CPTSD/Disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified

It hurts to think back. I go into extreme panic and distress.

I was working for NHS 111 and I had a relationship with a man who works there which was stupid, but he kept offering me lifts home and it started from there.

Anyway, one day he switched. Suddenly. I already had relationship ptsd in the sense that I was more stable alone because relationships would flare up my symptoms. So I took a chance with him. He invited his son round to meet me. Buy me gifts, wheel me in. He was in the army, so I trusted him. But he also told me he was single and he wasn’t. He was married.

When my brain started going like it is now into ptsd attacks, he suddenly switched on me. I was supposed to go to work the next day but I kept avoiding work. Then one day they called me in a meeting and said “Natalie, whatever you do, please do not go to the NHS mental health team, you’ll get diagnosed with BPD and you don’t have BPD, now listen to me… – please go to the emotional abuse support group.

I wasn’t even sure if I was or had been emotionally abused at that point, hence I didn’t go. I blamed myself. And avoided work. I kept asking to resign. They wouldn’t let me, until 3 months after. Now I know why. So I couldn’t put in a claim for constructive dismissal.

That’s how women are treated by men right? I’m yet to be with a man that shows me any different. So I came to Scotland after losing everything. To just re-experience it all over again and now Steve Cargill is the trigger of what happened in 2018.

That’s what the system does. Any woman who has been abused by a man they allocate the “BPD” label. So you can’t get the help you need. But many of us women out there know that. Don’t we.

That’s what Steve Cargill did to me again. It started off the same way, rapid cycling bipolar mood swings followed by ptsd attacks, I gave NHS Highlands a heads up when it started, then a crash follows but you come out of it. I haven’t come out of it: and I have new symptoms – emotional flashbacks of other past traumas.

I thought the PTSD was gone for good in 2018. I really thought that. I didn’t realise that it was there steadily getting worse. But as he said: when I asked him … “Why do you want to take everything away from me?” For someone who was 20 years older than me I expected better.

He said “time will tell”. And it has. Because now I’ll never have a life again. I was careful. Who to choose to love after getting my heart broken by my first relationship. I remained single for two years.

Every man has destroyed me in some way. My recent ex, he doesn’t understand why I went into intense fear and ran away from him after coming out of being sectioned.

He has no clue that I’ll never be able to have a relationship or sex again. My body is damaged. My brain is damaged.

I went through sexual abuse in childhood. I have no family who care about me.

I don’t even have friends anymore.

And the one who’s telling the truth, is always alone. In life. Now NHS Highlands have betrayed me. And taken my life from me. Everything.

I’ve always been alone in life, I’ve never needed anybody. I felt safe around my recent ex because he protected me. He knew the abused I had been through but he also lies to his friends. He told Patrick he split up with me. It’s a man thing. A pride thing. When I split up with him because of the CPTSD. So I just let him because he’s probably hurt and none of this is his fault. He’s probably not been the nicest to other people but my recent ex has a thing about being protective of abused women because his mum was abused by men. So that’s why he’s looked after me, very well. But he doesn’t know how to love and that’s why it worked because I can’t handle feelings either not since 2018.

Then my brain started to go again. And Steven said “I don’t know what you’ve got but it’s not BPD”. I was sectioned for 3 days as requested by my ex partner to get to the bottom of everything. At this point when I felt the CPTSD come back I said Steven you’re going to have to back off because my brain will automatically think you’re the perpetrator, just stay back, please. I know you’ve done nothing wrong but my brain won’t see it like that when it goes into a crisis. Every man becomes an abuser, dangerous, I run from them. I hide. I get angry that’s not me. You have to listen to me. So he stayed back.

He didn’t do this to me. I would admit it if he did, but he didn’t. He was the only one I had. Now I’m left with not a single soul who even cares about me.

Patrick said to me “you can move on and be happy” at one point. He has no idea that that’s impossible because of how I’ve been treated by other men in the past.

I can’t get feelings for anyone because it sends me into a crisis and that’s why I stuck with someone emotionally unavailable. I can’t fall in love again. It’s too dangerous. I can’t even have sex because I’ve now got complications of untreated PTSD. Endometriosis is a complication of untreated PTSD. My brain feels damaged. I can’t even read books anymore, I can only express myself. That’s how severe my trauma is now.

Everytime I try read a page of a book I forget what I’ve read. I lose time, lose days.

I’m just “stuck”.

If that’s BPD then it has to be PTSD right?

So if there was nothing wrong then, (I had ADHD and Autism/potentially bipolar), but that was the last time I was “myself”, now the effects are irreversible. I’m numb completely.

I’ve got nothing. No hope. No home. Nothing.