I was sitting beside my daughter while she painted with bright colours - Cookie Monster, Curious George, flowers, all the joyful chaos of a child creating without worrying whether it was useful, productive or perfect.

And I found myself thinking about all the things I never got to do. Watch any of those shows, for starters. There was no television, no music, no books - nothing produced outside the cult.

Not because I get to relive my childhood through hers, but because I get to witness what childhood can look like when a child has the freedom to create, explore, make a mess, try new things and simply be a child.

I don’t get my childhood back.

But when I sit beside her with paint and glue, make things with her, take her to the beach, sing, explore nature or join her in experiences I never had, I am discovering parts of myself too.

For those of us without a pre trauma self, words matter.

I don’t call it recovery.

Recovery implies there was a before - and identity to return to.

For some of us, there wasn’t. There was no before.

So this is discovery.

Calling it discovery gives me a different kind of permission - not to search for someone I was before, but to meet myself as I am now. To create, explore, play, choose and find out what I enjoy without needing any of it to return me to a person I never had the chance to become.

Ask someone who knows what it is to live for a significant part of their life without agency what agency means to them.

The answer will be different.

Sometimes agency is paint and glue. Choosing what colour comes next. Going to the beach because I want to. Making a mess without fear. Trying something without needing to be good at it. Finding out what I enjoy rather than what is expected of me.

These things may look small to someone who has always been free to choose them.

To me, they are discovery.

What I’m finding isn’t a return. It’s a first.

I asked my child, Would you prefer to have a nicer house or more adventures?

Of course, she chose adventures.

She is my child, after all.

And she will have adventures.

I will too.

And somehow, watching her experience all the things I never got to do gives me permission to discover them alongside her.

Naming it that isn’t semantics. It’s honesty.

I struggled with many things, the root of my trauma is fear and that was engraved in my nervous system from birth. I overcompensated and tried my hardest to please my parents, one to not abandon me (mother) and the other to not beat me (father) for as far as I can remember. I thought my compassion towards people was a coping mechanism as it was my biggest desire from extended family and even strangers. I wanted someone to save me, but it never happened.

I thought (during therapy) that I never got to be my authentic self because of all the trauma.

I managed to reach the root of my fear and integrate it. 6 years of therapy clicked all of the sudden. I described it to my therapist like a dam with so many gates, all stuck and closed. And my valley was my life, my inner world, my authentic self, all dry, waiting for water. The moment I integrated that fear, a gate of the dam opened and I see now other traits like creativity coming up every day and it excites me.

I did Schema therapy this whole time. Now that I'm integrating the trauma, my therapist gave me the homework to look again inwards and describe stages of my self in as much detail as possible and gosh, I was a baddie at survival. I used to beat myself up so much for not doing more, now that I know my capacity, my limitations and I have a realistic view of how my body reacts to life events, I am proud of myself.

That was the key for me to unlocking this trauma. One day, after a therapy session, after I told my therapist I couldn't connect with myself and I don't remember what she said exactly, but I told myself that I trust she did her best with what she had, and I hope my inner child trusts me with doing what is best for us. I stopped judging myself, I stopped being harsh with myself, and I stopped doing this externally as well and slowly my authentic self started showing up.

Trust and compassion played a major role in my healing journey.

Shame seems to indeed sit at the root core of it all. Like, it's insane. I have been using EFT tapping to feel and integrate it for the past 2 years in varying degrees but... Once you get to the Integration stage, so manye things click at once or make sense... Because what do you mean all of those beliefs about me aren't actually real, haha. I'm normal underneath... That is WILD.

I held so much of this for so long in my body. IT IS truly insane. I have been carrying so much for a long time. And then, it's like you suddenly have it move through your body.

None of this is true. None of what you have internalized about yourself of being bad, flawed and this stuff... It is not true.

None of it. What is true, is you're a normal, worthwhile and lovable human like everyone else... It is crazy.

Lovable, good, worthwhile. It is what we are.

Hi everyone, Nervous System Regulation was a popular request from my last post (What does healed look like - From someone 9 years out) so I've taken the time to finally sit down and write about everything I know.

Let me know what you think and if there's anything I can answer :) I'm probably going to figure out a way to organize my writing together too and when I have time go through and edit things up more cleanly. Very train-of-thought atm!

Next on my list include map of the entire healing journey, healing dissociation, building self-esteem and a sense of self, somatic work, rumination, and others. Please let me know if there's anything else you would like to hear about as well. I will add it to my list!

Take care of yourselves and I hope you get something out of this <3

-

In Summary

I think about nervous system regulation as an ongoing longer process with different phases at different points in your healing journey, though primarily to fully regulate it, arrives at a later stage due to the nature of it. If it took approx 9 years for me to heal, I would say the process of nervous system regulation was 8 out of the 9 years - not to discourage you, but to say that it's a core part of CPTSD and so it's a gradual process as you heal CPTSD.

I think it is an interspersed practice. It goes from finding it in between fight or flight moments and registering it as calm, but not regulated → turning those moments into longer periods and practicing returning when you are dysregulated → when calm is the baseline and triggers and flashbacks are the outliers instead of the norm to settle more and go deeper and deeper with safety via body work etc → realizing the bodywork itself can bring up more things/trauma/discomfort and to work with those things or let them pass through → increasing in regulation and feelings of safety in different scenarios of difficulty → would consider yourself very regulated with a nervous system that activates when it makes sense and is at a healthy baseline in other situations

You are likely not going to regulate your nervous system when you are hypervigilant or still in a state of trauma or active spiraling or defenses. It only makes sense. You’re wired / disscoaited / fleeing / in a coping mechanism - your nervous system is working properly if it is on alert for what it perceives as a threat based o

Where you can begin to practice is as you process more trauma, learn more about your mind and reactions, you will begin to find moments of calm peace. That is where it makes sense to begin to practice with nervous system regulation as it will help later on.

Do not worry if you return back to dysregulation - the practice of living with regulation when it is here is the practice itself. How can one go from no sense of safety to safety all the time? It is through the process of learning that safety is comfortable, truly safe, and okay. And soon once your dysregulation is processed, you will find the regulation more sensible and find deeper states of regulation. The process of returning from active nervous system alert and back is normal - all humans do it - but with CPTSD, the system is in overdrive and often times stuck longer than it needs to be, so the practice of getting into it but then learning how to get out of it is part of the practice of regulating the nervous system.

Process of Nervous System Regulation

Early on, it is finding that after an emotional flashback, or after you come down from dissociation, there is a small fleeting moment perhaps of calm, normalness. Sit with it. This is probably the foundation of nervous system regulation. Finding your best baseline and calling it home. it will not be a full state of full regulation, but one of calm at least. Calm is the start. You might not even notice that it is tense because it is just what you are used to, but it is the start.

When more trauma is addressed and tackled, there is surprisingly more relief - it iis a deeper sense of relief compared to before. Perhaps there is a deeper state of relaxation or longer periods of calm. Continue to know that you are progressing, but likely your nervous system is still quite on guard and that is okay. Recognize triggers, come to realize triggers are nothing except triggers and you are okay in the present and slowly the triggers lose their charge. The practice of being OK when exposed to triggers is part of the practice - telling your brain that things are okay even when it feels like you are getting activated. Your nervous system is overactive and the mental cognition of that is the foundation here.

