I am on a different forum for abuse victims and one of the members thinks I might have C-PTSD and I was wondering if I could get some advice on the types of things I struggle with. I read into it and it does sound like I have a lot of traits regarding this so now i'm looking for advice on how deal with them.

To give you some more backround. I grew up in an abusive household that only got worse after my mom past away. I have been physically beat and mentally beat down by 2 fellow family members for over 10 years. I got the courage to walk away from them and start over. Now that I'm away from them and I'm on my own and have gone through some counseling I'm finding that the damage that has been done is seeping through my cracks and it feels as though the damage is getting worse the longer I'm away from my abusers. I don't know if that's me healing and me recognizing it or if it's because I don't have my abusers around to beat into my head what a worthless human being I am. The mental abuse from them was extreme. To them I was the worls worse person on the inside and the ugliest on the outside and they let me know it and when I got a little gutsy and refused to listen to them or I stood my ground they would use physical force until I broke down and gave in.

I feel even more lost then when they were around. Like i'm learning about myself from my point of veiw and not theirs and at times my brain feels chaotic as I fight through what they burned into my mind and what I want to believe in myself. Below are some traits I show. If it helps one of my abusers was diagnose with Narccassistic Personality Disorder. The other I assume also has Personality Disorder. She shows all the signs my other abuser did except she never went and talked to a doctor.

1. When making mistakes I panic, am extremely embarrassed and try and avoid any confrontation that may occur as a result of it. I don’t like to talk about it and I’ll feel so bad about messing up that I’m afraid to have anything to do with it.
2. I feel guilty for things I don’t do or things that are out of my control for example: if someone is mean to me and I stick up for myself and I have the right to do that I’ll go over it in my head with the “I should of’s” or the thought that I should have just put up with it or I should have done this differently and maybe this wouldn’t be the result of it. I shouldn’t have been so mean or maybe they are right. It’s so bad that if I’m driving in the snow and I’m going slow (10mph) and I slide off the road into a curb I’ll apologize for hitting the curb and I’ll feel like I’m having a panic attack about it at times. Situations like this have brought me to tears.
3. I am fearful of people. I don’t have the drive to meet new people, make new friends nor do I want to. I am cautious of new people. I think they are going to just hurt me. They’ll back stab me, lie to me, beat me down or even worse, abandon me. I push people in my life away thinking in the back of my head they’ll just abandon or hurt me anyways so what’s the point?
4. My husband is my best friend and is the only one that has ever stayed true to his words. He is so supportive and loving. He always tells me what I want to hear……yet I don’t believe him. I find myself constantly asking him why he loves me and how could you love me? Why would you love someone like me? He gets frustrated because while I feel I’m the worse, most ugly person on the planet he thinks the exact opposite but I can’t bring myself to believe him no matter what he says or does.
5. I think jump to the worse outcome when it comes to situations. Someone doesn’t call me back and I’ll think they died or they hate me or I ask myself what I did to cause them from wanting to talk to me?
6. I’m afraid to talk about how I feel or what I’ve done. For example: I feel if I vent about someone or if I say anything negative about someone I’ll be attacked for it. This is really bad when it comes to talking about my abusers. I’m afraid to death that they’ll find my story somewhere or hear what I’m saying to someone about them, know that’s me and attack me somehow for it.
7. I go over conversations in my head, over and over and over again, especially if I either do something wrong or it’s someone else. It’s like I feel chaotic and no matter what I do or tell myself I can’t make the feelings and negative self-talk stop. My mind literally won’t stop thinking about the situation.
8. I feel like I’m anti-social. I have such a hard time communicating with people, starting conversations and or finding anything in common with people, that feeling just makes me want to avoid everyone even more. I feel like everything about myself is negative and I get so insecure about myself I bail out on plans, avoid outings, public places, social events and people in general.
9. I take other people’s problems and make them my problems. I feel bad about myself when someone else has issues with themselves.
10. My negative self-talk is so bad. I’m truly my own worst enemy and I have beat myself up for days over something someone else did.
11. I think about what I’m saying too much. To the point where if I think that if what I said was mean I’ll over apologize for it it’s like I have no confidence in anything I say or think. I always second guess my thoughts, my choices everything. I feel like I have no confidence in myself at all. It’s starting to affect my work, my life even my hobbies. Ex: I grew up with horses and I know how to ride, how to take care of them, how to own a horse yet when people are around me I freeze.

Hello chosetolive87 and welcome to NeuroTalk.

I am sorry for your experiences.

Please continue to work with your psychotherapist. You may want to print out what you have written here to discuss during your session. What can also be helpful is seeing a Psychiatrist for medication. The combination of therapy and medication might be more helpful for you. It is possible for things to get worse before getting better.

As far as Complex Post Traumatic Disorder (C-PTSD): This is not recognized in the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), PTSD is.

Take care.

There is a subtype of PTSD:

PTSD with prominent dissociative symptoms (either experiences of feeling detached from one’s own mind or
body, or experiences in which the world seems unreal, dreamlike or distorted).