CPTSD: How I Got Here

By 1964 I was already terrified of my father. No child should be scared of his father, much less terrified of him. But I was.

And until I was aware that he had died, I remained so. That’s at least 43 years.

But if I was that afraid of him before I testified against him in an Annapolis courtroom, then seeing him get walked off to prison in leg irons and a belly chain didn’t help, and in fact made it worse. I knew he’d killed before. Now I feared his revenge from behind bars, and in fact often convinced myself that he would escape and come for me.

Unreasonable, you might say, but across this country and around the world, people of all kinds suffer the same fear. And it doesn’t matter what age or gender you are; that kind of fear is hardly unreasonable at all. People die that way.

Let me make it simple.

For at least ten years I was sexually abused (including rape) by both parents. It had nothing to do with “teaching” me, which is what they both called it. Rape and abuse are always motivated by control. The need to dominate and control every second of a child’s life in order to gain the feeling of satisfaction through power is it. Period.

The sole driving force in many violent crimes and all sex crimes is a feeling of having no or little power, and filling the burning need for it.

Beyond that, no one can possibly explain why it happens. Children may be attractive sexually to any perp, but no sex crime is ever about attraction. And even if that becomes part of the pedophile’s psyche, it’s a defined sexual deviance, but always it remains the nature of the crime and the targeted victim: weak, unable to fight, the lack of adult physical features and the high from hurting an innocent.

Over an extended period, the trauma of the very first attack is compounded exponentially. The damage becomes far worse than any human is capable of recovering from. The victim has learned crude coping behavior that is never sufficient but which can get him or her through the worst of it. These mechanisms go on to become behavioral problems because they get used to get through all crisis events. There is no known damage to the perpetrator except that, over time, rationalization and the ease of continuing to abuse is made him unable to use restraint. The sociopath becomes even more immune to guilt; never even considering the harm they have caused. In the case of abusive parents, they go on to expect their victims to display academic excellence and other unrealistic accomplishments. When the child fails to live up to these demands, the child is typically tortured. Physical beatings, revocation of privileges and withholding meals may be involved, among other things. The trauma is reinforced and added to.

One coping method children can display is the obvious attempt on many levels to please their parents, and to adopt their social, religious and political views. The child learns to conform. It’s basically risk reduction, and this is purely survival at its most pitiful and desperate level.

Since the views the parents have are themselves either ethically wrong, biased ot hateful based on their self-image of inadequacy, the behavior of the child leads to serious problems in school, social circles and more. It becomes dangerous.

If the parents are bigots or racists, the child invariably reflects that in inappropriate settings with words or actions.

Into adulthood, the child has learned and will be unable to break his or her dependent behavior and not sever ties to parents. Holidays become occasions where victims are belittled and treated lovingly at the same time. It is a no-win situation and it causes more trauma. For instance, visiting for Christmas with a frowned-upon spouse (they always are) is a tense running of the gauntlet that both the original victim and his or her spouse is actually traumatized by. These are not happy, festive gatherings; it is just more of an opportunity to abuse, mostly verbally or through the giving of trivial, demeaning gifts. More damage for the parents to inflict. And they love every second of it, every hurt look on the victims’ faces. More power.

In my case, all off this actually happened.

The sexual abuse, including sodomy and rape continued unimpeded until I was 16-years-old. The mental abuse, which included verbal abuse of the harshest kind, continued until I filed charges with the police at the age of 28. After the trial and sentencing, I never saw them again. They’ve both since passed away, leaving various levels of damage behind in their children. Yes, they got us all.

The nagging question for me has been, why do some of my siblings prosper, while I have been the most hurt and severely crippled?

The short answer is, there’s no way to know.

All I can say is that I was a very sensitive, imaginative and very kind kid at one time. What they didn’t take away from me, they damaged. But CPTSD did far worse.

The descriptions I’ve read so far indicate that it is exactly what I have.

I’m not just mistrstful of others; I’ve actually believed that they would stab me in the back. There was no reason for such a belief so I thought that I was paranoid. It’s not paranoia. It’s a symptom of CPTSD that I now deem incurable. It used to be called running, what I did. Draw a line, you get this close, no closer. Every time I dared cross the line, it ended badly, with hurt feelings and confusion that I had caused. But coming to the conclusion that I was meant to die alone took 50 years. Still, I was socially and extremely sexually dysfunctional. Even a casual relationship was impossible for me to handle. Everything was scary, dangerous and caused my fight/flight response to kick in, which was aberrant. There was no danger. No one to fight. So I just fled. Self protection at its worst.

Other problems continue. The nightmares grow worse and worse despite an increase in prazosin dosage. As I wonder how much more I can take, I am constantly triggered, and flashbacks happen every single day, more than once in a day. Triggers are everywhere because the abuse took place during my formative years when I was experiencing new things, learning new things, becoming more aware. Even pictures of the past that remind me of things I liked trigger me. Things I liked I spent so little time with, and those times were always interrupted by harrowing beatings and sexual abuse. Of all the times I had sex during my marriage and with girlfriends before that, I believe my mother still has the record for most times a woman copulated me. It’s disgusting and I’ve had a hard time accepting that probability. Yet it’s valid.

That is a hell of a thing to have to write.

Tomorrow I will conclude this three-part study. For now, I’ve had enough.