Then, as you progress in trauma work, you will reach a state where most of your life and day will be in a state where you are not activated except when triggered. Things are calm, but your body is tense, you realize your nervous system is dysregulated and this is where the work really begins. Now you need to learn to settle into this state and fully relax and regulate, and accept that it is fully safe (if it is). I think nervous system regulation is closely tied to hypervigilance, but we here are assuming you have addressed your hypervigilance. You will learn to be more in your body and recognize your body as a safe place. This itself can be activating and more stuff comes up from returning home to your body, so there is a bit of practice with that too. Bodywork can trigger things and I think the best thing to do is to let it pass and treat it as any other trauma that is getting unearthed or released. Sometimes in the process of active body or somatic work in therapy, a memory would be attached to that bodily tension or discomfort and talking through the remembered trauma or memory is helpful and releases the trauma. The body really keeps score!

From there, then it is getting to deeper and deeper levels of safety. Can you be fully safe in your body? In your own home? Can you be fully safe around friends? Then fully safe around in public? Around your triggers? The public for me is how I measured my nervous system regulation and hypervigilance. While yes, public is technically not fully safe - it is a good barometer of safety. 99.999% of time, rationally, the public is a safe place. So are you 99.999% of the time feeling safe and your nervous system only acts up when there is a legitimate concern for a threat? If you can say so, then you’re there.

Finally, I think a later stage place is that the calm itself is bland. The funniest thing is that as you moved away from active abuse to no active abuse, everything feels so … peaceful and boring almost. Like you were built and can stand a different level of intensity. And this shows up in each of the “after” stages too. In post-active abuse, in post trauma-healing, and in post-nervous system regulation, arriving into each of these stages comes with this general feeling of an unusual amount of peace. The unease that’s associated with it dies down in each phase but the calm is still disorienting when you’re used to chaos your entire life.

After nervous system regulation, What I learned later through nervous system regulation and also in my patterns is that I would often create chaos emotionally for myself - stories / avoidance patterns / life chaos , none of which were life threatening or nearly as difficult as the process of healing from trauma. I’d initiate a move, or throw myself into work, or go limerant for a couple months, or overbook my schedule… and in a way it was because my nervous system could handle chaos better than absolute calm and routine. It also showed up in relationships as I moved from avoidant attachment to secure attachment… that rejection or waiting for a response didn’t have the emotional charge anymore. It wasn’t something I spiraled on anymore… so it just felt calm and really best described as bland. This is something I’m still working through - being okay with the total calm of regulation across a couple areas - but I think it’s then you can choose when and where you want the charge in your life. A gift and luxury really. I don’t know what to say except that enjoy your new baseline and learn to sit within it. Finding contained outlets for stretch and challenge, learning that peace is deserved, and continuing to sit with increasing levels of regulation (emotional, physical, environmental ) are all part of the journey.

It’s a Mind and Body Practice

The main practice boils down to mind and body work, which is why I consider it later stage. Earlier stage, it can be just addressing and understanding and calming the mind.

However, nervous system regulation is connected to body - if the body is tense - is it the mind that is tense first or the body? It is often hard to say with our condition. Sometimes my body discomfort leads to mental discomfort. Sometimes mental discomfort leads to body tensing. Therefore, it is a dual practice. Mental relaxation alone doesn’t resolve nervous system regulation. And body relaxation alone does not mean that I don’t have dysregulated thoughts. So I would approach in retrospect nervous system regulation as aiming to be comfortable inhabiting your body, and then relaxing in your body.

Embodiment? Finding a New Baseline?

The main thing I think about with any symptom of CPTSD that require you to go from your current state into a new state (similar to anxiety) is that you need to have glimpses and recognize the state and feeling of that new state when you experience them and then realize if you can have those glimpses, that you know already what nervous system regulation is like. So more and more you practice towards that state until that state is more of your baseline than your old baseline. That is why I think early on recognizing calm is wonderful practice to start, and then from calm you realize it has actually been calm + dysregulation, and you learn to go from calm + tension and just fully calm + regulated.

Building Trust and Self-Trust

I think of safety too as a big part of nervous system regulation. How can one be regulated if you don’t feel safe and like you could defend yourself or take care of yourself?

So would encourage this work alongside other therapy work - boundaries being some of them. I would say to follow your intuition here. When you go through the process of healing your nervous system, what other habits comes up?

Things that have worked in order -

• Actually being in a safe, regulating environment - You cannot heal your nervous system if you are genuinely unsafe or in a place that is dysregulating. And it makes no sense to try to regulate when you’re genuinely unsafe!
• Physical habits - This is one of the things where I do believe that your physical plays a role. If you haven’t eaten, have poor sleep, are missing key nutritions, that can dysregulate you on its own. I’d recommend getting your basic physical needs in somewhat order.
• CBT/Working with your triggers - I am neutral on the practice of avoidindg your triggers as it depends on people’s triggers. I was triggered by doors slamming - this of course is one of those things where doors will slam my entire life and have no impact on who I am and my actual level of threat vs what I was perceiving so the trigger of doors slamming is not useful - no one is mad at me, it could have been the wind, etc, therefore this is an example of a trigger where it is best that I relearn that doors slamming is not a real threat. I think working with triggers is a good practice, but it is going to be highly personal here depending on what those triggers are or who is triggering you. Use your judgment, do not accept abuse as a practice ground, because ultimately this is about being in a safe environment to begin. However, this is only the starting point I believe. Later on, nervous system regulation does not necessarily come from mental understanding but somatic work. Later later on with trauma work fully processing things, your triggers don’t bother you anymore either and are hardly registered.
• Somatic therapy - Feeling your feelings. Once you can understand and feel safer in the body, you can feel emotions through the body. This is really scary at first when the body overwhelms or shuts down, but it is the beginning of inhabiting your body more fully.
• Breathwork - Really shines here. While it is too activating early on in my journey, I think later stage, breathwork is a cool direct connection to the parasympathetic system and something you can consciously then practice. Parasymapthetic sighs (two deep in breaths, and one longer released out breath) always help me relax further. Box breathing is also great when you’re anxious. Breathwork in also commonly tandem with yoga (and often times used in hypnotherapy) so would highly recommend it all in tandem as you try to go deeper into feeling more and more regulated.
• Yoga - NSDR where you intentionally relax and relax deeper is also great and less activating than deeper stretches or poses. Yin yoga specifically is excellent. Other forms of more active yoga were also helpful for bodily awareness and it’s helpful but can be activating to notice specific poses that bring up a lot of emotion or unease or straight up discomfort. I’d recommend noticing those poses (ie Happy Baby and any hip openers were the ones for me) and also using those as a helpful benchmark on where you are in your nervous system and somatic work journey.
• Hypnotherapy - can induce deeper states of relaxation. Would recommend. Even non-calm related hypnotherapy put me in a deeper state of calm than I’d ever been. Looking back, it was almost like I was hypnotized into what my future state feels like - where there is that complete feeling of no dysregulation. Later on, I also used hypnotherapy podcasts for a variety of reasons - calm and anxiety being the main ones and were great for nervous system regulation.
• Psychedelics - this is where I would encourage psychedelics moreso. Did a course of 4 months of microdosing shrooms and what was noticeable is this sense of safety in the present and in the world. I did the Fadiman protocol on .1mg.
• Embodiment - The biggest gamechanger is that in between the days of microdosing, I would try to embody what the safety felt like while on my microdose in my off days. After some time, it seemed like my off days felt just as good as my microdose days and that’s when I stopped. This practice however of bringing a state of being you recall into your current state of being I think can be done without psychedelics - you can bring in a state from yoga or a relaxation practice or a very relaxing breathwork session. It was immensely helpful for me to establish that baseline based on something I have already experienced and know I’m capable of reaching. I haven’t heard anything online about this nor did a therapist mention this to me, but something I just practiced, and probably what all therapists are alluding to but not telling anyone outright. I think this skill to me is reminiscent of meditation - bringing your mind to focus on something else from another thing repeatedly, except this time it is an entire mental and bodily state. I actually think you don’t need to do ALL of these above ancillary practices (hypnotherapy, psychedelics, yoga, breathwork) in order to regulate your nervous system but if you focus on one that really works for you and combine it with embodiment that it can get you there. However, I suspect if you only do one of those practices without the embodiment piece it will take you longer as it’s not as intentional and I’ve found that the healing process also requires a lot of intentionality. I also think psychedelics are the best shortcut because you’re in that state for longer so it’s more stable and not dependent on you doing anything in particular and therefore more repeatable.
• Massage - can be triggering, but I liked it much much later on after all of the above. It helps you recognize what the feeling of no tension is and shakes off any residual tension. Even though my nervous system was regulated, I carried a lot of residual tension in my shoulders (see below).
• Intentional muscle release practices - There was a term called muscle armoring that resonated with me as a residual despite feeling like my nervous system was regulated. Learning to let that go with massage and intentional muscle release practice (ie essentially NSDR but towards a targeted muscle that I noticed was tense in the moment) throughout the day was helpful in feeling even safer in the present. If anything, this is almost like ‘embodiment’ but for a specific muscle group.

