How to find courage to ask

[JessC]

I truly relate to every single thing you wrote here ^ It’s almost freaky.

For my part, it turns out I basically lost my ability to function adequately in the workplace, and my symptoms were really going haywire, so I ended up retiring “early”. I have been engulfed in shame and depression ever since. I have a tiny handful of ppl I interact with one-on-one whom I’ve been able to share some of my stuff with, but honestly, I’m mostly buttoned-up. (Had a really jarring therapy saga in that retirement timeframe, too, so I’m a bit therapy-averse for the time being.) Most ppl don’t know what I’m dealing with (and therefore end up assuming the worst about me because, despite my best efforts, I tend come across as...abnormal, in certain ways—and ppl do notice...). I’m so tired of feeling judged and ridiculed... And yeah, I feel lots of fear, too [wow, it sure does feel weird to be so vulnerable]

Anyway, I won’t blather on anymore about myself, but I wanted to paint a bit of an image for you, just to reiterate that I hope you’ll not feel too alone in this. It’s a hellish quagmire, indeed

Thank you. It's kind of nice to know you're not alone even with things that seem to be on the extreme side.

So pleased you've written about it here, must be so hard to do I'm sure I relate to quite a bit of what you say too. Welcome to the forum, I hope you'll be able to write about everything here.

I think you might find Pete Walker's site really helpful, here's his page on the inner critic. Check out his pages on emotional flashbacks too.

Also, an exercise you may find very useful when your emotions get too much is the dropping anchor exercises based on Acceptance and Commitment therapy. You can listen to them free here

Thanks for the kind words, and the links. I will check them out.

 

[Friday]

What is CPTSD? Is that different from PTSD?

THIS >>> Understand complex ptsd (cptsd)

Complex - Ptsd means you've had multiple traumas.

Nope. Bit more to it than that.

Just like people can experience trauma and NOT develop PTSD, people can experience complex trauma and NOT develop CPTSD.

Ditto? Multiple traumas doesn’t mean it’s complex trauma. Multiple traumas of the same type over and over can actually be some of the “easiest” / simplest to sort (easy just being relative, they all suck), as the slight -or major- differences between the same event happening actually nix a lot of the issues that come along with a single trauma, and yet all of them are profoundly effected by treating any single part of the trauma history, unlike complex trauma that tend to spiderweb between each other, OR the same trauma over and over can create Grand Canyon type effects. 2 people same traumas, same time frame, totally different results. (This would be the prolonged piece. Like thousands or tens of thousands of rapes, over years & decades by the same person/people, verses say 50 rapes over the course of several months/years.) Whuch is basically just a “don’t worry about the prolonged piece & let a pro judge it”.

Check out the link above for a more in-depth breakdown