Feeling stuck

I'm not really sure how to write this, but I feel a need to reach out. I'm a 30yo woman in the UK with early childhood trauma and a long history of contact with psychiatric services, including a fair bit of therapy in my younger years.

In many ways, my life is improved. I'm able to live independently, I'm in a long-term relationship, and I've managed to avoid inpatient, by and large, for the last 6-7 years. These are things I could never have imagined achieving when I was younger.

I'm still struggling with the effects of the early life trauma, however. I'm often afraid, paranoid and emotionally dysregulated. I feel totally disconnected from society - even when I'm able to socially engage and when the response from others is generally positive.

I can't integrate my trauma - I don't know how. I think they don't want to offer any more therapy because it can be retraumatising for some, destabilising etc, plus I just don't think I have the cognitive, let alone emotional, ability to try and work through it. I totally get that.

I'm just at a loss, really. I'm alive, interspersed with a lot of troublesome, ongoing mental health and trauma issues, but I'm not living. It feels like I've got nowhere to go with this any more, and it bothers me a lot.

I'm not sure what sort of response I'm hoping for, here. I guess I'm hoping that being able to write this out will help a little. If anyone has anything they can offer, that would be great too.

Welcome to PC and the CPTSD forum! Are you seeing a therapist now? A therapist would be best to help guide you through the trauma. I wouldn't suggest working it out alone. As some of us here have tried and cam e to realize it was much larger than us and we needed help. What I have found for myself is that not working through the trauma keeps us hostage to it. It's very hard and yes re traumatizing , but that's kind of expected, ya know? That's why it needs to be done under a watchful eye, and a professionals care. Do you have access to trauma therapists? Doing this is very hard work and you have to be the one to do the work. The Mental Health providers can only help you gain the tools to work on it yourself. So that type of work requires a strong commitment to want to change. Even when it gets hard, you have to push through, but if it's putting you in a dark place hard you need the help from the professionals. Does this make sense? I feel like I'm rambling

Do you know of any therapist who's familiar with Brainspotting who'd be willing to treat you?

Brainspotting is a new type of trauma therapy that is showing great promise and also doesn't re-traumatize the individual. Yes, you still have to face it, but you don't have to relive it at the same time.

Look into it and see if it's a possibility. And welcome to PC.

Hi there, thank you very much for your thoughtful words. It does make sense indeed

Unfortunately, due to living in the UK and the NHS system here (and also given that I don't live in a city so mental health 'provisions' are not widely available) I would find it difficult to even access fairly 'basic' therapy. I feel grateful for the therapy I've already received and attribute my improved state of health to that work, but I'm nowhere near healed.

I guess my hope is that they'll come a day when I'll be well enough to earn enough money to be able to pay for suitable therapy. Until then, I'm going to need to look at other avenues to try and find my footing in this world.

Thank you very much for the welcome and kind thoughts.

Hi, thank you for your reply and welcome I have never heard of Brainspotting, I'm intrigued and will look into it.

Accessing therapy on the NHS is significantly difficult, but maybe it's something I'd be able to pay for in the future.

You are certainly always welcome here. We are not mental health providers but there's a lot of experience here with people's own personal journey's Healing and mental health help is seldom one size fits all. So we just pick up the bits and pieces that relate to us and try to make the best of it. As with my story, even with fairly well mental health resources here it's still my job to do the work. Have you ever gone to Youtube and checked out any Kati Morton .com videos? She has a video on almost all things mental health. We also love Pete Walker, best CPTSD resource I'm aware of, then there's https://www.healingfromcomplextrauma...d.com/untitled , a lot of good info there.
Keep in touch with us.