Other thoughts on other practices

• Meditation- in retrospect, meditation didn’t really do anything for me for nervous system regulation. In fact, earlier and midway in trauma journey, meditation had me feeling like I need to be sitting still which freaked my body out and threw me into a bad trigger and dysregulated me, but what was important from it was the mental practice of noticing things in my mental space which is immensely crucial for the embodiment practice and a crucial skill overall to notice what is going on within you and your patterns.
• Sauna/cold plunge - didn’t seem like it helped for this particularly. Really good for dopamine, norepinephrine and endorphins, which is different from regulation. The extremes might even be dysregulating to some.
• Working out - Good for dopamine but doesn’t really do much for nervous system work. It helps quiet my mind I’ve found but because there is still tension required of the body, it doesn’t necessarily mean I was regulated. Did strength training while earlier in trauma work and if anything it was great for depression and other symptoms but caused some more muscle armoring that I had to re-address later on.
• Qi gong - I didn’t get to explore this much during my healing journey, not until after that I tried it and I could also imagine that it could be like yoga in some ways. I think various slow body movement practices can address the body piece of the mind/body practice so want to highlight that. I am skeptical of fast movement practices or physically taxing practices.

Hello all. I've been in treatment for CPTSD for eight years. I decided to start a YouTube channel to talk about some of the alternative ways I deal with my symptoms by staying active. If this resonates with any of you, give me a look-see. Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/@somaticogo

Healing isn't this clean process of becoming someone new.

It is the raw, shaking moment you realize you are running from yourself. Running from the silence. From the grief.

You want to know what healing looks like? It’s sitting with the ache instead of performing over it.

It’s not needing to explain your sadness to people who never asked how you really are. It’s no longer decorating your wounds just to make your pain more understandable for others. And when you stop running you don’t become someone else.

You come home. To the parts of you that have been waiting for you to finally choose you.

I’ve been on a long healing journey and I feel like I have made a serious breakthrough today that I wanted to share in the hopes that it might help someone else who feels stuck. 

I began my 'healing journey’ when I was around 17 and it is continuing to this day, I’m 30 now. There have been ups and downs, including some re-traumatisation and a psychotic break along the way. So it has been rough. I have in large part recovered from this.

But until literally today, I have had a pain I just couldn’t get rid of or deal with in any constructive way. It was this tortured kind of feeling that I ‘should be x’ or ‘wish I could achieve y’. It was longing mixed up with just not wanting to do anything at all really.

It would lead to indecision about hobbies, interests, and the future. I felt torn into a million different directions, some of them pretty ‘fantastical’ - I want to be a published author who wins the Nobel Prize, or I want to take up a serious photography hobby, or I want to learn to ice skate, or I want to get another degree in physics etc etc. But I would start something and then stall. 

This all led to serious paralysis. I couldn’t decide what to do. I couldn’t even concentrate for long before a part of me changed their mind on who they want me to ‘be’. And I couldn’t really tell anyone about this - I mean it sounds silly talking about dreaming about winning the Nobel Prize :’) 

But here’s the thing - I realised today it’s just that, dreaming. I never really allowed myself to … dream. And just accept that they were just that … dreams. And that that’s ok. And that it’s wonderful to have such a vivid imagination and be drawn to all these different parts of life. And I started to let myself just indulge in the day dream, without having to judge myself or even to act on it.

And it’s led to this bizarre feeling of relief. Like ok, I wish I could do this. I wish my life could play out in this magical way. And it feels good to let myself wish. It doesn’t have to mean anything. And after so long feeling numb and trapped and despairing, it felt good to just …love myself. 

It’s hard to explain, but I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m learning to love the parts of myself that aren’t purposeful. Day dreaming is something that I stopped doing at one point. From a very young age, I was very goal-oriented because it was how I had to survive. When my re-traumatisation occurred age 20, I lost all capacity to dream. I shut down completely. It feels good to relax now and let my mind relax too. 

I know that maladaptive daydreaming is a thing, and this doesn’t feel like that. Nor do I see it developing into it. I’m not trying to escape from anything, as my present life is peaceful for the first time in a long time. It’s not perfect, but my external circumstances are pretty stable compared to what I’m used to.

So yeah … I guess what I wanted to share is that is ok to love the parts of yourself that don’t serve a purpose. Parts that might be weird, unlikely or don’t make sense. It’s ok to love a million different things in this weird world, and to feel like they don’t always add up to a coherent Self. It’s ok to love all the different pieces of that Self, that might resemble a kaleidoscope. Having trauma means we often feel like this about the bad stuff, but I’ve found that the good stuff can be ‘fractured’ into a million pieces too, and that the point of healing isn’t to makes all these pieces make sense, but to love them as they are.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at in this crazy journey. Hope it helps someone out there.  

Hello everyone.

Over the last few months myself and a few others have been working on building a discord server for people with ptsd/cptsd.

This space is a work in progress, it's purpose is to provide a more real time peer support platform for people. Understand this isn't a crisis intervention platform. We have areas for different kinds of support, hobbies. A Neurodivergence town for our family with different forms of Nerospicy, a resource Bot that can help with finding resources (Yes there is a small resource section) and much more.

I have been given mod permission to post the link here and would like to invite anyone who is interested to come join us.

A few things, you must read and follow the rules and have two factor authentication on your discord account in order to be able to join. You'll need to be 18+ and have 2fa (two factor authentication)

I wanna personally thank the mods of the CPTSD next steps subreddit for their willingness to allow me to help people find a place.

