Own The Suck: Consolidating My Gains During CPTSD Recovery, Part 1

I’m at the point in my recovery where it’s time to focus more closely on consolidating the intermittent gains I’ve made during the various phases of my recovery.  To that end I have been reading several books which are technically classified within the self-help genre but are nonetheless based upon the findings of scientific research studies.  Instead of writing what amounted to book reviews, however, I chose to wrap it all together.  This is the initial entry of a two-part post on integrating the insights of theses texts into what I’ve achieved through therapy.

My choices of readings were specific to ongoing challenges I have: overcoming my recent failures; handling the toxic relationships in my life; and how to overcome the pragmatic issues of “simple” daily living.  It was my hope to find a way beyond what were heretofore intractable hallmarks of my CPTSD and ADHD - socialization/relationship challenges, emotional regulation, behavioral adaptations, and development of healthy habits within a new life structure.   

The seemingly obvious starting point is the overall fiasco my life has become after the disintegration of my defensive repression of childhood traumas.  That’s what led me to first pick up Rebounders by Rick Newman.  It was written primarily to identify the attributes of "rebounders" - successful people who had been spectacular failures at previous junctures of their lives.  I wasn’t interested in reading about sappy success stories with trite maxims functioning as shortcuts to real change.  I wanted to know about why failure happens, how to overcome it, and most importantly avoid it in the future. 

The crucial feature of recovering from failure seems to be a person’s resilience.  The term “quality resilience” is a psychological term for people becoming more robust, skilled, and durable after setbacks.  In fact, I'm trying to internalize a reframing of the very occurrence of a setback as a weapon wielded to improve myself.  

Whether my setbacks are truly life-altering like divorce or fairly small in the grand scheme of things like an orthopedic injury, what matters is having the resilience to recover.  It does not matter if the setback is singular or one in a seemingly endless series thereof.    As the legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi said, “It does not matter how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up.”

This quote seems to be clichéd, but it’s not one of those shortcuts I mentioned wanting to avoid.  It’s an enduring statement of resilience because life never stops throwing you curveballs.  I'm not getting caught up in the optimism of the saying, however, because the truth is that hard work within the construct of a well-constructed plan is how I can learn to adapt and get up off the mat.  (Yeah, I’m a weekend warrior athlete who just shamelessly dropped multiple sports metaphors in one paragraph!)

I have been completely ensnared in the blame game - complaining about what people do to me and generally feeling sorry for myself.  This was my default attitude after I finally accepted my childhood of abuse and the subsequent problems I’ve experienced.  It turns out that I was what Newman referred to as a “wallower.”  I got rattled about being emotionally overwhelmed due to having never been taught any emotional regulation.  I became angry and indignant about my circumstances.  "It's not fair, damnit!"  Just realizing this painful truth about myself did not get me past it, however.

This brings me to another book I read, Toxic Parents by Susan Forward and Craig Buck.  While the topic is self-explanatory, I was able to extrapolate the lessons to toxic relationships of any nature.  This book crystallized for me the idea that my behavior regarding my circumstances was partially due to my refusal to reclaim my own life from those who mistreated me.  I don’t have to forgive an unrepentant father or a vindictive ex-wife, and I don’t have to allow their actions to drive negative overwhelming emotional responses such as anger and indignation.

Don’t get it twisted, though.  I’ve learned through therapy and Toxic Parents that I don’t have to meekly forgive and forget.  Unearned absolution for what these people have done and continue to do to me is just another form denial.  Denial is a significant maladaptive behavior I used as a child to survive and brought forth into adulthood.  To just forgive and forget is to pretend none of it happened which is the clearest form of denial. 

It is important that I instead process what has already occurred and respond intelligently to what continues to happen instead of knee-jerk reacting.  Otherwise I just allow myself to devolve into emotional chaos.  Unilateral forgiveness is to deny my reality and feelings and possibly subconsciously ascribe responsibility to myself, which is flat out crazy-making.  I need to accept what has happened, not get overwhelmed or angry, and move forward for myself.  Interestingly enough, this approximates what rebounders do regarding their failures.

Rebounders get past the circumstances of their problems and get to the business of solving them.  One term that stuck with me was “own the suck.”  It referred to military helicopter pilot Tammy Duckworth who lost both legs after being shot down.  The “suck” is an oft-used term by service personnel to describe fighting in terrible environmental conditions in various Mideast conflicts.  Owning the suck in my context means accepting my situation for what it is and doing what I can about it instead of wasting personal resources bemoaning the situation itself.

Rebounders have the self-awareness that allows for an accurate appreciation of why things go right or wrong both in the external environment and also within themselves.  I can’t successfully solve a problem if I cannot diagnose all of its facets properly, so I had to get my arms around my internal issues irrespective of their potential external origin.  It’s okay to be wrong, but it’s not okay to be wrong-headed.  My emotional immaturity and lack of regulation is part of what drove my stubbornness.

My emotions came over me like a tsunami after a lifetime of suppression.  One maladaptive aspect of my personality that carried over from childhood was not feeling virtually any emotion at all.  Of course the emotions were always simmering underneath my veil of calm and being comported at virtually all times.  Rebounders actually are recognized for their ability to compartmentalize emotion without ignoring it altogether, which is what I had done.  They do not become dominated by emotion as I had been for the past six years after becoming a father. 

