A Few Words About Ego State Therapy and Healing

In November of 2012, I published the following post on my Word Press site (Healing Complex PTSD Symptoms), and I'm republishing it here.  It is relevant to my present situation in therapy because I have, for the most part, reduced my symptoms to the point where they don't interfere with my daily life as they once had done--I have gone from not wanting to leave my apartment for fear that my symptoms would be triggered to not being worried about triggers. Also, my discussion in this post may give you insight into how you can take control of your own PTSD symptoms and reduce them. 

Although presently my therapist and I are working with EMDR, I have spent over two years working with Ego State Therapy to get ready for the EMDR phase of my therapy.  When I began my work with this therapist in April of 2010, I told her that my goal was to get symptom relief through EMDR.  She told me that before she would work with EMDR, I needed to get ready and that part of getting ready involved working with my ego states to make them stronger and to bring about some inner harmony.  I was not happy with these words because I wanted to begin EMDR as soon as possible, get my symptoms reduced, and get the hell out of therapy!  After all, I'd been trying for 30 years to find relief, and I wanted to reach my goal before I got any older.  But I decided to trust my therapist, to trust that she knew what she was talking about.  Now, of course, I know that she did, indeed, speak the truth to me.  I am so happy that I hung in with her!  Together we are working with EMDR, and it is helping me immensely to defuse the trauma energy that has caused my symptoms--flashbacks, dissociative episodes, numbing, etc.. 

Finding relief from these symptoms has been my goal, and for all practical purposes, I am there most of the time.  Now I need to learn to adapt to this new state of mind.  But I'm sure I can do it.  If I've managed to reach the point where I am now, I can certainly find my way from here!  However, I still have a lot to learn, and I know that as long as I have my wits about me, the learning will never stop. 

Hope and peace to you . . .

As you are aware, Ego State Therapy as developed after the middle of the 1900s by such people as John and Helen Watkins, is a therapy in which the client identifies his or her ego states and then is helped by the therapist to bring these ego states into a state of harmony so they can work in the best interest of the client to improve the quality of his or her life.  (http://www.clinicalsocialwork.com/egostate.html) This process is much like family therapy, but rather than work with members of a family, the therapist works with the “family” within the client and also teaches the client how to do this internal work on his own.  This therapy is often a precursor to EMDR therapy, but even when used without EMDR, Ego State Therapy can bring about amazing relief from C-PTSD and its symptoms.

How do I know this?  I’ve been engaged in Ego State Therapy for over 2 1/2 years now, and I can testify to its effectiveness.  Wow, can I ever!!  

In one of my recent posts  (November 28, 2012), I mentioned the spaciness and feeling of being “unsettled” that can creep up on me at odd times but primarily before my therapy appointments.  Last week, I mentioned to my therapist that this feeling is very uncomfortable, especially when it makes me feel disoriented.  She replied that she would help me learn how to control the sensations.  I was amazed!  I had no idea that controlling the spaciness and other odd sensations was within my power.  She did not elaborate on her offer to help me, and we ran out of time, so when I left her office, I did not know any more about the “how to” than I did when I entered her office.

However, I left my therapist’s office with one extremely important piece of information:  I have the power to control those psychic sensations that had been making me so uncomfortable!!   I had assumed that those feelings were beyond my control.  I had assumed that, like my liver and my kidneys, my psyche did its own thing on its own without any guidance from my conscious mind.  Boy, am I ever happy to know that my assumptions were incorrect!  Ever since my therapist enlightened me and I realized that I was in charge, I have had no episodes of spaciness and no peculiar feelings that have left me disoriented.  I am confident, now, that when/if I sense the condition beginning to come back, I can keep it at bay by recognizing and acknowledging its approach and negotiating within myself to keep it from coming on full force.  I’m sure this will be tested in the next few weeks, but I’m equally sure now that I can effectively keep myself clear-minded and fully able to function.

In addition to the above, I am now fully aware of my inner family and feel capable of negotiating with the various members whenever I feel the need to do so.  This is another amazing step for me.  I realize that anyone reading this might wonder how I could have been in therapy for several years without being aware that I can control what goes on inside my mind.  All I can say in reply is this: If you are in the throes of trying to heal C-PTSD,  you may understand.  Trauma damage, the major underlying component of C-PTSD, renders one’s internal “family” dysfunctional. 

