Rainbow Pie

Note: I wrote this article in Chinese and translated it into English using DeepL

Why am I having complex PTSD and not PTSD or depression or anxiety or borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder?
The trauma that I experienced was atypical. Early research in the psychological science community focused on typical traumas that occurred in the United States. By typical trauma I mean a single trauma such as exposure to physical violence, war, terrorist attacks, disasters, etc. For example, the landmark study of American Vietnam veterans in 1980 led to the first recognition of PTSD as a single disorder by the DSM, the definitive diagnostic standard in psychiatry. The events including 9/11 also led to a significant increase in the number of people suffering from PTSD in the United States.
Atypical trauma refers to trauma that is not visible to the naked eye. For example, a history of chronic verbal humiliation and bullying (without accompanying physical violence). I have experienced prolonged verbal humiliation from my parents and teachers. They were sarcastic and put me down as worthless for a long time. They questioned my physical appearance and objected to my behavior. They thought I was “disobedient” and threatened me that “if I continued to behave like this, I would not be able to find friends or a girlfriend.
At the same time, my teachers and my parents became complicit. They publicly humiliated me in front of all my classmates, hitting and kicking me, accusing me of being “ungrateful” and “ungrateful”. They sarcastically accused me of being “ungrateful” and “ungrateful”. I was told to remember my hardships and not to rebel against the order of the day. My teacher made me copy “Thank you, teacher” a hundred times, scolded me in front of the class for half a class period, and reprimanded me that “not being patriotic is not a good citizen, not being filial is not a good son, and not doing homework is not a good student”. My father used to verbally abuse me for hours every night when I was 14 years old, while I sat in bed and listened.
My body was not bruised, I was not bleeding, and the violence I experienced was not enough to get me proof that “I have experienced violence. The wounds of my mind were invisible and difficult to acknowledge. I also thought for a while that I was a normal child. As an only child, I imagined that other parents would say the same awful and humiliating things to their children, and that other teachers would do the same vile things to their students. My hurt eventually exploded. I wanted to kill myself. I felt deeply shameful about my existence. I could not feel joy or pleasure. I couldn’t be interested in the blue sky, the birds, the sun, the dogs and cats, the flowers, the grass, the forest, the sea, the cows and horses, or even the food.
Also, as a human rights defender who used to live in a totalitarian state, I have been harassed by state violence. I was forced to leave statements at police stations, write pledges not to attack the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government, and was threatened with imprisonment and restrictions on leaving the country if I continued to speak. My family and I were taken to the police station without a summons, and several of my friends have been jailed for backing up deleted articles and organizing friends’ gatherings, publishing articles, etc. Despite solidarity from international human rights organizations, they continue to lose their freedom and experience torture. I used to walk down the streets of China and have panic attacks when I saw security cameras and police.
Then I went to the most prestigious psychiatric hospital in China and got a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I started taking lithium carbonate extended-release tablets and sertraline hydrochloride, then switched to magnesium valproate extended-release tablets and mirtazapine. I took lorazepam for panic attacks. However, because I had to pay for my own medical treatment in China, I stopped taking the medication without medical advice because I could not afford the expensive medication, which made my depression and anxiety symptoms even worse.
In the spring of 2022, six months after arriving in Italy, I finally finished the pile of bureaucratic paperwork and was granted free access to Italian psychiatry. I received a diagnosis of depression and anxiety and I started taking psychiatric medication for the second time. I don’t remember the first medication I took because I tried to commit suicide and it was changed to venlafaxine. Then I started taking quetiapine because I was suspected of having borderline personality disorder. However, I soon became suicidal again and stopped taking quetiapine. I started taking olanzapine again because of chronic loss of appetite. I took XANAX during panic attacks.
What bothers me are some very classic symptoms in CPTSD.
Toxic shame: I would often somehow feel an unspeakable shame about my existence. I hate and loathe myself so much, just as my parents and teachers used to act towards me, and they made me feel like they hated and loathed me so much when they were shaming me.
Emotional flashbacks: I would often fall into a drowning complex of emotions out of nowhere. This emotion is a mixture of disgust, sadness, and fear. I can’t see the flashbacks. But I can feel my emotional state in the same way I felt as a child when I witnessed domestic violence between my parents and could do nothing about it.
Abandonment depression and emptiness: I was often self-abandoned and self-exiled, for example, I used to sit alone at the table and not sit with others. I would easily relate to the experience of being isolated and ostracized by my parents and teachers. My heart would feel a sense of numbness, emptiness and sadness, and meaninglessness. Nothing I do can make me happy and give me meaning.
Internal fault-finder: I often hold myself to a perfectionist standard, fault-finding myself, attacking myself viciously like my parents and teachers did, and finding fault with myself to humiliate myself.
External fault-finding ghost: I also somehow look at others and feel threatened by them. Because as a child I had to remain highly sensitive to the emotions of my parents and teachers in order to survive and not trigger my parents to bully and dislike me as much as possible.
Panic attacks: My amygdala habitually secretes large amounts of adrenal hormones, causing me to lose my ability to relax, with constant neck tension, difficulty and shortness of breath. Before I took venlafaxine, I had daily panic attacks, feelings of impending doom and persecution paranoia.
Negative Suicide: I have never attempted suicide, i.e. I have never been actively suicidal. But I always had negative suicidal thoughts. That is, I wanted to kill myself, I imagined myself committing suicide, I imagined myself jumping from a building, jumping from a bridge, hanging myself, lying on a rail, jumping into a subway track, taking a lot of sleeping pills, burning charcoal, slitting my wrists, etc… I would imagine that I died a sudden and painful death in various dramatic ways, such as car accidents, air crashes, medical accidents, etc.. In the worst cases, I would write my will before flying and give my account password to a trusted friend for safekeeping.
Suspicion of illness: I suspected that I had cancer, or various rare diseases. I was motivated to go for various tests, such as gastroscopy, etc. I was motivated to pay for my own vaccinations, such as the HPV vaccine, which is only available to women in China, and I actively fought for the opportunity to get it after I came to Italy.