Childhood What could my life have been if I did not have cPTSD from childhood...

[Artemus]

I'm 67 now and look back on my life. PTSD didn't have a name when I was being whipped with a tree branch at 2 years old in diapers. I still remember being swung in a circle as I tried to run from it and my father held my wrist while he kept hitting my bare legs. It didn't have a name when I was being gang beaten in grammar school because I was the class cry-baby in rural Appalachia. I was scared of everyone and everything at that age. Boys chased me down in groups to beat and kick me when I fell to the ground curled to protect myself, then ran home crying after they got bored because I didn't fight back and walked away.

It didn't have a name when at age 12, I went to war with the world and turned my fear into hate and became a bully. I earned a reputation as someone you might fight once, but you would never return for seconds. That's how bad I would/did hurt other teens. Or when I pulled dozens of dangerous stunts on dares that could easily have killed me, but somehow didn't. On the outside, I had no fear. On the inside I'm sure I must have, but it was so deeply buried I never thought about fear or consequences--only winning. I was ruthless.

It also didn't have a name when I got married at 21 and was an abusive adulterous husband to a young 18-year-old woman for 3 years. And a number of girlfriends in the years after that. When I became a black belt in karate in the 70s (back when the point system was in place), other students would refuse to spar with me because I was so fierce--even in that era of tap combat I projected an energy that scared other students. I couldn't own a gun because I've always known my hair-trigger, zero to ten in the blink of an eye, temper would land me in prison.

I spent 10 years in the 1980s trying to fix what was wrong with me doing EST type trainings and therapy. cPTSD still didn't have a name, but I managed to get--what appeared to me to be a form of genetic insanity--under control. The old me was still there, but it was 10% of the way I lived before that time in my life and seldom harassed me.

PTSD had a name in 2005 when an undiagnosed heart birth-defect made me to pass out driving and caused an accident. No one was hurt seriously, but that was God's will, someone could have been killed. I was severally hypo-hypoglycemic and had drank beer putting me into insulin shock, so I drank more beer and drove. Difficult to prove, unintentional intoxication, but true. No one took my license. I wasn't charged with DUI. But, I wouldn't drive for 6 months until various doctors helped me figure out what had happened to me that night. No one cared of course. The prosecutor indicted me for Aggravated Assault--intentionally trying to kill someone. Even with the medical evidence, I hated and blamed myself for what happened. I had done this thing. Not being in control of myself is unthinkable to me. I've lived all my life controlling myself just to live a reasonably normal existence.

I had a wife, a new born baby and a pre-school child at that time. So, I pled guilty rather than face 10 yr min sentencing. The PTSD symptoms returned in full force as society tossed me aside--a convicted felon. I went to war against that prosecutor and another local politician who made his political reputation through bullying and abuse. I built a consensus of others. As this abuse of sentencing laws and humanity became wide-spread/ I united a front of fearful people to speak out and fight back as well as decent powerful political allies. That prosecutor was disbarred for "Defiling the Public Trust" a few years later. The other legal politician was so severally tarnished that he lost office after decades in it. Then, I filed to have the felony removed and it was dismissed. Still, I'm at war, but with no target, just a quiet seething goes on in me these days.

Today, I know about PTSD. Now I know the "why" of it all. But I'm too old, too smart, and too much a faithful husband and father to live with it and not suffer. My family knows not to startle me because I've almost cold-cocked my daughters and my wife in our near two decades together. Last night I was in bed reading. My wife came in and started to yell at me about something my daughter had done. My back was turned and I didn't hear her come into the room. Startled, I jumped at her lightning fast. She screamed as she jumped back. I didn't hurt her of course. It only lasted an instant. I wasn't angry at her. I didn't mean to do it. I hugged her and apologized, but her eyes still said fear. God, what a way for us to live.

I isolate most days, living in my office alone while my family goes about life without me. I've lost my temper enough and said mean things that I avoid them to protect them. I feel like Bruce Bannon and the Hulk. A switch gets flipped and I'm raging. Although, 90% of the time, I just walk away or walk a few miles until the feelings abate. Still, I don't want to be alone. It seems I have to be.

And I wonder--a lot--what could my life have been like without PTSD? I know I can't change the past, but I am soooo sick of these symptoms. I'm tired of warring against the world. I just can't seem to make it go away a second time. There is no peace now. If it's not anger, it's anxiety. I try to remind myself of times when I was happy. I know they must exist, but for the life of me, I can't remember one.

Well, that's my whine for today. If you've read this, thank you.
Blessings and support to all.

 

[grit]

Hi Artemus,
That is sounds a really difficult life but the fact you can summarize like that also says a lot about you as a person with a great precision in life. You sound very symptomatic to my laywoman's eyes. Asking this question is like the butterfly affect. it is hard to answer because all your love today, would have to be reconsidered so no reason to ask what life would have been if this or that cause that is impossible answer.

