Thank you for your kind message. I hope that your children get well very soon. I've had struggles with self esteem problems also during my life. One book that I will always remember is a book called,"Telling yourself the truth". It had very good input for me. Sometimes the things that we tell ourselves during the day are not true,and are exaggerated,and false. We need to remove some of those words,and replace them with words that are more fitting,and build us up,are help us to keep things in the proper perspective. I think that the book helped me. I cannot remember the name of the arthor. I had many experiences that hurt my self esteem. My illness hurt my ability to process the material that was in front of me in school. I overheard the teachers talking with my parents when I was in elementary school,which didn't help my self esteem. The school systems didn't know anything about learning difficulties associated with biochemical imbalances in the late 1950's. They thought that I was lacking intelligence until I had IQ tests at a Military School,and went through a reading program with the rest of my subjects in the late 1960's. All along the way I had bullies picking on me for some reason. Those problems started to disappear when I took boxing at a boxing gym. I started lifting weights,and then I started taking Karate. I didn't want to hurt anyone,I just wanted to keep them away,and it did. In the last 10 years the manipulative harassment in the work place where I worked got out of hand,and the boss let it happen. I moved,and got a job and landed right smack dab in the middle of another harassment situation. I didn't expect it,and I became very upset,and agitated. The human resources didn't do anything because it was a crew of people who had been there for up to 35 years,and there was one person who had been there 52 years. Allot of the people where related. I was harassed. One day after 8 months of it I resigned. The other place where I worked,I had been there for 14 years before this place. Now I'm very defensive around people,and the anti harassment policies don't work,because they don't care,and I live in a Commonwealth State. When I would go home,I could tell that it was taking a toll on me because of the anxiety build up,in both mind, and body. I don't mind the work. I like the work,and like to do a good job. It's the people that bother me,and for what! They get some sadistic fun out of doing this at work. I'm a good person who is easy to get along with until they start with the head trips,and harassment. Not everyone in a crew is like this,and the others will not stop them because of peer pressure,and there is not much that OSHA will do until someone gets physically hurt. Here I go again,I'm talking to much at one time.

I'm sorry I haven't been on this board much in the past couple of weeks. Quickly: I say what goes around comes around threefold....just keep that in the back of your mind as you smugly nod and say 'good day.'
I agree, the harassment laws don't truly protect the way that they should. Until the workplace truly retrains their management to create a better work environment for all involved, it will fail to protect those who most need it. Not every person in management should be in those positions, but I digress...

Thank you GladysD. I have gone to the Bipolar site. I've been receiving help from the people on there. I may have a form of bipolar 2 syndrome also. Time will tell. I hope to have some new tests,and/or Doctors,with social services,because I'm running out of my Trust Fund,and I don't have insurance any more. I'm going back to the bipolar site after this. Thank you for your reply. I think that If managers went to a class where they could at least learn,what is healthy for people emotionally,and to not rivet them with control,and fear to do a job,it would be helpful,and professional,and good for moral. Some of us can work even better with an ounce of ,"Good Job!". That makes me feel like helping a boss with all that I can produce. The other way makes me work though,but takes a toll on me in the long run. Now my anxiety is worse,and I don't work for those people anymore who I worked for 14 years. I was looking to them for leadership,and I was going to work for them with a proper attitude.My conclusion is that the people who I worked for where a family of dysfunctional,and narcissistically motivated people. I forgive them. I wish them well,but I have removed myself from the abuse. It made me disillusioned with peoples true intentions in businesses,and I'm sorry that I saw that side of the human being.

Dear OneMoreTime

I am so excited I cannot thank you enough for your thread. I had seen similarities with PTSD but did not exactly know what it was supposed to be linked to, other than a brief episode of separation and subsequent rejection at age 2. Also I began to feel like and be accused of being a psychiatric hypochondriac. I am very distrustful of self-diagnosis and such for that reason, but I know there have been two extremely happy episodes in my life, one age 3-6 and one age 30-37. I would not have allowed that if I loved misery. And the circumstances were even far from ideal at the time.