Communication among the various parts of the psyche and communication between the “family members” and the person whose psyche they inhabit is often nonexistent.  Thus, despite the fact that I have been working for about two years to bring about harmony within myself, it’s taken me this long to reach the point where I feel as if that “family” and I inhabit the same body.  But now I do!  What an amazing feeling!  I actually feel “together” for the first time I can remember.  So this is what it feels like to be “normal”?  I must be healing!  Is that possible?  Is the end in sight? 
 
I’ve lived long enough to be skeptical, so I’m not jumping up and down and rejoicing and assuming that I’ve “made it.”  No, I know better than that!  But I do know that I feel together, as in the expression “Get it together.”  I also know that I feel empowered, at least I feel that I can manage myself.  I don’t want to manage anyone else.  Beyond those statements I will not go at this point.  It’s too soon.  I’m not planning to stop therapy right now, either.  I need to stay with it until I’ve adapted to my new self. 

Whew!  It’s been a long old haul, but I think daylight is a lot closer than it ever has been.  My short message is this:  If I can do it, you can do it.  With the help of a competent therapist, you, too, can heal.  I’m looking forward now to a downhill journey rather than the uphill battle I have fought in the past.  
 
In the spirit of the Advent and Christmas season, I ask you, if you are healing from C-PTSD, to pass on the Hope to others.  Here is a quote from Winston Churchill that may inspire you:

 “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” — Winston Churchill

Seen With My Third Eye: A Glimpse Into the Therapeutic Relationship

Seen With My Third Eye--July, 2013

Therapy, in its traditional form, is all about the client--so the books say.  And that is true, to a point.  My therapist's job is to help me undo the damage done by people in my past, the damage that underlies my Complex PTSD.  And I have come a long way, thanks to her skillful help.  She is a clinical psychologist, and I am her client.  So--what does this mean, exactly?

I can't answer that question for anyone else, but I can partially, at least, answer it for myself.  During my first two-plus years seeing my therapist twice a week, I worked with my ego states to bring them to something resembling harmony: not an easy task for somebody my age!  Over my 74 years of life, I had developed a lot of ego states, and it took me a while to identify and define most of the parts within my psyche that make up my "self."  I'm not certain that I've identified all of those parts yet, but I identified enough of them to enable me to do what I have needed to do to alleviate my PTSD symptoms.  This was work I had to do on my own, for the most part. 

In fact, I did my ego state therapy work at home.  I wrote a dialogue or script of more than 1,000 pages in which my parts interacted and worked together "to promote the recovery and the happiness of Jean."  Where did my therapist come into the picture at this time?  She listened to me read installments of my dialogue, she encouraged me, and she witnessed my progress.  The few times I seemed to veer off course, she helped me find my direction.  During the time I worked on my dialogue, my therapist and I interacted in my sessions and worked on our own relationship.  Thus, by the time I had gone as far as I needed to go in this part of my therapy, I was able to transition into the phase of therapy where she and I worked with EMDR, and that is where we are now. 

Oh, I can always return to my dialogue when I need to do that, but now our focus is on EMDR and trying to shift trauma energy from my right brain to my left brain so I can understand it, talk about it, and then let it go. My therapist facilitates this shifting of energy by tapping first on one knee and then on the other, bilateral stimulation, as I actively recall the events connected to childhood traumas.  I am doing the remembering, and I am processing the traumas, and she is doing her part to help me do the processing.  We are working together, but our tasks are not the same.   The tasks are, in fact, very different from one another.  I am aware of my role, and she is aware of her role.  I am alone in my role, and she is alone in her role.  In a sense, we are working together, but each of us is working alone.

Yesterday, however, I learned something about myself, something I did not expect to learn.  I learned that, contrary to what I have believed to this point, sometimes I cannot do my work alone--sometimes I need to share the burden with another person.  Let me explain:  Recently I read a column in the local newspaper discussing the role of fathers in the lives of girls and how the father-daughter relationship can shape a girl's adult life.  As I read this column, memories of my own childhood and my own father flooded back until I felt overwhelmed by feelings of sadness, resentment, and anger--altogether a depressing experience, one I thought I had put to rest.  Obviously, the ghosts are still present and active.  If you have read my posts, you know something about my relationship with my father.  If you have not read my posts, then this post will give you information: Parental Alcoholism, Parental Mental Illness, and Shame: Three Threads In the Tightly-Woven Tapestry of Complex PTSD. 

