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Has anyone got complex PTSD with predominantly the freeze response!

18 replies

LoseMyself · 01/01/2020 16:24

I just wondered if anyone else was out there like me. Im really struggling at the moment and am in a really bad place right now.

OP posts:
legodisasterzone · 01/01/2020 16:46

I’m with you- that’s my primary response and I even hold my breath.
Sorry you are struggling. I’ve also been terrible over the last few weeks and tbh I’m sick of it all.
Not really sure what to do about it though?

ohwheniknow · 01/01/2020 16:49

Yes.

LoseMyself · 01/01/2020 17:35

Hi. legodisasterzone ohwheniknow . Do you mind telling me what your main symptoms are. From reading the Pete Walkers book I have all the freeze symptoms but the worst one is severe social anxiety. It's honestly ruined my life. I have an extremely strong harsh inner critic too. I've been like this since primary school. I hate myself for it.

I feel like I'm the only person in the whole world this messed up.

OP posts:
legodisasterzone · 01/01/2020 17:51

I have bad anxiety, avoidance behaviour, constant flight or fight issues and over-thinking and being overly self critical. However, the symptoms are too numerous to remember and list, sorry.
I suffered trauma from prolonged physical and sexual abuse as a young child.
Please know though, PTSD can settle and it hasn’t blighted my whole life or been a constant fixture. It’s bad at the moment for unrelated reasons but don’t think it’s forever.

Have you had any professional help?

LoseMyself · 01/01/2020 18:07

legodisasterzone well all my adult life I thought I had social anxiety which is the main thing I hate about myself. But when I used to read about it online / in books I always felt that there was something more to it. It was like I knew I had SA but I also noticed a list of other things about me that were "wrong" . I came across cptsd and never even knew what it was. I thought it was PTSD , people with visual flashbacks, horrific trauma. I didn't even read about it until one day I saw it mentioned on a thread on MN and I googled it and I remember reading the website and just being taken aback at how accurate it was.

I'm currently reading through the book now and I find it a very very hard read. I've been reading it on and off for months.

A few years ago I visited the gp for the SA. That was a massive step in itself. I was referred to iapt where I received CBT for ten sessions. It was useless and I also found myself feeling really bad during the therapy.

Can I ask what has helped with yourself. I too am very avoidant and extremely harsh on myself. I was reading an excerpt from a diary from when I was 17 and I sound exactly the same now as I did then. It was a 2 page diary entry of how I hated the way I was. I had forgotten about it until recently and was so horrified. I really don't know what to do with myself. I even thought maybe I have avoidant personality disorder but I honestly don't know.

OP posts:
legodisasterzone · 01/01/2020 18:22

Please don’t hate yourself- this isn’t something you have caused or have any control over.
I’m still very much a work in progress- I’ve spent decades learning to cope: things like removing toxic people from my life, carving out enough down time for myself, self care and trying to talk a bit to family and friends about what happened and how it affects me.
Last summer my GP referred me for more specialist therapy and we worked on how to deal with the specific symptoms and how I react to them.
It may be worth asking to see a psychiatrist as it’s very specialised therapy and needs to be tailored to your own individual presentation.
Good luck and try to remember it won’t always feels this horrible.

ConfusedAndStressed95 · 01/01/2020 18:27

I do, it's horrible because I'm prone to panicking at lots of different things. I need therapy, but addressing where the issues come from is likely to break me and I'm too much of a coward to go.

legodisasterzone · 01/01/2020 18:36

Not a coward at all- terrifying to face the past and i do understand.

SimplySteveRedux · 01/01/2020 18:38

I think you'd get a lot of mileage from the Donna Jackson Nazakawa book - Childhood Disrupted.

There's lots of us with similar issues on the "Stately Homes " threads (Relationships).

I find the freeze response to be a total mindfuck. To be unable, physiologically, to protect oneself. It's akin to an out of body experience watching oneself unable to act despite every muscle, sense and reflex screaming - just frozen, completely numb.

LoseMyself · 01/01/2020 18:54

legodisasterzone did your psychiatrist diagnose you with cptsd. I'm scared to go to my gp because I think they might not take me too seriously. I wasn't horrifically abused as a child, no sexual abuse. But it was all emotional. my dad was abusive to my mum and would hit us I lived my life at the edge of my family. I didnt play with my siblings. I was very lonely and had noone to talk to when people treated me badly. I know it all stems from that. But just writing that makes me sound like I'm an overly sensitive person and being a bit dramatic asking to see a psychiatrist. I feel like a fraud. I was wondering if I could go to a private psychologist and see what they say and if they could refer to NHS. Not sure if they can even do that?

OP posts:
ConfusedAndStressed95 · 01/01/2020 19:13

@legodisasterzone, it's only the past year that I've been able to come to terms with what happened and it was around 18 years ago. But I'm 24 and I cannot continue letting the effects ruin/rule my life.

