Hi
@TV33I'm so glad you reached out! First and foremost good on you! In my experience many prospective partners have put CPTSD in the too hard basket so it's genuinely great to see how much you care. If anything I write doesn't make sense please question me on it and I'll try to think of another way to order my words and similarly if anything I say that prompts another question please ask away!
Ok so ....
Triggers: they are the devil themself! In my experience the only may to get help with triggers is professional psychological help, there are just not enough tools in my tool box to fix something that is so complex. The irony of triggers is it has you withdrawing at the time you actually need the most support. Try to think of it less as a cycle and a more of a "it's not linear" progression.
Conversation: The safest way for me to talk about it is when things are going well. It's also when I don't want to talk about it because ... things are going well! Perhaps you could say to your partner. I see this is a hard time for you but I would really like to talk about this at a later date. Even write it down (but communicate you are writing it down). When things are rough the CPSTD brain doesn't think the way I want it to.
Time management: Your partner will need to find a strategy that works for them but that doesn't mean you can't help. You could purchase daily/weekly/monthly calendars or a wall calendar. Start with larger increments of time first - Like what's happening this month. Then progress to weekly break downs, then daily, then hourly. It's a big leap to go from brain chaos to order and your partner may need some stepping stones.
Memory: CPTSD is generally pretty bad. Our brains are trying the forget the bad of the past and it can't work out what it needs to keep.
DID: DID is VERY different from dissociation. Dissociation is a switch off. DID is a switch on to different characters. The difficult part to understand is that the brain is doing DID and dissociation for the same reasons. It's trying to cope however it can. If you want a fictional realistic taste of DID check out "The United States of Tara".
Disassociation: Dissociation is so very weird. I myself only realised I did this earlier this year when I was on holidays and a friends comments made me question myself. For me dissociation is a lights are on but nobody is home. I don't know when one is "starting", I don't know when or for how long I've been in one and I only recently have been able to recognise when I am coming "out" of one.
Please, if you are comfortable, let's continue this conversation.
At the end of the day thank you for seeing your partner as fabulous and not broken and for loving them when they are most likely struggling to even like themselves.
Genuinely hope to hear your thoughts
@TV33🙂
