally and physically abused throughout my childhood into adulthood. I was never protected, in fact the opposite. I have been fending for myself since i was 17. I`m now 39, with no family, children, or close relationships or friendships. I feel this has all been stolen from me.

Whenever I try to get close to someone I can to a point and then `the terror` as I call it strikes. I just block, cannot think of anything to say and my head just empties of words. I have been told by the few friends who have stayed with me that I try to push people people away. And this is just with my friendships. Those individuals drift, as I start to pen up and find myself depending on them too much, overloading them with my sadness as the PTSD starts to manifest itself and the chaos of my world becomes apparent.

With my relationships it`s horrific. Nightmares, skin crawling, living in a whirl of terror and suspicion. Positivity seems an impossible dream, mired down as I am in black and darkness. I cannot see anything positive or good about my world or who I am. I feel my life is worth nothing, and all I am left with is the unbearable overwhelming urge to escape.

The worst thing is that when I am relaxed, I really do love who I am. I am very bright, funny, caring, positive, sensitive, intuitive, wise. I have been told people are drawn to me, though I cannot see it myself.

But it is the loneliness that asphyxiates me. This doesn`t feel like a life, it feels like an existence. I thought I was normal before, but now I am trying to open up and face my issues, I realise just how lonely and scary my world is. I fear for Christmas, for when I am older, for being alone.

Apologies for the negativity btw X

 

[intothelight]

Hi @Amelia

Welcome to the forum! :)

I didn't read your post as negative, just very honest. That is one of the benefits of a site like this, as you will find that members here really do what you are struggling with.

I hope you find the information and support here helpful and that ultimately your world become a lot less scary and lonely.

Debbie

 

[Amalia]

:shy::shy: well.... like this weekend. nobody has contacted me to even see if I'm okay. everyone is busy with their own lives. Its the world cup, England are playing and I love football but have no one to watch it with. I had to leave my ex because I can]t be with someone its just too terrifying. but through him, because I actually stuck it out long enough,I had a glimpse of what life, friends and friendship could be like. I saw safety from an objective perspective. and though I'm determined to change, it will take years and im still desperately lonely. everyone thinks I have an amazing life but it couldn't be further from the truth....

 

[Deleted member 20280]

@Amalia as @intothelight has said, there are many, many here, who just like you know exactly how you are feeling and what you are going through,

I until this time last year was a highly functioning, well paid government employee. I crashed, I fflipped, I lost everyone and everything as I spiralled down and down.

I realise now that I allowed my PTSD to take control of my life and it did. I have now realised all of this and I chose, regardless of my now pitiful financial situation that; I had a great financially secure life before, I will have it again as well. I am being gentle with myself and I am working towards that end, slowly and carefully so as not to trip myself up again.

You have my sincerest :hug:s. Like you I would love to be with good company this weekend watching England excel in the World Cup. I can't at the moment as I am recovering still some 4 1/2 days now since a bad disocciative flashback.

I will get there because I am a fighter just like you, as I believe you are a fighter from your post here.


Much Kindest and please take time to be gentle with yourself, we all need to be gentle on ourselves now and again, and to take time just to be alone, to take stock of our lives and Then we can move on.

Laurence

 

[Amalia]

Thanks for this. It`s .... I have terribly high expectations of myself and what I think I should be. I`m so bloody hard on myself it`s untrue. I was also successful but I had a lot of detritus from when I was younger so I`ve never fulfilled my potential. Thing with me is I know what caused the ptsd but for so long that was buried under loads of bad stuff going on at home in other ways. So... I am ..... also terrified because nobody can understand, and ironically, the more I understand the more distant and separate I feel from people around me.
I, thank god, have, bar one, buried, every single memory of what happened to me. When I try to remember I vomit.

I feel ..... huge anger ... and injustice, because being close to people is what helps my PTSD - having positive experiences....but people also scare the hell out of me too. The worst thing is it`s taken me so damn long to realise all this that people must wonder. There is a great article that a fellow sufferer wrote on here and it explains that when really bad childhood trauma occurs, the child grows up believing their brains function just like everyone else`s. For years and years I just thought it was me, my problems, my poo. I didn`t even think the terror, and all that it comes with was anything that could be diagnosed. I just thought I was pants.

Anyway. I sincerely hope you recover soon. I don`t mean to sound self-absorbed I`m just desperately trying to pick my way through all this with no professional help. I don`t like being alone! At all!

As for England excelling .... we shall see lol.
Thanks again.

 

[Amalia]

Ps I really do appreciate the response. And I really admire your positivity. After what we have been through, the last thing we should have to fight for is our happiness / any sense of safety now.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

@Amalia the close resemblance between your survival thus far and my own to me is strikingly similar in magnitude.

