Are there any here?

I only recently found out that the decade long nightmare I endured up until a year ago was…(this is still hard to say)… not my fault.

And I realized behavior patterns in myself, now being in a wonderful relationship, that are destructive. Self destructive. I react not to the actual situation, but react with emotions forged by past experiences that were full of pressure, pain and … a loss of self, I suppose.

If I see a problem that is not resolved right away, I feel very strongly that it never will be, and want to run. Because that was my reality, for so long.

I lost myself, in the constant assault and manipulation of that emotional vampire. I no longer knew who I was, and am only slowly returning to it.

I only recently remembered that, yes, there was a time before I met her where I was a happy person, looking forward to life.

I was 18. She was ~40. I didn’t have a chance to defend myself against her. She isolated me. Imprisoned me. One time when I tried to get out, when I had found some reserve of strength, of fight left in me, she called the cops. She had the cops force me to stay, lying through her teeth, crying fake tears. As soon as they were gone,…

I’m a battered man…

Not really a boost to my self image, there. Not sure if it wasn’t better to just blame myself for her suffering. I’m kidding.

So… right now I’m waiting to here back from a therapist I selected to give me a concrete first meeting date.

Until I do… well… do you have experience with this?
My dad has PTSD, he had to pick up bodies from a plane crash.

The triggers will set up off are as follows. The smell of burnt toast or anything burning, he will get up and start going around all crazy because of it. Because of the smell of burning at the crash.

Bones, like say there are bones from a deer or something on the side of a road, that will bring memories to him.

The color red. A certain color of red he has trouble seeing and can actually almost run into cars and stuff because he has such a problem with it. Pretty messed up.

And if there is a large frenzy of activity then that also drives him crazy.

He has like 4-5 flashlights next to his bed (none work). Pretty strange behavior.

He has been a real bastard at times, physical violence but the worse was mental and emotional. Oh well, I deserve it. I guess I did something bad in a past life and he probably is trying hard to deal with it. He has mostly gotten over it.

That stuff is hard wired in your brain now. Those triggers that you have will set you off. And you can really hurt people with emotional and mental abuse.

I feel everyone has their own level of PTSD. I have some things about me that are similar based on past experiences. But I guess the difference is the extreme level of odd behavior that the PTSD sufferers show.

I believe there was some science that showed that your neural connections have rewired, that they actually hard wire to the amgydla fight or flight response in connection to those triggers. So when the triggers happen you access those really primordial and instinctive reactions.

The best suggestion you will ever get is to learn how to really meditate and awaken consciousness and have profound self awareness. You will be able to catch and recognize the triggers as they occur and with the whip of willpower you can defeat the PTSD. It will be as if you never had it.
Thankfully I already have that. Mindfullness. INFJ type here. I have a very strong connection to my subconscious. So, I’m hoping that I can deal with it, with help. I wouldn’t know what to do if it was hard wired, impossible to change.

One trigger I came across a long time ago, before I knew it was a trigger, was actually quite hurtful to my girlfriend. The intensity of our fights, in my previous relationship, was so far beyond the roof, that I was honed to that.

When we had our first fight, I emotionally detached, I went completely cold, and assault her with a volley of words, a mealstrom of dissaproval and critique, completely void of all empathy.

But instead of the return fire I expected, a volley at least as strong, she just collapsed, scared, cried, confused. I felt so bad about it I activly tried to never go there again… and I succeeded.

So… I have hope.

Most of the triggers I’m aware of now are only really damaging to myself. Trying to protect myself by cutting connections to other people, or not letting them establish at all.
Mindfulness and consciousness can be honed to an infinite degree. If you "had that" then you no longer have any problems.

Having a strong connection to your subconscious is a bad thing. The subconscious is everything underneath your conscious perception. All of that needs to be eliminated and turned into consciousness. It is not your friend, your subconsciousness can gobble you up and cause the problems you are experiencing.

The fact that you fight with a loved one so badly indicates you have a complete lack of understanding in yourself. You do not know the roots of your anger, you are probably unaware of the crumbling of your image produced by the angry bouts.

If you were aware of everything you were doing and its exact effects then you would never do anything wrong. We all naturally strive for success and perfection. Happiness.

