I'm a bit of an outlier. Strictly speaking I don't fit the diagnosis of CPTSD. One bad nightmare started me on this journal. Some vivid dreams followed. Most of them just weird. (What does it mean when you are in a big shed filled with metal working machines, and drums and piles of scrap. At the far end is an androgenous figure. Someone yells "Pink! Duck!" Who is Pink. (I knew it was a name.) Where's the threat. That's it. 2-3 seconds of dream time.)

I don't have flashbacks, not really. Ok. I have emo-flashes. I'll feel fear or shame for no apparent reason. The mood lasts 15 minutes and fades. Most of the time I can continue to function but am hyper vigilant. Once in a grocery store, I just found a corner wehre I had a protected back, and just waited for it to pass. "This is an emoflash. There is nothing here to be afraid. All the bad crap happened decades ago. Deep breath. This is 2024, It's the first of June. I'm in a Save-On grocery store. And it slowly faded away.

Lately there are value switches. Not like what I understand of alters. More like I had a lego set for personality. And at any given time I had a perosnality built of 1 brick of each colour. So the purple brick would be sexual orientation, and could be ace, gay, hetero. And the mauve brick could be libido, and came in various sizes. And the red brick could be integrity, and adherence to authority, with values of scofflaw to rule abiding.

And this affects my whole decision making process. Not for little stuff, like "time to mow the lawn" But bigger stuff. "Sell the farm?"

But I don't get flashbacks of the CSA. Nor of the CPA.

But when I work through the list of traits on the CPTSD wiki, I have a lot of them. And my T. says I have some form of dissociative disorder.

When I started therapy, I found Fisher's "Healing the Fractured selves of Trauma Survivors" Her intro spoke to me. She described exactly the inner turmoil.

I started writing, and in no time, I could see/feel a whole bunch of parts. Slipstick, Rebel, Ghost, Puritan -- my teens. Socks, Blue Stripe, my toddlers. Scrapper, Little Ghost, Critter, my middle childhood kids. The dozens of tiny flame cartoons, that I think are memory bundles of the individual CSA events. The Ent, Protector of the Realm that guards these little ones. Aragorn, a fictive mentor. (Not all who wander are lost) I can describe them. How they are dressed, what they look like. Most don't look like me as I am now or as I was.

Teacher, Explorer, Wordsmith, Shutterbug, adult parts, some well integrated. I could talk to them. I could hear/feel their responses.

And then it stopped. They couldn't reach me anymore.

I can reach them, or I am able to self deceive that I am. When I try to talk to them my eyes mist up, my throat gets tight, and my nose goes that wonky feeling when you are about to cry. I think they hear me. I think some protector is keeping me from hearing them. I think that this protector thinks I would be overwhelmed if they let the messages through.

I think the protector is right.

But also, I cannot heal until I hear these parts.

Something is about to break/change.

I feel a ... pressure? ... underlying tension? Something impending, abrupt, some internal avalanche or fault slip about to happen.

The body dysmorphia is back. The urge to self harm, to abrade patterns in my skin with a wire wheel on a drill to shout at the world, "See! I'm Broken!"

The alienation is back. The urge to disconnect from people. To push them away, to retreat into my box (See the cartoon on the top of CPTSD_memes)

Ever look at something and while nothing changes, you perceive it in an utter different way?

I was snowshoeing on Lake Winnipeg near Scanterbury. The lake is big, with the northern edge way below the horizon. That half of the world was ice, with snow sculpted into fantastic shapes by the relentless northwest wind. Above an intense blue sky.

Out on the ice were scattered some cardboard boxes. I found this odd. Then a little man came out of a box.

SNAP

The boxes were ice fishing huts over a kilometer away, not boxes a hundred meters away. My mental frame took a new shape at 10 times the scale.

I'm apprehensive about what I will find. Not dread. Not quite that strong.

Yet.