The First Post About CPTSD

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I don't even know where to begin with my Complex PTSD introduction post. I’ve started several times trying to find the words and they all feel like trash to me. Yes, I sometimes have low self esteem and a perfectionist complex (both of which can be hallmarks of CPTSD) but there’s more to it. Complex trauma is, well, complex. There isn’t an easy way to explain it. There’s also a lot of different ways one can become complexly traumatized. I could share my exact story with all of its hairy details but at the end of the day that’s just me sharing trivia about myself. Yes, sharing one’s story can help others but with so much nuance, specific circumstances, and perfect storms in my story I know that not everyone with CPTSD will relate to all of the moving parts to my story so it seems silly to just talk about me and my journey. Some of the behaviors, symptoms, and thought patterns one has with CPTSD can be more uniform and relatable but even then there’s a spectrum. So the best way to start my inaugural CPTSD post is to explain my intentions behind what I want this series to accomplish and give a little bit of background information about how I even got CPTSD to begin with (since I probably can’t be too evasive and have to share some of it).

Thankfully we’re living in a time where mental health issues have become less stigmatized and people are getting more literate about all things related. But we still have a ways to go. Complex PTSD is having a hey day with more people being diagnosed every day. I have thoughts about this and how trauma is changing the mental health field, but I’ll save those thoughts for another time. For now, we’re stuck in limbo because the word trauma is often misunderstood and overused. Having a whole disorder around it is intense and I had to undertake a second education of sorts to better understand it. When I was diagnosed in March of 2022 I became overwhelmed. I read Pete Walker’s book (a MUST read if you have or suspect you have CPTSD), Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, as well as a bunch of other trauma literature and my system got overloaded for a bit. I’m so thankful for even having access to this information but at times it felt like my education was somewhat too clinical. A lot of the CPTSD part of my blog is aiming towards humanizing and understanding CPTSD without innately understanding how the brain works and the science behind why unprocessed trauma makes your thoughts and behaviors dizzying to the point of feeling broken and actually being misunderstood. There’s some cards I want to keep close to my chest, but I will share tools, perspectives, and anything else I’ve acquired that have helped me in hopes of that helping you.

That said I'm not the monolith on complex trauma and if it's okay if you do not relate all of the things I say. I’m also still on a healing journey, meaning I have yet to feel like I’ve healed. I’m far enough along where I can honestly say I have turned many corners and am operating differently than I was even six months ago, let alone any time before that. But it’s more than okay if what has worked for me doesn’t resonate or work for you. And if you're reading this to better understand a loved one with CPTSD or out of sheer curiosity alone, remember that just because something worked for me doesn't mean it will work for other people. I’m not a guru. I'm not selling silver bullets. I do not have all of the answers and I will never claim to. I’m just hoping to help people feel connected, feel understood and seen, and help brainstorm how to manage. That’s literally it.

Alright, let me put a few things down on this table. A lot of people who know me who have heard I have CPTSD have assumed it must be because my parents are dead. Well, that’s kind of true but largely not. It's true because yes, parental death (especially at a younger age) is traumatic AF. And I’ve also lost friends and relatives making these losses feel more compounded. The thing is though, I did grieve my parents and everyone else's death in a healthy way. Yes, you grieve people for the rest of your life but I got through raw and active grief in a healthy, timely, somewhat “normal” way. PTSD (of any kind) happens when trauma is unprocessed. I processed my parents dying but what hasn’t been processed effectively for me is abandonment issues and rugs being pulled out from under me. There’s other ways I’ve had those issues besides deaths, but the deaths I’ve encountered have exasperated those issues. While I grieved the people I lost, some of the circumstances and themes surrounding their deaths have been repeated and it's been driving me crazy and quite literally traumatizing me repeatedly. I never feel totally safe in this world or with people. I have had a front row seat to how unfair and fragile this world and life is and I have trouble unseeing it. To say I’ve acquired many forms of hyper-vigilance would be the understatement of the century. I have profound issues with promises broken and low key don’t believe anyone knows what they're talking about, even if they’re just being misguided versus being an intentional liar. Here’s one profound example of this:

