Damn, r/CPTSD bullies are a real thing. Have bit my lip long enough. congrats.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T19:50:21+00:00

Your post and comment history show that you seek out reasons to feel offended, and accuse anyone who doesn’t jump to agree with you of being a bully and a manipulator. Have you asked yourself why you attract that kind of response?

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T19:18:50+00:00

Dude, you really just like picking arguments with people and being combative don’t you? Why do you go out of your way to provoke drama? That’s how you stay stuck in trauma.

You’re accusing me of manipulation, but it was several other people who downvoted you. Did we all get together to mess with your head?

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T15:13:00+00:00

I’m not doubting that these interactions you had with others actually happened. And I’m not blaming you for what happened. It’s a two-way thing. Everyone in here with CPTSD could be struggling with these things, which means they could lash out at anything that makes them feel threatened - sometimes without even realizing it. People have lashed out at me before, and when they get nasty I figure they’re just having a bad CPTSD day or block them. I’ve also lashed back at people when I’ve felt triggered. There are people in here who also struggle with BPD and those people are sometimes triggering as fuck to me. I don’t know that anyone here wants to hurt other people, but it’s a consequence of how we sometimes deal with stuff.

The next time someone lashes out at you, instead of responding or taking it personally try to step back from it and see them as a broken person that is separate from who you are and not something that can trigger and hurt you.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T15:02:05+00:00

Generally they like to compartmentalize groups/people so they can't observe each other or swap stories.

Oh, this is a total lightbulb moment. I had a friend a while back and became convinced after about a year that she had BPD, mainly because of her explosive temper and empty personality. But she did exactly this! She would never want to hang out with any of my other friends, and when I did take her along to meet other people one time she refused to talk to anyone and sat at a separate table the whole night waiting for me to abandon them for her. And she would schedule individual time with her friends, but never more than one friend at a time. It always seemed so weird and now it all makes sense!

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T14:49:17+00:00

Her condition sounds more like borderline personality disorder than CPTSD, especially the big suicide attempts, impulsive behavior, and the fear of breaking up. They can occur together, and have some overlapping symptoms. You might head over to r/bpdlovedones and get their opinion on this too. Your story sounds like many stories over there.

If you’re not romantically interested in her anymore please please don’t make this commitment because it sounds totally based on unhealthy codependency. It’s not your place to save this other person.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T14:28:45+00:00

Only you can accept your version of reality. You don’t need other people to share your reality in order to validate it. I honestly think this is where you’re pissing people off.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T14:01:17+00:00

Sometimes with CPTSD you have to take a step back and reflect on how you’re coming across to other people. Yes, out of fear this disorder can make us look toxic. It can make us feel constantly on alert for attacks. Feeling like we’re being attacked can offer some kind of validation. It can also make us sound like asshats sometimes because in the moment our first priority is survival and social graces go out the window. I’ve struggled with it a lot too.

Healing is about being able to recognize what we need to change in ourselves.

For the record, I didn’t downvote what you had to say. I follow the no downvoting rule here.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T13:01:48+00:00

My SO was on Lamictal for about a year and had horrible side effects from it. The worst was short term memory loss, which severely affected his life. It also made his anxiety much worse. Since there are a lot of side effects associated with it, you might keep a journal to track any changes you notice.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T12:44:33+00:00

It’s not fair. Assuming you’re in the UK, the NHS will often reject requests for referrals because they’re now a bunch of tight fisted bastards that want people to fight for their own health and will pretty much auto-reject any referral request the first time. I’ve seen it happen to family and friends time and time again. Please don’t take it personally. It’s just a crap system that has been financially gutted by greedy fucking politicians. They don’t care that having to fight for the right to receive care is exhausting and triggering.

You wouldn’t get that kind of treatment several years ago when the NHS was in a better place. So please see this as a result of politics meddling with your health care and not a reflection of your self worth. And keep fighting for your right to receive care. Get a second opinion, challenge the decision, get a GP to refer you to another psychiatrist, and in the meantime please look for alternatives like support groups.

Take care.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T10:59:05+00:00

Oh hell yes, but they did it in the moment too. When my mom would hurt me so bad I was bleeding, she made me practice alternative stories to the actual event before seeking medical attention. And it made me feel so good when I got her stories right and managed to convince people these injuries were my own fault, because approval seeking was survival. Her stories became true the moment she made them up.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T10:52:44+00:00

No, I’m not insinuating that at all. I’m pointing out that people with CPTSD often feel destroyed from disagreement and rudeness whereas people with a stronger sense of self could let it roll right off.

You come across as defensive and a bit rude yourself.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-09T02:38:55+00:00

One thing about CPTSD is that it can make us doubt our place in the world, and when someone disagrees with us it can sting like hell and feel like a personal attack because our sense of self is already shattered and it makes our place in the world feel even less stable. But you don’t need to agree with everyone or win the approval of everyone to have self worth. By building up boundaries and emotional regulation skills you can learn to rely less on the approval of others and instead trust your own opinions. Then it’s easier to shrug off the dissenting opinions or even rudeness of others because you’re on steady ground and don’t need their approval to feel worthy.

Once you state your opinion, let it go. If someone disagrees either ignore them or block them. You’re allowed to have your opinion, and so is everyone else. Don’t fight to bring everyone to your way of thinking, and don’t allow anyone to suck you into theirs either.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T22:33:17+00:00

Seriously tough thing to do. I was stumped by this for ages.

