Writer’s Note: About a year ago, I landed in the hospital after four nights of not sleeping for a total of even one hour. I was then placed on a suicide hold. It was the final suicide hold I was put on before I made the decision to take my healing journey into my own hands. What follows is a journal I wrote with pen and paper during my suicide hold.

I wouldn’t inflict the extreme torture of Complex PTSD on anyone. No one deserves to feel like this – perpetually hating, punishing, and castigating myself – all while pretending like nothing is wrong with the rest of society. Even in sleep, there is no solace – the insomnia, night terrors, and sleep paralysis are often worse than my pain during the daytime. 

What does Complex PTSD feel like to me? 

It is a daily solitary confinement sentence in a shrinking prison cell of my own mind and body. The tiny walls close in on me, and the claustrophobia sets in. 

It is daily reruns of excruciatingly painful traumatic flashbacks, unable to exorcise them from my psyche. 

It is my family and friends who love me and just want to see me happy. They know my worth, but I can’t see it.

It is seeing the goodness in everyone else but being blind to anything good in me. 

It is never forgiving myself and consistently punishing myself while being wracked with constant anger and rage at both everything and nothing at the same time. 

It is never having hatred for another human being but hating myself with a fiery, burning passion. 

It is not allowing myself to believe I have trauma because, on the outside, I live a blessed life and should have no reason to feel so miserable and afraid. 

It is seeing a neurologist because I’m confused as to why my body is experiencing such unusual symptoms, and I need to rule out disease. 

It is not knowing who I am anymore and wanting to return to the light I had before it was almost completely blown out. 

It is protecting myself in isolation but enduring further anxiety and depression from the isolation. 

It is throwing away the clothes that remind me of my trauma because I can’t bear to look at them. 

It is looking in the mirror and not being able to recognize myself or believe that I am real. 

It is constantly reliving the past, unable to focus on the present or the future. 

It is losing the academic ambition and creativity I had growing up and not knowing how to get it back. 

It is having involuntary face and body tics while violently yelling things to shake off the flashbacks that are infiltrating my mind. 

It is trying every form of treatment without results, only to have even worse side effects. 

It is compulsively repenting to God and reciting Bible passages I memorized so I can be forgiven for how awful I am. 

It is desperately trying to hold onto the hope that there is a loving God out there, even after the years of spiritual abuse that shook my faith to the core. 

It is waiting to die so I can finally be at peace. 

It is vomiting randomly because my body can’t take the pain. 

It is developing random bruises on my body for no reason other than the extreme stress and hypervigilance I am under. 

It is receiving 25 different diagnoses over many years from professionals ignorant about trauma, being degraded, dehumanized, and feeling like a disgrace to society because I am “mentally ill.”

It is putting my trust in medical providers and them taking advantage of my vulnerability. 

It is seeking help to understand my symptoms, being laughed at and told, “That’s not normal.”

It is trying so many different medications, nothing working, and experiencing even deeper side effects, like increased suicidal ideation, weight gain, akathisia, and medication-induced psychosis. 

It is going out of my way to be kind and loving to everyone I meet, no matter how much torture I am in on the inside. 

It is not offering that same kindness to myself. 

It is walking down the street and seeing the faces of my past tormentors on strangers’ faces. 

It is not being able to say “no” even when I am uncomfortable because I want to please everyone and get their approval. 

It is being terrified of everyone and everything and feeling inferior, even to the water bottle sitting on my desk. 

It is experiencing constant panic attacks at random times, even in public. 

It is being drawn to abusive personalities because I think that’s the way I deserve to be treated. 

It is turning my camera off during Zoom meetings so my coworkers don’t notice that I’m dissociating or experiencing trauma responses. 

It is experiencing sleep paralysis that is so painful I’m terrified to go back to sleep. 

It is setting 15-minute alarms when I sleep to wake me up from the night terrors, taking a few minutes to catch my breath, and then setting another 15-minute alarm for the next set of night terrors. 

It is being raped by demons in my sleep, slammed against the walls of my apartment by evil entities, and being given CPR by four police officers, feeling all this physically but not being able to distinguish reality from fiction. 

It is experiencing narcolepsy, falling asleep involuntarily in the middle of my daily tasks. 

It is believing that those who relentlessly criticized, controlled, mocked, and hated me were right about me. It is seeking their approval and working to “fix” the things about me that anger them so much. 

It is internalizing others’ negative emotions about me and making them my own. 

It is hating hearing my own name being said out loud. 