One day I was politely trying to coax my dad into seeing his doctor because he had mounting medical issues that were seemingly getting worse. His poor health was showing and yet he seemed to be in denial about it. I had mentioned it to him once or twice and he wasn't having it, so one day I played up the daddy’s girl card (he was mostly a stable parent, which not all of us with CPTSD have) and batted my eyes talking about how I didn't want to lose him in the most gentle and loving way possible. He smiled warmly and - very convincingly, I might add- beamed while saying, "I'm going anywhere for a long time. Don’t worry.” Now, in my bones I knew that may not be correct but he seemed so sincere in his confidence that it was hard to not be effected by it. Cut to less than a week later, my nineteen year old self walked into our family room to discover his dead body on his easy chair.

There's a lot that I can unpack about this incident, some obvious and some more specific to other themes in my life that won’t be obvious to new readers. Understandably, I have a history of losing my mind when promises or even words get broken. I have some chill depending on the circumstances, but depending on the day, the person, what other triggers are present and so forth I see red when people don't follow through with what has been promised. This can happen in non life and death circumstances, but unfortunately it has repeated in the death category too. A lot of my other loved ones who have passed have had similar denial before their deaths (like my friend who I begged to wear a seatbelt and slow down while driving who ultimately died in a car crash) or even a few positive thinkers who believed they’d beat cancer even though I thought their odds were long I couldn't help but believe with them because their belief was so infectious (and sadly they have also died). Life has kept throwing similar circumstances at me, in big and small ways, making both the events impossible to escape but also to process.

Not related to death I also have had my fair share of medical trauma, have been at a few wrong places at the wrong time, and have had “normal people issues” like bad friends and bad relationships, all of which felt magnified because my foundation was not sturdy and has continued to quite literally disappear.

Making things worse, as a trauma response I learned how mask that I was okay even when I wasn't because frankly put: nobody cared. I'll definitely be expanding a bit on that in coming posts, but people have had a weird habit of believing I would land on my feet even when I was saying I was struggling. I get that I put that energy out there and can see how I co-created this problem, but also nobody was listening when I was crying either so I was damned no matter what I did. The older I get the more I resent how many middle aged adults in my family and family friends thought I’d be fine at nineteen with my dad dying while simultaneously experiencing some unrelated chaos in our family at that exact moment. Eventually you become old enough to see how young nineteen really is, and that moment came around twenty five for me. I was in a college town in some sandwich restaurant that was setting up a live event with a DJ (as you do in sandwich shops) so a bunch of college kids were clogging up the line. I not only immediately wanted to go and leave this scene because of how out of place I felt, but was also struck by just how young these college kids were. And then I realized they were roughly the age I was when my dad died and I couldn't believe any of my relatives or family friends could have seen young me at that age and openly said to my face that they weren't worried about me. Da fuq?!

I don't want to say much about my mom, because again, it is kind of just trivia. But it’s a big part of why I have CPTSD and possibly the biggest piece of the puzzle. She really was a good person but she had demons. In her own words she wasn't very maternal, so I don't feel too bad putting that out there. Hell, I think she even bragged about that to my friends once or twice…which was a choice but hey, at least she was honest? But she also was lovely and generous and many other good traits. That said, she never dealt with her own childhood trauma and was an alcoholic. Part of why I feel fine saying that last part is because if someone creepy enough found the death certificate (please don’t) it would say that she died of cirrhosis of the liver. Like, it’s a legal fact. I don’t think any child of an alcoholic has nothing but rosy things to say about their upbringing, so take that as you will. We also were a private family who did not air our dirty laundry, but also public facing as both of my parents were esteemed members of our community who frequently graced our town’s front page newspaper. There’s a lot about that dichotomy and its messaging that I’ve had to unpack and frankly still am doing so. It’s part of why (but far from the only reason) I feel cagey writing this paragraph. But if you’re reading this and knew my mom and adored her, keep on keeping on! Your experiences are valid. She had a lot of great traits. That said, being someone’s friend versus being someone’s child can be too entirely different experiences. There’s space for a lot to be true at once.

