Being pushed with my face on the hard truths after a trigger is truthfully painful. Yes, pun intended.

Today I have faced and learned the truth about my own impatience when I am in crisis. I have realized I am “hiding” behind the fact that I have C-PTSD. Realizing that I have used it as a shield hurts a lot. I have said it too many times, ” I can’t help it I have C-PTSD ” Which is partly true. I do have C-Ptsd but I am still responsible for my own actions. This is, to begin with, the reason why I have been working so hard on healing. And then coming to the conclusion that I didn’t take that responsibility like I should have been doing was a kick in the ass I rightfully deserved.

When I am in crisis I have no patience because there’s fear, intrusive thoughts, and emotional pain that takes over my rational thinking. I am ashamed of the fact that I couldn’t control these emotions. I handled it all wrong and I am sorry.

I don’t think there’s anything really that can excuse me from taking that responsibility.

Am I too hard on myself? I don’t think I am. I feel confident that I am able to learn to practice more patience I only hope and pray that those who love me and that I surround myself with will practice their patience with me as well while I am healing and learning. I am in fact actually grateful I was able to face this truth, it gives me the chance to do something with it.

I just wish I had this much insight when I am in fact in crisis. Let this be a wake-up call for me.

Every so often I get challenged with questions about my symptoms and my self diagnose of C-PTSD. Understandable from one point of view but at the same time the other side of the coin is that it hurts, a lot. One of the things that I’ve been challenged with a few times is my memory loss, my short term memory damage that I have to deal with. It’s opted a few times that it’s a selective memory that I have.

It’s very painful to go from a very good memory to someone who has a very bad memory. I was a student who didn’t have to study for her exams, A child who won most memory games. Today I have to write things down I want to remember and set a timer to be reminded about events. It’s very painful that the symptoms of abuse, done to me by other people are being used against me.

I have not received an official diagnosis of C-PTSD because it’s not in the DSM 5. That’s why simple as is. In the next DSM, it will be listed and you will see that more people will be (unfortunately) receiving the diagnose of C-PTSD. However at the beginning of my healing journey when I went to my doc the first time and they forwarded me to the trauma center who treated me The diagnose I was given was C-PTSD. That’s what my doctor wrote down.

Since my first appointment was still far away I started to research C-PTSD and I found Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. From thinking I was losing my mind and going insane I suddenly had a lot of lightbulbs around me flashing on one after another. I started to understand what was happening to me was the result of trauma, abuse and I was definitely not going insane At a much later appointment with that same doctor and it was discussed again I found out they meant Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, that doesn’t match with the abuse I’ve gone through.

PTSD is mostly caused by single event trauma at any point in life whereas C-PTSD is caused by severe ongoing trauma starting in early childhood and is usually caused by several types of abuse.

The trauma center specialized in my type of trauma never gave me any single diagnosis they just treated me for my symptoms. Treatments that have been given for people with C-PTSD and when I say C-PTSD I mean Complex PTSD. It makes sense because C-PTSD is known to have such a variety of symptoms that overlap symptoms of other mental health problems that they simply don’t want to be misdiagnosed by anyone and it’s as mentioned before NOT in the DSM 5. Treatments that have been given for people with C-PTSD and when I say C-PTSD I mean Complex PTSD.

“The stress of PTSD can have an adverse effect on memory. Specifically, this can have severe effects on the hippocampus, including a decrease in hippocampus volume, causing problems with transferring short–term to long–term memory, and with the formation of short–term memories” Quoted from Wikipedia

“According to recent research, the hippocampus, an organ in your brain, literally shrinks by 8 percent in the brains of PTSD sufferers. That’s a significant problem because the hippocampus is responsible for regulating emotion, storing long-term memory, and sorting old and new memories.” Quoted from April Lyons

Stress can cause acute and chronic changes in certain brain areas which can cause long-term damage. Over-secretion of stress hormones most frequently impairs long-term delayed recall memory but can enhance short-term immediate recall memory. This enhancement is particularly relative to emotional memory. Quoted from Wikipedia

I have been sexually, physically, and emotionally abused, I don’t have a selective memory, I have C-PTSD. It’s hard enough already to deal with everything I meet with throughout my day without having to defend myself for my symptoms. Especially in stressful situations, when I’m trying to focus on not dissociating and when my anxiety pops up which is all the time or when I have a panic attack less or more severe, memory loss is a serious symptom I have to deal with. I have a hard time recalling words I want to use in my sentences or I forgot what I was going to say or what someone else said a minute ago. And that are just a few examples that make communicating hard for me sometimes more than other times.

I am sorry but not sorry for the inconvenience it causes for other people because it is not my fault and I am working hard on my healing every single day and with that, I am taking my responsibility.

Dynamics of a simple sentence worded to you can be affected by your past more then we may realize. We often do not just only react to the actual moment but rather influenced by past experiences that may have nothing to do with the current situation. Which then makes us come across as overreacting. But the truth is we only overreacted to what happened outside of us while there’s a whole world happening inside of us.

Obviously this is subject to cause huge problems and difficulties in about any relationship since it is impossible for anyone to constantly and always be aware and know whats going on inside of you even if they know you very well and through and through. They can not and should not have to because they are a person on their own with their own feelings and experiences.

