Yes Jane, it is physically exhausting at times, feels like your body ran a marathon. That is because of the cortisol or adrenaline not only flooding the mind but also all your muscles preparing you to fight or flight. I think it is great that the class was supportive it would be nice if society understood it better and was more supportive, that way IMHO it would become easier to control and much less embarrassing.

I think it is great that you are working through it and still going to class and engaging in moving forward with your education for a better career. While you can have these setbacks, you work through them every time you have them, you are getting support and you are recognizing that you have been gaining.

It sounds like you have a good therapist that is right there with you and encouraging you knowing that you genuinely struggle at times and validates you and is right with you as you continue to work through it. If you think about the mind and human beings, we all have life challenges and have our insecure moments, ideally we have a mentor or nurturer that we turn to that reassures us, then we do something where even though we are unsure we make progress and recognize we have overcome and gained, you see this with your son all the time. Well, as these challenges come up we experience chemicals in our brains too that encourage us to seek reassurance and then we have chemicals that take place when we make a gain where we feel much better and more encouraged to go forward. The more we go through this and realize we are making progress as we attempt to engage, the more our self esteem and desire to continue engaging takes place.

When PTSD is discussed it is mentioned that the sufferer looks for a rescuer. The reason that takes place is because our brain already is designed to recognize different chemical reactions and try to get a supply of the chemicals that are presented that create a gain and therefore a balance takes place and a desire to keep engaging. As I mentioned, you are seeing that taking place in your son all the time as he is growing and going to school and learning and building his skills in all different ways. You have talked about the fact that your son is a good, well behaved, positive little boy. Well, that means his needs are being met and he is getting all the right messages to help him continue to build self esteem and want to engage.

A big part of complex ptsd is because of how a person somehow did not get that need met. Triggers are reminders of when that was needed and not present for us. It doesn't mean you were not smart enough, it doesn't mean you didn't deserve it, it doesn't mean it was your fault or even that it is unattainable. There are a lot of people that do have these moments take place in their lives, their brains try to find some way of forming that chemical to proceed however. We have to be this way because it ensures our survival Jane and it encourages us to do a lot of things that not only help us, but help human beings as a species, to survive and keep looking for better ways to survive. This takes place partly on a conscious level, but also on a subconscious level too. That is how we can learn a skill and eventually do the skill without having to think about every step in the skill. We have many of these skills we have developed by learning and practicing which creates these deep abilities to be able to drive for example yet at the same time be able to do other things without all our focus on every little detail of driving. We can learn to write and practice that until we get so we write things down quickly without having to think about how to form every letter and where that letter goes in a word.

What we do not realize is that what also happens is how when needs do not get met and we struggle in some way emotionally or frustrated and that happens a lot, that negative message can also become something we automatically do without much thought too. We don't even realize that we have that and many people develop ways to suppress it or disassociate from it. Well, we have to have that too Jane because again, we still need to be able to survive and thrive "in spite of".

Jane, often people gain a sense of worthiness with "if you have this you are worthy and ok". That is also important to our survival, however what happens is that often gets skewed. Unfortunately, what can happen is that a parent or parents can send the wrong messages to a child "unknowingly" and the child begins to think they have to achieve or do only to "please" a parent. It is not unusual for a parent to pass the wrong messages to their child in teaching their child that the child needs to have the same tastes, opinions, and priorities as the parent. That is not the right way to raise a healthy child. Unfortunately, this takes place too often and it has amazed me how even well educated and successful parents make this mistake constantly not even realizing how wrong it is. Also, unfortunately this "mistake" often gets handed down from one generation to the next too. It is so common that a lot of people develop this deep message that to gain approval they need to make sure they have the same tastes and priorities and possessions as everyone else does.

Jane, when you talked about your mother and how she stresses both you and your sister that is not your fault or your sister's fault. When your mother needed to critique your dishes and tell you that you are wrong and should have dishes that "she" considers are better, that is expressing that your mother never gave you permission to decide what "you" like and what makes "you" happy.

People tell me all the time that I am brave, I stand my ground, I have my own standards. The reason "why" I am like that is because even though I was traumatized and struggled when I was little, my mother always sent me messages that told me it was "ok" to be me and like what I like and she also paid attention to what "I" like and rewarded me by trying to give me the things "I" like. My mother's mother was not like that, she was more like your mother where god forbid the house not be clean and certain things be in place. Every time my grandmother came to visit we all had to run around and clean the house and my entire family was stressed. So, when you talk about how your mother stresses you in different ways, I know what that is. Unfortunately, when that happens, it plants seeds deep in the subconscious mind that become automatic responses of "doubt and worry" about needing to be a certain way to "please and be worthy".

