This is the seminal book for me and perhaps for others on the forum with CPTSD. It is an insider’s perspective on the effects of continuous, chronic childhood abuse and neglect. The two most valuable features I find are first identifying, putting names to states I constantly find myself in, emotional flashbacks, “eternity time” and powerfully setting out the steps necessary to work through them and learn how to nurture and protect ourselves. When children have at least one safe person they can go to with their fears and painful experiences, they learn that it is alright to feel, to express, to at least sometimes be “good enough”.
Bessel van der Kolk’s book is helpful, but still from a clinical perspective, someone observing the effects and talking about ways to help people. Pete Walker does not engage in any clinical talk, although he refers to neuroplasticity. He understands the science and the psychology, but goes deeper, to the core of the problem. Being so emotionally abandoned, we abandon ourselves. He talks extensively about what he calls the 4Fs. These are the biologically wired responses to trauma which are corrupted by living in constant danger, no safe place or person: fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Peter Levine’s work is helpful in understand this, but he focuses more on one-time traumatic experiences. The ongoing, chronic terror of living with a “caregiver” who is truly dangerous is something else altogether. My body often starts trembling and thanks to Peter Levine’s work, I understand that my body is releasing some trauma. There is so much that it’s not a one-shot deal for me, and that is OKAY.
I understand now what happens to me when I go into an emotional flashback. My response has been so intense that I end up checking out so completely that I have experienced missing time, which just compounds the shame that I am just a hopeless person. Ending up in the hospital a year and a half ago was the greatest gift. The support and suggestions of forum members provided enough sense of safety for me to get into therapy. And DCM connected me with a compassionate, caring therapist who uses EMDR as one of her modalities. It is understood that EMDR is not the fix-all for CPTSD, it’s another tool.
One of the most powerful tools is understanding what an emotional flashback is, from an author who still in his late 60s has them. And that knowledge is very powerful. Now I am learning to identify when I’m in a flashback and growing that objective observer part of me that can say “I’m in a flashback. Even though it feels like eternity time and it will never end, that I am the helpless, powerless child at the mercy of my tormentor, I am in flashback. I am here in the present in an adult body. I am safe. “We” (my internal family system) are SAFE. I can breathe. I can feel their terror and NOT run away from it. I can feel compassion for what they lived through and create safety right now, even if it means curling up in bed with a pillow or my teddy bear. Yes, even those comforts were taken from me growing up so it is wonderful to be able to give that to myself in the present. When the last couple of major triggers occurred, I did NOT check out. I cannot convey the amount of sheer will it took to stay present, to ask for help from DCM. This is a moment-by-moment process. I can be triggered at any time by either something I am conscious of or something that is deeper than my conscious mind, usually the latter.
He talks about grieving and how cleansing it is. At this point the only time I feel safe enough to do that is in therapy. She has powerfully created a safe place for me to be wracked with sobs, usually during an EMDR session, and come out the other side feeling some cleansing has happened.
After all of the psychology books I’ve read, the information on this forum about doing the work have been like water on a stone. I just have not been able to “get it” which constantly sends me into flashback mode, that I’m too stupid, worthless, to be “good enough” to be part of a group of such amazing people. I still feel like an outsider almost all the time, that I’m not good enough to belong. I read similar sentiments from other peoples’ posts which helps me to identify the inner critic’s vicious attacks. He has specific things for what he calls “shrinking the inner critic” as well.
I often wonder what it would be like to be as outspoken as Laura, to have the sense of self and safety to say what you think, from a place of truth. Maybe some day I will get there. I can only work with where I am in the present and be inspired that more is possible. When Joe posted his iodine experience the first thought I had when he described that dark emotional place was “imagine living your whole childhood in that place with no one to turn to, completely alone with your abuser”.
One really positive thing from Pete Walker’s perspective is that as we work through the ongoing recovery, the silver lining is that we “earn” the ability to have a depth of intimate relationships that most people never reach.
Something else I would like to mention is Gurdjieff’s thoughts about how people will give up anything rather than their suffering. We don't know we're suffering because it's all we know. That just triggers me into another flashback about how defective and worthless I am. He obviously knew nothing about CPTSD. And Madame Saltzman’s quote about thinking you’re much better than you are. People with CPTSD have NO self and that quote just adds to my feelings of worthlessness. That's a struggle to even write, but it's the truth. I still work to wrap my head around incidents of conscious cruelty from childhood. I know I need to do this to be able to have the objective observer’s perspective and pull my body, brain, neuropathways, out of the abyss. It is not an intellectual pursuit. It is a gut-wrenching, all encompassing drive to see the TRUTH of the situation, with a brain, mind and body that were deformed. What a life’s work! And of course there is the sorrow of spending the first 60 years of my life in this abyss, this darkness and the grieving. The grieving is a powerful tool to shrink the inner critic and the hardest thing to access. The inner critic has a field day with that one. "What have you got to feel grief about? You're such a loser. You're such a wimp. There are a lot of people worse off in the world than you are." The predator mind on steroids.
It’s interesting, yesterday when I was thinking about this post, just the thought of expressing my feelings, after all these years and posts sent me into a serious shaking episode-the terror of being punished for thinking, for expressing my own ideas and thoughts.
This books and therapy are shining light on the “terror of the situation”, past tense. Ironically, I’ve never had the “luxury” of living in blissful ignorance, thinking the world was/is a safe place. Quite the opposite, which is also a gift. I can never take anything for granted or feel any sense of entitlement which people who had some modicum of safety growing up, from my limited perspective, appear to have.