When I saw my therapist yesterday, then, I was in a real downer.  She and I talked about my father and about my lifelong bouts of feeling invisible (depersonalization), and she helped me as I worked to understand the connection between my father's behavior and attitude towards me and my experiences with depersonalization and derealization.  (For information on derealization, please see my essay titled "Derealization OR Another Trip Down the Rabbit Hole?")  Finally, I could see that my 90-minute session was almost over, and I asked her if there was some way I could do something that would help me lift my mood.  She asked me what I would like to do, and I said that maybe some art work would help.  So she brought out the colored pencils and paper and set up the small table we used for art.  I sat on one side of the table, and she sat across from me. 

Before I began working, however, I suddenly and impulsively asked her if she would work with me.  I simply did not want to do the work by myself.  I wanted her company in this effort.  No--I needed her company in this effort.  She agreed, and we began.  She made a squiggle, and I added to her squiggle, and thus we continued--she and I taking turns.  I loved it!  By the end of my session, we--working together--had created a whimsical, happy little butterfly with a third eye, an eye of intuitive wisdom, so I call it.  You can see this blissful little butterfly at the top of this post, winging her way into the sunshine, guided by a bluebird singing a happy song.  Yesterday, in the process of working together with my therapist to create this blissful little butterfly, I was able to lift myself from the pits of my depressing thoughts and soar into the sunshine, into a much better frame of mind. 

I had come to my session in a miserable frame of mind, but I left feeling happy because my therapist cared enough to join me in creating that little butterfly with the blue and pink wings.  She, in fact, added the bluebird and the music notes.  Before I left, she rolled the picture up, tied a ribbon around it, and suggested that I tape it to my refrigerator door.  I have done that.  I looked at it this morning with my "third eye," the eye of my inner wisdom, and I saw my therapist's care for me.  That makes me happy! 

The really happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery when on a detour. Anon.

Interesting Article You Might Want to Read

Recently, a retired psychologist friend suggested I read articles by Dr. Stephen Porges on his polyvagal theory and the application of his research to healing PTSD.  You might find this information interesting.  Here is a link to one of his articles: http://stephenporges.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25:nicabm-the-polyvagal-theory-for-treating-trauma&catid=5:popular-articles&Itemid=12  Note:  What will appear when you click on this link will be a box with a photo of Mr. Porges and some text describing the article.  If you look at the text carefully, you will see that the word "here" is in blue.  Click on "here" to get the whole article.  It's worth the trouble!

As I read his article, I thought to myself, "Oh, yeah, what he has to say about pitch and voice makes a lot of sense."  See what you think of his theory.  Jean

"Why do people do these things to me?" How I Changed This Question and Changed My Life

 Jean, Second Grade, 1946

 

The title question is one you may have asked yourself at times if you have been the target of abuse and violence.  I've asked myself the question many times throughout my life.  Have I ever gotten an answer that satisfies me?  No, I never have. The people who have targeted me may have their own answers, but I wouldn't know anything about that. Yesterday, though, I had an experience that changed my whole perception of myself, and I realized that I had been asking the wrong question all my life.  I also realized that I needed a new question and a new answer to that question. 

Here is what happened yesterday--I had my therapy session as usual, but I didn't arrive at my therapist's office "as usual."  No, I arrived feeling very nervous and feeling as if something was binding me around my shoulders, as if something was gripping my shoulders--and I was scared.  I told my therapist about this, and she decided that we needed to get to the source of this feeling.  I agreed. 

After a few minutes of EMDR work—EMDR is a very simple technique that enables a person to move emotional experiences from their right brain to their left brain so they can verbalize the feelings and understand them--I began to put the sensations in my shoulders and my fears and nervousness into words.  What my body was remembering, I realized, was the first time I was chased and captured by a group of boys while I was walking home from school.  I was in the second grade, and my route home took me past some areas where there were a lot of vacant lots overgrown with bushes and high grass.  I was a fast walker, and I could run faster than most other girls in my class, but the boys were faster.

The boys caught me and forced me into the bushes.  While several of them held my shoulders down on the ground, the others took some of my clothing off--by then the part of me that wasn’t physical had left my body, gone elsewhere: I had dissociated.  I knew what they were doing, but it didn't hurt because a part of me had mentally “checked out.”  Then the boys left. 