Developing resilience is not something to be done merely by force of temperament, however.  The important piece here is that self-awareness is paramount to bouncing back.  Wallowers rarely question their own judgment or conduct a truly introspective analysis even when giving the appearance of doing so.  They get hung up on external factors while also tending to overestimate their abilities and talent.  Former US President Calvin Coolidge once noted, “nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent… (and) the world is full of educated derelicts.”  I refuse to be categorized as such.

The upside is that the resilience of rebounders is neither developed nor maintained like inherent talent or intelligence.  Mother Nature doesn’t need to endow us with it because we can develop the attributes of resiliency incrementally.  Once we own the suck it becomes time to take action to adopt the other traits rebounders have which allow them to keep moving in spite of their negative situations.

One critical action is preparing for the things which will inevitably go wrong.  I need to prepare for how to be comfortable with setbacks, hardship, and inconvenience because that is what's required to move toward my goals.  My internal desire to do things as perfectly as possible engenders impatience both with respect to having failures at all as well as the length of time it takes to realize substantial gains.  This impatience, combined with my CPTSD-generated anxiety, tends to spiral me downward into self-loathing, frustration, and inability to act.  Therefore I need to remain cognitively vigilant about responding well.

I also continue working on internalizing the reality that I’ll never be completely free of the anxiety, guilt, fear, and confusion in my life because of what I’ve endured.  These things can simply no longer be allowed to define me or control my actions and responses to triggers.  I can plan to anticipate these issues as well.  This will allow me to develop the change in habits required to alter those maladaptive behaviors which linger and occasionally continue to control my life.  Now that I’m doing my best to own the suck, the process of changing daily habits to effect a consolidation of my gains made during recovery is what I focus on next... and the subject of Part 2.  

Adrian Peterson Case: No Good Men To Be Found

I originally wrote this piece about the Adrian Peterson child abuse scandal for the Good Men Project, but they felt it was too one-sided.  Guess I am a bit biased against child abusers because of my past, but I've littered this post with links demonstrating that what I've presented is factual and not simply subjective.  Maybe I should include the men at the Good Men Project as those who didn't show themselves to be good men?

The Good Men Project is a favorite of mine because it gets as close to defining what it means to be a good man in this age without all the sermonizing and emasculation.  I have wanted to write an article for them for quite some time, and I thought it was going to be something inspiring and wonderful to read.  Little did I realize it would end up being a tale of disappointment in so many men. 

The much-publicized saga of All-Pro NFL running back and confirmed child abuser Adrian Peterson has an obvious villain.  This 217-lb person - I doubt I’ll ever refer to him as a “man” again - beat his 4-year old son with both a belt and a tree branch so bad that it caused “bruising and visible cuts and slash marks” after he stuffed leaves from the branch into the boy’s mouth.  I attempted to look beyond the obvious storylines we’ve all been reading throughout this sad tale. 

My hope was to find men involved in this case who were lighthouses in this dark storm.  I wanted to pen the one feel-good piece that could be written about such a wretched situation.  Certainly there was at least one real man somewhere along this storyline who boldly stepped up at the risk of taking on an incredibly popular multi-millionaire star player in arguably America’s most popular sport. 

I was wrong.

When the news broke that Peterson had been charged with criminal levels of child abuse, Vikings general manager Rick Spielman initially suspended him for just one game and eagerly reinstated his lead back the following week saying, “we feel strongly as an organization that this is disciplining a child.”  Minnesota owner Zygi Wilf and Mr. Spielman view cuts, bruises, and slash marks sustained on a pre-school boy at the hands of a grown man much differently than I do.  These are not good men.

I understand their competitive desire and duty to field the best players for their team.  However, they also have a responsibility for setting the cultural tone for the organization and their community.  These two men each had an opportunity to demonstrate what that NFL franchise stands for, and one thing it shouldn’t stand for is the cold-hearted abuse of defenseless children.  I expect better than this from society’s leaders.

Surely the one man who would have all the cover and incentive required to fight for that child’s best interests would be the prosecuting District Attorney Brett Ligon.  He folded like a cheap card table at the prospect of losing a high-profile battle with Peterson’s lawyer, an admittedly effective attorney winning acquittals for professional athlete scumbags accused of spousal abuse and sexually attacking their own daughters.  Ligon allowed Peterson to plead out with virtually no punishment. 

As if that wasn’t cowardly enough, the district attorney promptly threw the boy's mother under the proverbial bus to cover his own professional backside.  Ligon blamed his decision to tuck tail and run  the mom because “… this is exactly what she wanted."  

I appreciate the difficult position the district attorney was in.  Yet a real man would not have conceded a battle to defend a child, and he absolutely shouldn’t have hidden behind a woman after having done so.  The mother being an apologist for the abuser is never reason to shirk the duty of a district attorney’s office.

I didn’t really expect to find much good in Peterson's lawyer, but it was how he defended his client that I found so offensive.  He stated that horse-whipping a four year-old was a family matter and not something in which the legal system should be involved, which is essentially saying that tiny boy doesn’t have a right to be protected from the trauma he suffered.  I know somebody has to defend these guys in our legal system, I just don’t know how they can claim children don’t deserve protection and then ever sleep again.

