Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Tumblr Posts

Every professional psychiatrist/psychologist I’ve ever met have always assumed my attachment to my mum was too dependent and tried to treat me based on that which is why it was wild that I went to two sessions with a specialist in my disorders who immediately told me that I showed all the signs of having no attachment to anyone in my life especially my mother.

That’s a lot of learned behaviours added to exacerbate an already awful attachment style.

When you have an under-researched disorder people miss so many important things that could have helped you much sooner because they just assume the obvious.

Don’t be afraid to push back when you know they’re missing something important. It’s your brain they’re messing up.

Our therapist was talking to us the other day about memories cos we have severe amnesia and she was saying how some memories will be appear when we’re ready, some will never appear and some might not have even begun to form in the first place because our brain decided it didn’t need them.

And like that’s so fucked up. It’s so fucked up that we don’t even get memories of what happened to us but we have to live with the consequences and it’s fucked up that things happened to us and the brain didn’t even try to process them so we’ll just never know.

So much of your sense of identity gets taken away due to trauma. Our abuser took our chance at having a childhood, took our ability to feel certain things, took our sense of stability and any kind of security and took our memories before they even existed.

That’s just so fucked up.

Had three nightmares in a row last night because my brain hates me 😊

Shoutout to people that DIDN’T become people pleasers or have a faun response because of their trauma. Shoutout to people who became argumentative, angry, mean, and lash out due to their trauma. Shoutout to people that start a fight every time they perceive something related to their trauma. Shoutout to people who fought back to their abusers. You are not a terrible person for having that reaction. Your abuse was not your fault. You are not an abuser yourself. You’re allowed to be angry.

Why does this gay porn game legitimately have the best understanding of sexual trauma and DID I've ever seen

Diversity wins! Yaoi game devs know whats up and how to represent trauma disorders more accurately than 100% of mainstream cinema

often frequently I feel the urge to crush the skulls from every single one who made fun of me or mistreated me and I'm not gonna pretend it's not a recurring thought

I spent so much time forced to live in distrust of the people around me that nowadays I am almost incapable of believing in people. It also doesn't help that I seem to experience the same types of traumatic events

I don't even know how to chat anymore, I just act like a psychologist trying to understand people and make questions about every single fucking thing they say

It's impossible to separate the symptoms of autism from the symptoms of trauma because our society hasn't produced a single autistic person who wasn't traumatized in childhood yet

I'll never forget what you did to me and I hate you with every inch of my being for that

You asked for an angel, yet you created a demon

Whenever I'm asked to do something I become unable to even behave like a human, let alone doing the thing I was asked for

Bì-Hán from the incredibly abusive and unrealistic expectations put on him with dire retributions against him whenever he wants something for his interests or pleasure with his every move and decision criticized and scrutinized in comparison to his father and Liu Kang both the architect of his suffering or it could be his descent into noob saibot having his body forcibly changed and violated to have him because a mere spectre as everything he ever worked towards is forcibly ripped from him while the ones closest to him leave him to die with his mind and identity broken and the essence of his soul corrupted forever.

And Tomás for the fact that his mother and twin sister were murdered in front of him as the architect of his suffering and pain took him in to raise him as warrior to a worthless cause with the creator of the cosmos telling him that the pain and suffering he went through was purposefully orchestrated by him as a means to bring him to a destiny he would have probably never wanted.

That's my interpretation of it feel free to correct me if I am interpretating it wrong.

Bì-Hán and Tomáš both have C-PTSD.

I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.

I suspect quite a few people on this site don’t realize they are struggling with the effects of chronic trauma. In particular I think more people need to learn about the symptoms of C-PTSD.

Distinct from general PTSD, Complex PTSD is caused by prolonged, recurring stress and trauma, often occurring in childhood & adolescence over an extended period of time. There are many risk factors, including: abusive/negligent caregivers, dysfunctional family life, untreated mental/chronic illness, and being the target of bullying/social alienation.

I’m not a mental health professional and I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, I just remember a million watt light bulb going off in my head when I first learned about C-PTSD. It was a huge OH MY FUCKING WORD eureka moment for me—it explained all these problems I was confused and angry at myself for having. The symptoms that really stood out to me were:

Negative self-perception: deep-seated feelings of shame, guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, and stigma. Feeling like you are different from everyone else, like something is fundamentally ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ with you.

Emotional avoidance of topics, people, relationships, activities, places, things etc that might cause uncomfortable emotions such as shame, fear, or sadness. Can lead to self-isolation.

Learned helplessness: a pervasive sense of powerlessness, often combined with feelings of desensitization, wherein you gradually stop trying to escape or prevent your own suffering, even when opportunities exist. May manifest as self-neglect or self-sabotage. (I remember watching myself make bad choices and neglect my responsibilities, and having no idea why I was doing it, or how to stop myself. Eventually I just stopped caring, which led to more self-neglect.)

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My parents really managed to do the opposites of all these

Wild things I have learnt in therapy:

When a child cries, parents are supposed to comfort them, not punish them

Parents are, in fact, supposed to want to spend time with their children

Children too have a right to privacy, meaning parents are not allowed to read their diaries etc and then punish them for the thoughts they found about

Children are allowed to be upset and cry

Children don't have to earn the love and attention from their parents by performing various things

Children are not supposed to be scared of going home and/or their parents

Children are not supposed to be physically abused and even a little bit of hitting is actually physical abuse

Parents are not supposed to expect that children are mentally as mature as other adults

Children are not supposed to be told that they're an accident, a burden, or something the parents regret

Children are not supposed to be scared and ashamed of themselves or feel like failures because of their parents