The fact that I found something I thoroughly loved to do and was healthy (growing veggies the very old-fashioned way and researching this as well as researching connected area's) and I was rigidly sticking to a rythm for my child were the causes of my happiness. I also had a very supportive friend who I had nearly daily contact with, and the supportiveness was mutual.
There were bad things and bad people in my life too at the time. I just don't like to discuss these here and now.

So, before age 40 people just marvelled at how I took the most horrifying things in stride without seeming to be emotionally affected at all. At age 40 my circumstances changed, I became mildly depressed, was persuaded to take anti-depressants and whammo! I was in an emotional storm, unable to sleep, 24/7 for 2 years. I was then prescribed meds to suppress this emotional storm and for sleeping, and I became less alert and more gullible. So my mom and best friend, who has been trained by her company about interpersonal dynamics, worked hard for two years to gradually make me debase and demean myself and were planning to use against me to take away my kid and my independence in one swift stroke. I did not know but did not like what I was doing so I had myself committed. This took them by surprise, they sprung the trap in a hurry, but I managed to escape with my kid and my independence after two years of crawling through hell on my belly and eating crow and doing WHATEVER IT TOOK 24/7 by sheer will-power to get out from under the scrutiny of the authorities, get this "friend" out of my life (I had to abandon other friends who were being used as messengers after I went NC) and heal the feelings between me and my kid.

This caused a very deep, huge additional trauma, but also it was in a more comprehensible, visible way a repetition of what had happened to me as a kid. In analysing and healing and learning to protect myself and my kid from this "friend", I discovered a lot of similarities in my childhood. I finally realized that I was unequivocally a victim, no matter what any therapist or other person said, and that it was done deliberately, while I was still jumping for the "carrot" of my parent's love, believing if I explained again and again how she made me feel, one day the "misunderstandings" could be healed.

I have been reading up on narcissism, working on the individual SYMPTOMS that I had that led to the host of disorders I was diagnosed with. I took what was useful to me out of every healing approach anyone ever found for any of these symptoms when and how I was ready for it. I stopped scolding myself for having been inert and depressed the last two years, since I decided to drop all the "token goody-two-shoes" activities I was doing, which made me feel I had finally been made to concede I was damaged goods genetically and among sick, dysfunctional people is where I belong. I also felt that I started them under duress, even if I truly enjoyed the volunteer work I was doing, and that my "friend" was standing behind me with a whip still, in spite of NC. I was still terrified of her and the way she kept on watching me to see who I came into contact with, in order to persuade these people to see me in a certain way, treat me in a certain way, harm me and my self-esteem, and convey covert threats to me. I isolated, which everyone says is so bad. But I needed the freedom of fear this gave me, temporarily. I have worked on my fear and my insecurities and my reactions to superficial, short contacts with people, and I feel hardly fearful any more, I am actually being treated better and more like a normal person, I have observed, learned, tried and tested. I am ready to come out bit by bit and doing so, one of the ways is being on this board and a board for adult children of Narcissistic parents.

I was the rare kind of child-abuse victim that named and protested the abuse. I have read that tests show that in mice, the one's that flee or simply undergo socially aggressive behavior from other mice, have less distortion of the amygdala than the one's that fight back. The amygdala can be cured with B-vitamins, especially B12, melatonine, and self-affirmation techniques. Blood-flow towards the amygdala being hampered can augment the chances of problems, like depressions. I am certain this is the case, but the doctor refuses to look into it. So I had physiotherapy for upper back and neck and I sometimes massage the area myself, so the blood has more room to flow in.

I was convinced that what I received was a kind of "embarrasment diagnosis" and that those who scorned me because I kept trying to find a good therapy whereas the two I had were not working, were wrong. They were just annoyed that their help was not helping so it had to be my fault. They instill you with the belief that you have to be completely open and full of trust in your therapist, yet when you behave like that they call you too dependent and say you attribute god-like qualities to them. Isn't that what they are telling you to do? Then when you decide okay, I will think for myself again, you are uncooperative. You only want to complain and you don't want a cure and you love being miserable. If that is so, why am I sitting here? Because you are addicted to therapy and misery. Right. No more pills, no more therapy. I will do it myself, because the therapists were also taken in by this "friend" and my mother. This contributed to my feeling helpless and trapped. There is only one therapist I feel relatively safe with now, who I have contact with for an hour once every three months, just to make sure there is a professional keeping tabs on me in case someone decides once again to accuse me of things in order to make me miserable and take away anything that deeply matters to me.