The fact that your dear loved one is collapsing, hurt in a major way and so forth, indicates you are asleep. It indicates that the ego of anger is alive within you. That subconscious fiend within you that harms others. It needs to be eliminated. You cannot be friends with it or have a strong connection to it. It has to go or at the very least be weakened.

So the roots of your anger are fear, doubt, shame and frustration. Learn them, know them, meditate on them. Do retrospective meditation on the causes leading up to the fights and during the fights. See how fear, shame, doubt and frustrated desire may have had a role in causing the fight. Because they did.

Then comprehend it and pray to dissolve it. This takes enormous courage and sincerity to eliminate the ego. Your understanding will be so well that you will not want to do it again.

This is the only way to solve problems like these. If you think you have some other solution you are wrong, and you will go out and hurt others and you are responsible for the hurt you cause. Now you know, take my words seriously and solve the problem.
My ex is manic depression and borderlinePD as well as an alcoholic

I jokingly tell people I don’t fear hell, as I’ve lived with the devil for years.
But it’s not really a joke, just a way for me to deal with the craziness that I endured.

I can completely understand the battered person syndrome.. I was mentally and emotionally battered for several years. And even now, it takes a lot to really press my buttons and get me angered, or stressed out, however, when these situations occur, I "appear" to be the most level headed.. it’s like a different person actually takes over.. but in reality I’m so emotionally detached from actions and issues, It doesn’t have any real meaning for me.. so be on the watch for over detachment.. let it work in the situation and with the person, don’t let it spill into other areas of your life and for others.. that can be easily done, and I have struggled with that.

I at times did feel at fault for a lot of things, his behavior, his actions, etc… but finally realizing that I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, nor cure it, helped a lot, as well as support from good friends.
None the less, I have moved past it all, I have been determined to not be defined by the problems that someone else created, just to go on, and do the best I can from here on out.

But really the best thing I have done was to get out of the relationship.. He is not missed at all, nor is his drama and chaos.. In fact, the only thing I noticed that was missed that he would do, was so menial and insignificant that it took me 5 months to even notice.. And in all actuality, that was a huge breakthrough for me of realizing how much I did in comparison..
That menial task.. I taught my 5 yr old to do it, and he now has it as his chore, and it takes him 5 minutes once a week…

That entire construct falls apart because it removes learning from experience from the equation.

I said it happened once. 2 years ago.

I hear that. I called it "going cold". It was my primary defense in that relationship. You have a very positive outlook. I congratulate on reaching that.

I’m still very confused myself. There is soooo much coming together right now. The realty of my situation then can only be now understood with the contrast of a working relationship, the template of something not fucked up, one sided, manipulative… but actually caring, and honest, patient.

I had a panic attack yesterday when I realized that I basically have a decade worth of emotional manipulation for sex behind me, and what that did to my sex life. *shakes head*

All you ever needed to know about psychology you learned from a 5000 year old book inspired by a self-aggrandizing jealous psychopathic murderer masquerading as a deity, right? I’m sure it’s full of good examples of how to be a healthy responsible person, like the time he turned someone into a pillar of salt for daring to watch him murder everyone she’d ever known, or the time he drowned the entire population of the world because they didn’t believe in him anymore, including non-sentient animals incapable of comprehending his existence in the first place.

I’m sure you know a lot about your religion, but your psychological advice is all kinds of effed-up.
Hi. My mom has BPD and used to be extremely codependent and conditionally-affectionate. I’m well-versed in PTSD due to emotional trauma. Got any specific questions you want answered?

Learning from experience does not excuse the behavior. You can rob a house and get caught and be remorseful – you still go to jail.

Sincerity has levels. The level that I am talking about is quite deep and below common perception. The purpose of it is to become a better person. So I am trying to help you, do you see?

Rude!

Sounds like you jaded, boy. If there was something to be good gotten from them then you would not get it because you already have your mind made up. I am open to take and discard what is good or bad from anything, I hold no attachments to anything and am not a fanatic about any religion.

You can say whatever you want about my advice. It is what it is, praise it or curse it… you cannot change it.
@spiritus

You should start to forgive yourself. It’s not gods job. That’s yours. He doesn’t want you to torture yourself. He loves you.

@deusexaethera

A specific question. Man. Let me try to pick something out of all this confusion.