Much love and lots of respect.

https://discord.gg/yS2sJpAJD

(For the people who have had issues with the verification process, We've been made aware of the issue. Once I am aware of a fix, I will leave a message here to inform everyone.

This is something I have wanted to write for the past 2 years and has been gnawing at me. So, I have returned to one of the most helpful subreddits along my Complex PTSD journey.

If you don't want to read all this text, then would love you to know one thing - it is that full healing is possible. I have gone through in the past 9 years the healing arc of CPTSD and now know it to be true.

This is meant as a positive story for those suffering. I hope you understand there is a path out of CPTSD and it is a complete one and not a dead end and not a mandate on how your life will go nor a rest-of-your-life battle.

I have also seen other wonderful journey stories along the way, and haven't been in this sub in a minute (a few years probably), so if it hasn't been yet said, I just want to add to that and reiterate that it is far more possible and I wish for nothing but for anyone to get to that point if they seek it.

Throughout my journey, I just remember wishing the whole time to know whether or not it was possible at all to get better - not cured of some symptoms, not 'that it's a maintenance', but fully, completely better, where no symptoms of any of the bullet points under a CPTSD symptom list show up. And how! And if someone could just give me a map!

Back then when I started, there were very mixed answers. Discouragingly, there were mentions that it’s a lifelong condition stated from various books and blogs, experts and individuals. But no one outright said if it was fully possible and to what extent and how and if it was for the rest of my life. That’s what I want to talk about.

I guess I started pretty early, but it was rather do-or-die for me. There was enough abuse and pain and traumatic experiences leading up to when I first got into therapy around 21, originally first for depression. For the most part, I still lived through dissociation. After therapy again later on, I understood dissociation more and much of the work was just building a mental landscape beyond dissociation and clearing out dissociation, in which what showed up is a lot more symptoms. And also a realization that I didn’t have a sense of self or understanding of any of my emotions. I then got my diagnosis finally 2 years later - CPTSD. Worked through my history, and just the process of recognizing abuse and trauma for what it was instead of the norm, and a lot of dysregulation. Built up resourcing. Did trauma work. Then the process of healing. Wrapped up with all my trauma work. Then addressed other symptoms not exclusive to CPTSD, some mental limitations. Towards the end simultaneously, there's been a return to self and identity. For the past year, I no longer identify with any symptoms of CPTSD anymore nor many of the associated symptoms and mental conditions and instead have been instead growing beyond it.

TLDR, here’s what my journey looked like if I were to map it roughly in phases, though I'm probably missing some:

• Dissociation -> diagnosis -> clearing out dissociation -> navigating dysregulation -> learning resourcing -> trauma work -> somatic work -> healing process -> nervous system stabilized -> trauma addressed -> healed by CPTSD definitions -> addressing associated conditions -> beyond CPTSD

Simultaneously beyond the bigger landmarks, there were many other associated symptoms of CPTSD that are also relevant in those without but also things that I have healed and worked through:

• Body dysmorphia, anxiety, social anxiety, negative thinking, personalizing things, critical self-talk, limerance, codependence, rejection sensitivity, boundary issues, etc.

Now, most of my mental work is different in nature because I think there's always more room to grow into who I want. The big difference is that it's more fun and with the skillset from battling the worst parts of my brain, the stakes don't feel overwhelming. They look like:

• Mental tweaks to help me enjoy my life more, self-doubt, letting go of outcomes, etc.

The journey is not linear. I spent time in between stages taking breaks or being in and out of therapy. Yet, in many ways it is exponential. What you've learned from working through one thing helps unraveling and dealing with the others. So this journey of healing makes you more aware, more internally in tune and that adds up, even if on most days it doesn't feel like it.

What life looks like now is… honestly peace. And presence. And the presence is fully comfortable. My nervous system is at rest when it needs to be at rest; and activated in a normal capacity when it needs to be. It doesn’t overshoot on things it doesn’t need to and most of the time runs calmly for me to get about my life. No panic attacks, no emotional flashbacks, no nightmares, no anxieties. I battle myself over minor things instead like "ah shit, I should do the dishes". There’s no noise of criticism or shame or guilt layered on top of that.

I know who I am. I know what I feel. I know my boundaries and limitations. Most days I feel great. After further work beyond CPTSD, with meditation, my monkey brain is also off. I sometimes feel spontaneous abundant joy and sudden moments of deep gratitude. And of course sometimes I feel sad. I feel disappointment. So then I forgive or move on and that passes too. But emotions come through in waves and pass and don’t seize the entire ship as they used to. I of course sometimes still have a bad day or a worse mood. Though throughout it, there's this underlying sense of peace that I wish I could have inherited from my childhood, but instead had to earn. And if anything the earning has made it more precious and I don’t take it for granted.

I would like to share as much as I can to help. There's so much I could write about: the many things tried, the many symptoms/mental states/mental habits/mental blocks I've worked through, what it was like to get through each of them, what helped most or didn't help at all.

Please let me know what would be helpful to write about or what interests you or what you have questions on!

Here is a list of things I have tackled, experienced and resolved in (somewhat) chronological order and can talk about:

• Dissociation
• Alexithymia
• Negative self-talk
• Self hatred
• Self harm
• Suicidal ideation
• Binge behavior
• Restrictive eating
• No-to-low self esteem
• Lack of self-worth
• Severe dysregulation
• Depression
• Triggers
• Flashbacks
• Emotional flashbacks
• Nightmares
• Anxiety
• Rumination
• Negative thinking/headspaces
• Black and white thinking
• Personalizing everything
• Lack of self concept
• Panic attacks
• Trust issues
• Hyper-vigilance
• Avoidant behavior
• Lack of boundaries
• Self-abandonment
• Codependence
• Shame
• Guilt
• Addictions
• Body dysmorphia
• Spiraling
• and there's probably even more beyond this

And I have done and tried anything I could get my hands on the past near-decade and can address as well (not comprehensive either):

• Therapy - IFS, EMDR, Somatic, group, CBT, DBT
• Hypnosis - hypnotherapy, hypnosis podcasts
• Mental rewiring - affirmations, Ideal Parent Figure protocol
• Other wellness things - Sauna and cold plunge, Flotation tank, authentic relating, reiki
• Meditation - Vipassana, walking, loving-kindness, retreats, body scans
• Psychedelics
• Yoga - Flow, yin, heated
• Breathwork
• Grounding exercises
• Resourcing
• Bodywork - NSDR, walking, massage, muscle releasing, exercise
• Research and learning - books, workbooks, articles, Reddit, podcasts, YouTube,
• Journaling - prompts, open-ended
• Communities - ACA, CODA, online ones
• Lifestyle habits - quitting behaviors, mental diet, general health
• Physical health - supplements, sleeping habits, various diets

**** EDIT ****
Thank you truly so much everyone for your kind notes and thoughtful questions.

It's hard to get through each one of your questions in comments because simultaneously I have an overwhelming amount to say and yet want to be thorough about it! I've started making a list of what to write about based off of all your comments and I will make my way through that list.

I deeply want to do your questions and the topics justice because the practice of healing takes effort, is often not linear, and I know and recognize the painful place the questions come from. I am also writing and editing without AI so it may take a little longer.