If even one person reads the book and benefits from the wisdom and experience in it, then my struggle to post this is well worth it.
I don’t know if Pete Walker does interviews, but if his book is anything to go by, he would be an excellent guest IMHO.
Bessel van der Kolk’s book is helpful, but still from a clinical perspective, someone observing the effects and talking about ways to help people. Pete Walker does not engage in any clinical talk, although he refers to neuroplasticity. He understands the science and the psychology, but goes deeper, to the core of the problem. Being so emotionally abandoned, we abandon ourselves. He talks extensively about what he calls the 4Fs. These are the biologically wired responses to trauma which are corrupted by living in constant danger, no safe place or person: fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Peter Levine’s work is helpful in understand this, but he focuses more on one-time traumatic experiences. The ongoing, chronic terror of living with a “caregiver” who is truly dangerous is something else altogether. My body often starts trembling and thanks to Peter Levine’s work, I understand that my body is releasing some trauma. There is so much that it’s not a one-shot deal for me, and that is OKAY.
I understand now what happens to me when I go into an emotional flashback. My response has been so intense that I end up checking out so completely that I have experienced missing time, which just compounds the shame that I am just a hopeless person. Ending up in the hospital a year and a half ago was the greatest gift. The support and suggestions of forum members provided enough sense of safety for me to get into therapy. And DCM connected me with a compassionate, caring therapist who uses EMDR as one of her modalities. It is understood that EMDR is not the fix-all for CPTSD, it’s another tool.
One of the most powerful tools is understanding what an emotional flashback is, from an author who still in his late 60s has them. And that knowledge is very powerful. Now I am learning to identify when I’m in a flashback and growing that objective observer part of me that can say “I’m in a flashback. Even though it feels like eternity time and it will never end, that I am the helpless, powerless child at the mercy of my tormentor, I am in flashback. I am here in the present in an adult body. I am safe. “We” (my internal family system) are SAFE. I can breathe. I can feel their terror and NOT run away from it. I can feel compassion for what they lived through and create safety right now, even if it means curling up in bed with a pillow or my teddy bear. Yes, even those comforts were taken from me growing up so it is wonderful to be able to give that to myself in the present. When the last couple of major triggers occurred, I did NOT check out. I cannot convey the amount of sheer will it took to stay present, to ask for help from DCM. This is a moment-by-moment process. I can be triggered at any time by either something I am conscious of or something that is deeper than my conscious mind, usually the latter.
He talks about grieving and how cleansing it is. At this point the only time I feel safe enough to do that is in therapy. She has powerfully created a safe place for me to be wracked with sobs, usually during an EMDR session, and come out the other side feeling some cleansing has happened.
After all of the psychology books I’ve read, the information on this forum about doing the work have been like water on a stone. I just have not been able to “get it” which constantly sends me into flashback mode, that I’m too stupid, worthless, to be “good enough” to be part of a group of such amazing people. I still feel like an outsider almost all the time, that I’m not good enough to belong. I read similar sentiments from other peoples’ posts which helps me to identify the inner critic’s vicious attacks. He has specific things for what he calls “shrinking the inner critic” as well.
I often wonder what it would be like to be as outspoken as Laura, to have the sense of self and safety to say what you think, from a place of truth. Maybe some day I will get there. I can only work with where I am in the present and be inspired that more is possible. When Joe posted his iodine experience the first thought I had when he described that dark emotional place was “imagine living your whole childhood in that place with no one to turn to, completely alone with your abuser”.
One really positive thing from Pete Walker’s perspective is that as we work through the ongoing recovery, the silver lining is that we “earn” the ability to have a depth of intimate relationships that most people never reach.
Something else I would like to mention is Gurdjieff’s thoughts about how people will give up anything rather than their suffering. We don't know we're suffering because it's all we know. That just triggers me into another flashback about how defective and worthless I am. He obviously knew nothing about CPTSD. And Madame Saltzman’s quote about thinking you’re much better than you are. People with CPTSD have NO self and that quote just adds to my feelings of worthlessness. That's a struggle to even write, but it's the truth. I still work to wrap my head around incidents of conscious cruelty from childhood. I know I need to do this to be able to have the objective observer’s perspective and pull my body, brain, neuropathways, out of the abyss. It is not an intellectual pursuit. It is a gut-wrenching, all encompassing drive to see the TRUTH of the situation, with a brain, mind and body that were deformed. What a life’s work! And of course there is the sorrow of spending the first 60 years of my life in this abyss, this darkness and the grieving. The grieving is a powerful tool to shrink the inner critic and the hardest thing to access. The inner critic has a field day with that one. "What have you got to feel grief about? You're such a loser. You're such a wimp. There are a lot of people worse off in the world than you are." The predator mind on steroids.
It’s interesting, yesterday when I was thinking about this post, just the thought of expressing my feelings, after all these years and posts sent me into a serious shaking episode-the terror of being punished for thinking, for expressing my own ideas and thoughts.
This books and therapy are shining light on the “terror of the situation”, past tense. Ironically, I’ve never had the “luxury” of living in blissful ignorance, thinking the world was/is a safe place. Quite the opposite, which is also a gift. I can never take anything for granted or feel any sense of entitlement which people who had some modicum of safety growing up, from my limited perspective, appear to have.
If even one person reads the book and benefits from the wisdom and experience in it, then my struggle to post this is well worth it.
I don’t know if Pete Walker does interviews, but if his book is anything to go by, he would be an excellent guest IMHO.
