Is It Isolation Or Letting Go?

[LiketheMouse]

A little about me. I suffer from C-PTSD. I grew up in an abusive household with parents who had mental health issues of their own. I survived my childhood and I got out. Went to college sought counseling, at the time everyone thought I just suffered from depression. When I was 24 my parents died in a murder suicide, leaving me to fend for myself and my little sister who was 17 at the time. To say the families handled it badly is an understatement. So I soldiered on... finding work that would support myself and my sister when needed. My life goals went out the window. In the same year my family insisted I must be bi-polar and I believed them. I took pills that didn't work and didn't treat anything, but I did turn into a zombie for the year I attempted to stay on them. Eventually I found Zoloft and Klonopin worked best for me and I've made every effort to stay medicated since then.
When I turned 30 I found out I had stage 3 cancer, survived that. When I was 40 I had a radical hysterectomy designed to save my life and remove all the tumors & diseased organs, I carried on.
Last year while under stress and attacks from a stalker, I had a break a real one. I reached out to my friends/family for help and they saw it as the sign that I'd officially lost it. The put me in a hell hole of "mental health" facility and washed their hands. Now I'm a year out, I've done therapy, meditation, medication and all that I know to do to rebuild my life, even those friendships.

I've been told: "It was an inconvenient time for you to just fall apart", "I have PTSD too and it goes away" "you need to get over it", "Everyone has issues".

My BEST Friends or so I thought, have abandoned me to figure this out myself.

In short.... as I've read on other posts here.... I've realized I don't matter to these people. They've treated me like a social pariah for over a year and spread lies about me to anyone who will listen in order to undermine me. I'm exhausted. I'm working every day to get better and I'm realizing that isolation isn't the answer, but dealing with the world is sometimes the worst thing for my own personal healing.
Hoping some of you have words of wisdom, as I'm all cried out.

 

[Enaila]

Welcome to the forum. I have found a lot of useful information on this website, as well as support from those who understand PTSD, as they have experienced it first hand. Share what you are comfortable sharing and realize you are not alone...others care and understand.

 

[GenerousMoon]

Sorry to hear, it's their loss not yours. Ignorant folks always speak on what they do not know. Many folks would say I have bi polar in which do not have. Cptsd is not curable but it's can be treatable depending on the severity. Mine is extremely severe and very proud that I am still working a full time job.

You will find friends that will accept you for "you". It takes time to find true friends that understand true meaning of trauma. No one wakes up in the morning and says " it's great to have cptsd". Our struggle is real and only the unique can understand. The emotional numbness is very overwhelming. I hope everything goes well for you.

 

[mamachick]

You have been through a lot and people have really let you down. The irony is, or I think so, with a different support system, things might be much different for you. That does not really matter though as that applies to most of us. I only mention it because I think you are much stronger than you may give yourself credit for.

It is difficult exposing ourselves to these people who are this way, and isolation can be really damaging. I think that finding new people, through church, classes, groups, etc can help. Those who have treated you poorly will likely not change. We all need socialization, even if it is going to a gym and being around others but not sharing our life story with them. Often, our own knowing of our history may make us defensive before we even begin. Its nobody business unless you choose to share.

I also think it is really important to do things that help your esteem. Are you in counseling at this time? A good counselor can help you work through some of this. I know I can't go from isolation to being out in the world everyday. It is just too overwhelming. However, some have reported success from day treatment programs.

I really understand the tendency to isolate though. In my world, many invites are around alcohol and other behaviors that I am not interested in. Not that I have many invites either. They are also what I can do for others that have not been there for me. I am not resentful, just a fool to get out of bed to drive someone to the store and lend them money I don't have. Thats just my world. Hope its not yours.

 

[Justmehere]

Maybe there is a 3rd option: letting go of these jerks in order to not isolate but instead find some room and space to reach out to new healthier connections and friendships.

 

[LiketheMouse]

Thank you all for your words of support and advice. It means more than you know.

 

[Sideways]

@Justmehere hit the way I'm kinda going about this. After years of isolation and agoraphobia, I'm starting to simultaneously want to disconnect from toxic family, and find people that I actually want in my life. They're 2 seperate things, each difficult for different reasons, and not happening exactly in tandem.

For me, I seem to be lucky in the sense that my family isn't the single entity that I always thought it was. Out of my immediate an extended family, I have regular, fairly superficial contact with 3 of them. It's taken work, but I seem to be able to keep contact with them withhout having to keep contact with anyone else in the unit. Tackling family members individually could help identify if there are any odd ones out for you that you have a mutually beneficial relationship with. The old habit that we all assume that we're one big unit was hard to break, but it seems to have worked, and I'm better off for the effort.

Filling that void, wanting to fill that void, is different. But working at the 2 together seems to help with the momentum. Making new friends, finding an identity for myself in the world and people that connect to it, is something most people have been working on since they started school. Here we are starting from scratch, and learning from scratch- mostly about ourselves and what we want, need, and genuinely enjoy.

But when you think about the life ahead (can be a weird concept!), there's enough years, potentially enough decades, that being a beginner now is going to be worth it in the long run.

Take care, and don't judge yourself on the pace you're moving at. There's so many pre-conditioned beliefs about ourselves and others involved in tossing out toxic relationships, and building healthy ones.

Family is a fluid concept. Ask any orphan, and you'll realise that for a lot of very content people in this world, their family is made up of the people they have chosen, not by those connected by genetics.