Starting to waking up from this after more then 20 years. Need advice.

[kafkaesk]

Around 15 my CPTSD did its entry in my life. Im 40 this fall. I handle PTSD like everything else and just pushed it away with lead me in to DpDr.
I have made a lot of progress this last year and Im starting to wake up but its like Im waking up from a near 25 year long coma. Some parts of me are still in 1994. Im still a child in some ways and I just miss everything from before I got sick. It is like someone drugged me 1994 and now I wake up in this place and I feel very misplaced. I don't belong here. I should be in 1994 and continuing living my life. The pain from this is crushing me. It is hard to explain this things I don't understand it fully. If you can relate in some way to what I write and you have gone through something similar please tell me how you handled this.

 

[MrMoonlight]

I started waking up a couple of years ago. It started when I found myPTSD. I found a people that understand and are also fighting. I found good advice here, I found encouragement and community.

You are doing great, you aren't crazy. I relate very much to your story and look forward to getting to know you better.

Good job reaching out here.

 

[Changing4Best]

I woke up one day and realized I was in an abusive relationship. He had put his karate foot upon my neck and threatened to kill me the night before. I ran away and ended up in a home for the mentally ill. The TV and most of the people were in a living room on one side of the place, and I was on the other side of the building behind a lace curtain, looking always to make sure he didn't come to that home. I craved silence. I loved the quiet peacefulness in that room and revelled in it. I stayed in that room for about three months. However, as soon as I started relating and conversing with the people there, I had trouble. So I eventually got my own place and enjoyed the silence there. Also, I moved about six hundred miles from where the abuse occurred, so as not to be reminded. Now I am at peace and love where I live.

 

[grit]

I went to bed at 17/18 and also wake up in my 40s. The way I dealt and this ongoing struggle and learning is that I do not pity then and now. Both are me and then I was forced into helplessness and now I am free.... Try to balance the two phases of my life... Until they blend. Again ongoing as we speak.

I hope truly you find the strength that hold you over.

 

[Mach123]

I tried to bury it with drugs. Didn’t work. Well it worked for a few years. I kept going to therapy. I was trying to tell someone I’d been abused as a child. CSA. Even then I’m my forties, I was still trying to tell. I did finally. I recommend Judith Herman’s book “trauma and recovery”. It’s heavy stuff.

 

[Survivor3]

Hi @kafkaesk , I used alcohol to try and hide my PTSD. Sometimes drugs which made the symptoms worse. I was never a frequent drug user. Alcohol was my drug. I'm 45 now and I've suffered from trauma all my life. Nearly died as a child from illness. Violent and abusive alcoholic father.racist attacks by gangs with metal bars, nearly died. Beaten and left in the road needing 5 staples in the back of my head.

eventually this shit catches up on you like BAM! And you have to start dealing with it. My counselling is on hold atm due to pandemic. I don't know if you have a therapist but it helps. It can take years to recover from decades of shit. Best wishes to you. S3 ?

 

[user27357]

started at 11, long pause, woke up at 25 and I was married and had a kid on the way. The rest is just adjustment and learning to cope with all of the traumas that came after.
Welcome to a reality I wouldn't want to push anyone into, we are all finding our way back or out or over-anywhere but where no one wants to be. You will find lots of help and support here.

 

[kafkaesk]

Thank you all for sharing. Every bit I read helps puting the peices back in my giant jigsaw puzzle of life, memories and existential thoughts. So I will write some of the things I do around this feeling of waking up from coma. I look at a lot at old photos and try to remember how I function before the sickness. I can often handle bad and traumatic memories coming this far in my progress even if it is hard to get through sometime. Generally when I have gone through a rough memory my brain is flooded with positive to neutral memories from that era that I had forgotten. I think this makes me feel more whole becouse I just I can see more clearly my path instead of me not knowing how I got here.

 

[MrMoonlight]

In real life I am having a hard time interacting or having trusting friends. I want people in my life but I don't want people in my life because of the stress of interactions. Calls out of the blue when I'm not ready for them.

I'm supposed to text my friend A from my IOP program I attended a a while back. I'm having trouble even doing that. I'm supposed to before my therapy appointment this coming week.

 

[Survivor3]

In real life I am having a hard time interacting or having trusting friends. I want people in my life but I don't want people in my life because of the stress of interactions. Calls out of the blue when I'm not ready for them.

I'm supposed to text my friend A from my IOP program I attended a a while back. I'm having trouble even doing that. I'm supposed to before my therapy appointment this coming week.

I understand and can relate to that. I've been burned several times by new friends. You make an effort and then realise they're shit in one way or another. Tough call. Don't actually have advice on that one. Maybe just make the call and see what happens.

 

[user27357]

I look at a lot at old photos and try to remember how I function before the sickness.

I get that. I had the opportunity to spend some time in my old neighborhood recently and even walk the yard of my old house as it was for sale and empty. I am glad I took pictures because the day I was there all I got were bad memories. It took me awhile to start pulling back the good stuff that happened there before the bad stuff happened. Like having that huge span of very bad things was a fuzzy lens to look back through and it made it all look bad. Having a clearer memory of what it was like before has helped. Hope it has helped you too.

 

[MrMoonlight]

@Survivor3 Very disappointed in M from IOP, we maintained a friendship until I couldn't do electrical work for her...not a word from her...so whatever. A from IOP is unpredictable and in the martial arts world...has problems controlling himself. I'm not scared of him but there is that. He is a nice guy, we have stayed in touch for what a year and a half...gone to lunch together a dozen times at least. We haven't talked for probably 9 months. Well, we did text at the beginning of the plague.

I could just say: Hey, I've been thinking about you and hope everything is going well. I'm still quarantining myself but wanted to keep in touch with you. Did you finish that tattoo sleeve? I'm getting myself squared away with a speed bag, hope to use it rhythmically, and get in better shape. Good quarantine stuff. Take care

ETA: done, nevermind I just texted him.