As I struggled to get back onto my feet, I worried about what my mother would say regarding the dirt on the back of my dress.  I was supposed to wear my school dresses three times before putting them into the wash because she had a very basic wringer washer and hated washing and ironing.  I also knew that I didn't dare tell her about the boys because somehow she would make the incident my fault, and she would use her wooden spoon on me.  I couldn't tell her when I was seven about what the boys did anymore than I could tell her at age five about the abuse I endured at the neighbor lady's house.  So I decided to tell my mother that I had been running through the vacant lot and had tripped.  That was why my dress was filthy and my hair was out of its braids.  I'd taken my braids out so I could use my fingers to brush out the dirt.  I can imagine that I looked pretty wild when I reached home, but my mother bought my explanation, got mad at me for getting so dirty, and let me go.
 
Years later, I found myself in the same position--on my back, being held down at my shoulders, and slipping out of my body.  Except by that time, I was in my early twenties.  The person pinning me down was my husband.  I wasn't in my body when he did what he did, so it didn't hurt.  I put up with twenty years of this because I didn't know what else to do.  I couldn't justify leaving him because nobody would believe that I was suffering--so I thought.  And in the 1960s and 1970s, when the legal system in our small town was still grounded in the mentality of "men rule," I well may have been wise in not doing anything about my plight.

Yesterday, at the end of my therapy session, I remembered that, in 1983, after I had ended my  marriage, I asked my former husband one day why he stepped up the violence in our bedroom.  His reply: "Because I wanted to know if there was anyone in your body."  He knew I wasn’t present in my body, yet the only way he imagined he could force me back into my body was by using violence!  Now, there is some twisted thinking.

After I left my therapist yesterday, I caught the first of the buses on my way home.  As I sat on the bus, I became aware that the man two places down from me on the bench seat was muttering, trying to get my attention.  I ignored him.  He reached over and touched my arm to get my attention.  I glared at him and said loudly, "Please don't touch me."  He recoiled, and then he stepped up his muttering, using the words "bitch" and "women libber" and a few more derogatory terms.  I said loudly, "I don't want to talk to you," and continued to ignore him.  He leaned closer and grew louder.  Then his stop came up, and he got out. 

After he had left, I took stock of my feelings and realized that I was ANGRY!  Appropriately ANGRY!  I'm still ANGRY!  Not just about the bus incident but about all the other incidents in which I have been bullied and victimized and abused.  I'll have to figure out what to do with the anger, but I'm glad now that I can feel it.  I guess I have the jerk on the bus to thank for that.  Now, there's an irony! 

So how do I answer the question in the title of this article now?  My answer is very simple:  People bully and hurt other people because they CAN!!  They act out their own "stuff" on other people because they figure they CAN and they can do so without consequences.  And they are often smart enough to pick victims who overtly, at least, show no ability to fight back.

Now, the next question is this:  How can I change "Because they can" to "Because they can't"?  If I change the answer, then I'll need to change the question.  So I propose that the new question be this: "Why don't people victimize me now?"  That would fit with the new answer: "Because they CAN'T!  I won’t let them." 

It’s taken me a long time—74 years, in fact—to transform my old question and answer to my new question and answer, but now that I have done this, I feel strong.  I feel as if I can truly take care of myself and protect myself from bullies and from people who want to stroke their own egos at my expense.  I’ve worked hard and long to change my question and answer, and I’m glad I didn’t give up.  Now, at least, I can live the rest of my life without wearing the word victim around my neck. 

 

 

 

 

Equine Therapy: Happy Trails to You!



Prince and I, Circa 1941

Bob Dylan said it right:  "The times they are a changin'"  Along with society's changing times in general, changes are coming into my personal life.  I'm about to relocate to Chehalis, Washington, and with this relocation will come huge changes in my therapy and in other aspects of my life.  Why the relocation?

My main reasons for relocating are that once again I find myself being priced out of my housing--the rent goes up, and my income remains static--and I want to return to a more rural area.  I have applied for HUD housing, the kind that keeps my rent at 30% of my income.  I have lived in this sort of housing three times, and I swore I would never live in this housing again, but as somebody said, "desperate times require desperate measures . . ."  My present apartment and my previous apartment were classed as "affordable housing."  The problem with "affordable housing" is that it gives no protection from unaffordable rent increases.  Oh, there is a ceiling on the rents, but the ceiling changes to accommodate the rent increases, so the so-called ceiling is no protection at all for those of us who are living on the financial edge.