I also wrongly assumed that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell would have learned from his complete tone-deafness during the Ray Rice domestic abuse debacle.  Instead of suspending Peterson outright, the NFL commish decided it was more appropriate to essentially give Peterson a paid $5 million vacation on the Exempt List instead of suspending him immediately without pay.  What exactly does one of the NFL’s domestic thugs need to do before he hands out real punishment?

     

Just when I thought my research couldn’t turn up anything more vile regarding this situation, I came across this little nugget:  Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer actually read a motivational text message from Peterson to his players to inspire them before the Atlanta game.

Motivational quotes should come from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi… not from a disgraced bully who attacks four-year olds.  I wonder if Zimmer also puts up posters of Pol Pot’s most inspirational quotes and hands out Mein Kampf on the team bus, too.

Now the question comes down to when Peterson will start carrying the rock again and what will happen after he returns to the team?  If Vikings fullback Jerome Felton is to be believed, Peterson will have 100% support in the locker room upon his return.  Assuming that’s true then there isn't a single decent (much less "good") man on that entire squad.  I understand the need to have locker room unity and all that but, seriously, there’s not one good man amongst 53 on the active roster with a conscience? 

Finally, there's Peterson himself who refused to step up like a good man to own his mistake.  Instead he tried to justify his actions by saying the way he harmed the child wasn't really his fault because he was just following the same discipline he received as a child.  I don't doubt he’s telling the truth, but he had a chance to become a symbol of breaking the generation-to-generation chain of abuse that is very common in these situations. 

He also miss an opportunity to set a wonderful example of being a good man who accepts responsibility, learns from his mistakes, and demonstrates to his son how a good man is willingly accountable for his actions.  Given the bully pulpit he has because of his fame, Peterson could have had a great impact towards better parenting and protection of defenseless children. 

The one thing I kept wondering while writing this was what kind of man this little boy is going to become.  All around him are men who have failed him.  From the father he likely idolizes to the public officials tasked with protecting him, he has learned that being traumatized is just part of childhood and there’s nobody around to protect him.

I sincerely hope I am mistaken and there is at least one good male role model in that child’s life I was unable to find.  If not, statistics show that 20 years from now he is likely to continue that cycle of violence to the detriment of another defenseless child.  I prefer to think that maybe this four-year old will end up being the one good man to come out of this situation.

Destroyed Relationships in the Aftermath of Recovery From CPTSD

I miss my daughters so much.  My ex-wife is taking advantage of my temporary situation to set the stage for her to steal the 45% custody that I was awarded just 7 months ago.  She says that she’s concerned for the girls because I had two suicidal ideations during a 10-day span. 

On the surface that seems reasonable, but the reality is that she knows that I pose no threat to myself, anyone, and certainly not my own daughters.  I spent 16 intimate years with my ex, so her surprising me with just hours’ notice of the petition to temporarily suspend my parenting time was completely unnecessary.

I’ve provided her with written documentation from both my psychologist/therapist and my psychiatrist, who have seen me for almost 3 years now each, that I pose no threat at all to anyone.  They know that I’m not truly the suicidal type.  I was simply in a state of serious distress without any help from my family and I have spent the past two years in self-imposed social isolation as many with Complex PTSD typically do.

These ideations barely even fit the definition of the term.  They were more of elaborate, if not so subtle, cries for help.  I never made a single plan to actually off myself, and I never would have.  I stupidly reached out to my ex thinking she still had a heart, and the fact that she’s a psychotherapist herself made me completely blind to the idea that any of this would be cravenly used against me.

It’s rough for me, but what bothers me the most is the impact on my 4- and 6-year old daughters.  I got almost half custody precisely because I had spent 2 years as a stay-at-home dad and had almost 50% custody for the 18 months between the split and the official divorce.  We have such a close and strong bond that this sudden disappearance from their life has to be confusing at best and significantly stressful and painful at worst. 

Immediately after my hospitalization I offered to go to counseling and mediation while she could name her conditions for me seeing the girls while I’m getting back up on my feet.  She responded with the combative petition.  She’s not interested in working with me, being cooperative in any way, or co-parenting at all.  She just wants me to disappear and allow her to raise those girls in the twisted manner of her mother.

While watching my oldest play soccer my youngest was telling me how her mother won’t allow her to call me, and then she was physically taken out of my lap by my ex because she was upset about what she was told.  She did more or less the same thing with my eldest while we watched her sister. 

I should have long stopped trying to rationalize the irrational because my ex disagrees with every I say and everything I teach my girls.  My youngest even told me she that she showed her mom how I taught her what a magnolia tree looked like, and my ex said that I was wrong and went so far as to check her iPhone only to realize I was of course correct. 

Why would I randomly tell my daughter the incorrect name of a tree?  My ex knows I basically grew up outdoors with Mother Nature as my best friend.  She has first-hand marveled at my knowledge of nature as I’m the first to take her camping, fishing, and hiking.  The fact that she would instinctively disagree with me regarding nature when she has no earthly idea about nature herself gives me all the indication I need regarding her illogical and emotionally-charged reactions to anything and everything regarding me.

