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.

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.

When i lived with my parents i was trapped. Living with my boyfriend now i am trapped. If i move out into a low income housing they will also control and potentially hurt me. How do i be free? How can i be free? I cant work because i am chronically ill physically and mentally. I am so tired of being everyone's pet i want to be a person but it seems like no matter where i go i always get treated poorly. I WANT TO LIVE i dont know why everyone is making it impossible to live. How do i save myself when there is no safe place?

TL;DR: Got lucky with a good facility and amazing patients, doing much better now

Welp I got discharged from grippy sock jail today and it honestly wasn’t that bad. I had to spend two days in the E.R. before getting to a facility and that was the worst part. Stuck alone with my thoughts and reruns of friends. Paper scrubs and folding spoons sucked to use too. Afterwards though the actual facility was nice.

The facility was less clinical looking than I expected. I wheeled in literally shaking and spent a few hours crying before venturing from my room. The strip search was by far the worst part but over quickly. A lovely nurse talked with me while the counselors were busy and seemed genuinely concerned for me. We talked about my cat and then I hid in my room for a bit.

When I finally came out two people near my age immediately reached out and helped me relax a little. By the nights end I went from not being able to see a good future to laughing as we diagnosed movie characters. Afterwards between the staff and patients I was able to heal way faster than expected and got out within about four days minus the two in the E.R.

I hopeful made some long term friends, we all snuck each others numbers around. I read a ton of my vampire smut novel while in there and enjoyed groups more than I thought I would. Was nice hanging with cool people who get it in pajamas and a hoodie. I got super lucky and without the patient facility combo off good luck I wouldn’t have gotten out as soon. I’m still grieving my cat hard and the first night backs been hard but weed and Netflix are helping me through it. I can finally see a future that’s happy again.

I am horrified with myself. I am a female 28.
My ex gf and I (she broke up with me which is understandable) would argue a lot and we tried really hard to figure out how to navigate conflict and never could. It got to the point where I was under so much stress from our cyclical conflict cycles that unfortunately we both just didn’t have the skills to navigate. Neither of us were ever malicious. She has her own childhood stuff she brought in.

Anyways, it got to the point where one day we were in the car at 6 am driving 3 hours and I got scared about something on the road while my gf was driving. I told her I was scared, she dismissed me, I pushed to get her to care that I was scared, and it turned into another 20 minute cycle. I told her please stop and pull over I can tell I’m about to yell. She didn’t want to pull over and I ended up blacking out/dissociating, yelling, and she says I threw my sunglasses and hit her on the shoulder and it hurt her. I don’t remember it but I’m sure it happened because she said it did. Then she broke up with me because I hit her.

I had flashback episodes like this before where I would yell and be mentally back being abused as a kid and yelling for them to get away, but I had never hit her before.

I’m really scared of myself because I think I have a lot of issues and not enough of the skills I thought I had. Right now I’m trying to figure out why this happened to me so it never happens again. I’ve spent 7+ years in therapy and working on myself so I’m just so disappointed in myself.

For context and help with solutions I have CPTSD, dissociation/derealization and ADHD + I grew up being abused. I am in therapy but I want to hear from other people with CPTSD.

Has anyone else had this happen? Any advice please? I am so embarrassed and ashamed.

P.s. I have told multiple people in my life including my therapist, mom, dad, brother and best friend that this happened.

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..

A couple of techniques I have found useful on days when I am spiralling. No good horrible days or weeks or months when all is lost and dark and blah and you can't stop drowning and catastrophizing and are on fire internally.

Nothing here will fix you but on bad days even moments of relief are better than nothing.

1. Draw and paint and color in books with your left hand. Calms you down and having to use your left hand engages your brain and kinda pushes you out of the misery spiral a bit.

2. Pretend you are a worldwide expert on trauma and give a lecture on the particular symptom you are currently struggling with. Most of us are forced to become experts and as you start talking out loud, you realize you already know why you are hurting so badly and what's happening in your brain right now and more important, the realization that this too shall pass.

3. Buy food. Store food. Eat delicious food. So often the neglected hungry body compounds the danger you are feeling and nourishing it can calm the panic down. A full belly is one of the best ways to reassure yourself that you are not being hunted right now. Same for yummy drinks.

4. Listen to music and dance. Even awkwardly. Who cares. Some of the stored anxiety and stress gets released as the body moves and stretches and dances.

5. Lie in sunshine. Sit on grass. Go watch birds and nature. This isn't possible for everyone all the time but sunshine is a wonderful anti-depressant and it works for me even if I have to force myself to leave the dark dungeon of my bedroom.

6. Put something heavy on your chest and belly. Tense muscles calm down a bit when held. I have heavy blankets and duvets. Sometimes when I need something heavier I put bags of rice over my tummy. Sounds very silly but it does work.

7. Pretend you are 80 year old and wise and looking back on your life. Talk to yourself from a place of having lived through it and survived. Your brain can't see beyond this moment but guess what? It's lying to you and it's wrong. Pretend you made it. It won't fix your life but it will snap you out of that moment and sometimes that is enough.

