I have been trying to get myself together to go out Christmas shopping and I had not been doing well at all. I have a very hard time when it comes to the holidays. I used to enjoy the holidays, yet the holidays do tend to bring on their own different stresses. There is this picture of how to celebrate the holidays with family and friends, and this idea that if one can capture this picture of the ideal gathering, that person is doing well and is lucky. The holidays are times where we take a time out so we can actually make time for our family and friends and be thankful in some way and to extend ourselves to others to let them know we are thankful they have been a part of our lives. A time to be thankful and "bring joy".

Well, the way things have gotten so toxic I don't have a healthy connection to the holidays. In fact, I can get literally flooded when it comes to the holidays, flooded with triggers and emotional confusion. I have even felt and came right out and said yesterday, "all I want for Christmas is to not have to do Christmas".

With the way things have been in my family since I experienced all that loss and developed PTSD I began to face even more losses and dysfunction. With that the holidays began to become more and more of a challenge. Whatever I thought I had that I thought came close to experiencing that "ideal" of each holiday just turned into losses that built up. It wasn't just the changes I was facing within my family but how going shopping changed from the places I used to go for years where I always had luck finding just the right gifts, to suddenly having those gone too. I don't know about anybody else, but I like to "see" and "feel" what I am buying and giving as a gift. When you have certain places you can go where you get to have that and walk away satisfied and then that is suddenly taken away or is gone, it can be extra triggering when so many other things in your life have changed and you are trying so hard to figure out how to accept it while struggling with PTSD.

This year has been extra hard because of how hard last year was. Yet, this year is coming with losses that I honestly don't know how to wrap my mind around along with all the very challenged emotions I have. So much has happened in the past year and a half alone that have changed the picture I thought I had that I have not been able to process it all. How my parents had declined, how my older sister had been so controlling and possessive and mean, and then having my older brother come back into my life. I have had so many flashbacks and confusion that I got overwhelmed and because I was so overwhelmed and confused by all these flashbacks coming forward I withdrew because I honestly have not felt "safe" to engage as much as I used to because of how this thing called complex PTSD has pretty much knocked me down where I have to sit with it and figure it out somehow so it doesn't knock me down in a way where it catches me completely off guard.

One of the things that constantly is said to me is "what you get caught up in is NOT IN THE NOW". And then I get comments that come down hard on me with anger and blame when I get triggered and all these flashes hit me and I can't collect myself. I remember when I was seeing the therapist that helped me the most that I wanted him to help me with all that I was dealing with that was overwhelming me in the NOW. Even when I did break down, and I literally was so overwhelmed by the now that caused me to experience what is called a post traumatic breakdown, I wanted "grief counseling and rest" and I did not get that, and what I did get was a constant message that I was wrong for having so much grief about all that I had lost IN THE NOW.

If I just think about that, how everything about me in my own world was invaded, destroyed and violated so badly, that is probably what contributed to so many other things in my past where I experienced "losses" suddenly coming forward and crippling me. That did not happen right away, and I believe that if I had gotten the right help I would have been able to slowly regain the resilience I had managed to regain with all the traumatic things I had experienced in my past. I think that the one thing I kept hearing and was constantly expected to focus on was "HISTORY".

Instead of getting what I had consistently begged for which was REST and GRIEF COUNSELING, I may have been able to begin finding my way towards processing all the loss I had experienced and then moving forward in spite of it. The one thing I still carry in me is how I never got what I had asked for and instead all I faced was "more and more and more" LOSS and "invasion" and I feel like a part of me has gone without sleep for days on end, no weeks on end that turned into YEARS on end.

I did not start having the flashback invasions until the beginning of 2011ish, the flashback invasions that came forward from my past and childhood. The loss I experienced that overwhelmed me so much that I experienced a post traumatic breakdown happened in 2007. I did have flashbacks about what I lost, but I did not have flashbacks from my past. While I kept trying so hard to get help for the NOW, all I kept facing from both therapists AND a lawyer and anyone else that failed to respect my need to regain my boundaries and effort to feel safe as well as TRY to handle the huge change to everything I had created was HISTORY, HISTORY, HISTORY. I ended up with a great deal of debt that changed everything I had managed before to not being able to get near how I had managed and live my life before all the loss. And what I ended up getting with that too was "history, history, history" and how all that I had managed to create was managed by also maintaining a decent credit history.

One of the constant challenges I faced with my need to get true REST AND GRIEF COUNSELING, was how I had to literally PROVE I actually deserved to FEEL I had a right to be feeling such a loss and that I had a right to actually VALUE what I lost. The other thing I experienced in this was the constant message of "what are you worth where I can profit from your loss". The message I got a lot is "I will care about you if I get a financial reward for doing so and I can see a gain for myself if I give you that feeling that you have a right to feel your loss".

I know I began with wanting to talk about the horrible day I had yesterday that revolved around my attempt to JUST find my way to get out and go Christmas shopping. Truth is I don't know HOW to do that anymore without it having a bad affect on me on so many different levels. And I did not know how to find my way to articulate that to my husband and NOT have him react in a way that would only add to my challenge of actually getting in the shower, finding something to wear, and physically making the attempt to TRY to figure out HOW and find my way to accomplishing SOMETHING in my effort to do so.