That begs the question: why do I still get bothered so much by what she does to me?  The reality is that it doesn’t bother me so much, but the collateral damage to my daughters infuriates me.  She is a trained child psychologist but has willfully blocked out what she’s doing to them. 

Now you may think I’m leaving some things out, but I’m not.  The truth is that I want the girls to go see a child psychologist to discuss what their mother and grandmother puts them through, but my ex disagrees vehemently.  She knows what the girls will tell this psychologist.  I’m completely fine with anything and everything they say regarding my parenting, but I guess my ex is not.

I’m not nearly the perfect father and have made some fairly substantial mistakes.  I guess the difference is that I’ve owned my mistakes and have worked to correct them.  I’ve not mentioned the fact that none of my mistakes have included neglect, physical man-handling, religious zealotry, or psychological manipulation… all things they are subjected to at their mother’s/grandmother’s home.

Look, I readily admit that I’ve not been in a place to be the best father ever given what has been going on with me.  I’m coming out of the throes of recovery from child abuse that was repressed for 12 years or so and came at me full-throttle in the form of Complex PTSD.  However, I’ve never touched my girls, neglected them to the point they end up in the emergency room, or introduced them to aggressive and scary concepts such as satan, hell, and sin. 

I know that what’s going on with me is temporary as is my ex’s ability to create additional chaos in my and my girls’ lives.  It’s so frustrating, though.  I would like to have focused this entire post on something else that helps me further along in my recovery, for example.  Having to deal with court dates, written responses to her absurd petition, and the stress of not knowing what she’s going to try and pull next.

I’m sure my ex is frustrated that I’m going through this and cannot hold up my end of the parenting bargain right now.  However, it’s completely counter-productive to the peace within her life, our daughters’ lives, and of course my life.  However, I have to realize that I cannot control her nonsense.  All I can do is control my reaction to her nonsense. 

I need to continuously remind myself that this is a temporary state of affairs and that hopefully one day she’ll find enough peace in her life to stop fighting me for control over the girls.  All I can do is do me and my girls will grow up and realize what their mother has been doing to all of us.  Like I said, I’m very content owning my part in all of this. 

Soon enough I’ll be back on my feet financially and be back in a position to effect the parenting agreement I fought so hard for.  In fact, I’ll be in a position to get that last 5% custody so that the girls can spend equal amounts of time with both of their parents.  My ex will fight me on this, but it won’t be too much longer before the girls will make their own desires known.  The three of us will be alright.

Complex PTSD Recovery: The Neutral Zone of Transition

I'm now moving from my personal nadir into something I refer to as the "neutral zone" of transition based on William Bridges' work.  This neutral zone is the time after mourning for the childhood I never had and regret over not avoiding just how screwed up my life has become by getting therapy earlier. 

It’s time to reinvent myself now, though.  I’ve done much of the initial work required to recover, but not quite all of it.  However, my progress has been sufficient enough to begin advancing to the next stage.  It's this period of time in which so many things are now possible which weren't before I began my therapy, and for the first time ever I get to do it on my own terms. 

While my marriage ended in a cluster-bomb of animosity, regret, and confusion, I can now find a partner better suited to how I need to live happily.  Not only did my personal life run off the rails, but my career in healthcare management and consulting is in tatters from neglect and the inability to effectively network because of my past problems socializing as an adult.  

However, starting from scratch allows me the freedom in this neutral zone to consider becoming a teacher/professor, maybe start an outdoors excursions outfit, or run a small non-profit without regret or guilt that I should be out there making well into six figures annually just because I feel an internal pressure given I have the education and ability to easily do so. 

There’s been considerable external pressure in the past as well.  Besides the fact that I’m the golden child of the family, my ex-wife once told me the only thing she truly cared about regarding my career was that I make at least $100k/year for her to be comfortable.  I didn't realize the impact that had on me at the time, but thereafter I was consumed with making sure my career path brought me into that income tier.  Now I can find a partner who doesn't care which income bracket I’m in, but she'll rather want me for who I am and prefer I do something fulfilling that gives me a sense of joy. 

Most of my old friends have been out of the picture after I basically went into hiding for 2 years, but it'll be interesting to see who's still there for me as I embark on the beginning of the post-apocalyptic chapter of my life.  It's truly exciting to think about all of the new friendships and romances I can have without all of that emotional baggage holding me down and screwing things up for me.  

Yes, my first real relationship after splitting from my ex-wife has recently been snuffed out mainly because I still have not completely escaped some of the bad habits from my past.  To be specific, I subconsciously hit the self-destruct button on any relationship when someone gets too close and I feel vulnerable.  

It's a direct result of being abused or neglected by the people I loved and idolized growing up.  I learned then that allowing people too close to you only results in pain.  Keep them at arms' length and I'm protected.  It's amazing to look back and see the patterns across relationships of all types, and it's even more amazing I never saw them before.  

The only exception thus far has been my ex-wife, but that's only because she's a psychologist and could recognize and dismiss my nonsense as just that instead of thinking it really had anything to do with her.  Yet I won't go into a downward spiral fueled by self-loathing and regret for my mistakes with this most recent relationship.  I accept it as another opportunity to recognize, learn, and change so that it doesn't happen again.  It’s easy to say, but so damn hard to do.

