Constant muscle tightness in complex trauma survivors ‘armoring’ ~ Lilly Hope Lucario

Healing From Complex Trauma & PTSD/CPTSD

I am currently reading Pete Walkers book on complex trauma and he describes constant muscle tightness, which I have suffered all my life, as ‘armoring’. I have not heard it described this way by anyone else and it makes perfect sense.

My massage therapist once described my body as being continually ‘braced for something’, which she was correct in describing, and is a symptom of my hypervigilant state, that always assumes subconsciously, that I need to be prepared for trauma. In the case of my body, I always have my ‘armor on’.

It is no doubt why I have always required alcohol to actually relax.

I know my muscles are continually tense and this ongoing wear and tear, causes considerable pain, that worsens in cold weather. It is what I consider to be complex trauma induced fibromyalgia. I think many fibro sufferers who have had prolonged child abuse or prolonged…

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Psychiatric horrors

Dave's Deliberations

This isn’t the kind of book I commonly pick up, but I’m glad I read this one. It’s the autobiographical account of an ordinary Yorkshire teenage girl who, in her struggle with shyness, angst, a dysfunctional family and issues of faith in the 1970s, was admitted to a psychiatric institution—temporarily, ‘for a rest and observation’. Instead, she remained there for years, partly as a resident and partly as an out-patient. The book is:

The Dark Threads: A Psychiatric Survivor’s Story by Jean Davison (Accent Press, 2012)

She writes well, so that what could have been a dry account of factual happenings becomes, instead, alive with passion, colour and intensity. In fact, it’s a gripping read. It draws you in, just as the system drew the author in. She suffered the horrors of electric shock treatment and a fearful regime of drugs and misunderstanding, all of which served to aggravate her…

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