A lot of people with CPTSD genuinely hate their parents and I respect their right to do so. I do not hate my parents. My feelings about them, most specifically about my mom, can change week to week but I also can't unsee that she did the best that she could under the circumstances she was dealt. She wasn’t a bad person, but her best wasn’t always good enough either. We also were on really good terms the last several years of her life (not perfect, but better than a younger me ever could have imagined could happen) and I'm not willing to deny that or undo a lot of the forgiveness I felt while she was still alive. No pun intended but my family story is very complex and I feel protective over it, not because I'm trying to protect anyone because of a trauma bond but because I see all of the nuances and am comfortable not having my story fit neatly into some linear box. That said, given how complicated parts of my story can be, this may be the last time for a while I go into any details about my family. I don't want to defend my experiences that are not linear or obvious, I don't want to be click bait-y, I don't need to work within extremes, nor do I care to throw anyone under the bus. Acknowledging we weren't the picturesque family we seemed to be without giving away the entire store is my boundary.

The too long and didn’t read reasons why I have CPTSD is basically that life has thrown a lot at me at such frequent levels that I’ve literally had to spend all of my energy surviving and have not had room to process, let alone live, let alone thrive. And many people in my life ignored my cries for help, refused to believe something was wrong with me that I wasn’t capable of fixing myself, and I’ve continued slipped through the cracks in many ways not having learned some basic adulting skills because I was ironically too busy being forced to be too grown up in less common ways. And it’s a huge mess I’m in real time untangling.

Back to what this blog is about… the next few posts about CPTSD will be a long list of frequently asked questions and confusions about CPTSD, a more metaphorical post about what it feels like to have CPTSD, and from there I’ll get more specific about certain trauma responses, lessons learned, trends I’ve noticed within the community, and any nuances I don’t see being talked about in CPTSD spaces.

This blog outside of CPTSD will host a few topics, including but not limited to friendship and cannabis use. Many people with CPTSD feel so alienated that they never make a friend. Being a social butterfly was my trauma response and boy did that get me into trouble at times. I have learned a lot through being overly social and have learned even more being forced to clip my butterfly wings and get more discerning about how I socialize. Some of it is funny, some of us it is sad, but I hope to contexulize a lot of people’s loneliness since I think everyone low key feels lonely even if they have friends. I also want to help those seeking friends do so in a healthier way, because we have some strange ways of socializing that we’re normalized that need to be untangled. Naturally there will be some overlap with friendship and CPTSD in some posts. Same with the cannabis posts, as I only started doing it regularly a year and a half ago because I stopped sleeping and eating. It turns out I had a dysregulated nervous system (most of us with CPTSD do) and it really started driving me in a ditch by early 2022. Weed isn’t for everyone and for many people it’s a backwards step. For me it’s been a life savor for reasons I’ll expand on in those posts (I promise I’m not out of control with my usage nor am I numbing feelings in unhealthy ways.) That said I don’t think it’s a perfect drug nor is it a one size fits all. Cannabis helped me sleep but not so much eat. Because of these mixed results I’m trying to provide a middle ground. I don’t think everyone should do weed though as lots of people have varying experiences, so your journey is valid if we are very different in this way. But again, there may be some overlapping posts about cannabis and CPTSD.

Thanks so much for reading. I was probably a little more all over the place than I would have liked to be, but as I keep saying, this is all very complex and even abstract at times. Still being on a healing journey I don’t always know how to be succinct and in a general post like this that was an impossible task, ha! It’ll get better from here, I promise. Please check back soon or follow me on social media (tabs are on the top of page). Also if you have CPTSD or suspect trauma has impacted your life, check out my trauma resources page. Have a great day!