So this post is all about transitioning from whatever low point you're currently at in your life to a more healthy and functional one.  If you feel like your life is over, then good!  Unless you're dead and reading this from the afterlife, your life is not in fact over.  This means there’s a litany of opportunities awaiting you now.  It's time to relinquish the behavioral programming from childhood and learn more sophisticated and mature behaviors.  

I'm not saying that you should reject and ignore your old life.  Never forget that owning your past is the key to overcoming it.  It's critical to extricate the impact of our past traumas from our present reality.  The avoidance, repression, and suppression causes us to be clueless as to what's happening around us, which was great for us when we were kids under constant threat... but we can't afford to check out from reality as adults.  

This is what I did for a few years: I simply checked out little by little around the time my first child was born.  That adult experience of becoming a parent triggered a jail-break release for my childhood demons who had been in repressive purgatory... and I was simply overwhelmed emotionally.  It's similar to what happened with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  The defenses which held all that water at bay were simply insufficient in the face of such a deluge.  

This was what I experienced starting a little bit before the birth of my first born.  Then came the ever-quickening descent into the black hole of CPTSD: night terrors; flashbacks; self-loathing; you name it.  That was then, though.  Now is completely different.  I'm into my Neutral Zone now.  I no longer have panic attacks.  I recognize my maladaptive behaviors even though I've not completely conquered them.  The point is that my loss and grieving period is over, and now I have to figure what my new beginning looks like.  This is what the neutral zone is all about.

It's true that I'm in a limbo of sorts because I no longer hold onto the past and haven't quite set my future plan, but this is not filled with stress and consternation.  Yes, I'm still unsure of how to configure my future, but I'm figuring things out little by little as I continue through this introspective journey called recovery.  In the past, this type of limbo would have brought me crashing down to my knees, but now I'm truly enjoying this time of discovery about myself and how I want the next half of my life to materialize.  

Don't get it twisted, though.  I still go through some fairly craptastic days because I still grapple with the consequences of my old world: lack of social circle, financial difficulties, legal problems, employment difficulties, etc.  However, I never expected there to be a clear line of demarcation between the old me and the newly forming one. 

This is a transition and not just a mere change.  A change is really just a function of a singular decision or one-time situation.  My transition is an inner release of how my life was and embracing what my life is becoming.  Being in the neutral zone portion of my transition has meant serious and rapid progress for me.  I’m trying to push out of it now, but I’m okay with the idea that it may take longer than I want because I’m confident that I’ll make it eventually.

Hopefully this will help you advance in your recovery, get past the problems of your old life, and feel more comfortable about your own neutral zone as you realize how much better it’s all going to get if you put the work in. 

CPTSD Recovery & My New Life

I'm just now realizing, two years after separation from my ex-wife, that there's an entire world out there that always existed, but was completely outside my grasp.  I began the relationship with my ex at 20 years old, and every major decision thereafter was either made for me by her or made with her as the primary consideration.

Eighteen years later I find myself feeling like I'm 20 again.  I'm rudderless in an ocean of possibilities...  I just don't know what to do or how to do it.  I missed the selfish years most people get in their 20's.   Living in a few different cities; The trips with the guys to Vegas;  having complete responsibility over career direction;  the crazy relationships of 20-somethings;  I never got a chance at any of that.

I was too confident back in the day to realize what I didn’t know.   Now I have the experiential benefit yet lack the required self-assurance to move forward with any real measure of conviction.  It’s a strange space to inhabit.  Add a very unhealthy dose of CPTSD-driven anxiety and you have my recipe for paralysis of action.

Not that I regret the decision to marry my ex.  The love and life we shared was mostly wonderful and infinitely more worthy than those selfish pursuits.  I only mention this because most people don’t get divorced in their late 30s from the only person they’ve been with since the age of 20.  Most of the divorced people I know got married somewhere in their mid-to-late 20s, and so they’ve already experienced “the single life.”  I haven’t, and so this is all so new to me.

I'm stuck in this city that I mostly detest until my 2 daughters go to college in roughly 14 years.  I have a deep feeling of helplessness regarding where I live even after no longer having to factor my ex into the equation.  This helplessness is one reason my life has been stuck in neutral for the past two years.  I now recognize that resentment and helplessness are feelings leading to nowhere.  Now it's critical that I make the most of my time here, and this is what my post today is all about.

My first real post-marital relationship has just ended.  While lasting only a few months, it was sufficient enough to provide me with the confidence required to kick-start my life into first and then second gears.  It was exactly what I needed, if not necessarily everything I wanted.  She made me understand I’m still worthy and valued by women of her caliber... even with my psychological warts and all.   .

Just dating her and introducing her to my girls gave me the ability to recognize the power I now have over my life.  It's been quite the revelation that I'm now making my own life decisions based solely on myself and what I want out of life.  (Of course, my daughters are a factor but not an anchor-like one as before.)  That's not to say I won't adjust once I'm in a long-term relationship, but it's good for me to have a period in my life like this. I had always wondered what it would be like.

Well, I'm about to find out!