So, because I could not explain it I ended up in a situation where my husband was going to react to me in ways that would end up triggering me that made my attempt so much harder and I ended up venting. And HE ended up venting things to me that criticized me and "You are bad and it's YOUR FAULT". You don't go out, you don't have any friends, you hide too much, you spend too much time on that computer instead of engaging REAL people, you this and you that and it all came at me in a way that kept saying I was not living in the NOW anymore and how I need to IGNORE and AVOID and JUST. He also talked about how I need to see a therapist too. Well, I had been working with therapists, and they both retired. And the truth is that I wanted a break and I did not want to start all over with some new therapist and sit and get that new therapist caught up with ALL MY HISTORY. And I did not want to sit across from the kind of individual that was like all the individuals I had spent time with that only made me worse instead of helping me HEAL.

I have been reading and learning on this computer. I have been sitting with the things I had learned with the therapist that helped me the most that I can't talk to and see anymore.

Yet, I have also experienced somethings in just this past year and a half that I have had to sit with and sort through by myself. I want to sit with what it means to me from having my older brother come back into my life. I want to sit with understanding how I did react when it came to him because I had wondered if seeing him might trigger me to have even more flashbacks from my past that I did not know I had stored in me that would so rudely surface and cripple and confuse me. I did not experience what I thought I might, instead I had different feelings when it came to him. Also, what I experienced in the time I have reconnected with him surprised me in that he was the one person who talked to me differently and he also made it a point to apologize to me in a deep meaningful way and a validating way. He also told me things I did not know, even told me how one time he had to drive my husband home because my husband was too drunk and he was so disgusted by how drunk my husband was. My husband threatened to punch him and he stood up to that and I never knew that happened. There were lots of things I simply did not know.

I got a chance to get close to my older brother and he just told me cancer is spreading through his body. I don't know how to wrap my mind around this along with all the dysfunction taking place this past year alone when it comes to my parents and my older sister.

Going out Christmas shopping this year was not something I wanted to handle. And when I did go out I began to see things I would have bought for my father and my mother. I saw a shirt with little anchors on it and I held it in my hands and I felt him and YEARS of him and how I miss him and yet just trying to call him to wish him happy birthday was so hard and I ended up with my sister yelling at me F you, F you and she hung up on me. It has gotten SO TOXIC that just trying to find SOME WAY to experience my parents has proven to be EMOTIONAL ABUSE.

I went out shopping yesterday and it was SO HARD and I was SO LOST that I did not need to have my husband express so much anger at me. I did not need him to point out how I don't have any friends right now either. There is a reason for that that HE is a big part of that I just don't have the energy to sit and GO THROUGH THAT HISTORY. Having friends takes time, having a friend means having the time to cultivate and be able to spend time with them. It's so hard to do that when so much of one's life revolved around being married to a binge alcoholic and then a recovering alcoholic who's life always revolved around that. I actually did TRY to fit in having friends, but I also faced that blowing up in my face too. I had to learn the hard way how sometimes friends are more about what you can do for them and what you have that they can "use" to their benefit. My challenge in that area that I have slowly been realizing stems from how my older sister taught me to be good at being an audience and to learn how to play well with an individual that likes to have all the "control". So, when you play well that way, you unknowingly attract that kind of individual and that means you are in a relationship that can prove to be "unhealthy" for you. And the truth is, one can end up being married to someone like that and that can prove to also be unhealthy too.

One the things that came out of me yesterday in all that mess, that came out in anger was, "I don't want to be useful, someone else's ship that came in for THEM, or carry the identity of someone else. I want my OWN identity".

The therapist that helped me the most kept telling me that the reason I suffered a post traumatic breakdown, and developed PTSD is because OF MY HISTORY that predisposed me to being susceptible where I would break down if something traumatic enough happened to me. I kept getting the same thing "history" when I had so wanted to focus on the NOW. So all my history came forward in a way I never imagined it could, and now all I hear is "That is history and you need to focus on the NOW". Included in that was having to deal with a lawsuit for about 9 years, a lawsuit that went on too long because of a lawyer that was declining mentally that no matter how hard I tried I could not get rid of. That most definitely kept me in having to concentrate on "History" constantly for way too many years yet also kept me trapped with struggling to handle all the new ways I had to constantly learn how to manage under the stress of not only all that loss but how that kept me in this constant new way of having to function with all that debt that handed to me.
That changed everything about how I had lived my life and just the other day I realized how much I had changed that contributed to the constant stress I experience.

So basically, I got yelled at yesterday and my effort to JUST try to go out and find my way to do this thing called Christmas shop, turned into one big horrible experience. And in midst of all of that my husband began talking to someone and that was something I just did not want to do and I ended up losing my ability to focus and I honestly wanted to get out of that store and escape. I did not want to see anyone I knew and have to stop and find a way to be social. I just wanted to focus on getting the shopping done. I did not do well at articulating that and instead ended up with HISTORY coming at me in ANGER and it ended up coming at me like bullets being launched from an automatic machine gun/rifle of some kind.

Today I feel very TIRED and depressed and LOST. And the truth is, I don't have a friend I can talk to about all this right now so I came here to a forum where at least others might be able to relate.