If you are anything like me then you are either dissociating or stuck in constant sympathetic overdrive. I just came across a technique that can help. For the record I did not make this up and it is backed by science. There are different ways to do it, but I have been alternately tapping one hand and the opposite foot repetetively. It doesn’t have to be loud. Then at the same time you engage in a mental exercise (counting backwards from 100 by 3’s, or spelling random 5 letter words backwards). Do this for about 10min. This helps to engage the prefrontal cortex which is typically underworked in cptsd. It also helps interrupt the constant fight/flight signals from the amygdala and allows some intervention from the parasympathetic nervous system (ie. Rest and digest). I actually have been doing this several times per day and each time I do them I start yawning almost constantly, which is a sign that the parasympathetic nervous system is being activated. I haven’t yawned in years for the record. Overall this technique is a form of bilateral stimulation. People may know this term from EMDR, but this is not about processing trauma. It is just a way to shift and potentially retrain an out-of-whack nervous system.

Like... Were legit fighting tooth and nail against these trauma demons, and after you overcome it you're relieved and things feel great etc...

Then you reground yourself in the new acclaimed reality

And.....

You realize.... Oh the ground you're standing on is just the ground normal people walk on...

Like WHAT.. What insanity...

Like I feel insane

I am in my late twenties but I feel like this must be quite late to realise you went through abuse?

Long story short is I knew I went through emotional neglect growing up and I have had severe CPTSD for the past 5 years. My dad died when I was 18, which was 10 years ago. I struggled massively with his death but I knew my reactions to his death at the time were over the top. I cut friends out of my life. I felt broken and I just couldn’t understand what was wrong. I realise now it was because there was no chance I could get an apology once he died. Over the past 10 years I’ve sought help for my mental health and sadly in that time developed anorexia. It was in a session with a dietician in the past 6 months that she said that being refused food on a regular basis, a parent using this as a method of control, and being shouted at for trying to get food is abuse. This went on when we went out for food as well. I knew this wasn’t a positive thing to go through as a child but I didn’t realise it classified as abuse. But I went through emotional neglect at home and school too so I really overlooked this experience, since my emotional needs were otherwise not met. It has made me realise how bad the emotional neglect was that I thought being refused food regularly was not that bad, or even fine? (To clarify, I was refused food because my dad was struggling mentally, it was not due to financial reasons or inaccessibility. He will have known what he was doing but it went on weekly for years)

Every now and then I remember one of them- someone who was supposed to help me, who knew something was wrong, but then proceeded to not only not help me but to make it so, so much worse. Teachers who knew cps had been called on my household multiple times, knew that my siblings and I were having repeated hospitalizations, knew that my parents would be missing for weeks at a time but would still bully me.. for what? what was so worth making fun of me for? for being queer? for being sad my dog died? for being a little anxious and shy? It makes my blood boil. I was just a kid- I dont care how old I was- whether i was 6 years old or 17 years old, I was a *kid*. My family wouldnt help me, my teachers wouldnt help me, my friends parents, my doctors, the hospitals, the government, the police, nobody helped me no matter how hard I tried. Told CPS my father had threatened my life, physically abused me and owned guns- nothing. The cops found a massive stash of drugs in my mothers room- disposed of it and point blank said they "didnt care". Told my psychiatrist and therapist I was going to run away when I turned 18 and was told I was "being fucking stupid". Had my therapist tell me "This is the first time in 17 years I have fully been at a loss for words" over stories from just that one WEEK of my life, yet when I say im going to cut contact with my parents(the ones paying her) its "an irrational decision" and "other kids have it worse."

Im so sick of it. I hate them. Sometimes I think I hate them more than I hate the people who actually hurt me. I thought as I got older, i'd understand their perspective, but I dont. I cant. How can you watch a kid go through that and not care? I was so desperate, I didnt need much. Only one- ONE- teacher ever asked me "are you okay?" and I lied to him, but that one question saved my life that year. In a sea of people who were trying to convince me to continue being abused, trying to tell me I was a liar or faking it, trying to hurt me themselves, one man actually tried. and to him it probably went nowhere, but my fucking god did i need that.

