Anyone want to chat?

On Thursday, I met with a therapist who ran through the ACES inventory with me during our session.

It’s been a wild ride since then. Never have I felt so much validation and relief, and never have I wanted to get started with the healing process so much. At long last, there’s a name for what I’ve felt over the past 36 years, and more importantly there’s a treatment protocol.

I truly thought I was alone, especially after my encounter with a different therapist some 20 years ago. No one was talking about c-PTSD back then.

Yesterday I could hardly sleep, as it often happens. I let my emotional dysregulation (learned that has a name too!) run wild, intentionally, to pull together a list of all the traumas I faced. I could scarcely sleep until I had written everything down.

Just sharing my joy at being understood.

We're an upstart CPTSD support group on Signal messenger. We want to foster a warm and understanding community dedicated to helping each other navigate the challenges of CPTSD and related co-morbidities. Feel free to join us

https://signal.group/#CjQKIP8GyzRWSXqDboNWFn8D6XCkJhgT_tfuKBq6Cu9s_7xPEhBLytQ1tVZQrp066rz10bi9

CW: There is a transcript of a therapist talking to a sexual assault survivor towards the end of the article. No details of the assault are provided, but it may still be triggering to some. You can read up to "A case example of PTSD symptoms as a future-oriented survival strategy" and not see this content.

This is an important look at how trauma symptoms serve a purpose of warding off further trauma. This must be addressed during treatment, otherwise the symptoms may never fully go away.

I love this article because it addresses the magical thinking and locus of control shift experienced by abused children. If you are not familiar with the concept, read the paragraph titled "The locus of control shift."

This is an issue I have, I tend to stick to dating sites as intentions are out lined but saying that I still struggle in my day to day as I think people being nice to me male or female are presenting sexual interest, I was sexualized at a young age hense I have this unhealthy mind set.

Went on a date with someone, caring understanding and diagnosed with cptsd. We had a lot to talk about. Date went on for 8 hours, near the end we entered a very busy restaurant, I started have symptoms of anxiety, hot and cold flushes, heart racing, unable to talk or hold a dialogue, felt so uncomfortable, I randomly said about getting the food to go alluding to going home, I knew what I was saying and the connotations that went with it but couldn't stop myself. Its the next day and I feel so embarrassed, I continued texting her after the date and spoke to people about what had happened. I'm still dealing with the anxiety but think I stopped dissociating anyway

This hole thing has put me in a depression.

I want to tell her what was happening but idk if I should continue contacting her. I feel like a weirdo

Other forms of resources would also be appreciated.

Housework has been a longtime struggle for me. Its one of those things that makes overwhelm seem more overwhelming. I have been using a cleaning podcast ~11months. Just throwing it on in and doing what I can when i have the energy to has transformed my confidence in the ability to deal with my space. Even if its just to get started on the essentials. I hope this helps someone

I am experiencing a trigger. The difference is, I have more awareness now. Before my diagnosis, I didn't understand why I reacted to things the way that I do. I can remind myself to be gentle, slow down and take it easy. Breathe. It WILL pass.

…have you ever not been anxious every single moment of the day?

Yeah, me neither.

I'm wondering, why can't I be fun whenever I feel things are getting more serious with someone? Why can I just not be silly? Why can't I play and be goofish with those that matter to me? Why must I be so damn dead serious?

“Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child. These feelings states can include overwhelming fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief, and depression. They also include unnecessary triggering of our fight/flight instincts.” (Pete Walker)

Regression is a defense mechanism that awakens when survivors face anxiety-filled events that cause them to retreat to a childhood state. In regression, full-grown adults flashback back to their emotions as children and feel abandoned, abused, and helpless or overwhelming emotions of fear, rage, shame, depression, and grief that trigger a strong fight/flight/freeze response.

According to Pete Walker, survivors experiencing emotional flashbacks are overwhelmed with emotions they cannot understand or recognize with events they may or may not remember or connect these emotions to.

Pete Walker describes 13 Steps to Managing Emotional Flashbacks.

1. Say to yourself: "I am having a flashback." Flashbacks take us into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless and surrounded by danger as we were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now.

2. Remind yourself: "I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present." Remember you are now in the safety of the present, far from the danger of the past.

3. Own your right/need to have boundaries. Remind yourself that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you; you are free to leave dangerous situations and protest unfair behavior.

4. Speak reassuringly to your Inner Child. The child needs to know that you love her unconditionally—that she can come to you for comfort and protection when she feels lost and scared.

5. Deconstruct eternity thinking. In childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless—a safer future was unimaginable. Remember the flashback will pass as it has many times before.

6. Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. (Feeling small and little is a sure sign of a flashback.)

7. Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into "heady" worrying, or numbing and spacing out.

   [a] Gently ask your body to Relax: feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. (Tightened musculature sends unnecessary danger signals to the brain)

   [b] Breathe deeply and slowly. (Holding the breath also signals danger).

   [c] Slow down: rushing presses the psyche's panic button.

   [d] Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a stuffed animal, lie down in a closet or a bath, take a nap.

   [e] Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body that cannot hurt you if you do not run from it or react self-destructively to it.

8. Resist the Inner Critic's catastrophizing.

9. Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment, and to validate—and then soothe—the child's past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn our tears into self-compassion and our anger into self-protection.

10. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don't let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn't mean you are shameful. Educate those close to you about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them.

11. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes. Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable.

12. Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal our wounds from past abuse and abandonment. They also point to our still-unmet developmental needs and can provide motivation to get them met.

13. Be patient with a slow recovery process. It takes time in the present to become un-adrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradual process—often two steps forward, one step back. Don't beat yourself up for having a flashback.

Download in PDF format here

Recommended reading: https://cptsdfoundation.org/2021/01/11/managing-emotional-flashbacks/-

I was wondering if anyone was present on this community.