anyone managed to get well again after complex ptsd?

[mosp]

I would love to talk to you. Please?

I had CPTSD and am now 'better'. Mine was the result of leaving an abusive ex two years ago and that triggering the memories of my Dad sexually and physically abusing me as a child. I already remembered all the crap with my alcoholic mother and the general abuse and neglect when growing up.

What helped me was therapy but more specifically EMDR. It helped me access some very troubling memories that even years of therapy wouldn't have touched. I paid £40 a session and didn't even try going down the NHS route as I know services in my area are limited.

I have an issue/theory about how many people who say they can't afford to pay for therapy although obviously appreciate that some people genuinely can't. But there is something about accepting your own self worth and believing you deserve the therapy tha stops people paying for it. I would definitely have been in that camp but I knew if I didn't get it sorted I would become unwell again. Many people can afford Sky, holidays, cigarettes but are adamant they can't pay for therapy. Sorry if this offends.

I rarely dissociate, Don't somatasise psychological stress and no longer feel different, damaged and dirty. It's amazing to realise that this is how most people feel because for people like us, it is such a novel thing and can seem unattainable.

Toptramp, just because you mentioned your interest in Buddhism which I share. We become very attached to beating ourselves up about our bad decisions and that keeps us in samsara. Letting go of the attachment brings freedom - easier said than done of course!

mosp I'm hesitant to go against your psychiatrist's opinion as a) I'm no professional and b) have no idea about your mental state. But I notice that she's not offering you any alternative to help you other than meds. And if you want therapy I believe you should have it. You will need someone with whom you can go slow and build up a safe relationship though. Not ten sessions of CBT. I hope safeline can help you find somewhere. Be aware though that being on the right dose of the right meds can be an enormous help in accessing therapy.

Queen certainly to a point I agree with you about paying for therapy. But I think what especially women are really saying is 'It's a lot of money and I'm not worth that kind of money, it's not right for me to take money for myself that the family needs to watch Sky'. We've been paying for dh's therapy for 2 years now and we're still alive financially. It's helping him so much that he's not bloody well allowed to stop until he's all better.

Well, I'm comfortably off atm, but only because I'm in the support group so receive ESA. When they decide I have to come off that (which mioght be before I am able to work - you know what gov funds are like), I'll have very little. We don't really go on fancy hols, or have tv at all let alone sky. Don't smoke. I suppose the only thing I could stop buying would be alcohol, but that wouldn't cover the cost of the therapy. I will def think about it.

Also, I know this is my issue, but I feel resentment that another person's actions against me might put me out of pocket. I already feel annoyed that they have stolen enough from me in other ways :(

I think that my mental state is better than this time last year, but still reliant on diazepam and feel vulnerable constantly because the attacks come on with no warning.

mosp I don't think the paying comment was aimed specifically at you. But it is true that your mental health is the most precious thing you have and it's worth a lot of money to feel better.

I'm concerned that you say you are reliant on diazepam. How often and for how long have you been taking it? Is your psych prescribing it? I'm sure you know it is an extremely addictive and habit forming drug that stops working when you take it for 4 weeks. What attacks do you take them for? Panic? In that case some CBT may well be helpful.

Oh and of course I understand that you feel resentment at the fact that you are out of pocket because of what someone else has done. That's normal. That's why in the States victims sue their abusers for the cost of therapy. Gets messy though.

But you 'give' your abuser even more if you let him have years of your life that you could be enjoying instead of feeling ill. You need to do this for you, not for him.

I've been taking diaz for well over a year. I know it is addictive. I'm not sure if I am addicted. Some days I feel no need for one. Other days I need them. I try not to ever exceed three a day, and only take one if I'm desperate.

Part of my problem is the secrecy. My parents (and lots of friends) don't and mustn't know what happened. Therefore, I need something to lean on when I have to function 'normally' in front of them. If it were up to me, I'd be much more of a hermit. However, that would ring alarm bells and questions would be asked. Also, I need to do right for my children, otherwise there is no point me staying alive for them.

The comment about paying was absolutely not aimed at anyone on this thread, more of an observation of mine.

Are you aware that there are NICE guidelines for PTSD? Basically what that means is that the NHS should ( but importantly isn't obliged to) provide services in this way. Might be worth having a look at discussing with your psych and GP. If it's a questions of funding, your GP can apply for exceptional funding on your behalf from the local Primary Care Trust. I work fir the NHS so PM me if you want to know more about this. guidance.nice.org.uk/CG26

Have you spoken to your psych about this strong conviction you have that family and friends mustn't know? That's a powerful law you're applying to yourself and if the trade off is you feeling this way, it might not be the best thing. CBT is good for dealing with the musts and shoulds we all have.

Diazepam is addictive but so are sleeping pills and I was on them for over a year. My GP was concerned about how I would get off them but I just stopped when I didn't feel the need anymore. He thinks I'm unusual for having been OK but it could be that with CPTSD your arousal levels are so high from the hyper vigilance that it's just dampening them down ti manageable levels when they peak.