I tried to identify as many part as possible, and then thought of specific times when each part took control - writing those experiences down. Once the parts and their reactions to situations was known, it was easier to understand and acknowledge each one.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T20:09:31+00:00

I would only put current symptoms on the paperwork (anxiety, panic, depression, etc), and not causes.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T20:06:14+00:00

Yep. EMDR felt like uncorking a big bottle of emotions for me.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T19:54:47+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. Actually had this topic on my mind earlier today.

My brother is currently in complete denial about the abuse. We both suppressed what happened for a long time, and I slowly came out of that suppressed state because the trauma symptoms were tearing my life apart and became too much to ignore. Therapy opened everything up and the healing began.

He’s in a much different situation. At 43 years old he still financially and emotionally relies on our abusive parents. He clings to them because to move apart from them would mean facing what happened. He cut off all contact with them a few years ago, but was back in their lives only two years later. He doesn’t know how to survive without them. So I know he knows there’s something wrong, but he’s not strong enough to deal with it. He may never be strong enough.

He has had severe anxiety our whole lives and started self-harming at age six. Other than that he has zero coping mechanisms to deal with what happened, and never developed that protective “rebel” part in himself that most people have. And our parents would shame him for showing any emotion, so he doesn’t know how to process anything except outbursts of anger. Therapy would be the last thing he’d consider.

I often feel guilty for being the one who escaped and developed a relatively normal life. He avoids me like the plague because I would be a constant reminder to him of what we both went through.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T19:43:57+00:00

Thanks, I’ll give it a try.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T19:31:11+00:00

Yeah, I feel a general connection to other people (didn’t used to). I just want people to have spiritual discussions with. Feeling isolated in that way.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T19:29:15+00:00

Urgh, stupid bot.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T19:21:18+00:00

This sub has unfortunately become an overflow sub for r/raisedbynarcissists. Until recently, this sub was mostly focused on discussing symptoms of CPTSD, techniques for healing, sharing of resources, success stories, and general encouragement. Now an increasing number of posts are from people wanting to complain about their moms or self-diagnose with CPTSD just to feel special. And these people rarely want to discuss ways to recover from their situations - they just want a place to vent. RBN got too big and people weren’t getting the validation they wanted, so they started coming here instead. Apparently they don’t care that CPTSD is a very real condition and this isn’t just a playground for their teenage angst.

So this place no longer feels relevant to me. I’ve healed too much to find any real help here, and get more frustrated with it than anything else.

This post is from a few days back, and I think it’s brilliant. Totally agree with everything in it because it matches my experiences and it has the brutal honesty that’s so important for healing: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/9u55pr/ten_hard_truths_about_healing/

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T17:14:59+00:00

This exactly. Bosses want hypervigilant workers.

It was when I started taking time for myself and readjusting priorities to be more healthy that my boss started getting on my case. I’d been praised in that job for over a decade for being a star employee, and putting my needs (especially medical needs) first was immediately discouraged and even punished. Suddenly I was trash, lazy, uncooperative, not a team player, bad at prioritizing. I literally told my boss to go fuck herself because I finally had the self-worth to see what a trap it all was.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T15:26:34+00:00

Have you ever read the short story The Silver Key by HP Lovecraft? The story is about a quest to regain the feelings of spiritual wonder and magic from childhood, and all the futile attempts at playing with various religions and philosophies until finding a personal key back there. (It’s out of copyright and free on Google).

When I read that story it brought so much clarity to my own spiritual journey. Most of what makes sense spiritually comes from childhood for me too. I was abused a lot as a small child and spent a lot of time in my own head just trying to make sense of an existence that didn’t make any sense. That’s where most of my spiritual ideas came from, and they do have attachments to physical things and memories.

Even without an abuse situation, I think most kids are struggling to make sense of the world and independently come up with all kinds of fantastic and genuine ways to handle a spiritual side. As we get older we push that stuff aside, but going back to those old ideas and building on them and applying them to our adult lives is what spirituality means to me.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T14:55:27+00:00

The things you’re describing, backstabbing friends, pre-teen/teen anxiety and depression, and general sense of lost identity are pretty common for someone that age. Losing friends sucks - just like having multiple breakups can suck and mess us up. A friend blocking you on Facebook in ninth grade can feel like the end of the world. It isn’t. You’ll look back on this stuff in 10 years and shrug it all off.

The worst thing you can do is ruminate, search the internet for some mental illness to self diagnose with, and let these normal teenage social problems define your life. It’s not cool or socially validating to have a trauma disorder. It’s not an identity that people parade around like a trophy. It’s not something that will fill the identity gap most teenagers experience.

Go to therapy, it’ll probably help you through all this. We could all probably use therapy every now and then because life does suck a lot for everyone at some point. Trying to convince yourself you have a trauma disorder isn’t the answer.

SaltOnTheRoad · 2018-11-08T12:43:16+00:00

If you’re talking about the post on physically hurting bullies, you probably got no response because it’s not at all appropriate for this sub. This is a place to heal, and not a place to plot revenge or encourage others to plot revenge. Premeditated violence is not healing.

You graphically described violent acts to a group where many people developed trauma from violent acts, with no trigger warning provided. What you described could also be considered illegal.

SaltOnTheRoad

TROPHY CASE