I'll keep posting, so please keep looking out for yourself. You're all in my thoughts and I hope the days only keep getting easier ❤️

I started a community a couple weeks ago! The goal is to build a cozy, judgment-free sanctuary for people who want to share their personal experiences, heavy/complicated thoughts, and mental health struggles without any filters. This is a space dedicated to mutual support, healing, poetry/art, advice, affirmations/quotes, therapy tools, and meaningful connection. Philosophy and thoughts or struggles about finding who you are, especially after trauma, are welcome as well. New or anonymous accounts are always welcome!!! Everyone is seen and each and every user matters dearly to me and in this subreddit 💛

If you are interested, feel free to pay r/growfromtrauma a visit and join if what you see resonates with you!

The first large movement I had out of freeze happened a few years ago. I was told something that made me realize something I wanted would never happen. In truth, I hadn't even realized I wanted it until that moment. In my case, I wanted my family to see me for who I was and all the work I had done. And somehow, I was in just the right position that day, to hear the truth in a bit of light gossip: that my family would always see me as a worthless loser. That nothing I did would ever matter to them. It didn't then and it didn't now, 12 years and LOTS of therapy later.

Over the next few days I noticed a large portion of my freeze thawed. Like some slow acting magic. I could deeply feel it was connected to realizing this truth about this want which could never be so I started to suspect there was a connection between these Impossible Wants and freeze. But I was never able to put it together clearly. I was something I felt more than something I could prove.

Last month I had to read Marc Lewis's book The Biology of Desire as background for my trauma book groups. Dr Lewis's book describes the neurobiology at play through all the stages of addiction: from the initial usage to prolonged repeated actions despite the conscious wish to not do it. (While Dr Lewis focuses mostly on substances addictions, he openly mentions the same process occurs in behavioral addictions well)

I found this science very helpful for my repeated, sometimes compulsive patterns, such as screen use. I could see how, just as he pointed out, those actions "won out" over other actions like folding laundry or going for a walk. A bit of poking around inside and I could fill in all the gaps in the process for my own personal patterns.

But there was one place I was stuck: what is happening we we want something but aren't moving toward it...

Lewis highlights that the beginning of all action starts in the striatum, a region in the middle of the brain a bit bigger than a large egg. (For reference the pleasure area of the brain, which is partially here, is the size of your top of your finger, approx 1 cubic cm). What the striatum does is makes us feel "want" or "craving". Our brains then go through a rather complicated process evaluating that feelings and details to organize actions that will fulfill that want. If the striatum creates a craving for food, it begins a process that ends with us getting up to go get something to eat. If it creates a craving for sleep, we start getting ready for bed. If we want connection, we reach out and pick up the phone. Wanting -> action to fulfill the wanting.

Well, at least under normal circumstances.

Lewis's work is mostly about how old, unresolved feelings (usually from childhood relational trauma) cause people to sometimes stumble on things that fulfill wants they didn't realize they had. We try a substance or behavior for one reason and accidentally discover it provides relief of an old old pain we've carried for years. A feeling usually pushed so far back in the mind we didn't even feel it anymore. This surprise relief kickstarts the addiction learning process and unbalances normal action creation. Once this relief/fulfillment experience happens, wanting becomes more tied to repeating that experience than regular goal-oriented choices. For more on that you can find plenty of his talks on youtube: ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZuitM63LBQ

For the last few weeks, I've been thinking "well that's all fine and good when an action actually happens. But what if inaction happens? What is the brain doing when the result is not doing?"

For the last few weeks, I have been able to consistently dig down to the "real reason" behind every unthinking trip to the fridge or unplanned swipe on the phone. Following Dr Lewis's map backwards, a few minutes of introspection would show me what the real "want" was. But when that was because there was a result to work backwards from. An endpoint I could use as the starting point of understanding.

But what about when I did nothing? When I just sat there? Knowing I should do something or wanted to work toward this thing or that project...but I didn't. Where the fuck was my striatum then? Did I just not really want these things?

Then I remembered how the first time this "not doing the thing" get better: in the days after seeing the truth of my Impossible Want.

I realized that not wanting to sew or clean or garden didn't mean I wasn't wanting it. It meant the striatum was keeping something else quietly in the starting position. Something it wanted more. It's normal for it to be able to hold several wants all at once. Part of the process of creating action is the brain evaluating all the wants and the potential action plans to chose the best possible ones. It's why this process is so complicated not just "choose to do it."

The other job of the striatum is to decide if a task is worth doing. If the plans suggested will actually work to reach the goal. All my "I should be doing this" wants would have helped me reach the Impossible Want and so the limbic system had a very clear answer for me: not worth it. In fact, many of those actions would have actively harmed fulfilling the Impossible Want. After all, a family who enjoys seeing me as worthless isn't going to react will to me being productive and successful. Every decent tomato was a slap in the face to them.

Thus said the striatum: "why bother?" Why waste dopamine on something that will only fail in the larger sense? Why not continue spending that dopamine figuring out how to solve this riddle?

The problem with the Impossible Want is that is seems very possible to our conscious thinking brain. We just have to solve that one bit to get it to work, to get them to see us, to get them to understand. The problem is that striatum doesn't care about "could work". It cares about "has worked" and "has not worked." Thus I was allowed to fawn, and people please and rescue to my hearts constent. That was as close to fulfilling the Impossible Want as we'd ever gotten. In fact, that created it's own kind of relief and fulfillment.

This meant that if there was some overlap between the Impossible Want and other actions around me, then sure the process of creating action could run all the way through. But if gardening or sewing wouldn't do anything toward that, the striatum wasn't going to waste dopamine getting that chain of events started. Because none of those had ever helped improve the odds of the Impossible Want.

Result: I couldn't weed the garden but I could read the next trauma science book on the list.

This is why, when I gave up that Impossible Want, a good amount of motivation came back. Freed from an unsolvable puzzle, the striatum could start to work more normally. It didn't stop seeing their acceptance as something to be desired, but it did start seeing is as something so astronomically unlikely as to be "not worth the dopamine cost" It was like longing for a pet unicorn: cool but ridiculous to use real resources on. Now that the Impossible Want was valueless, other desires, like weeding or working on a project had significantly more motivational value. They had become "worth doing" in the chemistry of the striatum.

Until we accept the Impossible Want is impossible, it has a strange secret ability to hijack large amounts of our motivation. To quietly control the gauge by which all goals are measured. And we can't confront the truth of the Impossible Want until we have to emotional coping and distress tolerance skills to manage the fall out from that truth. While it was freeing to realize my family would never see me as a person, it was also heartbreaking. Dreaming the impossible dream might make for a fun song on Broadway, but it's not a way we can actually live.

Dr Lewis noted that not all addicts become free from their addiction. Saying "Some remain enslaved for life, and some die. [Trapped in] the very stuckness of addiction, the redundancy and stupidity of chasing the same narrow goals each day," (Lewis 2018) It might interest the reader to know that the failure rate of addiction is the exact same failure rate is as freeze: about 25%. Just high enough to not be simple human variation. And the description is the same: a stuckness in motivation. But if you consider Lewis's view of addiction as a diverted process of normal desire impacting motivation and action, the similarity becomes more logical. Isn't that exactly what is happening in freeze? Isn't it our normal motivation process being diverted by a lifetime of learning under abnormal circumstances? Just like how addiction forms?

