“EVERYTHING YOU LOVE IS VERY LIKELY TO BE LOST, BUT IN THE END, LOVE WILL RETURN IN A DIFFERENT WAY.”

This is a quote that helps me a lot in my healing journey and I can find true meaning for myself. Especially now today for reason I don’t wish to share. That why I want to share this today here. It’s by Franz Kafka who was a novelist and short-story writer, he never married and never had children. He lived from 1883 until 1924.

When he was 40, he was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin, when he met a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her doll. Together they looked for the doll without success. Then Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again for the doll.

The next day, they still didn’t found the doll and Kafka gave the girl a letter that was supposedly written by the doll that said, “Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I’m going to write to you about my adventures.”  

That was the beginning of a story that continued to the end of Kafka’s life. 

Every time when Kafka and the girl would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures and conversations about the doll, which the girl loved. Finally, Kafka read her a letter where the doll tells them she had come back to Berlin and he gave her a doll he had bought for her. “This does not look at all like my doll,” the girl said. Kafka handed her another letter that was reading: “My trips, they have changed me.” The girl then hugged the new doll and took it home with her.  

Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crevice in the doll. The tiny letter, signed by Kafka, said, “Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”

This story, this quote, tells me about replacing a love that’s lost and within my last relationship, I found so much truth in this that I was reminded about this quote and story. The love this man has given me has proven to be very healing. I feel blessed that we met. Thank you, Ali

How do you explain C-PTSD to another person? How do you explain the feelings that come with it when you yourself have no idea how to even call all the emotions that are running rampage through your body.

How do you explain to someone that just because another person who also happens to have C-PTSD and who appears to be very successful in certain areas that’, that doesn’t mean that you are supposed to be capable of these things too?

How do you explain what’s going on with you when you have to focus on keeping your reactions under control because your in the middle of an episode.

Partners, family, and friends of people with trauma, physically or mentally please do your research, talk about it with your partner, and be patient. And to those with the trauma, be patient with your partner. It IS hard to understand often because they don’t feel what you feel. they have not gone through and are not going through what you feel.

Some may have wondered if I am going to give the answer to the questions I have asked in this article, but I can’t. One person is not the other and your trauma is not mine. Some people are more open and willing to learn about another person’s trauma than another.

Some people are more empathic and understanding than others. Sometimes we just need to accept that we don’t understand something and simply accept what the other person is saying. You don’t always need to understand it. Just being there and listening and making the other person feel heard and not alone means a lot already.

What we feel is only for ourselves to feel. We have no right to tell another person how to feel. How we act on how we feel is our own responsibility and we have no right to blame another person for our own behavior. That being said, an action usually causes a reaction, we are all human keep that in mind and most of all just be mindful overall.

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.

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.

With all the pain of the break-up, I am still hurting from sometimes, I almost forgot the power of love and more importantly how to benefit from this strength within me. It’s not that I had completely forgotten it but when that pain floats ashore and you trip over it so that you have a face-sand experience it’s really hard to appreciate that what is left behind unanswered; Love.

A memory on facebook in the shape of a post I made a few years ago reminded me once again to use this love as well to heal and grow. You just need to see past the pain and realize its the attachment and the loss of a loved one that causes that pain. The love itself does not hurt. Love heals, love has given me the strength to forgive, the power to move on and the understanding to let go. The love I have for this person, however, has not changed or disappeared. It’s still there, in all strength.

How can I still love this person who has caused me so much hurt? Because he is so much more than just that. I am not going into detail but I am simply put not going to dismiss the good because of the pain. The good still outweighs it by far. So perhaps my sentence Omnia Vincit Amor may not make sense to others because we are not together anymore but those people may not understand that love is not the same as attachment.

I am moving on yes, no there is not anyone else in my life to fill up that space. But I am not going to keep hanging in the past. My moving on means I am healing from my wounds and learning from my own mistakes. The love I have for all what is dear to me is the main source of my strength.

Omnia Vincit Amor! <3