Learning I Had CPTSD

Helped me. Now I Treat Myself With More Compassion

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” Henry David Thoreau

I was very lost for a very long time.

I had no idea what it was, but I knew that something was really wrong with me my whole life. For as long as I can remember, I always felt broken and worthless. 

From where I am now, I can look back to younger versions of myself with a kind of care and compassion that I never had access to until recently. 

I was told by my father and stepmother that I was stupid and that I would never amount to anything so many times that I believed it. Their callous treatment of me coupled with my mother’s suicide when I was just eight years old taught me that I was worthless, at least in the eyes of my inner critic.

My belief that I was inherently flawed led me to decades of self-hatred and self-punishment. This took many forms. I was downright cruel to myself. The tapes replaying in my head over and over constantly told me what a piece of garbage I was, and I went along with it and lived my life that way. 

I drank too much, did too many drugs, and I didn’t take good care of my body. I went from one toxic relationship to the next, staying in bad situations for way too long, allowing people to treat me badly. I got myself into legal trouble and into deep debt. I worked a job that I hated as an exotic dancer for thirteen years because I felt that was all that I deserved. I self-sabotaged every effort I made towards creating a good life for myself. 

My answer to everything was to strive to be as perfect as I possibly could be, and when I showed any flaws whatsoever, my inner critic would beat me up for it. I had a devil on one shoulder, and an angel on the other, and they fought all the time. My inner world was a constant battleground, and I was in massive emotional and mental pain for many years. 

Even as I was making good strides through therapy and healing work, it always felt like one step forward, one step back. I was still in so much pain, even after twenty-five years of therapy and various types of healing. Why wasn’t I “getting it?” Why was I still so stuck?

Then something amazing and wonderful happened, although it didn’t feel that way at the time. I had a mental breakdown. My breakdown came after years of trying to escape the pain of my childhood and the grief of my mother’s death. 

It was painful at the time, but now, on the other side, I can see that it was more of a breakthrough. After running away for so many years, I was exhausted and I hit a wall, and I finally landed in reality.

I was liberated from the lies I had been telling myself for so many years. I finally could see that what happened to me was not my fault at all. None of it was my fault.

At that time, I was working with a wonderful therapist who gave me the diagnosis that I had never received before: Complex PTSD. You may think it strange that I would be happy with such a diagnosis, but I was and I still am. 

Why am I happy to finally know that I have CPTSD? As soon as I found out, I felt a huge burden lift off my shoulders. I could finally stop expecting myself to heal, to change, or somehow to become “normal.” 

My diagnosis gave me a very real way to understand and accept who I am. It gave me a template for self-understanding and it helped me to see that what has always happened inside of me is a normal reaction to a set of very abnormal circumstances…years of abuse and neglect as a young child. 

Now I understand myself, and I no longer feel so isolated and alone. There are a lot of people just like me, people who grew up in situations of childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma, and many of us have Complex PTSD. 

Everything that has ever happened in my life and inside of my mind finally makes a lot of sense to me. Now I am able to see clearly that I am not broken and I have so much compassion for the little girl inside of me who was so terribly mistreated for so long. 

Today I have so much appreciation for the amazing, resilient woman I have become. No matter how hard it became, I never gave up on myself, and I never will.