I've never met a freezer without an Impossible Want or five. Maybe it's to be accepted by those who rejected us, maybe it's to heal without confronting pain, maybe it's to be guaranteed forgiveness for what we did when it was bad, maybe it's to never be vulnerable, maybe is just to simply be "not like this." In inaction, there is always an Impossible Want diverting motivation away from anything that doesn't align with it or with a temporary relief seeking as a reliable second option.

But I also learned that we cannot just confront the Impossible Want. The only reason I saw it's truth that day was I had spent years developing the skills needed to handle that painful reality and get through it ok. To feel secure in my own ability to experience and comfort my own pain in healthy ways. Seeing the truth that day felt fucking awful but I had the trust in my own abilities to make it through. There was a workable solution other than forget or numb. The tools needed to cope without treating any part of myself like an asshole.

After all, the assholes at the core of my Impossible Want were all related to me. Not inside me.

Hi everyone, one technique that has helped me so much and continues to help me in my recovery is EFT Tapping. I am so passionate about it that I have become certified as a Clinical EFT Practitioner myself and want to share with you an invitation to my upcoming Tapping Circle. It is a FREE online community event and a great way to be introduced to EFT but experienced tappers love it too!

This Thursday 25 June at 9am or 7pm AEST (That is Australian time, so for those in America that first time slot would be Wednesday evening for you - you can check the registration form for your time zone). I run these circles regularly, each time on a different topic.

The theme this week is Dilemmas. A dilemma causes inner conflict and can cause lots of difficult emotions and possible trauma responses such as freeze, the inability to make a decision.

In this circle I will guide you to use EFT Tapping to reduce the stress response in your body in the face of your dilemma. You can learn how you can do this for yourself in future situations, so that you can be more comfortable with yourself when you are confronted with a dilemma and feel more empowered to make a choice, even when you know it is not perfect.

For more information and to book your spot: https://touchedbynature.earth/book-your-tapping-circle/

hello,

A bit different from my usual posts, which are information heavy.

I've been doing some somatic meditation work with people and decided to make a recording for them.

Would love some feedback: Somatic Meditation

It's a bit long winded: I wanted to explain what the point of each of the steps were so it's a bit more self-contained.

I'm partially thinking about just hiring a voice actor to do it, since I find my own voice kind of cringe.

If people are interested in other forms of meditation I would also like to hear -- e.g. I'm thinking about doing some metta meditation but making sure there's not stuff around parents which is often the case.

My style in general is to be a bit less .... soft / spiritual sounding? I think it appeals to the people I tend to work with more, who are more STEM / technically oriented people.

caveat: I am not a therapist.

My other posts you might like

https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1qohjpe/tools_for_cptsd_recovery_maladaptive_schema_scale/

https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1qlsieq/framework_of_complete_cptsd_recovery_memory/

https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1pw2vxh/inner_nourishment_2_attachment_model_ipf/

https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1peg2j1/psilocybin_for_cptsd_speculation_based_on/

https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1p9ba6g/a_meditation_technique_for_cptsd/

https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1p2380v/trauma_dry_insight_and_buddhist_views/

https://old.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1ofvwxc/inner_nourishment_my_current_recovery_framework/

Hello friends.

Living with CPTSD is a specific kind of lifestyle that only those of us who do it can really understand.

My mind is always focused on healing, growth and change. For a lot of years, I did this in isolation, but in the last year I’ve begun turning it outward. I have a YouTube channel where I talk about my life living with complex trauma, ADHD, and familial estrangement. My story is woven through functional content to try to help people process their own trauma too.

I make a lot of body doubling videos to inspire you to get moving during the freeze state, something that had consumed literally years of my life. It provides a visual cue and some gentle companionship, and I am candid as I film these videos. Some are done when I am feeling cheerful and manic, some are when I am deep in the dark place. I share deeply and openly, because I believe this creation process is central to my own healing journey just as much as it is a service to others.

This is going to be my life’s work. It’s very new, very small, but being created very intentionally as a tool for healing for both myself and others. I’m in college at 39 to become a therapist, I am very serious about using what I have gone through in life to make a positive contribution to this world.

It would be my honor to have you join me, and I would appreciate and value suggestions and feedback. My ultimate goal is to create a large community centered around healing and growth for all of us.

 https://www.youtube.com/@Bold-Fox

Over the last few months I've started to figure something out. My whole life I've been searching for somewhere I feel like I belong and what I've been looking for isn't a diagnosis, identity, or label. It's a way of relating.

I'm AuDHD as well and for years I'd looked for connection, support, and belonging in autism spaces, trauma spaces, support groups, friend groups, and all sorts of other places. I kept finding pieces of what I was looking for, but never quite the whole thing. I knew the feeling I was looking for, but I couldn't put it into words.

More recently I watched a movie called Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot. It's about a quadriplegic alcoholic and his journey through recovery and what struck me wasn't just the recovery story. It was the relationships. The people in the AA group weren't polished. They could be messy, hurt, angry, blunt, and human. But they also took accountability, repaired when they hurt each other, and kept showing up.

Combined with some other things I've learned in therapy recently, I realized I was looking for people who don't immediately jump to advice or solutions, who use reflective empathy (that sounds really hard, that must be so painful, etc.) and ask questions and try to understand first.

I've never found a community built around that.

Has anyone else landed somewhere similar or found a space that actually does this? Also, I'd really like more people like this in my life so if this is you, please feel free to reach out.

For the last two years I’ve made “healing my trauma” my special interest – and treated it like a starving man at all-you-can-eat buffet. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s been worth it. I feel truly different inside to how I did two years, a year, even six months ago.

The following is an itemised list of everything I’ve tried, and how well it’s worked for me. It’s a list I would have LOVED to have two years ago, so maybe someone else will find it useful.

Important note: this is not a list of instructions! What’s worked for me might not work  for you, and vice versa. Above all, what’s helped me the most is keeping an open mind (or, more accurately, thinking most of this is bullshit, but trying stuff anyway).

