(Part 2) Top products from r/CPTSD

I want to encourage you and say your CPTSD won’t affecting your parenting and you providing her with love and security is enough, but I also don’t want to delude you into a false sense of security. To answer your question as to how I do it: Firstly, I put in a massive amount of effort everyday to keep myself grounded and mindful and conscious of how I’m acting/reacting towards my child. On top of that, I never let myself slip into depressive states. On top of that, I have learned to manage and control all of my triggers so that my emotional states never negatively affect my child.


One major element of CPTSD is that it is an attachment disorder. This attachment disorder WILL affect your ability to provide a consistent sense of safety and security to your little one unless you learn how to manage and counteract those insecurities. Another element of CPTSD is that it causes you to develop a distrust/distaste for humans, and a desire to avoid human interaction. This will be absolutely detrimental to your child as he/she ages. All children rely on their parents to provide them with safe, healthy and consistent family and friends. It’s a very tiring and very difficult job, but it creates a ‘safety net’ of security on which your child can lean. How you interact with and value others will turn into how your child interacts with and values others. You will have to spend lots of time around other moms, letting your child play with their child. It’s a strain on you emotionally and mentally, but it’s necessary for healthy child development.


The best advice I can give you as a fellow parent with CPTSD is to start searching for a trauma psychologist and get an appointment scheduled ASAP. Of course anyone can recover from CPTSD without the aid of a psychologist, but when you add a child to the mix, quality and speed of recovery becomes a very important factor. Getting a psychologist to help you process your trauma and learn newer and better ways to do things will save you a lot of time and heartache. A psychologist will also teach you the importance of obtaining and maintaining friendships, and how to better manage all the triggers that parenting will bring up for you.

In the meantime, here is a short list of my all-time favorite parenting books. I’ve read probably hundreds of parenting books at this point: most are bad, a few are great. These are the best, most knowledgeable books I’ve found for ‘people like us’, at least in my opinion:

The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering our Children

ParentSpeak: What's Wrong with How We Talk to Our Children--and What to Say Instead

The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind

The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development

The Attachment Parenting Book : A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby

No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind


Feel free to PM me anytime :)

If they really love you but are just bad at it, imagine what they'd want you to do if they COULD understand. They'd want you to take care of yourself and do what's best for you, right? So do what's best for you, and if it makes them uncomfortable, be secure knowing that they'd support you giving yourself some distance if you need it. (And on the off chance they DON'T actually love you, well that's a pretty good reason to back away a bit!)

I highly recommend Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents as a great resource that helped me navigate my choice to stop talking with my parents for awhile (over a year and counting) while still letting them know I love them and I know they love me, but I need some space for awhile to take care of myself. (Age 18+ not required :P)

First, you're welcome. It helps - often! - to have an outside observer.

So, her PTSD and your CPTSD are going to be different: hers is a single incident from an untrusted stranger; yours is repeat incidents from somebody you are supposed to be able to trust. So, she will need help understanding that.

> I'm just scared. I want to tell her all of it.

Do it!!

> I want to give her my diagnoses but it feels dumb why should she need to know or care?

Because she loves you.

I know that I felt so .. trusted and treasured .. when my partner told me.

It almost broke my heart, because I could see that she expected me to leave her in response.

> She said I could always look to her for help. She says that now but does she mean it?

Neither of you can know that until she knows the entire picture. So, yes, its a risk, but it also allows her to make an informed decision:

If you tell her this, and she opts in to loving and supporting you ... then you know she chose you as you are, and knowing what the costs will be.

> I want to care for her.

You do care for her.

> I want to touch her and be affectionate but my dumb brain stops me and tells me she doesn't want it.

I all-but-guarantee that she wants it.

I know I do, with my partner. I pine for her touch. She is almost unable to -- but knowing how hard it is makes those times that she does touch me very impactful:

She was hurt by something, and walked away hurting one night, and I was afraid that I'd lost her .. but she came back, knocked on my door, and when I opened it, hugged me .. it may have lasted five seconds, and then she had to pull away .. but knowing that she chose that discomfort for herself in order to tell me that she still loved me even if she was hurting ..

God. Unless your partner is touch-repulsed, she wants your touch.

> Ugh. You're right I'm just so fucking terrified vulnerable and feel like I'm asking too much a lot from her no matter what I do.

FTFY.

Yes, you are asking a lot of her.

Being the partner to somebody with CTPSD and a history of CSA is not easy!!

It isn't for everyone.

Here's a book you might recommend for her:

Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child

I'm wishing you all the courage and love in the world ... it is tough to tell somebody.

You can do it!

<3 <3 <3

p.s., either of you are welcome to PM me any time

• richard schwartz: website. he's written a ton of books as well & has an audiobook with parts work meditations (if that's up your alley). if you search for him on youtube, a gajillion videos come up. really good stuff. if you decide to purchase any of his books, make sure to compare prices with what's in the store on his website; often the ones on his site are cheaper than amazon & other places (even used versions).
  