While I can't exactly act as though I'm in my 20's, it does approximate how I'm approaching this.  I'm considering a complete career change.  I chose my own apartment.  I’m dating different women.  I'm choosing my own friends based on my own opinions.  That may not seem like much to most people, but consider that I've spent 2 years in almost complete social isolation because of my CPTSD-induced combination of self-loathing, shame, and confusion. 

I could barely understand everything happening inside of me much less explain it to others.  Most of my close friends were either part of my ex's family or somehow closely related to her, and I did not need any more of her in my life than absolutely required.  That, coupled with my brother moving to Atlanta around the same time, is how I instantly lost my entire social network.  I never developed my own due to, you guessed it, CPTSD-induced trust issues.  I naturally latched on to those my ex already trusted, my brother moved here just after I did, and it was plenty for me. 

I’m slowly building my own network, but it’s incredibly difficult for me even though I’m very gregarious and outgoing.  I make acquaintances so very easily.  My problem has always been my predilection toward detonating relationships of any kind once the person gets too close to me.  It’s an old self-defense mechanism learned from my childhood that’s so ingrained that I have to make conscious efforts to overcome.

As for the non-relational parts of my life, I still don't know what to do.  At least I'm finally moving in the right directions and making progress.  While more than just a tad frightened, I’m also thrilled at all of the opportunities which lie before me (almost too many).  There’s a whole world waiting for me, and I’m so glad to finally have the ability to go exploring on my own.

Recovering From Child Abuse: A Day in the Life

In this post I'm just sharing off-the-cuff thoughts and feelings.  The idea is to express myself as a CPTSD survivor without worrying about grammar, appropriateness, or any of the niceties typically required of a "respectable" blog!  

I recently found out my father probably has cancer. I say “probably” because healthy and effective communication simply doesn’t exist within my family.  

I'm struggling with the simultaneous feelings of apathy for him and his plight, disappointment in myself for being apathetic, sadness for my Mom facing the loss of her life partner, and resentment that I'm unable to help her through this because all she wants from me is to reconcile with my unrepentant father... and that shit is simply not going to happen. 

Meanwhile I received some distressing news after getting an MRI on my shoulder.  Besides finding four orthopedic injuries, a lesion was noticed that is presumably a benign tumor but could potentially be malignant.  

Here's the real kicker: One of my first thoughts upon getting this news was, “this is the Karma I brought upon myself for being an uncaring ass about my father’s cancer.”  How's that for self-destructive and utterly undeserved feelings of shame?  

It really pisses me off that I felt this guilt and how it instantly morphed into low grade self-loathing.  My therapist would say it’s great that I recognized this for what it was and, as a result, won’t allow it to completely overtake me emotionally.  I say it really sucks that my childhood traumas continue to color my life at 38 years old.  

What I have realized, though, is that it’s more important than ever for me to continue to build a network of social supports, not just clinical ones.  I checked out from my friends and family for a couple of years because apparently that’s what CPSTD survivors often do.  My old social structures would invariably lead me backwards in my recovery, so I made the decision a while back to essentially act as though I moved to a new city and had to build a social network from scratch. 

I began the process by going on Match.com a few months ago just to wade back into the dating pool, and that experience was better than expected as I found someone I really dig.  This success spurred me to join two groups on Meetup.com last week: a Dads Group that has nothing to do with my recovery and also a Men’s Circle comprised of guys facing various life challenges  

It was initially intimidating to put myself out there again when I'm still unsure of how to walk the tightrope of explaining what's been going on with me without over-sharing.  This fear is one reason I remain anonymous in writing this blog (the other is that my ex-wife will somehow use this against me to steal the almost 50% custody I won during our divorce).

However, I understand that I can't control how others perceive me and the psychological challenges I face.  I can only control how I react to their perceptions and subsequent reactions.  I have a sweet little angel on one shoulder whispering "open yourself up and feel free to explain your plight" while my dark angel is shouting in my other ear that I shouldn't have to explain myself to anyone.

Complex PTSD and Maladaptive Behaviors

Today I want to explore how our childhood traumas have such a profound impact on who we became as adults.  Many men, such as myself, instinctively dissociated from the pain and confusion inflicted upon our newly-forming sense of self and nascent understanding of the world.  In other words, we had no real choice but to avoid confronting the horrors we endured simply to survive as we awaited and reached for the false safety of adulthood.  

I specifically detached from my experiences until I was 32 years old - over 12 years after the final incident - by subconsciously dismissing what happened (repression), consciously pushing aside thoughts and memories (suppression), or flat out deceiving myself and others by downplaying the true severity or impact. 

It came easy to simply insist my childhood was normal and that “of course” there aren’t any ongoing consequences.  To do otherwise was, in my mind, admitting that I was weak-minded and so soft that I couldn’t even get past things which happened when I was a child.  I'm a strong and resilient man who toughs things out damn it! 

Yet it isn’t about being tough-minded or strong-willed.  There were plenty of signs that I had some deep-seated issues which needed to be addressed.  Back in the day when I used to get into fights, I would never remember the first shot I took.  The beginnings of those altercations were never part of my memory.  I always blacked out for a split second (even when it wasn't a blow to the head) and then I'm back.  It's the most bizarre thing, but I never really contemplated why that happened. 