I've reached a point in therapy where I can make a transition.  My work with Ego State Therapy prepared me well for EMDR, and the work I have done in EMDR has helped me deactivate the trauma energy accumulated from the most devastating of the childhood traumas.  Yes, EMDR does what it is cracked up to do!  I can certainly vouch for that.  My therapist and I plan to go full steam to do as much EMDR work as possible so that when I leave, I will have rendered a lot of the trauma energy harmless--inasmuch as possible, at any rate.  So what is the next step?  The answer to this question is complex; however, I will attempt to answer it clearly.

A couple of weeks ago, I read a very depressing article by Allan N. Schore, PhD, a member of the faculty at UCLA and a prominent name in the area of infant attachment.  Here is a link to his article: http://www.francinelapides.com/docs-mar-2008/Schore-5.pdf  After I read this article, I asked myself, "Why am I working so hard in therapy?  According to this article, healing is a hopeless prospect for me!"  Of course, I had overlooked the fact that already I have experienced some healing in that I have alleviated my PTSD symptoms and have processed and reduced the effects of some of my childhood traumas.  When I told my therapist how much of a downer Dr. Schore's article seemed, her immediate response was to say, "I don't understand why he didn't tell the other side of the issue.  He described the damages in his first book, and then in his second book, the companion book, he described the process of healing the damage."  Wow!  By the time I left my therapist's office, I was once more my optimistic self, and I even had a copy of Dr. Schore's Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self to take home and read.  I have not read the book yet--reading it is going to be a challenge for me because I have no background in the field of brain science--but the title alone is enough to justify my optimism.

"Affect Regulation":  What does this term mean?  Very roughly, it has to do with the interaction between an infant and its caregiver and the effect of the interaction upon the infant's ability to regulate its emotions.  This, of course, is a simplistic description of an extremely complex process, but it's the best I can do at this point.  I have not had a chance to Google the term extensively, but if you are curious, you can do that.  If the interaction between infant and caregiver has not been consistent and "good enough," then the infant must somehow deal with its needs and emotions on its own.  The problem is that our brains are not wired to do this solo--we are wired to interact with other humans.  When we, as babies, must do alone what we are wired to do with another human, we run the risk of "getting it wrong."  And as you know, when we lay a flawed foundation and then attempt to build upon this flawed foundation, the whole structure can eventually fall down around our ears. 

As it happens, I am one of millions of adults whose mothers believed that touching babies and responding to their cries between feedings would produce "spoiled" tyrants.  Mothers who believed this and who did not respond to their babies denied their babies the interaction which the babies were naturally wired to expect.  Like many other adults raised by mothers who followed this policy, I have struggled all my life to keep my "structure" from falling down around my ears.  Now that my life is nearing an end, I'm beginning to understand why this struggle has taken so much time and energy, time and energy I could have used in other, more productive and creative ways.  In other words, my caregiver did not interact with me in a way that enabled me to build a solid psychic foundation. 

My recent awakening to the fact that I was cheated of this crucial interaction could cause my state of mind to take a real nosedive; however, I must be, as the song from South Pacific states, a "cockeyed optimist" because I don't do nosedives that easily.  And when I do nosedive, I seem to pull out of it when I find the slightest grain of hope or inspiration.  Granted, I spent the first few weeks of my life in a sterile hospital nursery waiting for my mother to recover from her kidney ailment so she could take me home.  Not much interaction with a caregiver there!  And then when we did go home, there still was not much mother-baby "mirroring" because I was on a strict four-hour feeding schedule with no interaction between times.  Very typical of the times--the era from 1900 through 1945.  As I said, there are millions of people running around who survived the same type of infancy I survived--unfortunately, some infants did not survive, victims of the "failure to thrive" syndrome.  So now that I am aware of this deficit within my psyche, what can I do about it?  This leads me to the next step in my therapy, the prospect of participating in equine therapy. 

What is equine therapy?  Here is a link to a site that answers this question: 
http://humanequinealliance.org/the-heal-model/  In short, equine therapy is psychotherapy that involves interacting with horses.  As I stated at the beginning of this article, I am hoping to relocate to Chehalis, Washington, and just outside Chehalis is the therapy ranch discussed on the web site attached to the link.  My present therapist, a clinical psychologist, is as excited about the possibility of my participating in equine therapy as I am.  We both see this therapy as a good next step because the work with horses will give me a chance to do some repair work on the foundation of my psyche, the affect regulation work that I did not have the chance to do when I was an infant. 

Of course, even though I have spoken with Leigh Shambo, the person who runs the therapy ranch, and have been given the go-ahead, I still have to be sure of the funding.  However, my insurance may pay for this.  If it does, then I'm in--as soon as I relocate.  I'm excited about this opportunity!  And as Leigh Shambo says, horse therapy is not only beneficial--it's just plain fun!  And I'm up for that! 

As I stated at the beginning of this post, the times are changing, and my life is changing.  Transitions are hard--what an understatement that is!  But the challenge of a transition can be energizing.  We'll see how this transition goes.  Here is a quote by Andy Warhol that pretty much says it all:  They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.  I need to remember these words!

 

In Response to My Readers: Parenting, Marriage, and Complex PTSD



The Icon I am working on now:  Virgin of Tenderness
A Work in Progress

June 26, 2013

Today I'd like to respond to two search terms that have popped up on my stat page recently:  1. Complex PTSD and marriage, and 2. Complex PTSD and parenting.

1.  Complex PTSD and marriage--
I am assuming here that the person who typed this term into the search engine and landed on my blog site was asking the question, "Can a marital relationship bring about C-PTSD?"  In other words, can a bad marriage cause C-PTSD?  I'll do my best to reply.  In the process of replying to this question, I may also address the question, "If a spouse has C-PTSD when he or she enters a marriage, will that affect the marital relationship adversely?"  Please bear in mind that I am not a mental health professional; I am, however, a survivor of child abuse and, later, of spousal abuse.  I use my own learning derived from experience and from reading and discussing to answer these questions. 

When I was married in 1961, I had no idea I had C-PTSD, and I had no idea that my spouse possibly had the same disorder.  What I knew was this:  I had a hard time trusting people; I also felt that if I didn't marry at that time, nobody else would ever want me.  Why did I have a hard time trusting?  Why did I feel totally worthless and as if nobody would ever want to marry me?  I couldn't answer those questions.  I simply knew how I felt.  I was twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, and I knew I felt as if I didn't fit into society, but I was not sure why.  Much, much later and after twenty years of domestic violence, I began to understand. 

Now, over fifty years after I married, I feel I can attempt to reply to the first question.  Here goes:  Research literature in the field of domestic violence, PTSD, and C-PTSD in general points to the tendency for people who have endured abuse in their childhood and have not healed to go into a marriage that will repeat the abuse.  The abuse in marriage may not, of course, be exactly the same as the childhood abuse, but it may resemble the childhood abuse in some ways.  For example, a woman who has been abused by her parents and/or other significant people during her childhood and who has not had help to overcome the effects of this abuse may marry a man who has personality characteristics that are similar to her abusers' personality characteristics.  Her decision may not be a conscious decision, of course, but at some level she feels "comfortable" with the man because he is "familiar" to her. 

In my case, my father would fly into rages and be physically and verbally violent towards me.  This was how he controlled me. Unawares, I married a man who showed the same behaviors.  Somehow, after we were married, he picked up on the fact that when he raged at me, he could, just as my father had done, frighten me into submission.  After our separation, my husband admitted that his rages were not really about his anger so much as his desire to control me.  He also admitted that if I had not put a stop to the dynamics in our household, one of us would eventually have been dead--and he would not have been the corpse!

My marriage lasted for twenty years because I put up with the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse my husband dished out; I thought our kids needed a father and a mother. Besides, I was used to being abused!  Why would my marriage be different in that respect from my childhood?  After I reported my husband to the police and filed for divorce, I realized that perhaps it would have been better for the kids if I had not hung in for all those years.  Now I am convinced of this.  However, now it's too late to undo the situation.  All I can do is be supportive of my adult kids and try to fix myself--which I am doing.  Yes, a bad marriage can add to the burden of C-PTSD.  If the marriage lasts long enough, I suppose that the prolonged violence and the abuse involved in a typical domestic violence situation could even cause C-PTSD in a person who did not have the disorder going into the marriage.  All I can say with any authority, however, is that I entered my marriage with C-PTSD, and the traumatic events I experienced in my marriage exacerbated my C-PTSD.  Presently, I'm working hard to heal the damages, and the sexual abuse and emotional abuse I experienced during those twenty years have made my healing more difficult. 