Kraai · 01/01/2020 19:19

You're not a fraud. The key thing in what you just wrote is that you were alone. There was nobody on your side. Imagine - if it's not too painful - if you'd had an aunt of a teacher who for years had given you a safe place to be where you felt welcomed, heard, understood and believed, even if they weren't able to stop the home situation. It would have radically changed your childhood experience and as such the pathways that were set up in your brain. You'd have known the bad stuff AND you'd have known what feeling safe and trusting people was like.

When you grow up in a situation not every getting those feelings of proper safety, it makes it hard to know who to trust, how and when, and you also do t grow up naturally understanding what it feels like to comfortably be part of a group (which maybe explains a bit the SA - I don't know, just a guess).

And flashbacks can be very physical, can also be smells of sounds too or even emotions (which is a total mind fuck).

I freeze, less now than before, but sometimes it was "just" internal and other times, embarrassingly, I'd be literally frozen mid step, somewhere public.

I've done a lot of EMDR which has worked with the individual triggers themselves (of which there are many) combined with something else that looks at how I have developed neurally to interpret the world (schema therapy is one, internal family systems is another) it's helping to reduce the symptoms.

But it's a fucking slow process and I apologise for swearing but the people who did this to me are not suffering, while my life is spent trying to escape what they did and I really think swearing is justified!

It can get better though.

LoseMyself · 02/01/2020 09:48

Kraai thanks for your post. Yes you're right, i've always thought if I just had one person, a sibling/ cousin/ friend whom I could trust and talk to and get some form of validation, I think things may have been very different for me. As an adult I am not close to anyone. I have never been close to anyone as a child and I don't even know how to. I think it's messed up the way I connect with people as in I don't.

I have heard of IFS and also Schema Therapy which id have to do on my own using a self help book. If you don't mind me asking what has these therapies helped with for you?

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Cloudyblues · 02/01/2020 15:34

"But we took you to Stately Homes.
I keep coming back to this thread and reading the advice. Then wondering what it would feel like to just write a little bit of my story. Maybe the act in its self would be like releasing the valve on a pressure cooker. Just enough to stop the whistle from screaming. I dont understand all the abbreviations, and that stops me from writing anything. In case i do something wrong.

LoseMyself · 02/01/2020 17:41

Cloudyblues I find writing things doen, my story so to speak really does help. Its really hard though. When I first did it I was feeling low for a good few days afterwards. But please go at your own pace. Whatever feels right and comfortable for you. I haven't been on the stately home threads myself but I think alot of MN do find it a supportive place. Flowers

OP posts:
GreenWhistle · 02/01/2020 17:48

Have you discovered Richard Grannon? His style is unique but I've found his stuff useful, particularly the free stop the flashbacks and emotional literary courses on his website/insta.

I'm freeze faun. I feel your pain.

Cloudyblues · 02/01/2020 23:32

The total lack of connection, the isolation and the loneliness are so hard to bare. I feel different, iv always felt different. Its like watching life through a thick glass box but never really feeling or being a part of it. I struggle to have a relationship with my grown up daughters. Keeping in touch with them is so hard. Yet there all i think about. I struggle to pick up the phone when they ring. I have to force myself. Nothing ever changes in my life but nothing around me ever stays the same. I was diagnosed with complex trauma. My therapy sessions ended after a year and i was committed to them, like iv never been committed before. I felt for the first time that i was beggining to make a logical narrative of parts of my childhood. I was seeing things as they really were and not the twisted way i was fòrced to remember events in order to preserve my mothers flawless parenting. My therapist promised me anger and rage at those that had hurt and betrayed me. Instead of accepting that i was the one to blame, that i was deserving of their hatred. But it ended before i could feel anything but more or less the same as always.

Kraai · 03/01/2020 08:06

@LoseMyself well they help with essentially recognising why I think about things the way I do, and how helpful that has been for my emotional survival as a child and looks at whether that's the best way to think now. HOWEVER it's not like the traditional CBT "just change your thought processes and you'll feel better". It's much deeper, far more nuanced and instead of essentially victim-blaming (which is what I feel CBT can verge into) treats you as a whole, competent person.

If you're looking into it alone then I'd suggest some authors (I've put links but if you still have a library they could be there):

Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score (for a really good understanding of trauma).

Janina Fisher - Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healing-Fragmented-Selves-Trauma-Survivors/dp/0415708230/ref=mpssa111?keywords=janina+fisher&qid=1578038317&sr=8-1

Perter Levine - can't remember the name of his books but he's also mentioned in van der Kolk and he works with how the body responds to trauma years later.

Richard Schwartz - Internal Family Systems (note: IFS is not the same as Family Systems Therapy which works with family members!)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internal-Family-Systems-Therapy-Guilford/dp/1462541461/ref=mpssa112?keywords=internal+family+systems&qid=1578038543&sprefix=internal+family&sr=8-2

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