Then through therapy and research I began learning about the dissociative aspects of my mind, which stemmed from the prolonged physical and psychological abuse I sustained as a child.  It was my brain's way of shutting off right when I would start to absorb the blows from my father in an apparent attempt to anesthetize and protect me.  I’ve since tried to explain this as going into mini-shock.  Of course, the pain of successive blows brought me right back to reality... but it is truly bizarre (and a little awe-inspiring) to recognize how adaptive the human brain is. 

This was also how I came to truly comprehend how my coping mechanisms, which were so effective in childhood, were utterly destructive when implemented in the adult world.  This is essentially what is meant by “maladaptive.”  For example, the "mini-shock" reaction helped me not feel the initial attacks from my father during childhood, but it put me at an absurd disadvantage during fights once I got older.  It was adaptation to my traumatic world as a kid but ended up being quite bad for me later. 

I'm not terribly concerned with addressing the particular issue related to fighting because I'm not an idiot teenager/20-something anymore and my last fight was over a decade ago.  However, there are plenty more maladaptive behaviors from childhood which I've subsequently had to overcome or are currently still trying to overcome by re-wiring my brain little by little, day after day.

The significance of this makes it worth repeating: Those coping mechanisms which served us fairly well throughout our disturbing youth are at best unhealthy during adulthood in virtually any context.  It’s okay to be self-absorbed as a child/young adult because your job is basically to focus on yourself and become the best adult version of yourself possible.  Once adulthood hits - and I mean the adulthood of responsibilities - the problems arise as you navigate workplace politics… romantic relationships… new and ever-changing social groupings... parenting your children… and all of the other ways in which adults must become those social animals evolution demand we be. 

Those preservation tactics from my youth are predicated on withdrawal, sole reliance on self, and distrust of virtually everyone.  Those tactics continue to be the ones I initially reach for even now.  I cognitively know adults don’t effectively function this way with all of the responsibilities and pressures associated with career/family/etc, but I still have to work hard at recognizing when I do these things.  That’s what I mean by “doing the work” in recovery.

I do my best to recognize when I use these maladaptive tactics, but it continues to normally come after the fact.  But that’s okay for now.  My therapist uses a football analogy.  Very rarely do you get to score on the first play of a drive.  So I shouldn’t expect myself to completely change my behaviors in this area immediately.  As long as I’m being introspective and honest with myself each time I have these maladaptive behaviors, then I’m moving the ball forward a little bit down the field.  Recognize them often enough, continue to determine more productive and positive methods which would have been better, and I’m slowly but surely retraining my brain to respond differently to various triggers… and that’s the touchdown at the end.

There's a concept called neuroplasticity about which I will go into great detail in a future post because it lies at the heart of why we can fully recover from CPTSD, unlike other diagnoses which require medication and therapy for life.  The basic idea behind neuroplasticity is that parts of the human brain were “wrecked” to a certain extent by the traumas which resulted in CPTSD, but the brain is elastic enough to withstand the wreckage and be “rewired” through recovery as with the process I just explained above.  I’ve already started seeing the results, and I’m working harder than ever as a result.

No matter how much progress you and I make in our recovery, whatever occurred during our life to necessitate recovery in the first place will always be a part of our life story.  We’ve spent so much effort dissociating ourselves willfully or not from the pain of those incidents that the mere thought of outright owning them as our own seems absurd and terrifying.  During my recovery I begrudgingly acknowledged the need to own those parts of myself that I wanted so much to push away, but it was only after many false starts that I finally “got it.” 

I can tell you from experience that this is a painful process.  Those distressing realities of our past need to be embraced as obstacles we will conquer, and only then can we dispatch their current destructive power.  We can become free and whole again by embracing our traumatic history, understanding how our previous defenses have become our current maladaptive behaviors, and then doing the work to retrain our brain away from using them.

A Quest to Help Others Recover From Child Abuse

It's trite, I know, but this really is the first day of the rest of my life.  It’s another chance to shirk the negative consequences of yesterday, learn from those mistakes, and start from this very moment to generate my own positives.  Sharing my story will absolutely benefit me as a cathartic release, and I may just be able to reach and help one or two others at the same time.

Today I've decided to just jump head first into this blog and post a little bit of the writing I've been doing as part of my recovery.  A harrowing childhood of abuse left me with a variety of physical and emotional scars, the results of which have been the downward spiral of my life to its current nadir.

Right now I have no steady income, no permanent home, have virtually no money, and I lost the few close friends I had because of divorce and the subsequent self-imposed social isolation of the past couple of years.  I’ve also recently lost my girlfriend who essentially broke things off with me just recently because she couldn’t bear all of the stressors with which I have to deal.  There wasn’t any problem between us at all.  In fact, we were a great match for each other, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.  She had to bail to save her emotional self from bearing the weight of my problems… that’s how sweet she was.

This is just some of what Complex PTSD does to a person, but these challenges can all be temporary if I lock down and continue the difficult recovery work I started over two years ago.  I know, I know… two years of therapy and I’m just now at my nadir?!  The first 3-4 months were spent dancing around the issues, the next 7-8 months were spent pulling out all of the dark demons down inside of me, and since then I’ve gone from one false recovery to another.  Let me back up for a moment, however.