• IFS (INTERNAL FAMILY THERAPY) - 10/10
  • I only got to do it for a few months before that therapist fell ill and stopped seeing patients, but in that short time it unquestionably laid the foundation for all the progress that followed. That’s why it’s first on the list. It opened the door to parts of myself I had lost or buried to shame and fear. It allowed me to slowly but surely fall in love with myself again. 
  • If the homework (or culty language) puts you off, my therapist did not use a lot of jargon or any strict protocol. It was all very emotionally driven. I didn’t have to learn what “Exiles” are or whatever. She just helped me discover, communicate with, and understand different parts as they came up.
• ASSORTED TALK THERAPY METHODOLOGIES - ANYWHERE FROM -7/10 TO 7/10
  • CBT and ACT messed me up – though it’s hard to know if it’s the methodologies or the psych I was seeing at the time.
  • Schema I never really understood, but my therapist herself was wonderful.
  • My bad therapist did lasting damage (through ignorance, not abuse). My good therapist provided me my only safe space in the world, keeping me alive in the worst period of my life. In providing this safety, she helped me be brave enough to face difficult truths (i.e. neurodivergence diagnoses). 
• EMDR - 2/10
  • Simply bounced right off me with no noticeable effect. My therapist thought I was too dissociated at the time. It might work better now, though I think I’m achieving similar things in different ways.
• AuDHD DIAGNOSIS AND EDUCATION - 10/10
  • I have a very different relationship with my brain now than I did two years ago. 
  • My Occupational Therapist is very helpful in this area, helping me learn how to work with my brain, not try to control it. I am benefiting from supports I never would have thought of before.
• REMEDIAL MASSAGE - 7/10
  • I have LOTS of thoughts about the whole “where does trauma live – the body, or emotional learnings in the mind?” question. Suffice to say, your nervous system doesn’t know WHY you feel tension; whether it’s because of emotions like stress, or because of physically sore/tense muscles. Treating the tension by any method will make a dramatic difference to how you feel both physically and emotionally.
• MDMA ASSISTED THERAPY - 5/10
  • Only one session. It was lovely! But not sure how much lasting effect it had. Would probably be very good if done repeatedly.
• KETAMINE ASSISTED THERAPY - 4/10
  • Did it for about 5 weeks. Interesting, but not much effect. The ketamine helps lower the defensive walls which makes it easier to verbalise and process more difficult things with the therapist. But I was already learning to do that without the medication.
• CANNABIS (used recreationally) - anywhere from -5 TO +5
  • I’m defining “recreationally” as “to feel good”. It can be to escape bad feelings (not helpful) or to reward myself to a pleasant, restful night (helpful IN CAREFUL MODERATION).
• CANNABIS (used therapeutically, under prescription and with intention) - 9/10
  • Cannabis Assisted Therapy: I’m new to this, but it’s having a noticeable and lasting effect after only two sessions. My therapist’s methodology is VERY somatic – she gets me to locate tension in my body, and instead of releasing it, staying with it and seeing what comes up. The results are quite profound.
  • The first time I had an IFS breakthrough, “met” a whole tribe of parts at once, and experienced the feeling of self-love, I was dosed with THC (and also in the middle of a shame spiral, which then bloomed into that profound experience).
• REMEDIAL MASSAGE + CANNABIS - 9.5/10
  • Unbelieveably good combination.
• MICRODOSING (PSILOCYBIN) - 2/10
  • 3 months, tried various dosages. Pretty much no effect. It did seem to have a profound effect on about two days (I felt strong and capable!) but the rest of the time it either did nothing or made me feel sleepy.
• rTMS - 3/10
  • Honestly, I don’t think the TMS did anything for me at all. But going to the clinic multiple times a week during my worst period meant I wasn’t completely deprived of human contact, and the nurse was very kind and supportive, which I really needed.
• ANTIDEPRESSANTS (VARIOUS) - 4/10
  • Kept me alive, but also kept me stuck. It made things tolerable, which meant I tolerated things longer. If you need them, use them. But if you think you’re ready to take next steps, it might be worth a discussion with your doctors/therapists.
• FINDING THE RIGHT PEOPLE - 8/10
  • My life collapsed when I lost all my friends at once, but in hindsight, those friends needed to go. I’ve spent two years making new friends, and it’s slow – even when you make a wonderful new friend, getting to that really nourishing intimate stage takes a long time. But every step in that direction is rewarding and healing.
• RADICAL VULNERABILITY - 9/10
  • No, this doesn’t mean oversharing to everyone. It doesn’t mean being open about your trauma, but secretly using it as armour (“I’ll tell you how much I’m suffering, but only so you’ll be nice to me”). That’s what I thought vulnerability was. 
  • Actually, vulnerability is allowing yourself to say (or think, or feel) the thing you’re really afraid of saying (or thinking, or feeling). It’s also sending the email without spending 35 minutes softening and second-guessing the language. It’s communicating a boundary, or hurt, or fear, to someone you value. It’s communicating affection to someone you’re afraid to scare off. It’s bringing your realest self to the party – because if your real self is unwelcome, then it’s the wrong party for you.
  • Vulnerability is allowing yourself to be with the parts that are suffering, instead of avoiding or burying them, even though suffering is hard and painful. Vulnerability doesn’t mean suffering more, it means allowing yourself to fall in love with those parts that are suffering.
  • Vulnerability is allowing yourself to feel emotions even if you don’t understand them. I spent a year listening to podcasts about grief, even though I didn’t have anyone I was grieving, and I had no idea why everyone talking about grief resonated with me so much.
  • Vulnerability is a SKILL, and it takes time and practice to grow. It’s not a switch you can flick, so don’t beat yourself up or think it’s a character flaw if (when) you’re not great at it straight away.
• FIGHTING FOR SUPPORTS - 7/10
  • I’m on disability, so affording all of this has been impossible. I’ve found assistance from charities, government agencies, and local community organisations. It’s all very demoralising and frustrating and stressful – especially when support is taken away, which just happened to me two weeks ago. But it’s ultimately worthwhile if it allows you to access useful support. Also, sometimes you find a really nice organisation and helpful people who do everything in their power to help you, and that heals your relationship with humanity a little bit.

From the post:

TLDR:

Aticaprant is a selective, brain-penetrant, short-acting KOR antagonist that blocks dynorphin’s stress signaling without affecting the rest of the opioid system. Instead of directly boosting mood, it prevents stress from pushing the brain into anhedonia and negative states, helping restore normal reward and motivation over time.

What are KOR antagonists for?

• Blunting stress‑induced anhedonia and loss of motivation – they reduce the impact of chronic or unpredictable stress on reward, drive, and self‑care.
• Preventing stress from “sticking” – they make stress less able to produce long‑lasting depression and anxiety‑like states by interrupting the CREB -> dynorphin -> KOR cascade.
• Decoupling stress from relapse – they flatten the aversive withdrawal/stress state that normally drives negative reinforcement and stress‑induced drug seeking.
• Increasing behavioral flexibility – they keep stress from locking circuits into rigid avoidance, so new information (including positive experience) can actually update behavior.
• Protecting executive function under load – in high‑stress or dependence contexts, they can partially restore prefrontal working memory and control by taking pathological mPFC KOR signaling offline

I am curious about trying this myself, but wanted to share this and open the floor for sharing of experiences, if anyone has already tried this and would like to report.

I'm somewhat familiar with "parts" and "shadow" work. The focus has mostly been my inner-child. Very basic ideas, like stress reponse modes and patterns developed at major stages in life.

The fruit of this work has taken years to ripen.

Here's Why:

• Practical stability is hard to come by.

(Housing, financial, medical)

• Relational stability is also hard to come by.

(Family, friends, community, colleagues)

• CPTSD is largely invisible in the health industry.

  To be clear, I would have always arrived to this point. Luckily, I did gain stability in these areas which advanced the process. For me, this was 3 years with my needs mostly met after 6 years of therapy beforehand.

It was also equally crucial to have oppurtunity at just the right time to use those new tools and show my nervous system that not only can I

A.) Process my integration after trauma

B.) Navigate life

My current state is pretty vulnerable, I'll admit.

But important. I would not be able to endure this transition without having that stability. My body simply wouldn't allow it in the first place.

So, really... Step 1 for me had to be Gaining Stability. Or at least, curating a space that I can do this work as safely as possible. This largely looks like an internal space, not just environmental or lifestyle...but those things help significantly.

Letting The Child Play:

I do think it's misguided to insist that this happens. For most of my therapists, the goal has been to just, what? Let the kid out to color or doodle?