I think it would help me if you told me that you’ve recovered, rebuild. That there’s hope to undo all the damage done.

I found a therapist I really like, we talked a while, but our first actual face to face isn’t going to be for another two weeks. I’m putting a lot of hope in her. It’s basically what I’m holding onto right now while my entire identity is falling to pieces.

Who am I?

I don’t know.

Edit:

When you found out, did you see it everywhere? I’m seeing BPD everywhere now. In my mother, my girlfriend, in myself, in a friend. I feel like I can’t trust anyone anymore.
I have complex ptsd- if you want to pm me, feel free I’d be more than happy to share with you some of the tools that I’ve learned to manage flashbacks and body memories and nighmares and all that shit. <3 thinking of you…

It’s quaint, though uninformed, that you assume my attitude is as a result of never having been exposed to God’s love. I arrived at my present evaluation of the Abrahammic religions from a starting point of implicitly accepting the existence and good nature of God without question. Life cured me of that in time, and science offered more reliable answers to my questions anyway. I used to annoy the crap out of the people in church by saying "but it says right here that what you’re telling me is wrong." Apparently the Gospels only work if you accept that other people’s interpretations are more valid than your own, but I’ve always been far too strong-willed for that bullshit.

Once I was old enough to read and assess the contents of the Bible objectively, it became blatantly obvious how fucked-up God’s behavior is, as depicted by the Bible anyway. And if you believe in it, then it’s the one incorruptible and wholly-accurate book in the universe, which means God really is the asshole the Bible says he is — that is, if you don’t read it with "your mind already made up" that all the bad stuff described therein is okay because it was God doing it.

Regardless of whether you’re inclined to believe the mythology, however, it’s still a 5000-year-old book that doesn’t have anything useful to say about psychology except how to frighten people into behaving the way you want them to. Not exactly a useful source for role models unless you’re trying to become a petty tyrant.

1) Yes, I got better. It took me years to find some of the root causes of my PTSD and convince myself that not every woman on earth was my mother, but I did manage to do it.

2) The therapist can tell you how to cure yourself, but she can’t cure you, because she can’t directly access the contents of your brain. At various points in your treatment you will have to simply trust that she knows what she’s talking about even if it feels wrong. Even healthy behaviors will feel wrong at first if they’re not what you’ve spent your entire life doing.

3) Ah, you’re in the "crusade" phase; now that you understand the basic pattern of behavior, you’re seeing it everywhere. Let me speed things up for you: one, you have a hammer, but not everything is a nail; and two, a disorder is an abuse of a particular type of behavior, not merely the existence of that behavior. Everyone behaves in certain ways that, when viewed through a narrow-enough scope, looks unhealthy, but it has to be a consistent abuse of the behavior before it’s really a disorder.
Yawn at deus’s long OT rant, typical know it all and a waste of time to reply to.

Perhaps I deserve a lashing from Bestia though. I have come into some of these threads a little too confident at times. Please do understand that I had the best of intentions.

OP, I’m new to this place but I’m not new to PTSD. I’m a man that had to live through the equivalent of a war from the age of 7 till around the age of 16. Not only that but at the very same time I was going through culture shock due to moving to the U.S. and many many other things I’d rather not get into right now.

You should definitely seek out help because the PTSD weight on your shoulders is just going to keep getting heavier and it’s more than you can handle alone. Even if it’s just having a goal of going to see someone you can talk with once a month (your Shrink) can be enough to make things seem a bit better.

I personally wasn’t able to get help untill over a decade after my situation came to an end. That’s because I grew up with the mentality of "brush yourself off. Pick yourself up and keep going without complaining."

Had I gotten help sooner who knows how much different my life might have been.

The only reason I’m sharing this with you is because I wanted to let you know that you’re not alone in having PTSD and all it’s nasty byproducts.

I can’t speak for you but I’d most likely run back towards the insanity I grew up in because it’s "home." It might not be a pleasant place but the situation is familiar and it’s a world in which I know how to function. It the real world with real "normal" people that seem completely alien to me much of the time.

I wish you the best and I hope you find a psychiatrist who can not only medicate the symptoms but also work on patching the root cause of your troubles.

Good luck and I hope my little tale helped a bit.

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