CPTSD Story

[Gladius]

It's about time I write my story here. I think it's the right place to share it in case someone ressonates with it. I'm writing all this from a position of understanding, I hope there is no blame or anger in here. 

I recently learned I was an emotionally neglected child. If you met my parents, you would say they're nice people. I had food on the table, good education, nice clothes, extra curricular activities, and so on. 

But.

I felt no one really cared about me. I spent much time alone, even though I had two healthy parents and a sister under the same roof. I remember being very shy and insecure from early age. And my parents shaming me for being so shy, which was a never-ending cycle. I can't recall them being happy for any of my achievements. My father was specially rough or absent. They were arguing a lot, not minding if they were in front of me.

When I was 8 until 14, my sister had a serious eating disorder, which brought even more fighting at home. I learned to just shut up while watching TV or observing them talking. For years.

At 13, I was transferred to a public school, where I didn't know anyone. Unexpectedly for me, I was bullied. At the beginning, I was shocked: I'm tall, atractive, and intelligent, so I didn't understand why that was happening to me (looking back, I believe that was the reason). The problem is, I was so insecure by then, I couldn't stand up to bullies. It took me several months to do it, and still I walked afraid until the end of high school.

After that, I dragged problems all my life: Poor decision-making, toxic relationships, people pleasing, oh and terrible skin disease... you name it. My love life was frustrating, since beautiful women approached me but I constantly sabotaged myself. My professional career was going nowhere and I was isolating more and more. However, I was living in denial, still trying to lead a "normal" life but running on empty. By the way, "running on empty" is a good book someone recommended me here. 

Discovering Leo and Actualized helped a lot. However, I have been living in denial for most of my adult life. I'm 34 now, and I realise how precious time is. This summer I tried (again) visiting a therapist, and I nailed it. She's not only warm and understanding, but knew how to do EMDR which was so helpful. My skin issues are gone, my relationships are more authentic and I'm almost not dwelling in the past anymore. Also journaling here and the people I met along the way helped a lot. I'm really grateful for that.

So my only advice would be to face your demons, even if it's not pleasant at all. The sole fact of tagging some concepts like cptsd, emotional neglect, autosabotage, inner child, outer critic... is huge.

Life gets better and better now, and I'm confident there's a lot of room for improvement. Being through this journey gave me skills most people don't have.

It sounds quite dark... FYI I missed the good stuff that happened in my life for the sake of simplicity

[studentofthegame]

Well done for coming this far on your journey mate. I am a similar age and have a similar background in some respects so i can relate to much of it.

What’s the plan going forwards?

[Gladius]

@Leonora Many thanks. Sure, you can work on it by yourself. There are tons of free content on the internet with all these concepts. If you can buy books, I'd suggest to start with Pete Walker. He wrote a lot about it. 

@studentofthegame Thank you, sir. That's a really good question. Now what? My main goal is to change to a more creative career, where I can use the skills I learned on this journey. If I can meet a nice girl along the way, that would be great too. I guess I just want a "normal" life now?