Not Good Enough. Not Bad Enough. Just Never... Enough.

[Cabinfever]

When I think about PTSD, I feel ashamed. I feel I have no right to post alongside people with real trauma. I think about people with real trauma reading my posting and hating me (haha well if they don't get bored immediately and just give up), or thinking about how good I have it (had it), or how I'm only here to get attention.

I wonder why I have so many problems with relationships. I wonder why I have so many emotional problems. I wonder how I got to be so physically ill, my body literally attacking itself with autoimmune dysfunction so typical of trauma survivors... but with no real "trauma." I wonder how I got to be so asexual... how sex was ok with random strangers, but then suddenly not okay in relationships.

I wonder why I don't want to be in a room with the door left open, or spend any of my time with other people socializing. I always want to be alone... physically and mentally...and I'm not lonely this way. I'm happy alone. Glorious isolation.

I just sort of exist.

I wonder why I react to the small things like a trigger happy hunter. Why I feel such overwhelming, yet unidentifiable emotions... and why they come and go unpredictably. I wonder why I never learned how to identify my emotions. All I know is "vaguely good inside chest feeling" and "bad vaguely inside chest feeling."

I wonder how this all happened...when nothing really happened. I wonder if anyone cares. Hell, sometimes I wonder if I even care... or should care.

My therapist says I have complex PTSD and attachment issues. Huh. Well, maybe. But nothing really bad happened. I saw bad things happen to other people sometimes, but never to me.

 

[ladee]

Welcome..glad you are here. A good possibility the trauma is still buried or you are in denial that what happened can be considered trauma.
Believe me..you are very welcome here.We don't compare traumas , we just try to listen and support each other. Sometimes make suggestions.
But glad you are here and hope you stick around. Never know what you might learn.

 

[OneToughCookie]

@ladee is right. You may also have forgotten what happened. Inability to recall aspects of the trauma is a big factor in PTSD. I had plenty of "real" traumas that I remembered for years, but only recently started experiencing body sensations and images of things I cannot say for sure happened. Denial is always the first step. If you read Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Pete Walker talks a lot about invisible traumas. Emotional neglect, for example, is really hard to pinpoint, but it can cause all the same symptoms. I don't look down on what you experienced at all, and I'm very sorry you did. You have every right to be here. Even if it turns out Complex PTSD is not the problem, you have every right to get support until you can clarify what you need. You inability to identify your emotions is called alexithymia. Environmental causes like severe emotional abuse is often a cause. You are welcome here, and you belong.

 

[Justmehere]

When I did a ptsd intensive treatment program for veterans and civilians, the director of the program, who had been treating hundreds of trauma patients over the years, including many with cPTSD, explained that the severity of the trauma is not actually the biggest predictive factor in the development of PTSD or the severity of symptoms. He explained that the lack of peritraumatic support and the lack of peritraumatic validation is actually a more predictive risk factor to development of the specific clinical condition of PTSD after trauma.

Other studies have shown that seeing someone else endure trauma is actually experiencing the same fight or flight emotions as if they are enduring the trauma. It's still horrible trauma to someone to watch someone else be harmed.

I had a well trained trauma therapist once who disclosed she actually developed PTSD from seeing a child get hurt by someone else one time.

Try not to compare traumas. Try to not minimize your pain and suffering. Trauma is trauma. What you went through is something you should have never had to endure.

 

[gealach]

When I think about PTSD, I feel ashamed. I feel I have no right to post alongside people with real trauma. I think about people with real trauma reading my posting and hating me (haha well if they don't get bored immediately and just give up), or thinking about how good I have it (had it), or how I'm only here to get attention.

I wonder why I don't want to be in a room with the door left open, or spend any of my time with other people socializing. I always want to be alone... physically and mentally...and I'm not lonely this way. I'm happy alone. Glorious isolation.

I just sort of exist.

You could be writing my story there. You're not alone.

 

[Cabinfever]

Does my reality even matter?

What constitutes reality? Objectivity?

Who gets to decide what's real and what isn't?

Does my reality and construction of events even matter? Is it objectively real?

If my reality is constructed from lies, is it real?
If I had a schizophrenic delusion, then my experience of reality would be real for me. It would seem like objective reality. But it's not real to others.Two overlapping levels of reality.