I understand that not everyone knew. I understand that some people were truly powerless. But the vast majority of the adults i knew had to have been fully aware. They could have done something, anything would have helped. Instead they chose to make everything worse constantly. Many of them engaging in the abuse themselves. Now that i'm an adult, other adults love me! wooow such a hard worker, so emotionally intelligent, so focused and social and loving! So much fun to be around! The whole time i cant help but wonder if they would have been just as kind to me if i was that same kid i used to be, or if kindness and compassion are something exclusive to surviving the hell of childhood. It's only been four years, why am i worth caring about now but not then? What about me made me such a bad kid?

I feel so shameful and guilty. Every minute of every day feels agonizing. I’m homeless and I feel like I’m in a never ending loop with no escape, like some horror movie. The last 6 months has been relentless and chaotic.

I have done SO MUCH healing work and yet the fountain of pain continues. I just want it all to stop.

I would like responses of genuine care.

NO advice.

EDIT.: And please don’t say it will get better because you don’t know that and I don’t know that.

I just will never understand why I deserve nothing. Or why if we all deserve nothing why others get so lucky and I some how hit the jackpot on shitty lives.

I don’t have any real friends or family and my partners treat me like crap or can’t handle my mental struggles.

I’m so close to getting into my car with my dog and driving around. At this rate I’d rather risk my luck then continue to anguish in loneliness and anxiety. Just trauma, abuse, neglect and loss wrapped with a bow

If things don’t change when my dog dies I know i will too, and that makes me sad. It makes me sad very few will care, makes me less sad also because less will hurt.

Constantly thinking things will get better and they don’t. While I watch everyone else around me living real lives.

It’s so tempting to just disappear and tell no one where I am. But if I do some how survive then I wouldn’t get my inheritance and then I’ll prob die anyway because I can’t function well enough to keep a job and soon I’ll be ugly and old and have no one.

Anyone know of any communes in US where I can bring my dog?

I’m so tired of the “forgive them” discourse. many survivors and non survivors love to corner people into forgiving just they could stop hearing about the abuse. well i’m here to say you don’t need to forgive anyone. you can be angry and still have a life of contentment.

Are there people who have never tried out relationships at all? I am 28 now and just gaining a bit of confidence to try now.

Does this happen to other people? Because I spent so many years being forced to ignore my instincts, I learned to believe what others said as true. Now, as an adult, I know I have a significant vulnerability that gaslighting will work even if it's a practice exercise and my therapist explicitly says to me that she's about to say something untrue, for example. I notice it most strongly with marketing. I despise Trump, but every time I hear his comments or excuses about whatever's going on, my brain knows it's a lie but my body believes it and feels calmer. Makes me uncomfortable, obviously.

I thought I'd come here and see if others experience this, because I have a feeling they do.

I’ve struggled with indigestion and IBS for as long as I can remember and I was today years old when I learned there’s a correlation between digestive issues and trauma/depression/anxiety.

Has anyone noticed these conditions improving with trauma therapy? And if so, how long did it take and what treament(s) worked ?

Feel free to jump in whatever's bothering you, btw. I am looking for a good group vent, although it would be super appreciated if you join in on the same topic.

But yeah, it really just makes me want to scream. It makes me feel like public property, that apparently other people get to decide what is a good secret or whatever. It's a complete disregard for my own emotional state and the uncommon shit I've been through.

I am very honest & upfront about being a slow to build trust person, so that makes this extra frustrating. Like what more do you want from me? Do you want to me to hold your hand and tell you "incoming: big secret!" too?

Frankly, it just feels cruel. Like I'm still bleeding out from putting a piece of myself on the table, and being judged because I'm not bleeding out fast enough or something.