• derek scott: youtube, website. if you google "derek scott IFS PDF" you can find some handouts/condensed explanations&explanations of parts work.
  
• since you're wanting to use art/drawing to further explore your system, you might really like lisa spiegel's IFS therapy with children & michelle glass's daily parts meditation.
  
• i've also found bonnie weiss's IFS workbook helpful in teaching me how to approach my parts (even the "difficult" ones!) with compassion & curiosity.
  
• this worksheet (zen & internal family systems: working with parts) is a really nice resource, too.
  
• matt licata (i refer to his facebook posts when i'm having trouble accessing Self/feeling really blended with various parts)
  
• there are also two groups on facebook (i don't post, just read, & still get a lot from them): IFS community group (is a mix of therapists & non-therapists; derek scott sometimes participates there) & IFS daily reflections.
  
  i hope that list isn't overwhelming. internal family systems/parts work has been so so so beneficial to me as i work on my own growth/recovery, so i've done a lot of reading to try to absorb as much as i can. i hope that as you learn more about your parts & how to interact with each of them that the self-compassion & tenderness you've expressed here will just grow & grow & become second nature/as automatic as breathing, & that you will heal more & more deeply. 💚

Helluva story. (I thought mine was rugged, but...) IWE, there's a tremendous amount of really useful literature around codependency and the ACA deal you can get into that will advance your journey with Al Anon like a supercharger.

Here are some examples:

CoDA's "big blue book"

ACA's "big red book"

Melody Beattie's four or five on codependency including the excellent Language of Letting Go (very good starting points, btw)

Pia Mellody's Facing Codependence

Anne Wilson Schaef's Co-Dependence: Misunderstood, Mistreated

Barry & Janae Weinhold's Breaking Free of the Codependency Trap

Jiddu Krishnamurti's On Relationships (utterly effing superior)

John Bradshaw's Bradshaw on The Family and Family Secrets

Susan Forward's Emotional Blackmail along with this brief article on dealing with manipulative relationships

Patricia Evans's Controlling People

George Simon's In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

Patrick Carnes's The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

Naomi Feil's The Validation Breakthrough (great for dealing with narcissistic &/or elderly parents)

ACA's Adult Children of Alcoholics: Alcoholic / Dysfunctional Families

The Friels's Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families: The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families

Janet Gerringer Woititz's Adult Children of Alcoholics and Life Skills for Adult Children of Alcoholics

Rapson & English's Anxious to Please: 7 Revolutionary Practices for the Chronically Nice

Madeleine Tobias & Janja Lalich's Captive Hearts Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships

Alan Watts's The Wisdom on Insecurity

Nathaniel Branden's The Disowned Self

I've read all of them and feel comfortable recommending them to anyone with a background like ours.

Here is a national care crisis number. 1-800-273-8255 Please call. They are very nice and have special training. We all want you to stay here. . Also call your therapist (glad to hear you have them) and set up an appointment soon. Hugs.



........

If you want to do a workbook, the best one I know is for ACT, which is pretty similar to DBT. My library has it but it's also on Amazon:.

Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572244259/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_2B1VCbQPY3CPT

Hey, it’s fucking bullshit that cost is a factor when we’re facing a life-threatening injury. It’s bullshit that you have to figure out how to do this on your own. However, I know that you can do this. You’re already doing it — asking for help is the first step. Allow me to believe this for you until you can believe it yourself.

I have had unearned privilege that granted me immoral access to resources, some quite expensive or even elite, and I’ve worked my ass off, and I am living a meaningful life worth living.

However, I hope you find it encouraging that I made the most progress in reparenting myself using books that you might even be able to get at the library.

Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving — Pete Walker

Codependent No More — Melody Beattie

Codependent No More WORKBOOK — Melody Beattie

Facing Codependence — Pia Mellody

Breaking Free WORKBOOK - Pia Mellody

Codependent behaviors and motivations overlap significantly with CPTSD, and codependency can be at the root of all kinds of trauma responses (freeze, fawn, fight, flight). So, strategies developed for codependence often include an element of reparenting, inner child work, etc.

I found going to co dependents anonymous meetings to be another cost-effective resource. (Usually suggested donation of $2, only if you have it.) Being around other people openly struggling towards healthy and loving relationships with themselves helped mitigate the shame I felt.

One important step in the process that I think it’s easy to skip over is giving thought about what kind of parent you are using to parent yourself? What are their qualities? Things like ‘patient, quiet, attentive, sober’ might come up.

Then, when you’re in need of reparenting,
You can ask yourself ‘how would a parent with the qualities I chose respond to me right now?’