Why does it matter what is real and what isn't?
How do I decide what's real? What isn't? Did I make things up?

Am I real?... or just a construct. Did I make up my reality? Do I use my 'victim' status to hide behind? Am I just a spoiled rotten child who didn't know how good she had it?

Does it matter?

If you aren't allowed to have your own reality... then your own reality doesn't really exist; it exists... but not never on the surface. If the only reality you are allowed to have is the one that other people who are in control of you tell you you can have... then that's your reality... at least that's the reality that matters.

And yet I am told again and again in therapy to trust myself, to divine in myself the truth. To find the thread of who I used to be before I was brainwashed.

Well, great. Except, I don't f**ing know what reality it is you speak of. I have never had a reality that wasn't carefully constructed for me... shoved down my throat until I agreed... yes I am a good little girl. Yes I will go play and leave you alone. Yes I did make up that story about cousin S molesting me for attention. Yes I did go out 'asking for it' that night when I was 17. Yes I ama perverse little girl who goes out of here way looking for trouble, bringing home strays.Yes, I did this just to trouble you. To make you have to feel something for me. Because all I want is attention. I just want your attention. I'm a desperate attention whore, that's me. I can never be satisfied. There is NO parent on earth that would be able to deal with the level of attention I demand.


There are so many realities. I can be any reality you want. I can be whoever you want me to be... if that's what you want. If you want me to be myself, then I will make up a self that satisfies your need for me to be myself.


What can I believe? Can I believe in anything I think? Am I real? Is there a real me?

Does it matter if there is a real me or not?

 

[DanielSomers]

When I think about PTSD, I feel ashamed. I feel I have no right to post alongside people with real t...

Dear Cabin,

I just did a search of "cabin fever" and ptsd and your post was the first thing to pop up. My issue is somewhat different (I'm trying to sort out what is ptsd and what is a more gradual thing, what I would call cabin fever, brought on by too much isolation; of course there's no terribly clear line between the two, as the ptsd is why I'm isolated), but I wanted to offer a few thoughts on what you wrote. I've been wading through some very difficult things for nine years now. First I spent several years breaking a dependence on SSRIs, which were slowly sucking the life out of me, then I realized those drugs were keeping me from realizing that I had massive, repressed childhood trauma, and then I walked into, and kept walking back into, over and over, a psychologically abusive relationship that took me right back to the same sorts of patterns I grew up with (not just related to psychosis but, as you might imagine, in a family where such a thing had to be kept secret).

What I wanted to offer you is that it was not until five years into all this that I even started to realize that there was trauma underneath it. I think I started to get inklings of it, but then finally my much-older sister, by 13 years, told me what had been essentially kept secret in my family, that when I was very young my mother had a psychotic break and there was extreme emotional volatility in my first several years of life. There were other things after that, and all of it got covered up in a WASP culture where everything had to be made to appear normal and happy. A while ago I went over some old journal entries from eight years ago and was astounded to see that I remarked on how lucky I was because, even though I had a lot of difficulties, I sure was lucky not to have any trauma in my background. In fact, the whole thing has been about trauma, and about walking back into more trauma because I never had any awareness of what had happened. It took years of therapy, and that conversation with my sister, to uncover it. Of course, I can't at all speculate on what might have happened to you, but I do think that in our society, in general, there is probably an enormous amount of trauma that exists below the radar in this way. I hope that might be of some help and wish you the very best in working through your difficulties.

P.S. I am just now seeing your second post. Not knowing what is real goes to the heart of trauma, and your description of it seems actually very aware and sophisticated to me. It's a long process. I think that as you work through it with a good and trusted therapist, you learn how to tell what is/was real and what wasn't. It's hard to describe (and I'm not entirely there yet) but it has a different feel, a different texture. Hang in there and know that you are not alone.

 

[Minimize]

oh, finally i found what i feel too. and it's sucks also hurts i know. Like we think we are weak and or stupid for being trauma just because blablabla... I feel guilty, shame and regret for being trauma by what i've experienced and also the assesment test result show that i'm sensitive. Sensitive caused by the death of my parents in a year when I was teenage, they were sick, so my therapist says i'm insecure. Now I'm 32 years old. But the trauma event was another story. maybe even still better than the death of my parents -_-'

Until sometimes i hope something worse will happen to me, it will be better if the event similar with my trauma but worse. Not sure why.