For a couple of months now, I have been despairing of having lost my resilience, that helped me survive and sometimes even thrive in spite of blow after blow my mother kept dealing me. I only discovered recently that she had been breaking friendships and relationships for me by having one-on-one's with these people or enlisting others to do so for her. She even brought in outsiders to talk to me. I just never realized.

For some reason, the past few weeks I have been struggling upright. It has to do a lot with this board and the other one, I have really made contact with some people here, and it is doing me the world of good. I am today actually somewhat optimistic that maybe, I can pull of the trick of struggling upright one more time, this time staying that way though, because I am learning so much, finally, and finding answers, finally. Thank you all very, very, very much.

thanks for the mention of herman! while i do have some criticisms along the same lines as i do with those who write about `simple' ptsd, her book `trauma and recovery' is excellent and i have tried to get various clinicians/ social workers to read it so we spoke the same language....

i do think there is a tendency to still over-assume wrt pathology.... in her description of symptoms, there is again the presumption that the subject, is, in fact- quite safe (at the time of evaluation), has an adequate support system, access to minimally adequate health care, etc. the consequence being that evaluation of a person not yet safe, ie. as herman describes, literally held captive by some factor or factors truly beyond the individuals control, by these standards seems misleading.

while the connection with a childhood of abuse is easy to see, i think we will eventually recognize a number of variants of `ptsd'. i think there are significant implications for treatment, and support. for instance, considering refugees and those who live as same... and probably have faced both life threatening and repeated traumatic stress, the first steps of re-establishing safety strike me as very different than those who are coping with childhood abuse, as adults.

thinking of all different types of trauma and while it being obvious that all else equal, some (deliberate human cruelty) are generally more devastating than others (lighting strike), there is so much difference among individuals in the significance attached to given incidents, degree of support and resources, etc. that it is very risky to generalize.

for me, the `defining' feature of what i would call `ptsd' of any sort, is crossing some bio-chemical (and or `mechanical', ie. change in size of amygdala, etc.) line `x' of exposure to trauma, where after one seems `programmed' or `conditioned' to experience physiological reaction upon reminders or re-exposure.

ie, the `trigger'.

peace

This is the first time I have been on here.

Im not sure if you are still contributing to this forum 'broken friend'

I too have Complex Post traumatic stress and live a bit like you do. I just wanted to say I understand the feeling of prefering to not have a lot of contact with others..sometimes having to cope with others adds to the detrimental thought patterns, and the feeling in the chest..like its a constriction/ avoidance of feeling/thinking really...UIts good you have your sister in your life she sounds supportive.

Let me know if you are still on this site, and if also how life is today for you?
My life is slowly improving...day by day....

Hope you are in a better space within

GladysT

I totally agree, we are given labels and are treated as the one causing the problem. The amount of medication that is extended towards our physical bodies with the term recovery attached is terrible. My experience with medication is that its thouroughly detrimental and mind altering. Arent we trying to get our mind back again! Arent we attempting to find a recovery tool!
I believe there is nobody more motivated towards recovering than someone with PTSD.

I know what ITHINKis very important. I know that my mind can make or break my after response to a trigger..(once I have calmed down)

I think it may be nightime over there and day time over here.

May your feet find paths towards light and hope

Helle Amii, and welcome to NeuroTalk.

I'm not sure if you realise or not that the threads you are posting to are over 6 months old, and the members you're replying to may or may not still frequent this forum.

It would be a shame for your ideas and concerns to get lost amongst an old thread, so may I suggest you start a whole new one of your own? You could tell the others what brought you here, and maybe people who posted these threads before, might be interested in replying to your thread.

Welcome again. I hope we see more of your posts around the board.

Hello and thank you for taking the time to bring that to my attention. How do I find the latest threads please?
Amii

hello Amii

the main board is directly below where the "sticky" threads are for reference

here is the link to the PTSD forum
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum98.html

you can also post an introduction in our new members forum at
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum88.html

welcome to NeuroTalk