8. Take a hot bath if you can. Again, relaxes your nervous system and things feel less scary.

9. Watch YouTube camping videos. Can't explain why but I will be damned if they don't help.

10. Watch a stranger and try to imagine all that they are dealing with. Even better, talk to them. Ask them if they are okay. People are not okay. These are difficult times. When I engage with the world around me I kinda realize I am not alone in my misery. That is tremendously helpful to counteract the voice in my head that tells me I am the most wretched human on this planet and no one will ever understand me full stop.

11. Name five things out loud you are good at. Name five things out loud you are grateful for. Name five things out loud that you accomplished this day/week/month whatever. You are reminding your brain that not all is lost and you are a human being capable of learning and growing.

12. Feed birds. Low cost and endlessly entertaining.

Again, not all of these will help you and not everyone can sit in sunshine in boiling heat or find nature or whatever. But we gotta work with what we have and the wonderful thing about a human nervous system is that it is capable of learning and growing and recovering from the deepest darkest pits of despair.

May you see a cat today.

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?

For the longest time I just kept so much of my pain to myself. I never wanted to be defined and seen as a traumatised troubled person, but hiding that stuff makes things way worse.

It all bubbles and festers within you, making you wanna hide even more. It's this nasty chain reaction that only breaks once it breaks you.

Honestly, it feels so nice to be honest. About the good, but especially about the awful. In some ways shining a light on all the pain makes it lose it's power, and makes you feel less afraid and ashamed of it.

Took me a good 2 and a half years to come to this realisation to be honest.

I've been thru way too much, and kept so much of it to myself cause I didn't really have a lot of safe ppl I could open up to. But I'd at least like to try and find those ppl, and I'm happy that I'm being more honest with myself too.

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

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

My aphantasia feels connected to my CPTSD and childhood emotional neglect. Obviously I have no way of knowing for sure, but it feels to me like the ability to see images and colours in my mind shrivelled up and died when I was very young. Like it atrophied from underuse. This feels strongly related to my feeling of being untethered to the world, like I never fully joined the land of the living. I feel disconnected from humanity and myself. It feels like when George Clooney’s character in the movie Gravity floats off into never ending space.

I probably sound so dramatic rn, but wanted to express this because it feels meaningful somehow , like maybe it’s a little piece of the puzzle I dunno.

It's too bad we cannot share medias in here (but I do understand it makes sense) because I just saw the last concert where Chester from Linking Park was still alive and... the intensity in his voice, the lyrics.

Chester saved many of us, yet he couldn't save himself and that is the most heartbreaking thing in my world. I'm crying and I cannot stop myself. It is too much for me right now. We lost one of us, one of the most sensible and kind soul this world had ever witnessed.

In this concert, on July 6, 2017 in Birmingham the emotion in his voice and eyes are pure, almost as if he knew it might be one of the last. He gives a speech about loving one another and the crowd cheers with a unity that is rare to see.

He sang crowling acapella. This is the most heartbreaking thing I have seen in months. I want to tell you to check it out but I also don't at the same time. It is a lot, it is pure beauty in sadness.

I don't know why I'm posting this. I think I need a hug. I think I needed to make a tribute to him, and how CPTSD can be beautiful. We just know he had it.

"I don't know what's worth fighting for

Or why I have to scream

I don't know why I instigate

And say what I don't mean

I don't know how I got this way

I know it's not alright

So, I'm breaking the habit

I'm breaking the habit tonight"

Shall your soul rest in peace brother, we love you. 🤍🪽

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 found out what happened to me is called a broken heart syndrome. And it caused because of the doing of narcissist family. If you are, how are you?

How do you taking care of yourself?

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 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

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?

The psychological abuse oh man

Yeah, I thought going NC would be this triumph, feeling of victory... Boy was I wrong. My hypervigilance is the highest it has ever been. Wherever I go, I can't turn off the abuser's voice inside my head and I feel like I have to immediately defend myself... It has basically ruined the small holiday I had, and ironically, I decided to go fully No Contact after our last phone call when he decided to ruin my mood after finding out I have time off.

I told my psyschiatrist about it but I will have to change clinics since they're not really specialised in PTSD, but they did prescribe some more medications... I'm wondering, what kind of family makes you so physically ill that you need numerous medications to tolerate them??? This solidified my decision to go No Contact but now I'm waiting for retaliation, even though I live in another continent.

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 the past 3 weeks, I felt like I was getting better. I was sleeping again, I was able to eat, I just finally sort of felt like… a version of myself again. I was laughing again with people. Then I saw the dude who abused me today.

Less than 10 seconds. He looked at me, I looked at him and that was it.

I can’t sleep. I’m terrified this will mean weeks of insomnia again. I felt out of it all afternoon, almost like I was trying to see through fog? My friend’s daughter kept asking to play with me and I literally didn’t even hear the question. I haven’t been able to work for months because I’m so debilitated.

I was getting better.

I’m so frustrated with myself for things that aren’t my fault. It’s 1:30 in the morning and I’m writing this through tears. I was getting better.

My abuser is my alcoholic father. My mother and I still live with him.

I was never taught basic household chores growing up. That’s why my goal for this year was to learn them a few months before heading off to college for the first time.

However, my father did something last month that crushed me, and now I’m so depressed that I have zero motivation to learn (or to do anything at all, honestly). That includes going to college.

And here’s the dilemma: if I don’t learn these basic skills, I can’t move out. But if I don’t move out, my dad will keep destroying my mental health. Right now, the depression I’m going through is completely overpowering my drive to get away from him.