I hope you find a therapist or men group that you can feel comfortable. One issue I find with some men is it is clear you need an outlet to let your feelings go, cry, be held, be supported and IT IS NOT YOUR WIFE!. Wife duties are not like therapy duties. I am happily married and need therapist just as bad why? because being happily married makes a stark contrast to my feelings of fear, terror, threat, flashbacks and dissociation and no matter how happy I am, I am feeling this so I find a therapist to deal with.

For you to create fear in your wife's eyes is cry for help!

You risked a lot in life. Regardless of how bad your lemon was, you are still here so YOU ARE THAT STRONG! find a group or therapist and start to cry and release the tension. You have nothing to lose cause your childhood problem DID NOT EVEN KILL YOU AS A CHILD. you are that much stronger than when you were a child.

find therapist. find group of men who are similar. finding this site is a sign you can find those support group and people.

Good luck.

 

[Artemus]

Hi Artemus,
That is sounds a really difficult life but the fact you can summarize like that also says a lot about you as a person with a great precision in life. You sound very symptomatic to my laywoman's eyes. Asking this question is like the butterfly affect. it is hard to answer because all your love today, would have to be reconsidered so no reason to ask what life would have been if this or that cause that is impossible answer.

I hope you find a therapist or men group that you can feel comfortable. One issue I find with some men is it is clear you need an outlet to let your feelings go, cry, be held, be supported and IT IS NOT YOUR WIFE!. Wife duties are not like therapy duties. I am happily married and need therapist just as bad why? because being happily married makes a stark contrast to my feelings of fear, terror, threat, flashbacks and dissociation and no matter how happy I am, I am feeling this so I find a therapist to deal with.

For you to create fear in your wife's eyes is cry for help!

You risked a lot in life. Regardless of how bad your lemon was, you are still here so YOU ARE THAT STRONG! find a group or therapist and start to cry and release the tension. You have nothing to lose cause your childhood problem DID NOT EVEN KILL YOU AS A CHILD. you are that much stronger than when you were a child.

find therapist. find group of men who are similar. finding this site is a sign you can find those support group and people.

Good luck.

Thank you, Grit. I've tried years of therapy. Doesn't do much in my circumstance. However, the Personal Awareness seminars I did in the 80s (known by name as EST, Landmark, Life Spring, etc.) had a deep and long lasting positive affect on me. The organization I used is called Insight Seminars in Santa Monica, CA. It is a very compassionate approach that allowed me to do what you recommend. My walls are made of stone, so it took a special kind of support to get me to open up. Intensity that (what I call) the 50-minute hour did not provide. I did this training for a decade, taking seminars between 40 hours and 3 months long. I found a great deal of who I was inside. Enough that it permitted me to allow someone close enough to marry and have children with. (first was born when I was 50) That was something I considered an impossibility most of my life. So I am grateful to have achieved that.

My wife, Bless her soul, is definitely not in the role of therapist. I believe she has a certain amount of PTSD from her childhood as well. Her's was not nearly as violent as mine, but there were father caused traumas a plenty in it. I think a therapist might say there is something magnetic there, with the abuser/abused having an attraction that is unspoken and sort of psychic in nature.

Thank you for the support. As for being strong, I believe that every person who survives PTSD and lives another day is strong. No choice really. My story is just that, mine, just as yours is yours. Mine isn't unique, the worst, or in any way "more than" thousands of others who have had tragic traumas in life. What would make me unique would be to conquer this demon once and for all. I wonder if anyone ever has? I've not known of anyone who was more successful than I was for a time, but if they exist, that is a person who can teach us all.

I would go back into that world of Insight, or one of its competitors, but where I live now--in the Midwest--is a long way from the CA mentality. This is a corn crib of people certain that their way is the only way, the "right" way, and if you're not of that mentality, then you are "one of them". CA was a melting pot of cultures and I loved it. In the small town I live in there is one grocery store and one of the old fashioned Walmart. The grocery story always has its 1 token Black worker, everyone else is White. There are never 2. No Asian, Hispanic, or other racial group allowed, just that 1 Black employee. When (s)he quits, one more is hired. The town demographics are not that diverse. However, this extreme illustrates the thinking here. The grocery store is closed on Sundays. It is closed on most holidays. Yet it is open on MLK day. Not my way.

How I went from the diversity of the West Coast in CA to here is a long story of itself, but basically moved to where my wife grew up so that the children could have relatives and feel a sense of a larger family. That was 8 years ago.

Take care and the best of everything with your own struggles in dealing with this malady. And, again, thank you for the feedback. It is appreciated.

 

[grit]

I agree with the 50 minute rule problems...thank you for that. I heard from some of the people here use EMRD and this does not use the 50 min rule but something like 90 min or more depending but yeah...that 50 min rule for trauma is a joke in the psychotherapy world that just never been challenged vigorously.

 

[Artemus]

I've been trying to find a day when I was happy after writing this post. I can't remember one. I can find days when I was content, days when I felt like a champion (better than) in some sort of competition, days when I felt peaceful--mostly in the forest alone or hiking with my dog as a teenager. But joy, or at least what I imagine joy to be for people, if I have experienced in the 67 years I have lived, I can't remember what it felt like. For me, joy is not being fearful and/or not being angry. It isn't peace, but a feeling of fearless happiness beyond peace and contentment.

I take that back as I write. I watched as our 2 daughters were born. Maybe that was joy? Or maybe it was just awe at the most amazing unbelievable thing I have ever witnessed. There was also a time in the Amazon Jungle when I looked up into the night sky at the Milky Way in all its splendor. It appeared like there was a fog in the sky, but the night was cloudless. I was looking at so many stars they appeared to be a fog. I even saw a pulsar that night, blinking as it rotated within the fog of stars. Tears rolled shamelessly down my face all 3 of these times, so I suppose I have experienced joy. It was only in writing this post that I remembered it. I am grateful for that remembrance.

However, I want more than a few minutes of joy for 67 years of life on the planet. I want days, weeks, months, years of joy. I want a joyful life--something I suspect is what all people dream of having. I will take what God has given, three wondrous events. a few minutes each, where joy filled my being. Yet I wonder. Why does it have to take such powerful events to have a feeling that seems to simple and so natural? Does cPTSD rule me so powerfully that there is joy all around me and I just can't touch it? I think so. Like a fish swimming in the ocean looking for water.

Blessings to all who read and want more joy in their lives as well.

 

[Artemus]

I had an interesting evening. Everyone was gone and I ventured out of my office and enjoyed the rest of the house. I spent the evening in quiet. Built a fire in the fireplace and read a lot of the fantasy book I'm reading. I enjoy that genre most these days--worlds of possibilities instead of a world of what is. I made myself hot chocolate, read my book, and pulled a chair near the fire--reading for several hours. The fire crackled softly. It was peaceful and quiet. When the family began to come home it was time to go to bed (wife works 3rd shift, so she didn't come home until this morning), and I maintained the quiet peaceful time, reading in bed until I feel asleep.

I had a good dream. I don't generally have good dreams. Typically my dreams produce anxiety and wake up worried, fearful, or angry to start my day...but every few years, I get a good one. Last night was one of those. It was a forgiveness dream. I've said I went to war with the world when I was 12, and I did. It has been my way or the highway for much of my life with people until I learned to a better way in my 30s. Last night I dreamed of Denny (Denise), my first love at 16, we both lost our virginity together and were going to get married--or so 2 kids in love believed. She was the first girl I truly hurt because of this malady. And, I've never forgiven myself for it. Denny and I dated for a couple of years. One day, we had an argument about something at a bowling alley. I don't remember the details. I remember she wouldn't get in the car so that I could take her home and end it. That was all it took back then to trigger me.

I threw her over my shoulder and carried her to the car like a sack of potatoes. I dumped her in it, drove her home, took the little engagement ring off her hand and told her to get out. I never wanted to see her again. I never spoke to her after that. I saw her in school, but I would ignore her and never say a word to her. She started dating Jimmy not too long after that. Then, she got pregnant and had to quit school. (That was the way with pregnant girls in Appalachia in the 60s) One day I saw her in a restaurant with her friends when I went back to Tenn after I got out of the Navy. She came up to me happy and friendly to say hello--I rudely ignored her and walked right past her like the argument we had was yesterday. The hurt in her eyes was palpable. It was a mean thing for me to do. I was who I was at 21. Ruthless, thoughtless, unforgiving--at war with the world.

A few years ago I began searching for Denny on the Internet. My intention was to find her and talk to her. To apologize for being the ass that I was at that age. To reconcile what could be reconciled 40 years later. I read her obituary. She had died a few months earlier of something. I learned that she and Jimmy spent their lives together, had more children, and she went on to have what seemed like a fairly normal happy life. I was left with my regrets and guilt. I've thought about her a few times since then, mostly in times of hating how I used to behave and feeling sorry for myself about life. But, not often.

Last night I dreamed of Denny. It was the first time that has ever happened. We met, talked, and had a nice time together around someone's kitchen table. She had traveled to meet me. The people were relatives of hers. She wanted to talk and to understand. She wanted to get all the old hurts out and reconcile the pain--to understand and let us both forgive me. My wife came home from work and it ended the dream. I wake immediately when anyone enters a room. But, I had a peaceful feeling--a good feeling on waking. Not feeling instantly alert and on guard, but feeling peaceful and grateful. I'm holding on to that this morning. It is to rare a thing--waking to peace and contentment. A feeling of reconciliation and forgiveness resides in my emotions this morning. I'm taking myself to breakfast now. I want to hold these feelings as long as they can last. Thank you, Denny. I truly am sorry and I feel like we both forgive me now.

I'm memorializing these events here so that I can come back and read them. I don't want to forget this time. I want to ready about last evening's events, cry, and be thankful. Peace is possible. Maybe I will live long enough to be able to experience it with others while I'm awake, but for now, I'll take it any way I can have it.