Hi anita,

“I guess so. I am a bit concerned about going through all this with the current state of my brain“- good point, something to ask a competent professional, if you are interested.”

I just happened to finally see a professional for the first time in my life, usually I would avoid them like the plague. At our first session he agreed about childhood trauma delaying emotional growth, he called it arrested psychological development. Reminds me of that noughties show Arrested Development, that I avoided watching.
He said I’ve spent my whole life wrestling with an invisible disability that I got when I was 18 months old. This disability was the prolonged febrile convulsion I experienced, causing hypoxic brain death of critical emotion and memory functions, oh and epilepsy.
This meant that every trauma after that, including my arrested development, was due to the invisibility aspect of my disability, and made worse by being so young. My natural intelligence meant I was really good at masking my disability, all the way till my 50s. The imposter syndrome I mentioned before.
So I’ve lived my whole life in a grey area, between appearing not disabled enough to get recognition and not being able enough to fully participate in society. Unable to engage in playing the game of life you could say.

“In general, any kind of re-associating/ re-personalizing work should be done very gently, a bit today, a bit tomorrow, noting rushed.”
Fortnightly should be enough time for me to process each session.

I feel a huge relief at realising I have an invisible disability that isn’t obvious to others, I thought I was just someone severely down on my luck due to “fate”. Now I have a chance to get myself unstuck and try to move on.

“C-PTSD is an umbrella diagnosis. Last I read, in the U.S. (DSM-5) it was rejected as a diagnosis because it’d make many previously accepted diagnoses obsolete”

What separates Cptsd from ptsd are 3 DSO’s; Disturbances in Self Organisation
1. negative self worth (how worthless you feel)
2. affective dysregulation (emotional control)
3. disturbances in relationships (how well you relate to others and maintain relationships)

Look up(google) the International Trauma Questionnaire, I rated myself highly on 1, and about medium on 2 and 3.

Generally speaking: CPTSD is rolling life long traumas. PTSD is discrete traumatising events, like what first responders, soldiers victims of crime etc.

“There are so many mental health diagnoses available, no wonder most- if not all people fit at least one. I was diagnosed with quite a few.”
-Alot of people don’t like labels, too convenient. I am not to keen on them myself. Some people need a label to feel better about themselves. It is similar to the concept of god, someone who people can pass their self responsibility of their mistakes and failures off to, be “absolved of their sins”. That’s where I got my definition of god I mentioned earlier.

CPTSD is the first mental health diagnosis I have ever been labelled with. It usually starts with a seed trauma somewhere in childhood, then all the other traumas throughout life, are triggered by the deficits the first one created. Like a snowball effect. My invisible disability was the seed trauma. The resulting social isolation led to child-abuse, then the abuse led to distrust of society, which reinforced the social isolation, etc.

Hope you’re keeping well,

Klast

Dear Anita,

– that’s hilarious, never read this before. We better do better than god, then, so that he/ she/ it can look up to us for guidance.

Those three lines are mine. They are my conclusions to the whole organised religion thing. Bureaucratising everyone’s personal spiritual life.
I grew up going to a christian church. One day when I was 13 and I was shaking the hands of the elders as I walked out, I thought; nah none of this feels right, WTF am I doing here, it all felt so insincere. Like all of us there were living some pretense.
Later in life a wise person said to me “Ahh you finally started thinking for yourself”, critical thinking.
Soon after my whole family left, the people we said goodbye to admitted they weren’t true believers, they were just there for the socialising. It was one of those churchies that abused me in unspeakable ways, that I fortunately don’t remember.

– re-associating with anger, re-personalizing your life: making it personal and real.

I guess so. I am a bit concerned about going through all this with the current state of my brain. I have recently been diagnosed with Complex PTSD, after all the traumas throughout my life. Seems like I am regularly getting diagnosed with something, every decade or so.

I used to have bad panic attacks, but I learnt to down regulate them with diaphragmatic breathing(triggers the vagus nerve, calming the parasympathetic nervous system fight/flight/freeze/fawn etc). Yoga Nidra at bedtime helped as well. Most people rely on drugs, Xanax etc.
Back then the docs said I had the lungs of someone 11 years younger, now it’s only 5 years younger.

Haven’t had an attack for about 7 years now. Fortunately I haven’t had to go on the big pharma merry-go round.
I am still on “duty of care” seizure meds, which I hate, due to the brain fog they put me in. But I have to stay on them for life or I get my drivers license cancelled. One of those times I wish I could fall through the cracks of the medical system.

– a reminder of how important it is to not mock others, to treat others (with aphasia or not, tics or not, short or tall, lean or obese, etc.) respectfully.

I feel I am just marking time until, we win lotto(HA), get an inheritance or some other random event turns up.

– saved by intuition!

My intuition seems to have increased since BC, but maybe I am just taking more notice of it. Some around me infer that intuition is a part of a normal persons life. For me it comes on like a strong sense of dejavu, during the day I can look at a thing or person and feel that I will be more involved with them/it sometime later. I was in a shop once when it happened and 3 months later my stepson got a job there.
When I met my wife 20 years ago. I had a strong sense of us having a long term relationship. Within 3 months of me moving in, her kids wanted to call me Dad. She’s a trauma child/woman like me, we feel we are on a committed life journey of healing together.

Klast
(short form of Iconoclast)

Hi Helcat

I was a total computer nerd for 15 years due to my social isolation, it’s only through IRC and online chat that I began to start relating to people in the real world. I was there at the start of the internet, I used to go on BBS’s before the internet. My first internet access was 90mins a day with a 14.4k dialup modem. I could have done IT but my brain issues held me back. I always saw myself as some sort of backroom techhead but my health issues stopped me.

Best wishes with your journey as well

Klast