Needing Skin To Skin Contact To Sleep

[missm1]

I have c-ptsd due to years of physical and mental abuse. It seems like most of us with ptsd don't like to be touched. For me, it's the exact opposite. I can't sleep in the same bed as my boyfriend unless we are touching and it must be skin to skin. If he gets out of bed, I automatically wake up and can't sleep until he is back in bed with me.

Anyone else have to be touched to be able to sleep in the same bed as your significant other? I also love to sit close and have skin to skin contact during the day. If he sits in the chair across the room from me, it makes me feel like I am having a mild panic attack.

Does anyone else have these issues or am I the only one?

 

[Deleted member 20280]

When my wife and I were together, (C-PTSD broke us up) I needed to feel close and in a way I can relate although it was just the closeness that I had to feel. I now struggle to sleep at all as I am on my own all the time. I think in some ways the lack of emotional bonding as an abused child makes us yearn even more in adulthood for that closeness and feeling of being wanted or even to say needed.

((Hugs))

Laurie

 

[missm1]

I'm sorry about your marriage. I also lost my last marriage due to c-ptsd. I think the reason I need touch to sleep is because when I was married to my son's dad ( my abuser), he would wake me up by beating me in bed or pull me out of bed by my feet when I was sleeping and beat me. It has been almost 9 years and I still cannot sleep with my feet off the edge of the bed and can still feel his hands wrapped around my ankles. Every since, I cannot sleep in the same bed with someone without being able to touch them. If I wake up and am not touching them, I immediately have to.

My boyfriend is also amazed how I instantly wake up if he even sits up in bed. He says I can be sound asleep but as soon as he makes any movement besides turning over, I am wide awake.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

It can be a natural reaction. One of my abusers used to drag me out of bed when I was a very small boy and hit me then leave me to cry on the floor. I took to tucking the top sheet under my feet so as to impose a barrier so he (my eldest brother could not easily get to me. My heart is with you on this one @missm1

(Massive net Hugs) if you accept them.

 

[missm1]

Ugh.... I'm so sorry. I definitely feel for you. I have a lot of wierd things I sometimes do to sleep, like the touching thing and sometimes having to put a blanket over my face or at least against my cheek, and if my boyfriend is on the couch watching television, I will lay down and use his leg as my pillow with my hand under his shirt so we are touching and sleep until he is ready for bed. I can't sleep in bed alone if I know he is in the house, even though I know he would never do anything to me.

Thank you for the net hugs, they are definitely accepted and I am sending some back to you ((((hugs)))

 

[Deleted member 24866]

I have this problem and then some! I just found this sight today- and thank God. It has effected my sexuality for a long time, firstly I could not climax till I was 30, then in a relationship I almost feel dependant and even manipulated.. when I am denied the physical contact I begin to lose my mind and dissociate.. and I have not been able to take care of the problem on my own so to speak.

(I was gang raped and left for dead in a swamp..then exploited.. when I ran away from a very unhappy home.. yada yada when I was 15. Now nearly 40) Touch also and quite naturally is medicine for dissociating. Right?

 

[bitterfight_]

Wow I thought I was the only one who did this before reading this. After my first traumatic event at around age 12 where I was locked in a bathroom in the dark for quite a while, I needed to have my mom sleeping literally in bed with me and have her arm around me and if she moved or if she got up to go back to her bedroom I would immediately wake up and be unable to get back to sleep.

Honestly, I adapted in the best way I could (although my therapist has said that this isn't as healthy as it seems) by sleeping with a fan on, my tv on, and a lamp on. Lots of light and noise (which isn't healthy for sleeping) but it's the only way I've been able to adapt since the first incident. Hope that helps you somehow.

 

[Barconian]

Who was the boy on Charlie Brown who carried the security banket?

 

[Deleted member 20280]

have this problem and then some! I just found this sight today- and thank God

@NLotfalla firstly a massive net ((HUG)) and welcome to the forum, this I would say is more common in sufferers than is actually known. I firmly now believe for all who have replied to this thread that this is symptomatic of abuse against a child. We all felt unloved and isolated as children and need to feel wanted and needed in some way that physical contact of an emotional and intimate nature are paramount to our psyches.

(((Massive Hugs Again to all ))

Laurie

 

[Deleted member 20280]

Who was the boy on Charlie Brown who carried the security banket?

That would have been Lynus @Barconian.... :-)

 

[GG-love]

I do the same thing with my current bf. I never really examined why I had the need for this. I was like that for different reason with my abuser (ex-bf), I liked to be reassured he was sleeping and that I could actually safely rest and not be on alert since that was when much of the worst happened was in the middle of the night, being awakened for no reason other than he was drunk and angry at the world. Now its an added level to healthy intimacy in my life.

 

[missm1]

Thank you for the replies. I don't feel so alone and ashamed about this anymore. I have so many "quirks" due to my cptsd that I feel like such a freak sometimes.