Am I Actually Suffering from Complex PTSD? – Part 2

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, bent minders!

In my very last blog post, I tackled complex PTSD or c-PTSD (complex posttraumatic disorder). I talked about what it is and some of the symptoms. I even delved into my story. See link to last blog post below:

Am I Actually Suffering from Complex PTSD? – PART 1

Now on with the rest of the show.

So, some of the behaviors or symptoms resulting from c-PTSD are depersonalization, derealization, and dissociation. At this point, I am going to dive into something EXTREMELY personal about me. For many years, I called myself different names. I oftentimes felt that I was not a part of myself or that I was not myself. I did a lot of acting out back in those days, starting in 1989, which is the year I came out.

According to what I’ve read thus far, dissociation is when you feel disconnected from yourself, your own body, and the world around you. And there are numerous ways one can dissociate:

1. Travelling to a new location and taking on a new identity (dissociative fugue).
2. Having difficulty remembering your personal information (dissociative amnesia).
3. Looking at yourself from the outside (depersonalization).
4. Experiencing life as if the world around you is not real (derealization).
5. Feeling your identity shift and change (identity alteration).
6. Having difficulty defining the kind of person you are (identity confusion).

Now, let me connect the dots from the previous post on this subject and the dissociation part. Remember when I told you how I learned from my grandmother that my grandfather had cheated on her and sired two other children? Well, that was in 1987. And that is when I left that cult, and I started drinking and partying. That was a two-year culmination leading up to me finally acknowledging my true sexual identity as being gay and coming out in 1989. It was quite a ride wild. And not the easiest, but rather quite bumpy indeed.

And make no mistake about it, I dissociated starting in 1989. I personally think it was because of all the horror I had endured during childhood up to this point. And coming out was just a springboard, a catalyst. Not to mention the fact that I was still dealing with the religious garbage of saying it was not okay to be gay, that I was an abomination. But just like the Eurythmics’ song says “I Did It Just The Same.” Ha!

So, according to the list above, I suffered from “identity alteration.” (Not to be confused with DID or dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as split or multiple personality). Starting in 1989, I began calling myself other names and going by different personas. Although I was not suffering from true DID and blacking out and having memory loss, I would experience a near blackout as if the room was spinning slightly.

Let’s do a breakdown of the other names/personas I adopted during this time and their characteristics:

Daryl Lord

I considered this person to be the part of myself that was the loud partyer, the drinker, the life of the party. He was very brash and obnoxious and normally talked with a New Jersey accent. He was sort of patterned after actress Erika Slezak’s Niki Smith from “One Life to Live,” except she wore a red wig. Daryl did not wear a red wig, but instead wore a sleeveless cutout, black denim jacket and tight blue jeans and cowboy boots, but not always. When I look back on it, I think he was the part of me that rebelled against all that religion that had been shoved down my throat all my life, and particularly my first two years in college.

Oh God, he was horrible. So, loud and brash and bold. He was able to do and say the things I couldn’t.

Nick Montraire

He was the promiscous personality. Okay. You can say it. He was the slut. He was always at the gay bars picking up strange men. It wasn’t that he dressed differently than me. He was just trashier in a sexy sense, more open with his sexuality. He went off with all sorts of men and yes, he called himself Nick. And that is how the other men knew him/me.

Guillaume Radcliffe (William Ratliff)

This guy was the snooty more studious side of me. He spoke with a British accent, but with a French name LOL. He was ALL business. Very, very smart and highly intelligent. He did not care about sex or partying. Guillaume wanted to see me succeed. He was EXTREMELY ambitious, and he did not like my friends at all.

“Dissociation is one way the mind copes with too much stress, such as during a traumatic event.” (ME!!!)

I look at it as detaching from reality, detaching from whatever it is I couldn’t face.

Over time, it grew worse, because I would dissociate whenever I felt under stress or there was something I felt I could not handle as Derek. But that one of the others could. As a matter of fact over time, I splintered into more than just Daryl, Nick and Guillaume. After I moved to Atlanta and over time, there were as many as 13 other me’s!!!!

And needless to say, I met others just like me. They shall remain nameless. But there were others who had alternate identities. So, I wasn’t alone. Ha ha!

In summation and to make it abundantly clear, my identity alteration was my way of coping with years and years of mental abuse – the c-PTSD. It’s like Derek died and these “monsters” took over my life. Fortunately, I do not feel a need to do that anymore. As a matter of fact, I think the last time I truly succumbed to my “illness” was back in 2002 over an extremely stressful period in my life.

Believe me, there will be more to the story as we go along. But for now, I want all of you to be mentally well!

Sources:

Complex PTSD and Dissociation: Understanding Detachment and the Healing Process