Why must they not know? What are your motives for carrying this alone? I know parents can be difficult ones to tell, my dad was pretty much the last one to know, but you do need a support network around you and you deserve it too!

I'm finding it really hard to focus and concentrate.

I do have some close friends who know about it. Just not the rl friends that I see on a daily basis. I just panic if I think people are visualising what happened. It's so humiliating.

I have actually looked at the cost of emdr if I go private. But I will take your advice and ask psychiatrist again. I have mentioned it before, and was told it is not available in this area. But yes please, I would like to know more about the exceptional funding.

You might find it useful to read the wise words of Pete Walker on Complex PTSD and the kind of therapy he suggests.

I don't have any personal experience, but I want to pay tribute to the courage of all of you in dealing with this. I can't understand how anyone could hurt children in this way. The fact that some of you can now provide help and support to others is something positive to come out of horrendous experiences.

Mosp as long as some friends know about it and you have some people to talk to it's fine - not everyone needs to know. But secrets are so heavy to carry.

Was thinking of you while worshipping this morning- we were singing 'And through the storm yet I will praise You despite it all yet I will sing, through good or bad, yet I will worship, for You remain the same, King of Kings, You are the voice of hope, the Anchor of my soul, where there seems to be no way, You make it possible...

I'm a worship leader by nature (not currently practising as dh is vicaring in a church with a choir, but I was in our old church today with my old band) so songs speak louder than words for me and this one means a lot. Only since what I've been through... Don't give up hope.

i was diagnosed with cptsd too.
i suppose it was 2, maybe 3 years ago now. (I'm not v good at estimating time)
id say I'm a LOT better than a was then. I take a fairly high dose of AD's for anxiety and depression still, but thats a small price to pay for a bit of peace and for not being a nut job around my kids if you ask me. :understatement:

Thank you all. I read the link. I just feel so hopeless. I realised I am not a 'fighter'. I don't want to carry on. I just want to go :(

My troubles started when I was 20, but I might as well have been underage, I was so innocent. Now I'm 35.

I just dream of heaven. Don't want to be here at all.

If I knew emdr would def work, I'd go for it. But I think I'd lose the nhs help I'm getting, so I would need to be sure.

Mops, I've PMed you.

Mosp, damn you autocorrect.

i think you're more of a fighter than you imagine. you're here aren't you?
its perfectly ok to be tired of it, to want to just lay down and die...
real progress is when you start to see that thats not the only route to peace, or that its not actually 'normal' to wish you were dead.
be kind to yourself.
imagine you are your own (imaginary, nice!) sister and how you'd treat yourself if you were. everyone deserves to be loved and looked after a bit. sometimes we have to do that for ourselves.

I haven;t got a lot of time now (children to put to bed) but I just wanted to say that I was in a very horrible place about 2-3 years ago and posted on here.

I was diagnosed with cptsd after being sexually abused at the age of 8-12, unemotionally available parents, panic attacks, dissociation and genreally feeling shit.

Keep at it. At the very dark times I would tell myself every bit of pain now will yield double the happiness afterwards and it always did. The pain was getting rid ofthe poison.

My psychiatrist referred me to a therapist and it took me nearly 2 years of avoidance before I would talk about what i needed to talk about. I have since seen 2 different tharapists, emdr therapist and an amazing guy near Brighton.

I have moved on a lot and gained confidence in myself, so ther is hope. I still have a way to go and owe a lot of my progress to madmouse... She is very insightful and full of useful help and support.

Thank you. I wish my psychiatrist would refer me. She has told me she won't :(

So, I'm stuck trying to access help from kind people (like on this thread). It takes a lot to talk, and even when I manage, I don't feel better.

Hi mosp
I don't have an extensive knowledge to help you with this as some others do and I haven't been abused but I had PTSD and read around it at the time..
I had no previous mental health or emotional problems but after a terrible episode which was hopelessly mismanaged involving my precious young ds I became overwhelmingly distressed by the event and its aftermath.
If I hadn't have had dc to care for I'm not sure I would have been able to fight it at all.
Counselling was disastrous as was broaching the subject or reading about it in any way... it was simply too much. I have now read the NICE guidelines and would agree that person to person counselling is traumatic and pointless, whereas cbt might help during the recovery phase.
Its totally crap, but time heals and eventually your mind lets the story become part of you instead of fighting it.
Then after time, it is just a memory altho a difficult one but no longer traumatic. I still think about it, I still regret it and wish it hadn't happened, but I am happy and productive and strong and wise.

Hello mosp, I've been reading your thread since last Wednesday, but I wasn't sure if I should post or not. Anyhow, I have PTSD caused by childhood abuse.

