Am I Actually Suffering from Complex PTSD? – PART 1

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

Welcome back, fellow mindbenders!

I am going to start off by saying again and again and again – I AM NOT A DOCTOR OF ANY KIND! I am not offering medical advice whatsoever. Rather, I am shining a light on what, I perceive to be, is wrong with ME. And I have no business self-diagnosing. So, I will be following up with a professional about this. But If you happen to see things in my posts that resemble you, then all right. Let’s talk about it. My blog is intended to be interactive, but not for medical advice. But that is where it ends. I want to make that very abundantly clear. I am not here to diagnose people, but to shine a light on some things that we may connect on.

With that said, I feel compelled to talk about something that is fairly new to me: complex PTSD. What is complex PTSD? Everyone, of course, has heard of just PTSD – posttraumatic stress disorder – which has typically been referred to or about people who have gone to war and who have returned traumatized. (Think Vietnam. Hell, think Afghanistan.) OR anyone who has experienced any sort of traumatic event. But there is another kind.

And again, I have no business self-diagnosing myself. But I first came across the topic of complex PTSD on YouTube. YES, YOUTUBE. However, after clicking on it and listening to what they had to say, I felt I needed to do some more research.

So, let’s a take a deeper dive into the world of complex PTSD.

What is complex PTSD?

Complex PTSD or c-PTSD (complex posttraumatic stress disorder) is what happens to a person who has undergone months or even years of repeated trauma or abuse, as opposed to PTSD which is over a shorter period of time. Sufferers are people who have endured extended periods of:

• Physical abuse or violence.
• People who are prisoners of war.
• Ongoing childhood abuse or neglect.
• People forced to traffic themselves or forced into prostitution.

Symptoms

And the resulting behaviors or symptoms have been compared to the PTSD we know, such as flashbacks, nightmares, difficulty sleeping or concentrating, or being startled by loud noises. But there are other symptoms, such as:

• Avoiding situations (and people) that remind them of the trauma. (Me!)
• Being in a continual state of high alert, i.e. hyperarousal. (Me!)
• Belief that the world is a dangerous place. (Me!)
• A loss of trust in self or others. (Me!)
• Often consider themselves to be different from other people. (oh DEFINITELY Me!)
• Holding a negative view of the world and the people in it. (Again, DEFINITELY Me!)
• Losing faith in previously held beliefs. (Me!)
• Losing control over their emotions, such as experiencing intense anger or sadness. (Me!)
• May have thoughts of suicide. (NOT ME!!!)
• A person may dissociate, which means feeling detached from emotions or physical sensations. Some people completely forget the trauma. (DEFINITELY ME – dissociating, not forgetting)
• It is not uncommon to fixate on the abuser, the relationship with the abuser, or getting revenge for the abuse. (Me!!)

As you can see, I put “me” next to each of the above symptoms/behaviors. I am “outing” myself, because I have just described the things I do or have done to cope with my past traumas. So, we may as well dive into my personal story.

My story

There is no other way for me to say this except to say that I was emotionally and mentally abused as a child. The culprits were my paternal grandparents and aunt, the people who actually raised me. I hate to throw them under the bus, but they are exactly where my problems started. There is a LOT to this story. So, you are going to have to bear with me. I will try and give the condensed version.

I was told all sorts of horrible things from the family who raised me. My grandfather often told me that I was going to grow up to be “sorry,” which meant I was going to be lazy and not amount to much.

I was also told on more than one occasion by my grandmother that she was sick and tired of raising me, and that she wished my parents would take me back.

My aunt called me names and slapped me several times across my face, once drawing blood (this was actually in front of my parents in Washington, D.C. They did or said NOTHING about it!).

And yes, I got the belt from both my grandmother and my aunt. Funny how the belt didn’t hurt nearly as much as the words that were used to cut me down.

I also witnessed on MORE THAN ONE OCCASION them fighting amongst themselves. I actually found it amusing at times, but at the same time I was glad it wasn’t directed towards me.

Living in that house was a nightmare at times, because I never knew if and when they were going to get mad and direct their anger towards me. When I look back on it, part of me was actually walking on eggshells as a child, which is the high state of alert mentioned above.

By the way, I experienced the same in school from teachers and most definitely some of my classmates. And I was afraid of EVERYBODY!

From intense fear to intense anger

But things began to change. You see, the older I got, the angrier I got. I grew sick and tired of my family mistreating me, and there were times in which I rebelled. Big surprise. Nothing major, in my opinion; I would simply talk back. A lot. And there was the time when my grandmother tried to whip me with the belt when I was 16, and I grabbed it and basically took it away from her. Big no no. Oh boy I never heard the end of that one. They all were upset with me over that! LOL

There was also the time when my grandfather had prostate surgery, and could not drive for over a month. So, I had to take my grandmother and aunt shopping. The Saturday trips to the grocery store were all on me, driving to church, etc. And I HATED it! Which is another subject and no doubt added to what I now suspect as complex-PTSD. According to my familial passengers I was either driving too fast. Or I needed to watch out for this car and that car. Slow down. Hit the brakes. And driving my grandmother was THE WORST! She always acted as if she had a set of brakes on her side!! LOL

Well, one day after school, my aunt came home and said that she needed me to take her uptown. I told her that I would do it in a minute. Let me rest first. Oh no that wasn’t good enough. She had to go NOW. So, that started an argument, which led to full Armageddon between me and the rest of the family. It was so bad that my grandfather, who had been sitting on his ass for over six weeks at this point “recovering” (he was milking it for all it was worth) drove her. But boy did I hear about it from grandmother and from him and my aunt upon their return.

Turns out my grandmother revealed to me about two years after this when I was in college, that my grandfather had had several affairs on her, one of which produced two outside children. And that I actually went to school with my own uncle and didn’t even know it!!!

This reveal rocked me to the very core of my existence. So, NONE of this was my fault. It was my grandfather’s all along. The very same man who said I was going to grow up to be “sorry.” I hated him after that. And my anger grew more intense. (And actually, my grandmother and I grew closer and bonded. She told me afterwards that she did not see a difference between me and my aunt and my father. That I was HER child. So, that actually made up for the past between us.)

Nonetheless, the anger didn’t stop there where other people were concerned. Over the next several decades it grew and grew and grew. It got much worse. Anyone that I lived with, for example, ended up seeing – and receiving – the full brunt of my anger.

I would just blow up for no reason. It was awful!! And again, sometimes it would just come from out of left field.

I am going to stop here before this article gets too long! LOL But there is definitely more to my story and to the whole c-PTSD thing. So, stay tuned for PART 2!!

And in the meantime, as always, be mentally well!!

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