I went undiagnosed all my life after severe traumas as a child, committed by several abusers over a prolonged period of time. This was followed by a single trauma when I served the RAF in the late 80's early 90's. Followed by a near fatal car crash in the early 00's.

I was sectioned nearly a year ago and released with no aftercare and still wait for the unit to review my care. I was abandoned by the NHS like a cook drops a steamy hot potato after picking it up with no oven-gloves.

I had a choice to make in August last year. I could wallow in self pity and stay where I was emotionally and psychologically, or, I could research and learn. I thankfully chose the latter. I have studied PTSD with regards my own psyche ever since. It had opened my mind with regards to other sufferers and supporters alike in how PTSD not only effects the sufferer but the people they interact with on a day to day basi.

I, although not an authority am very knowledgeable now as a result of my drive to push myself back from the brink I faced last year.

I admit, that I still struggle as I am now after a terrifying flashback earlier this week. After 4 1/2 days struggling through the mire of dark oppressive memories, (many of which, have no visual recollection for me) that I am still fragile and vulnerable to attack. There are many on this forum who have followed my journey with PTSD as I tend to come here to best understand what is happening to me and I share positivity with this forum in the hope that some of it, over time will encourage others.

I am no different to anyone on the sufferers side of this forum and I sense a feeling that you, like I, being forward thinking people have a desire to understand fully PTSD and a yearning to recover.

Your post lists negativity but exudes the positivity I feel.

I wish you all the very best in your recovery as this is where I see my life ending. Recovered and leading a full and fruitfull life again, although this time I will be aware of the injuries sustained in my life and the scars will be evident now andd not hidden in the mire of my previous undiagnosed life on earth.

Much happiness do I hope for you.

Laurie

 

[Amalia]

:shy::shy: ... I appreciate your words; at the same time they terrify me, as I have never....properly recognised the magnitude of the abuse I suffered. I have only had one disassociated flashback, and one real memory, which is so horrific my skin crawls when I try to think of it. I am seeing on here that flashbacks are good, because they mean your mind is more able to cope with the memories? The physical and mental abuse I was made to believe was a normal childhood. I still have sporadic unstoppable crying fits now as I remember and recognise more and more just how .... chaotic and .... cruel .. and ... blaming .... my life was....

I only started putting the pieces together of what happened to me when I was young about 3 years ago. I had felt, asides from all the ptsd stuff that has affected my life so deeply and desperately, that there was something ... really, really....just wrong when I was very young. I know I`m still not fully ready to face that. I don`t even know who abused me, I just have one memory of a weight on top of me, darkness, and just the most unbelievable pain. After that I remember bleeding, and such bad cystitis and bladder infections for so long I thought it was normal to be in agony when I went to the loo. I think I was about 3? I didn`t speak until I was 5 and then all I can remember is just staring at people. I was ... perhaps ... hypervigilant? even then ..... I was always convinced I had cancer when I was a child, would cry for nights and nights and nights on end, till about 2-3am, had about ... 1-2 years of terrible stomach aches that nobody could ever find the cause of. God. It all fits so much now, it`s like a jigsaw.

I remember the first time I had to have a smear test I screamed so much I had to have it done under general anaesthetic in the end. It still makes me feel totally physically sick to this day. I remember a nurse asked if I`d had counseling as obviously (to her) it came from somewhere. I didn`t even take on board what she said ... The brain is an amazing survival organ. Truly.

I`m sorry for releasing like this, the above I`ve never revealed to anyone before. On here it feels ..... safe to do so. But I do appreciate we also have to be super careful on here too.

And I know exactly what you mean about the nhs. It`s hard to sit in a waiting room, much though you feel for them, with people who decided not to get dressed. For a Week. You wonder just what the hell you have in common with them. As I don`t see myself as mentally ill - I see myself as a trauma survivor. And then when you talk to professionals, it`s clear they don`t have a bloody clue. The way I look at it is this : we started treating physical ailments 1000s of years ago - we were still locking people up a 100 years ago etc. who were mentally ill. Just a slight disparity there. I had the most frustrating exchange ever with an utterly patronising psychologist a while ago. It was seriously like talking to my mother, Unbelievable.

And the thing is I have had an amazing life - that might well have disappeared into mundanity if it hadn`t been for the fear inside me spurring me on to (albeit very lonely times but still in) pastures new and amazing, and incredible experiences that followed. And I mean really amazing - the friends that I do have are always stunned at the places and people I end up in. I am extraordinarily fortunate. Anyway. Thankyou for sharing today, and again, for responding.

My ex partner, I don`t feel, could possibly understand the strength required to continue after what we`ve been through - I hope we both find individuals who will be able to appreciate what lies inside both of us, and how ..... incredible it is that we are still here, fighting for happiness.

Thanks Laurence. :happy: