Lived Experience Forum

[Former-Member]

Hello,

After a bumpy year or so I am still in limbo, changing meds and treatment once again and I wonder if there is ever a solution for complex PTSD. Bipolar has been excluded while I was in hospital and I somehow feel so lost in this world where there are treatment plans for all sorts of illnesses, but I should just stay present and be patient. I understand I have improved and that i have come already a long way, but it seems we have barely touched the past. I'm not ready, I'm being told. Not strong enough to face the past.

How do you keep your head up when you're drowning and the memories take over? How can you and actually can you, really connect with other who have gone through complex trauma. I shut myself off and the people I know are similar to me - we summarise our life in a sentence or two and that's it.

Anybody out there?

[Former-Member]

Hi @Former-Member  Nice to meet you.  

I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone.  I also struggle with PTSD and have done so since I was a teenager.  I didn't start having counselling until I was in my 30's.  It has been a very long, slow journey and I am still looking for answers for healing.

I am wondering who has told you that you aren't strong enough to look at your past?  Do you think that you are strong enough to face your past?  Do you have a good counsellor/psychologist that you feel comfortable talking to?  

It can be very lonely having PTSD, as not many people understand unless they struggle with it themselves.

Do you live alone?  

I am married and have a daughter.  

[Former-Member]

Hi @Former-Member

I dont know the answers, but i have been/was drowning in a similar situation. also have cptsd. my psychologist was hoping that EMDR might help where everything else hasnt.. but not ready to try that.

In the past i have only got through memories by focussing on whats around me, looking at what i can see, and hear right where i am. Once the replay has lessened enough to come back to where i am. when its at its worse i just want to stay away from everything and everyone. I dont know if its ever going to go away, people on my treatment team keep telling me that it does get better.. but i wonder if their idea of better is just that i will learn to live with it better somehow.

lj

[Appleblossom]

In the 1980s I  was encouraged to delve into things too quickly, which may have traumatised me even more.  Since then, the goal of therapy has changed a bit and isnt just to bring up the past but to enable us in our current life.

i guess there is a sensitivity in the people who you know who have experienced PTSD.

Mostly people do prefer to keep things brief, I guess.

Take care @Former-Member

[Former-Member]

Hi @Former-Member

Thank you for your reply and encouraging words. My therapist has told me straight I'm not ready and I understand I am not - at the moment staying alive is a struggle each day.

Hi @Former-Member - I have exactly the same question, will we just be able to live with it better? It will never go away, it's our past, it's ingrained in our hearts and minds.

Hi @Appleblossom - some have encouraged me to delve in, but my current team is discouraging that as I have been retraumatised again and again. My mind still seems to run off with the trauma and then I get hopeless.

[Zoe7]

Completely understand the struggle. Also being re-traumatised in therapy again and again. Told there are encouraging signs and some progress - but can't see it.

[anarcticfox]

I am right in that bumpy boat with you!

CPTSD too, and also dealing with the endless rollercoaster of trying to find meds and treatment. 

It can be so hard when we know all the things we 'should' do, but none of them feel possible in the present moment. I know sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by memories and intrusive emotions that the concept of 'staying present' is a bit like climbing up from the bottom of a well without a ladder. Today I literally went my entire journey home crying my eyes out, despite my absolute best efforts to stop, so maybe I'm not the person to advise you!

But weirdly, the thing that works for me is to do the opposite. Kind of say, stuff what I 'should' do, and just ride the wave of the pain, trusting that sooner or later, the wave will pass, and I'll still be alive. Trust is the hardest thing, I know. Trusting myself, perhaps hardest of all.

On relationships: they're always going to be hard, I think, and that's okay. I can't speak for you, but I find I don't need to tell every detail of my history to be understood to develop something meaningful with another person. Dribs and drabs, a sentence here and there, it's more than enough. Expressing pieces as they're relevant, just like I do all the other pieces of myself. After all, that trauma is a part of me, not all of me. And people have to earn it like they do everything else.

[Zoe7]

Does this seem Familiar?

I feel as if I was dropped into the middle of an ocean by myself as a child, surrounded by the deep, dark water, the unknown dangers that lie beneath and no land in sight. I have been treading water, occasionally floating, going under and pulling myself back up, struggling to breath, struggling to swim, searching for land, searching for life. The water constantly laps around my face – high enough to have to fight to stay afloat, low enough to not take me under forever.  The waves push me in directions I don’t want to go, take me further from the stability of land under my feet, closer to exhaustion, closer to drowning. With every mouth full of water I take in the harder it becomes to want to fight. With every new wave that tosses me around, the more fatigued I become. Occasionally a boat can be seen in the distance and I think I can be rescued but just as quickly as it is sighted it disappears on the horizon. Hope is thwarted yet again. The larger the boat, the more the disappointment, the greater the waves that it leaves behind, the harder it becomes to swim. Just waiting for the water to be still and being able to float!

[Former-Member]

Self Compassion has helped me a lot. We were far from validated as children so now we have to really get in touch with those fragmented parts of ourself, that we had to detatch to cope, comfort and nurture and strengthen on the inside. To not be so impacted by the world I am doing ACT with my psychologist. Bother these processes are explained in Russ Harris's books 'Happiness Trap' and 'Reality Slap'. Further to that I think it made a big difference that I was ready, in the sense that it became a survival thing for me - to practise the grounding techniques (when i wake in the night alone shaking), do the meditations, go to therapy apts, seek, seek, seek, research... We kind of have to take it by force. I found online quotes very helpful. Lots of 'ah ha!' 'penny dropped' moments.
Don't Give up. xox

[Appleblossom]

I have just discovered the concept of "trauma mind".  It is interesting for me to try and distinguish when I am experiencing that or when I am within my "window of tolerance".

Lucky I believe learning is a life long endeavour .. lol

@Former-Member Take it easy as we cant really process or integrate when we are retraumatised.