In examining the issue of whether or not the presence of C-PTSD would affect the marital relationship adversely, I can only guess that it would.  I say that because now that I understand more about the dynamics of my childhood and my marriage, and now that I realize I am not worthless, I feel confident that if my self esteem had been "normal" and if I had recognized my husband's bullying for the manipulative ploy that it was, I would have left my marriage early on.  I'm sure that no woman with a healthy ego would have tolerated my former husband's behavior.  She certainly would not have allowed her children to be subjected to my former husband's behavior!  But if one or both parties in a marriage come into the relationship with C-PTSD, the chances are excellent that sooner or later the marriage will deteriorate into a violent mess, which is what happened in my marriage.  All parties, including the perpetrator, suffer, and if the process is not stopped, somebody dies. 

2.  Complex PTSD and parenting--

Building upon what I said in the first reply, I would have been a much better parent if I had not had the burden of C-PTSD and if I had not been trying to raise kids in a domestic violence situation.  Their lives and mine would have been entirely different.  I know this for a fact because after I turned my husband over to the police in 1981, I became a single parent and raised my daughter for five more years.  While the five years were not easy, they were good in some respects, and for once, I felt as if I could be a parent without living in fear of my former husband.  My daughter, too, learned to live without the ever-present shadow of her father.  The situation was beneficial for both of us!  Both of us lived with C-PTSD, but at least we were away from the domestic violence of the past.  Here are just a few of the changes we experienced:

1.  When my daughter and I lived together without my former husband, she and I could interact without having to deal with his rages and temper tantrums.  There was no "third party" to interfere with our communication and our attempt to negotiate life together.

2.  I was able to discipline my daughter with love and reason, and neither of us lived in fear of my former husband's physical violence or sexually abusive behavior.

3.  I helped my daughter get into a summer work program, and she earned the money to buy a horse.  My former husband would not allow her to have a horse because he told her that she would never take care of it.  By participating in the federally-funded work program, my daughter learned how to work and also how to apply for work and be interviewed.  She not only bought a horse, but she took care of the horse and learned to ride, a skill that made her happy and helped her feel good about herself.

We both lived with the burden of our C-PTSD, but we were free from the horrors of a life lived in a domestic violence situation.  As I stated, these were not easy years.  My daughter was trying to heal, and so was I.  But the two of us were free to develop a relationship.  We had not been able to do that as long as we feared my former husband. 

I've addressed the matter of "C-PTSD and parenting" as well as I can.  It's not a simple matter to address.  I feel that the presence of C-PTSD in one or both parents can lead to the development of a domestic violence situation if the parents don't get help to heal themselves.  Also, if people don't get help, they often don't have the insight into their own situations necessary to see the warning signs of impending disaster.  I was in that position.  If only I had seen the warnings and had understood the implications of the warnings.  But I was blind.  I didn't see the horror until I stumbled over it.  Then I put an end to the whole disastrous mess, but by then, the damage had been done.  Over thirty years later, my kids and I are still dealing with it. 

As I have said so many times in posting to this blog:  If you have C-PTSD, you need competent professional help so you can heal.  To get some idea as to the healing process, please click on "Healing . . . " in my topics list.  I wish you all the best in your efforts to heal.  I pray that by sharing my experience, I can save somebody some grief. 

Saturday, June 15th, 2013: A Response to Your Searches




My latest icon, finished on May 22nd:  What do you suppose he is thinking?

Dear Readers,
When I looked today at the search terms that have brought you my site recently, I found three that I would like to address:  1. Is PTSD permanent?  2.  gentle c-ptsd  3.  healing setbacks.  I'll do my best to address these in this post.  

1.  Is PTSD permanent?

This is a complicated question to answer, and I'm not a trained professional, but I will do my best to respond by relying on my personal experience and what I have learned over the years.

First, there is what might be called "straightforward PTSD," and this is the sort of problem that a person might have after a one-time traumatic, violent event.  Or it may be the type of thing that might result from events during combat.  I have had no experience with combat-induced PTSD, and all I can discuss is PTSD as it relates to abuse. 