When someone struggles with complex PTSD all of these troubling messages come forward. A trauma can take place, be a major threat, and present a chemical surge in the brain that actually "hurts" the brain. That is when we become "hyper aware" because we actually do need that to survive. Our subconscious mind kicks in to figure out how to resolve it. Unfortunately, what many people experience is that when that happens our subconscious also remembers whatever else was bad that hurt us in an effort to see if there are some kind of skills we can use. As you have noticed, that is very confusing and scary and because we don't understand it, didn't experience it before, we mistakenly allow ourselves to feed into it and we begin to experience these troubling cycles of confusion. That is when our brain develops an extreme desire for that rescuer that we genuinely need to help us so we can regain the right chemical balance to be ok again.

That is why it is so important that we find the right therapist. A good therapist will know that the most important thing they need to establish with a patient is TRUST AND SAFETY. The goal of a therapist is to get the patient comfortable so that they can "talk" and slowly get more comfortable telling their story, no matter whatever is in that story. A therapist needs to understand that it is "crucial" that they do not try to "control or instruct or send judgmental messages" to the patient because by doing that it disrupts their sense of safety and can trigger them and push them into feeding into the bad messages they got from a parent or abuser that hurt them or challenged their sense of "self worth or self esteem or sense of ability to thrive".

A person struggling with PTSD, especially complex PTSD, needs to have a therapist where they can "cry uncontrollably, express anger and outrage, or talk about how they feel so unworthy and threatened". A patient needs to feel safe enough so they can do what they may consider as "being a little crying child that needs that parent to help them and sooth them and make them feel ok again". That needs to be let out and expressed, validated and comforted and grieved and it needs to happen without a patient being "embarrassed or punished".

Jane, I have some very negative deep subconscious messages myself. I have experienced a lot of bad things in my life and when I cried out, unfortunately, I was reprimanded and punished. And when something really bad took place the only person that could be my rescuer and validate me was instructed to stay away from me. And my older sister who sent me a lot of negative messages my entire childhood was there when I broke down and treated me horribly. My older sister has sent me many negative messages over the years where "I was not quite good enough and didn't meet up to the right standards or that when I struggled it was inconvenient and that I need to find a way to hold it in and suppress it".

If you notice, I dumped in Alisha's thread about "therapy questions". I have been very overwhelmed IRL, and she asked questions that somehow hit me and I dumped. That is something that can happen with PTSD. The sign that someone is being repressed, or has been repressed in some way is "the need to apologize" and from my angle, that means that something very deep is sending me a message that I did something wrong and put myself at risk. The "sad" part in that is that if you read what I dumped, I actually was punished many times, even when I had a serious need with severe health issues. If a person is laying in a bed literally dying and they are "yelled at" for moaning, that is pretty bad. If someone is experiencing a crisis from a traumatic event and reaching out for help, is it fair to sit across from them and tell them to stop it, get their act together or else they will lose EVERYTHING, their marriage, their farm EVERYTHING?

Well, my message to you, or anyone who struggles, is that when you experience messages that come from your subconscious that upset you, IT NEVER MEANS YOU ARE WRONG OR BAD OR UNWORTHY. The "healing" comes when you take the time you deserve to take, and finally address the negative messages you received, finally express whatever emotions you have stored up, and be "validated" and finally have someone help you see that whatever is there is not your fault, never was your fault, and that you can finally learn to see it all in a much healthier way.

Jane, you have shared different moments where you struggle and shed some tears. I do try to point out to you that you "are' actually a good mother and how your "little man" is actually showing you that. You are actually doing with him, what is "right" because you are allowing him to learn how to be "what he wants" and not what "you or anyone else thinks he should be". He can't make up for whatever you need, because a child doesn't know how to do that and it is never good to do a role reversal which actually also takes place way too often when a parent needs love and approval and permission and isn't getting it the way it should be provided for them. You will have these little challenging moments, but always talk about them because these are also things you can grieve and work through too, and you definitely deserve that to happen too. As you learn and grow through all of this, you will be able to have more "good skills" that you can use to help your son the right way too.

PTSD is such a challenge, however, it can also open doors to gaining important knowledge that others might miss and may not ever have these deeply learned skills that they gain from, but can also help others gain from too. Always remember that.

OE