It is walking into a room where people are laughing, and I think that they’re laughing at me. 

It is masking my pain so well that people are shocked to learn the depth of my suffering. 

It is regularly typing things into search engines like, “What is the percentage success rate of jumping in front of a train?”

It is wishing someone would just stab me in the side so the blood would be visible, and I could be taken away to heal the wounds that I have no idea how to heal. 

It is not allowing myself to pursue the hobbies I enjoy that allow me a moment of freedom and peace. 

It is being terrified of social situations. 

It is thinking that everything is my fault and blaming myself for everything, even when I am the victim. 

It is forcing myself to get out of bed when I just can’t. 

It stops me when I laugh or smile and prevents me from experiencing it because I don’t think I deserve it. 

It is throwing away my TVs and not allowing myself to listen to music because I feel guilty experiencing joy. 

It is believing that the top three most evil human beings to ever exist were Hitler, Stalin, and me. 

It is believing every compliment is given with an ulterior motive. 

It is being angry at myself because my brain and body are stuck at a younger age in their survival mechanisms from when I was first targeted. 

It is wishing that someone – anyone – would empathize with the level of pain I’m in. 

It is trying desperately to explain it to them, but not being able to put it into words. 

It is constantly dissociating in the middle of conversations or work, not understanding why I can’t focus. 

It is believing that people are out to get me, that I’m constantly being watched, analyzed, and criticized. 

It is wanting to live in hiding and isolation so that no one notices my flaws or even thinks about me. 

It is physically and emotionally punishing myself with self-harm. 

There’s so much more I could say, but there really is no other way to describe the pain of Complex PTSD besides absolute psychological torture. I really want to believe that the symptoms I am experiencing are not problems that are wrong with me but a result of what happened to me, but it has been difficult to find someone who can help me and understand me. I think it is time I take this into my own hands. 

I have fought so hard for so long, and I’m lucky to be still alive and fighting. It’s so difficult to heal from this, but I’m making the decision now to begin trusting in my innate ability to heal myself, no matter how long it takes or how painful it is. Healing is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I refuse to believe the lies that it isn’t possible to heal from complex trauma symptoms. I was told I would have to manage these symptoms for the rest of my life, but I will 100% heal from this. I will never land in the hospital again. I refuse to give up and let the pain overtake me. 

I’m not weak. I can do this. I’ve spent years bending over backwards to offer forgiveness, love, and kindness to others regardless of the extreme torture I was in on the inside. I have so much love to give to everyone except for myself. There’s no reason why I can’t give that to myself. There is no reason I can’t overcome this. Everyone else is walking free and living their lives. Why shouldn’t I be able to do the same? I will never again allow another human being or institution to have control over my life, my thoughts, my belief systems, or who I am. No one but me knows and understands my full story. 

I am going to figure this out. There will be a day when life will be easier. I will live with peace, joy, and freedom without even trying. It will be effortless. I will find my confidence again. I will rekindle the light I had. It’s what every human being deserves, and that includes me. I have to first believe this myself – that I am worthy, that I am capable, that I deserve to exist. Then, I will share how I did it with others. I will encourage them to believe the same things about themselves. 

You were always good enough, Natalie. It was all lies. Keep fighting. 

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Natalie Rose

For the longest time, I thought I was inherently “messed up” and broken beyond repair. I spent about a decade running around in circles in the medical system trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me and how to “fix” it, managing all this while attending school and holding full-time jobs. I thought the way I felt in my body was “normal” because I had no sense of what the other side was. My complex trauma symptoms manifested as crippling anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive symptoms (in the form of religious and moral scrupulosity), extreme dissociative symptoms, insomnia, sleep paralysis, night terrors, and narcolepsy. My symptoms began at age 13 and continued into my mid-twenties. In general, I endured multiple types of traumas throughout my formative years, including numerous situations of both individual and large-group interpersonal cruelty, some of which caused me to have to switch environments. Due to what I was going through, my body couldn’t fathom what was happening, and my nervous system shut down. I felt guilty for simply existing. I saw danger everywhere, operated in a panicked survival mode, and lived in fear, anxiety, and isolation. I did my best to appear “normal” on the outside, keep a smile on my face, and control what was happening on the inside, distracting myself with extreme workaholism and doing nice things to serve others. I took active steps to keep branching out in confidence again, but these traumas kept piling onto each other and overlapping, so I couldn’t fathom what was going on. I wasn’t ready to give up yet, though, because I knew my family and friends would be distraught if I did. The most difficult and heartbreaking part of my story is that the two communities I set out to seek healing in—religion and the medical system—caused further trauma when some religious leaders, congregation members, and medical professionals chose to take advantage of my vulnerability for their own motives. In most of these situations, I didn’t even realize I was a victim until outsiders pointed it out for me and that my vulnerability made me a target of malicious people. Each future situation of being targeted was just salt on the wound of the original incident. As an extreme empath, I absorbed the negative emotions of others as if they were my own, and I did not know how to release them from my body. In my solo healing process, I had to quite literally disappear from everyone and everything to protect my vulnerability and allow myself to process what I had been through during my formative years using my own mind and body without the persuasion or invasion of others.