Physical and psychological abuse was the ever-present guillotine hovering over my youth until I was struck for the final time as a 20-year old sophomore home from college for a holiday break.  This long chapter of my life story is the single most problematic and complicated truth I have confronted, privately or not, to this day.  I was not sexually abused, however.

I bring that up immediately because the media and society in general give relatively no attention to the men who have endured repetitive significant trauma but were neither molested as boys nor maimed physically and/or psychologically as adult combatants in armed conflict.  There’s a litany of resources for men who were young sexual-abuse victims or those who developed war-related debilitating psychological challenges.  However, I’ve been quite frustrated over the comparatively few opportunities for help specifically dedicated to the untold number of men who were “only regularly abused” as kids. 

I'm in a great position to provide at least a few more resources out there for men like me.  I'm slowly and carefully constructing a multi-faceted social media presence to that very end.  I began writing months ago, have already started by dipping my toe ever so gently into Twitter (@men_helping_men), and now this blog.  I'm not too concerned with display, layout, professionalism, etc. at this point.  I'll get to all of that eventually.

It's the information that's critical to the success of my endeavor.  I'm NOT very well acquainted with manipulating social media tools.  I write this for men like myself who’ve been too “tough” to ever ask for help with the problems they don’t like to admit even having because of a past that they don’t want to discuss.

For the record, I've been diagnosed with C-PTSD, Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia, General Anxiety Disorder, and ADHD.  I'll go into greater detail in future blogs.

I hope that my writing primarily for men with C-PTSD doesn't turn anyone else off, however.  Anyone wanting a fairly expansive first-person perspective, along with helpful details and resources, should find this blog and Twitter feed very helpful (unless I fail miserably, which I don't intend to do).

Don’t come here for sappy feel-good nonsense, either.  I'm putting nothing but reality (or at least my particular version of it) into this.  Be prepared for different reads depending on the post and my mood of the day.  One day I'll be writing as though it's a scholarly article for peer-reviewed publication, and other times I'll be very laid-back in my writing style. 

It’s important for the regular guy to "get" what I'm saying, and sounding like an academic is not the way to go.  Sometimes I'll just talk about what's happening with me that day because it's been very helpful to me to hear the stories other men have.  I've learned so much from the experiences of others, and I hope to pass along this knowledge to others.  If I'm fortunate, then I will accomplish 2 things with this:

1) Other men with experiences remotely similar to my own will come across this and realize they’re not alone.  They will understand they should not be ashamed of how their adult lives have suddenly or repeatedly been twisted up, even though the actual abuse may have ended years and even decades earlier.

2) The all-important loved ones of these men will read this and begin a path toward understanding why the guys they love so dearly repeatedly act as they do or suddenly seem to have become someone else entirely.  True recovery has a much greater chance of success if they develop a sense of what he's previously endured, how those experiences currently manifest, why they are unable or unwilling to adequately express it to you, and (most importantly) that this need not be a permanent state.  Maybe this blog will initiate the early stages of repair and end with eventual enrichment of your relationships.

I AM NOT A CLINICIAN AND DO NOT PROVIDE ANY CLINICAL ADVICE TO ANYONE.  I do have a Master's-level education in Public Health (and an MBA, for whatever that’s worth here), so I've been trained on researching and understanding medical issues.  This allows me to digest a wide variety of information about childhood abuse and CPTSD, in both academic and first-hand fashions, and then reframe in ways accessible to virtually anyone.  I want to encourage people to seek the help of a psychologist, therapist, or maybe even a psychiatrist to overcome the traumas of their past.

The thing is that I'm just now lifting myself off rock bottom... so the upshot is that anyone regularly following this blog can see the ups and downs of real recovery.  You've missed much of my opening phases of recovery, but I'll reference them from time to time.

While I’m a very cognitively-oriented guy, this isn’t about thinking my own way out of having these problems.  This is about emotions which hijack my ability to function properly or at all.  I might be the smartest guy in the room most of the time, but I still won't recover unless I'm willing to confront, accept, and process those emotions effectively.

It sucks, I won't lie.  At the outset of recovery, you'll unearth some ghastly shit that will frighten you, and then you'll realize it has been there all along seeping poison into the various parts of your life.  Just realize that this is not a permanent state of being.  Once you avail yourself of the support from your loved ones, follow the guidance of a professional clinician, maybe join a group, and you'll be on a solid path to recovery and living the life you deserve.

Finally, recovery will happen only if you truly commit to the difficult work while availing yourself of every source of assistance you can find.  Since you’re still reading, I’ll make the assumptive leap your life has imploded and is completely littered with the fragmented pieces of your former world and future dreams, and you’re desperate to reassemble them immediately.

Let me disabuse you of the notion that there are any shortcuts to true recovery… believe me because I’ve tried just about all of them.  The path you’re peering down is plagued with potholes and straight up roadblocks.  Yet so many others have successfully traversed these obstacles, as I continue to do myself, so there's no reason you can't as well.

What you find on my blog is NOT a blueprint for recovery.  Everyone’s recovery path is just as unique as the person.  What you see in my recovery as it's recorded here is not something you should necessarily follow.  Maybe it's something for you to bring into your sessions with your therapist, maybe it's discussed with your partner or best friend, or perhaps it’s just some place you can go to see there’s somebody out there even more screwed up than you are!