For those who don’t know what I am on about, I’ll give a small example that may make it recognizable. We all have our pasts and have dealt with less pleasant people and situations sometimes. In my example, everything starts out fine, with no complications.

After a difficult past with others, you find yourself ina brand new relationship and truly it’s a wonderful experience, until…

You both are about to go out and while you are still getting ready he is already waiting for you while you still seem to be unable to decide which shoes to wear. So he urges you by kindly and gently saying “Come on baby we’ll be late they are waiting on us.” Nothing wrong with that right? Though you respond irritated and upset that he needs to calm down and relax. Little does he know that you are still getting yourself mentally ready for this outing and that it’s more than just a choice of what shoes to wear.

Even less knowledge does he probably have of your past experience in a similar situation with a person who you were in an unhealthy relationship with that did not go so peacefully. YOU may even not even be immediately aware of how this past relationship affects this current situation. Yet the emotions and feelings from the past have been awakened now and this is not even necessarily accompanied by the awareness of the fact of the likeness of both situations or rather the differences.

When we learn to see the dynamic of this with our inner witness we can then learn how to evaluate the situation better and respond better rather than react emotionally. To be able to respond differently (internally or externally) we need to evaluate the current situation and ask ourselves if our emotions really match the current situation without letting ourselves be affected by our triggered emotions.

From this, we can learn a few things:

• We are still hurt and /or angry about the past situation
• We are not currently being hurt
• We are reacting to emotions based on our past
• The other person has no fault in this

C-PTSD is a complex post-traumatic stress disorder and I have received this diagnosis because of my multiple traumas, starting in my early childhood. While growing up I had multiple different separated from each other traumatic experiences. This makes it extremely difficult and very energy and time consuming to do this because it’s very hard to tell all the emotions from each other.

On top of that, I have due to my traumas and my healing process a renewed freeze reaction because I’m aware I’m not always responding according to a situation, I developed a fear to respond wrongly so I freeze and don’t respond and rather find myself in a situation where I can’t respond due to my fears.

My mind at that moment is working overtime with so much happening at once and is trying to deal with the whole situation at hand. The emotions from the past, the current situation. trying to evaluate it and what my reaction at best should be. My lack of response has startled the other person who doesn’t realize the difficult momentum I find myself in and wonders why I don’t respond to something that’s quite a normal and healthy situation.

Still not bein able to respond adequately my fear grows and I may dissociate because of the overwhelming situation at hand now. I honestly find it difficult to explain how I may react now because I can’t tell at forehand. It happened I reached my wise mind in time and am able to respond well but I may have not and snap. My for the outside world unreasonable reaction is hard to understand and they may react to that themselves which may lead to a huge conflict that we can learn to avoid by training our own inner witness.

Reflecting on my own thoughts and evaluating my feelings led to my latest quote.

My quote is meant to be controversial and leave one to wonder not about me but oneself. This quote has more truth in it then we often recognize or want to admit to, in ourselfs and hopefully will lead to healing oneself just another little step.

This quote is not about that child (or adult) that misbehaves to get attention even tho it could be, it wasn’t what I was aiming for. I’m aiming for something a lot deeper under the surface then that; self-consciousness.

The self-consciousnes to recognize the patterns of our own behavior, without selfblame but with awakening the responcibility we need to have to heal. That’s what this is about.

I could write a whole lot more about my thoughts behind this but for those who come from where I have been or maybe worse hopefully understand it so it may find its way to a greater understanding and a step forward in ones healing process.

In no way I intentionally ask anyone to hurt me. So please don’t. Flat out for those who don’t have a clue. Its about Loving and respecting oneself.

Sleeping problems are very common for people with C-PTSD. There are quite a number of different problems that we can have and honestly, I can not identify all of them since I have not been aware of all of them. So I will stick to those that I have been experiencing myself or that I am still experiencing.

My sleeping problems begin with insomnia. I have periods of time that I hardly sleep at all. This is caused by heightened adrenaline in my body. When I am finally able to sleep I am often still very alert which causes me to sleep extremely light and I wake up between 4 to 8 times a night sometimes. This results in me not getting the sleep I need and extreme exhaustion obviously which affects my overall vulnerability.

Sleep para;ysis is another one on my list. It comes and goes I’m assuming it’s connected to my stress level. I am not as much in panic anymore when it happens and I have my anxiety under control rather fast usually too now.

I used to have sweat nights, I don’t know how to call them else but I recently learned that I’m not the only one with C=PTSD experiencing those. Now I don’t have those anymore for a while already which I am grateful for. I would wake up from a dream or nightmare or something else and finding myself and my sheets wet from sweating. It is been a long time since I have had one of those. Not complaining.

Of course, the Nightmares or Night terrors as they vary in fear level both are existing terms. When woken up by nightmares (Night terrors are a lot less frequent now) I am able to control my anxiety, fear, and disturbance a lot better and often I’m able to go back to sleep after a little while. Aside from those, there are dreams that tell me things that often disturb me. And last but not least te random waking up knowing by a feeling that doesn’t seem to come from me. I don’t like to go into detail about these though.

Apart from all the issues, I do enjoy the nights.. the silence.. the peace of mind that I get when being the only one awake. Not feeling others and not having to be on my guard might be the causes of this peaceful feeling. I love my silent nights.