If a woman who otherwise has had few traumatic experiences in her life is raped one time, that person may develop PTSD due to the traumatic effect of the rape.  If this is the case, then she has a good chance of healing completely IF she immediately gets the appropriate therapy.  If she does not get the right help, she may continue having the symptoms of PTSD--flashbacks, nightmares, dissociative episodes, etc.  If she gets effective help, however, she will be able to remember the event but not have the symptoms of PTSD.  The incident will be a bad memory, but it won't render her dysfunctional.  In other words, the PTSD will not be permanent, most likely.

If a woman who has been abused repeatedly throughout her childhood and then as an adult is raped, if she has been kidnapped and held hostage for a period of time, if she has been a member of a cult, or if she has been involved long-term in a domestic violence situation, then chances are she has developed Complex PTSD.  IF she gets appropriate treatment, she can heal.  But successful treatment for a person who has C-PTSD takes far longer than successful treatment for a person who has had a one-time traumatic event. 

Can healing be permanent for a person who has had C-PTSD?  My answer--I'm not sure.  I am now going through the final part of my own treatment, the EMDR, and I am not sure how permanent my healing will be.  Time and just plain living will give me the answer to that, I suspect.  However, I can say that for about a year, now, I have not had flashbacks, and I have not dissociated to any degree.  I seem to see life more clearly now than I have ever seen life, and so far my symptoms have not returned. 

I anticipate being in therapy for maybe six more months.  I plan to go as far as I can with EMDR and then get whatever help I need in adjusting to my new way of seeing the world.  If I experience symptoms after leaving therapy, I believe I will be able to deal with them on my own, probably by working on my own with my ego states.  It was the work I did organizing and bringing peace to my ego states that helped alleviate the PTSD symptoms, after all, and there is no reason why I cannot use the therapy on my own should the symptoms recur.  My therapist has assured me, also, that if I need to consult with her via Skype, we can do that, for I plan to relocate when I'm finished with therapy.  I'm moving to a more rural area where I can see horses and cows rather than concrete.  I'll let you know what happens!

2.  Gentle c-ptsd

I'm not 100% sure what the person who typed this into the search engine wanted to know, but I'll assume that the person wanted to know whether there was such a thing as "gentle c-ptsd." 

I have never read about "gentle c-ptsd," so I will reply to this solely from personal experience.  There have been times in my life when my ptsd symptoms have seemed to be dormant, when I have not had flashbacks and the other nasty symptoms.  However, I know now that the symptoms have been, like the encapsulated tb bacillus, just waiting to erupt into a full-blown problem.  I have no idea why my symptoms suddenly became so horrendous and life-disturbing when I was age 70, but they did.  Nothing I have read has told me why the symptoms may lie dormant for years and then become evident.  It's a mystery. 

However, I know now that even though I did not have the full-blown symptoms, the "gentle" times in my life have been an illusion.  This is because I was experiencing my life through the distorted lens of all the other aspects of C-PTSD--the lack of self esteem, the feeling that I don't fit into the world of "normal" people, the sense of being stupid, the desire to erase myself from the face of the earth because I shouldn't be here, and so forth.  I didn't recognize these parts of C-PTSD as being distortions in my thinking.  I thought these thoughts were accurate and true.  But now I know they are not accurate and true. 

So while C-PTSD may seem "gentle" because the miserable symptoms of PTSD do not seem present, the other aspects of C-PTSD are alive and active in the psyche and doing their own damage.  The longer a person goes without help, the more damage the C-PTSD can do.  I'm lucky!  I knew I had a complicated problem, and I persevered in finding effective help--and I found it.  Now I'm reaping the benefits of my hard work.  It's worth the effort! 

3.  Healing setbacks--

If you find my topic list on this blog and click on "Ups and Downs of the Process," you may find what you are looking for.  I've experienced my share of "downs"in the healing process, but when this happens, you just keep going.  It's a two-step dance--two steps forward, and one step backward.  Over time, though, the setbacks fade, and the dance becomes more like "three steps forward--one step back."  Progress peaks, of course, when you get to "ten steps forward--no steps back."  I hope the articles you find in "Ups and Downs of the Process" help you!  Namaste . . .