When trying to access help I discovered that there are organisations outside the NHS who sometimes provide help and support. In my case Mind were helpful: www.mind.org.uk/ also my local rape crisis centre, were brilliant as they initally helped me with person centred counselling, which got me talking, at a greatly reduced cost.

I also have a feeling that your GP could offer you some alternatives, as there are supposed to be more routes in to the different types of NHS talking therapies than there used to be. You also have a right to ask your GP to refer you to a different consultant for a second opinion - which I've done before with my dodgy knees.

Anyhow, hope some of the above is readable, it's not a great day for my dyslexia.

Talking is the key to overcoming PTSD - it is really difficult at first, but it does get better with time.

Thank you for the replies. I am trying. Sorry, don't know what to say about it any more. I have been offered a listening ear by someone who gets it, and I'm feeling hopeful that I can climb out of this pit with her help.

mosp

I would never have said this 3 years ago, but talking is the way to feel a bit better. Yes it hurts, yes it is incredibly painful, yes you will feel worse for a while - but you will heal the cause rather than it always being there.

I too am surprised your psychiatrist won;t refer you, but do you need them to? You can find a therapist yourself with your doctors help.

I spent years with lots of different therapists and stayed with some of them far longer than I should have because I didn;t have the confidence to move and thought it was me that was broken and couldn;t be fixed.

Now i realise that there are some bad therapists and some I just didn;t click with and I maybe wasn;t ready at that point in time. BUT

Don;t give up, ever. You are worth it, you deserve help and seek it for as long as you are able. Even if there is a flicker of "I want to be referred" then go for it. No one will judge you for it.

There are a lot of ramblings here and I'm not putting across very clearly what I am saying. Just I have a lot of highs and lows I have been through and want to get them all down, but can;t!

Take care

Tbh, I find the whole medical system rather baffling. In August 2010 I went initially to my gp. By October I had a cbt counsellor, but she brought it to an end after only 2 sessions because I was too suicidal and she thought I needed moving up a step (higher level of care). Then I was referred to the psychiatrist that I'm currently with. She been saying for ages that she needs ot know that I'm 'ready' for therapy, stable enough etc. It is only the last time that she told me that talking therapy is probably not the answer. She decided to change my drugs. Maybe she's waiting to see what effect that has.

So, you see, I've been round all the services available and they kept passing me on.

So far, talking has not helped. I always imagined that was because I need to talk to a person who can give me the answers/explanations etc. etc. I don't just want to 'manage' this illness. I want to be all clear. Anything short of that is not good enough because I will always be terrified of it spiralling out of control again.

Sorry, this post is all jumbled and a complete mish mash of verb tenses, but I can't be bothered to edit.

So far, talking has not helped. I always imagined that was because I need to talk to a person who can give me the answers/explanations etc. etc. I don't just want to 'manage' this illness. I want to be all clear. Anything short of that is not good enough because I will always be terrified of it spiralling out of control again.

MOSP
I went through this exactly as you describe it and I expect many others did too. I too wanted someone to give me explanations and then tell me what to do to stop me ever thinking about it again. For me it went on for a couple fo years. I was looking for a magic key - for someone to say (and I know this sounds ridiculous) "look this will go away if you jumnp four times and breathe in this way, wiggle your fingers 20 times a day and you will be happy and forget everything that happened".

I wanted someone else to tell me what to do, I would do it, and it would all go away. I wanted someone outside of me to fix it. Very recently i discovered they couldn't, but that was the very last piece of a jigsaw puzzle for me after 2 years of therapy.

The point I want to make here is that until you do start talking, no matter how pointless it may seem now, it helps and it is taking you forward.

I can;t remember how many times I said to myself, this is pointless, i'm not getting any better, I still have panic attacks therefore I am not cured. BUT bit by bit I WAS getting better, I was socialising more, valueing myself more, was less angry around my children (one even said "mummy, you are less shouty now"). It's those things that got better for me first. I am now moving on to dealing with the abuse because I feel more confident in myself, stronger. Maybe that's what your psychiatrist means about you being ready.

I completely and utterly understand what you mean when you say you don;t want to manage it, you want to be clear of it. I wanted to be cured, like going to the doctor and being given a pill or an operation and it be gone. My psychiatrist used to say to me, but psychological trauma is not like that, it's a journey.

Now after 3 years I realise, there is no cure, I thought managing it was a cop out and that the term manage it meant it was still there at the same level of intensity but I could manage to cope with it.

I now realise thats not what managing the situation is. For me at least, I now realise that there is no cure, it will never go away as it is part of my life experience, HOWEVER, by talking the intensity goes, the pain and hurt, anger, shame, guilt and all those other things that keep you trapped go as well and I came to a point where I accepted it had happened, i had times of pure hell, and now it doens;t define me.

Sorry, this is a bit garbled, but what you wrote was so like what I could have written 3 years ago. I want you to know that it seems impossible but getting it out is important.