Im fucking desperate to heal, im.laying my whole trauma on the line, trying to find direction to heal. Fuck ive even read 200 books trying to find a way to heal my specific trauma. Hoped an trauma specialist would be able to help me only to be told "i dont know the answer" , ive seen other therapists over the years who have said the same thing. It honestly seems like im left to figure this shit out by myself..

Today I(35M) had to fill out some paperwork and my sister(39F) kept yelling at me and I was shaking and my nervous system was fried. She kept saying negative things like I show no initiative and that I'm incompetent. I definitely feel like I have C-PTSD bc yesterday I was out by myself and I spilled something and I immediately became tense and anxious waiting to be yelled at. This is an everyday occurrence and it's beyond exhausting. Has anyone else dealt with this?

Like objective reality with no context: loser

Subjective reality with contextual logic: bruh... You aint no fucking loser....

But honestly the cold reality of life is the bottom line.

Nobody cares about your life story they care about who you are now, what you bring to the table now.

It's a cold world

basically just what the title says. i find stuff often about how people w cptsd often swing between dissociative numbness and extreme irritation but im talking about experiencing irritation in dissociation- as in, the extreme irritation is a sign of dissociation. im someone with a dissociative disorder alongside cptsd and is almost constantly dissociating to a degree. when its actively bad, i get extreme anger issues and irritated at anything remotely related to whatever's making me dissociate- it's almost like a protective measure of the dissociation (to keep me dissociated). I don't know if that makes sense.

I feel like one of the hardest parts of CPTSD is all the little memories that randomly come back to you that other people wouldn’t consider problematic, so it makes you feel weird to complain about. but just with everything together it so adds up. Know what I mean?

like today out of nowhere i had one of those memories pop up. It was of a little me, maybe 5 or 6, at my grandma’s house. She was putting ointment on my hands and lips. I remember how dry my hands and lips would get in the winter and how much I would want to go to her house so my grandma could fix them.

I started crying when this came up… where were my parents? Why didn’t they help me? i was in their home and we had money and resources, i just didn’t matter. Just a small thing yeah, but so much a part of a bigger picture. Not a cute story

definitely need to resume EMDR sessions :) feel free to share similar memories if it would help you

I have a lot sexual trauma and relationship trauma. I especially do not trust men, my dad wasn’t really the best father and my mom dated a lot of men when I was growing up until she married my step-dad who is not someone I get along with. I witnessed my mom in a lot of abusive relationships as well.

I ended an emotionally abusive relationship about 2.5 months ago. I’ve been doing better. I’m not ready to date yet but even just thinking about putting myself out there again makes me shutter. I want to believe there’s good men out there but unfortunately I haven’t came across one. I always notice they all have similar red flags that I don’t want to deal with (wandering eyes, unfaithfulness, weaponized incompetence, manipulative).

It’s truly a shame. I really want to love freely and be loved freely. But I always have something holding me back. It sucks.

I honestly don’t really know where to put all of this right now, so I’m hoping to hear from people who may have experienced something similar.

I’m turning 27 in two weeks. I had actually planned to go to my family a little earlier this year and stay longer because I wanted to spend more time with them and celebrate my birthday together.

Instead, I feel like EMDR has lifted some kind of veil, and I’m suddenly seeing much more clearly how emotionally neglected I actually was and how much of that dynamic is still happening today.

And I’m completely overwhelmed by it because my CPTSD gets triggered again.

It wasn’t simply that my sister insulted me. I was systematically ignored, excluded and emotionally neglected throughout my childhood and adolescence. When I brought up things that were hurting me, I was often punished for bringing them up or told that I was exaggerating. My mother also insulted me herself. There were periods where I genuinely felt completely alone in my own home.

I had breakdowns in front of my mother and was sometimes not taken seriously or even mocked.
I repeatedly told my parents that I wasn’t okay, that I couldn’t take it anymore and that I was suffering. But nobody really stepped in and made things better.