It’s important that you’re activating your imagination in the reparenting process — try not to think of your ideal parent as the opposite of your actual parent. You’re trying to open up the brain to accepting a new idea — putting a splint on the trauma injury — so it’s not helpful to remind it of past patterns when you’re trying to write new ones.

I hope that made sense! Feel free to ask clarifying questions.

Her book on love is maybe the best book I’ve ever read. I’ve given it to like five people and I found it so helpful in my healing journey. Also, this quote is from that book. Ha. :)

Here’s the link:
https://www.amazon.com/All-About-Love-New-Visions/dp/0060959479

yes these are definitely a sign that something went deeply wrong in your early childhood.

you might benefit like I did from this book on repressed memories

I didn't remember sexual abuse that occurred when I was 4-7 until I first deduced something like that must've happened to cause my behaviors and symptoms. we don't get powerful responses like your fear of the shower out of nowhere. something happened to give us those triggers.

The DSM (especially 5) is used to describe behaviors and symptoms and can often be a poor indicator of whats going on internally, and was written with insurance companies in mind, not the patient. The guy who helped spearhead DSV 4 actually wrote a book on how terrible 5 is. If you have complex trauma you have complex trauma. It can be nice to have a "professional" affirm you but you know your experience infinitely better. Id be more than happy to pass along resources.

Agreed. You and your kid(s) should also check out the Todd Parr book It's Okay to Make Mistakes :)

If you want more details:

Live Empowered!: Rewire Your Brain's Implicit Memory to Thrive in Business, Love, and Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N2YN1GK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_rQyACb2H5WFK4

You may also find it at your local library.

did work for me, maybe not for everyone: Hesse's 'Siddhartha'

​

Not fictional although it made me feel like I was in the adventure of my life all throughout the book, two years later I read The Heart Of The World. Only in retrospective can I tell how much this fueled my seeking, not in my mind but in, at last, manifest action.

​

I'll come back if I recall others.

​

There's actually a book called "Boundaries," a friend recommended it and it helped me a ton! I don't know that I'll ever have "normal/healthy" boundaries, or if that's even possible for any of us, but the book helped me tremendously! Here is is if you want to check it out.

I would start with learning the basics of trauma and some of the biology behind what it does to our brains/body.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670785938/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_5a0LDbXXEM1FC

Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, an... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1476748365/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdo_t1_4c0LDb5CB0806

Good luck!

Childhood Disrupted was the one that I read recently. There are others, tho.

Hey, just for info, the link to Bonnie Weiss's workbook in your reply doesn't work. Here's a fixed link:

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Therapy-Workbook-Exercise-Book-Process-ebook/dp/B00IJY7F7A/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bonnie+weiss+ifs+workbook&qid=1564418702&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I do have a source? I just told you. The image is a picture of text that IS from an academic source.

> Being an academic does not make everything you do academia

Ok but being an academic doing academic work does.

> has no peer review process and clearly has an agenda (promoting "psychiatric drug withdrawal). It's not academic. It's simply promoting pseudoscience and selling "education" for $100 a module.

and it links to academic papers... Mad in america is an aggregate for the papers not its publisher...

> If you want to talk goal posting shifting, why are you discussing SSRI's now? They're an entirely different class of drugs and aren't even used to treat adhd. So I take it you don't have anything to add about the long term impacts of stimulants and we'll call that one settled.

Because the discussion was about psychiatric drugs. I have never mentioned stimulants nor do I really care about the efficacy of them.

> Not for adhd. And even for the shift to discussing depression it doesn't support your claim.

Im not talking about adhd, well if that one paper is off there is a whole book on it.

Have you read Kelly Brogan’s A Mind of Your Own? She is of the view that depression is a symptom of inflammation and shares how to heal via diet, sleep, etc. I haven’t read it but have been reading up on the Immune-Cytokine Model of Depression.

I’m dying over here. I hate being nuts. I gotchu fam. I barely post anymore cause I get a part that goes back and deletes things.

Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195385217/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_J17nDbS9C8JM5

There is a great book called How I stayed Alive when my Brain was trying to kill me. The author has bpd and tried to kill herself many. many times. She talks about addictive/compulsive suicidal thoughts.

Anyway, one of the great takeaways is to say to yourself, I feel angry, sad, betrayed, unloved, lonely, etc and I have thoughts of suicide. So you learn that "suicidal" is NOT a feeling, it is caused by what I am feeling that I do not acknowledge or want to feel. Highly Recommend it.


https://www.amazon.com/Stayed-Alive-When-Brain-Trying/dp/0060936215/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=16VALLPQRHAKU&keywords=how+i+stayed+alive+when+my+brain+was+trying+to+kill+me&qid=1551094286&s=gateway&sprefix=how+i+stayed%2Caps%2C214&sr=8-1-fkmrnull