What I went through all those years was so severe, and my symptoms and physical body reactions as a result were so excruciating that I went as far as to see a neurologist, concerned that my symptoms were the result of some sort of nervous system disorder. However, he returned with no paperwork in his hands to inform me that there was nothing wrong with me but that I was simply completely traumatized, and my body reacted accordingly. I finally realized that my symptoms were not the result of an inherent mental or physical illness and began to take a trauma-based approach to my healing after many years of believing that I was “sick” for the rest of my life. My true progress began when I finally rejected the lies that were told to me that I would have to “manage my symptoms” for the rest of my life and made the decision to believe for myself that I was fully capable of healing from my excruciating pain, even if others did not believe in me. I still do have tough days and moments, but I have gotten to a place where I am consistently living a quality of life that provides peace and comfort in my mind and body since I have given myself the tools to overcome my tough moments when they return. 

Many C-PTSD survivors receive numerous diagnoses before ever hearing anything about complex trauma, and some are overmedicated to try and “fix” their symptoms, usually to no avail and with further side effects. I was told I would need to “manage my symptoms” and be on medication for the rest of my life. It was all lies. Today, I am on zero medications (including sleep medications) and am completely divorced from the disease management system. 

I am excited to share many tips for natural, somatic, and holistic healing that have helped me overcome my complex trauma symptoms, such as extreme dissociation, excruciatingly painful flashbacks, severe sleep challenges, anxiety, hypervigilance, worthlessness, and more. I began to pursue unique methods of healing after many years of not seeing much progress through westernized care, and this was the catalyst for fast-tracking my healing. I have so many exciting tips to share related to grounding, nervous system regulation, somatic healing, and more to offer survivors other ways they can learn to regulate their nervous systems on their own without spending any money. I aim to help survivors overcome their feelings of self-guilt, blame, and humiliation and help them realize that their bodies had normal reactions to abnormal situations. 

I am on a journey of rediscovering who I am at my core after letting so many other people infiltrate my mind for far too long. The five most important things to me in my life (in order of importance!) are: my health, my happiness, my family, my friends, and my creativity. My parents, my sisters, and my friends are my absolute rock and biggest cheerleaders. They were cheering me on all those years, fully believing that I was capable of overcoming my excruciating pain, even when I did not believe so myself. While I was repeatedly able to forgive others and extend the olive branch, I was never able to forgive myself. My loved ones kept telling me that there is nothing I need to feel humiliated about and that I should be able to see what everyone else sees in me. I have finally given that kindness to myself and have started to see what other people saw in me all along. 

I am so glad I didn’t give up when my pain felt unbearable. I know what I’ve survived. I know the work I’ve put in to overcome it. I know that I still chose to keep a smile on my face and be kind in the face of it all. In reality, it’s because I didn’t want another person to go through even one ounce of the suffering I was in. I am finally living a life of consistent peace and contentment, and I am sharing my story from the other side. My story is not a story of defeat but a story of victory.

I have enjoyed embracing the free spirit I always was and adopting a simpler life to focus on the things that are meaningful to me. I am still healing every day. I believe our healing is a lifelong process. I made the decision to escape my version of the rat race (big city life) and move to my happy place. I am catching up on many hours of much-needed rest and spending lots of time outdoors. I am reconnecting with the people I lost while I was in isolation. I invited the passion that saved my life growing up—dance—back into my life. I am passionate about fighting for other survivors in any way I can.

I hope that by sharing my story, I can convince other survivors that there was never anything wrong with them to begin with and that they are capable of living healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did not become a voice for the voiceless and share how I overcame it. I aim to live my life in love of both others and myself, understanding that everyone has a story of their own. I am grateful to the CPTSD Foundation for giving me an opportunity to share my story. 

“My story isn’t sweet and harmonious like invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment. Of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” ~ Hermann Hesse