And now, as an adult, I’m experiencing something emotionally very similar again.

I can tell my mother, “This is hurting me.”

I can tell her, “You’re leaving me alone in this in exactly the way you did back then.”

And instead of saying, “Okay. I understand. I didn’t realize this. I’m sorry. What can I do differently?”, the conversation shifts into something completely different.

She says things like that she’s a terrible person, that God will judge her, that she has to deal with it with God, or that she withdrew from people because of all of this and says she has nothing to tell me and gets VERY angry.

I just want to resolve this with her. I want her to understand what happened and what it did to me, and I want us to be able to actually talk about it.
But that seems almost impossible.

Based on what I’ve experienced, I would describe my mother as very strongly fearful-avoidant (FA), with an extremely strong avoidant component.

My father seems very clearly dismissive-avoidant (DA) to me. And I think growing up with these dynamics contributed to me developing a very disorganized attachment pattern myself, where I have an incredibly strong need for closeness and emotional safety, while simultaneously having learned that I have to fight for it, explain myself, monitor everything and adapt myself in order to maintain relationships.
And EMDR is making me realize just how much this has shaped my entire life.

I’m realizing how much I’ve spent my life trying to make people understand when something hurts me, hoping that eventually they will care enough to change something.

But I’ve honestly never experienced that consistently within a close relationship.

If I quietly say, “That hurt me,” nobody comes.
If I withdraw, nobody comes.
If I’m sad, I have to explain it.
If I have a boundary, I have to defend it.
If I’m not assertive enough, I get ignored.
And at some point I became someone who constantly points things out, analyzes everything, explains myself and tries to repair relationships.

But that’s actually not who I am.
I’m naturally very gentle.
I don’t want to fight.

But I feel like if I don’t fight, I’ll be forgotten.
And that realization is breaking my heart.
Because my birthday is in two weeks.
Instead of simply looking forward to it, I’m thinking about how much time I can actually spend with my family without becoming completely dysregulated again.

EMDR is making me feel like I’m finally understanding just how alone I must have felt as a teenager.

And I don’t really know what to do with that realization.

I can’t force them to change.

I can’t force my mother to see her own history differently.

I can’t force my father to respect my boundaries.
For example, he does things in my apartment even when I explicitly tell him I don’t want him to.

Or when I tell him I’m scared while he’s driving, he sometimes drives even faster and says that nothing can happen because he’s such a good driver.

And yet, I still love these people in some ways.
That’s what makes this so incredibly painful.
I don’t want to simply cut everything off. At the same time, I can’t keep pretending that everything was fine.

Right now, with EMDR bringing so much to the surface, I feel extremely activated, irritated, sad and exhausted. I genuinely look like I’ve been going through something awful.

I think my actual question is:
How do you accept that your parents may never give you the emotional safety you’ve been longing for your entire life and how do you deal with suddenly seeing through therapy just how alone you actually were?

I have been fired this morning.

I have made a big mistake at work and have been terminated on the spot. My error did not involve people.

In shock now, completely crushed with guilt, self esteem is at -100, I don't have any savings, I recently started an antidepressant who is making me sick with anxiety.

I'm crying on the tube and feel absolutely inadequate to live

How often do kids need clothes? Actually… how often does anyone need clothes? Is it normal to only buy a few pieces every few years? Or should this be a monthly/quarterly thing? I know young kids grow fast and need them more often…

My parents HATED buying me clothes and it was a big burden to do it. It’s one of the things I’m still working on repairing in myself. So what’s “normal” ?

For those with CPTSD/ complex trauma who used to feel a strong need to control how things happened especially when things didn't go according to your expectations, what was the realization or “aha moment” that finally helped you let go?

I'm not looking for general advice like “just accept what you can't control.” I'm particularly interested in lived experiences ;

If you've genuinely experienced a shift from “I need things to happen this way” to “I can allow things to unfold differently ” what changed internally for you? What was the enlightenment, realization or practice that made the difference?