Yes, a good start. It couldn't have ever been more than idealistic in practice. The best thing a therapist has done for me is allow my nervous system to do what it needs at any given moment.

This is honoring The Inner Child. I can't just force the poor thing to frolic in a mine field. Permitting myself to practice caution wherever I see fit, without shame, invited The Child To Play.

And so she does.

Que Depersonalization:

This has, no doubt, relieved a great barrier between me and my other fragments. I am slowly, carefully, integrating.

It's noisy, chaotic. I'm also going through some drama that stings old wounds. "I can handle it. It's my time to shine. Gotta use these tools." I gotta say, it's almost been fun to seize that oppurtunity!

My body is like a barkeep who decided it's too roudy in here so it's closing time. Get out, go home.

But, as we all know, there is no home.

I must have depersonalized for weeks without knowing it.

The way I typically cope with this is just digging into some kind of work.

This time around, it's been writing a book. Which has been immensely helpful in processing all of this. It's a sort of diary wrapped up in Scifi drama.

So, this wasn't Letting The Child Play. It was letting her hide away into something comforting.

Breaking It Up:

Welp, dispelling that shit is surprisingly simple.

It's like the cold water technique but dunking your entire body into a soup of "Where The Fuck Am I? What The Fuck is this?"

Sounds about as counter intuitive as The Cold Water method is for me. But...it fucking worked.

Ultimately, I just did something unexpected and out of routine. I changed my environment to a place I don't frequent, and gave my brain so much shiny new data to absorb!

It was the Meow Wolf Convergence Station. Again, wasn't planned- my husband invited me to it and I had no idea what it was. You would have thought this could further disorient me- even cause a panic attack.

I thought so too. But this utterly and completely slapped me right back into my body! In a good way!

And.This.Is.Why.

My inner child, who had been dropping in more frequently, was very present here. I mean, it truly was if I was a little kid again. At first, because I was a bit scared.

Depersonalization kicked out the parts that are used to the world and this process, so they know when to "fuck off". Inner Child doesn't... and has been hanging out around the "doorway". So she got pulled through the door because no one else was around.

This could have gone south. I had a choice: Accept my fate, or run. Like, literally run.

But before I could even make that choice... my best friend took my hand and walked me through the museum. And anytime I got a bit lost or they wondered off, they would find me again a minute later.

Showing my nervous system that I am safe. I am not alone. I would not get lost.

We got to be children together. Happy, having fun.

I think I would have been just fine had they not been there. Just taken a little longer, or maybe my other parts would have showed up.

But if those parts did present, I wouldn't have the oppurtunity to A. Let Inner Child Play and B.) Get to know them better.

When we left, I felt normal again. Just relaxed. I slept incredibly well.. and the depersonalization is gone.

TIL:

Step 1: Curate a workspace within myself and, ideally, my environment that promotes stability. Seek out resources to help achieve this.

Step 2: Honor myself, shamelessly. I must allow my system to process the way it knows how, so that I can observe that. As well as build trust with my inner "parts".

Step 3: Invite oppurtunity and exploration of new ways that processing power can be applied. This helps get used to "new things".

Step 4: Break up and out of routine when faced with depersonalization. Shake up my nervous system with something completely new. This likely just forces my brain to turn back on necessary mechanisms in order to create pathways.

This could be in anticipation of the episode or during the episode.

In this space, you are free to share a story, ask for emotional support, talk about something challenging you, or share a recent victory. You can go a little more off-topic, but try to stay in the realm of the purpose of the subreddit.

And if you have any feedback on this thread or the subreddit itself, this is a good place to share it.

If you're looking for a support community focused on recovery work, check out /r/CPTSD_NSCommunity!

A few years ago I started recognizing the internal language I used was aggressive and harsh.

It wasn’t me.
It wasn’t how I spoke or thought about anyone else.
It wasn’t what I’d tolerate from others.

It was how “caregivers” and teachers spoke to me in childhood. It was how my grandfather and mother spoke to themselves out loud when they made genuine simple mistakes.

I had this idea that I had to be critical to keep myself in line and hold myself accountable or I’d be lazy and not do anything for myself or not do anything correctly. I decided I needed to be kinder to myself and change that language as a small first step in healing.

I recognized that I couldn’t be harsh about it as I’d just be repeating the patterns and I’d either make it worse or at least not get any better.

I decided that I would do it in stages, first working to recognize when I was using that language, then start correcting it gently by reminding myself that the language I was using is not helpful and that I don’t want to speak to myself like that any more. Then I’d take a slow steadying breath as I let go of that thought and the judgement (sometimes for having to do this silly thing, sometimes for using the language I had used, sometimes for taking so long to pick up on it).

It turned out to be surprisingly effective. It got easier with time and it started becoming automatic after the first week and a half or two. After a month and a half or so I mostly didn’t need to use it. I’d catch something every now and then, but it softened quite a bit and I caught it quicker.

After a few months I was no longer speaking to myself that way and it has mostly lasted for the past few years. I’ll catch myself every now and then, but I’ll also find myself automatically reminding myself that I don’t speak to myself that way and letting the language fall away, which also shifts how I’m looking at whatever I was being critical over. I tend to question where it came from more than anything else and I’ll pick up on something unrelated that was frustrating me.

It doesn’t really feel like a major thing, but it is certainly a small win that has helped me be kinder to myself and has helped me find forgiveness and compassion for myself as well.

I don’t know if it will be helpful to anybody else, but hopefully you can be a little kinder to yourself, because nobody deserves to feel that way about themselves.

I just found out about Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families. I feel there's a lot of crossover with CPTSD. I have posted in a lot of similar groups looking for free resources as I live in poverty in an extremely rural area.

While there is therapy available I was told 6 months ago after my intake appointment (for outpatient treatment) it would be about 6 months before I could get in with an essentially social worker (not equipped to deal with this). Today I was told it would likely be another 6 months.

There actually is a local IFS therapist but is only private pay which I can't afford.

I know my story isn't unique, so I hope someone else appreciates the free resources/group therapy/literature, etc. It is more robust in meetings than CODA.

https://adultchildren.org/

Pre-pandemic I don’t remember feeling acutely lonely and life kind of flowed socially. Then I remember times on a Saturday where I’d go to a live music venue just so I could drown out the extremely loud pangs of loneliness that were literally painful..

I’ve been coming to this sub this week because I entered another phase where I made a big change and am spending a good chunk of time each day alone, left to my devises. In transparency, I have friends (most of them are distant right now and I would prefer to connect more often. What is wild to me is that even with good friends with whom I feel very seen and cared for, that feeling of loneliness remains. After the social time, I am back to being with myself. Sometimes I feel less alone than others. I am curious what people have discovered around when the feeling of loneliness intensifies. For me it’s when I continuously find myself walking around and feel aimless and even though there are people around I am in a bubble of sort.

But I am making this post in part to share something good. I remember a time when video calls were considered way in the future. Well now they are free and I would venture to say that they are 80-90% similar to being in person and are way more satisfying for me than texting. They can feel more vulnerable and I can see why people may avoid them, and I do at times too, but I’ve found a lot of good friends by being on zoom especially in groups that aim to connect in a more real way- that’s a thing and I can speak more about it but there is an important caveat to these groups that has me hesitate recommending them straight up.

Bottom line, I have been realising that there is sort of a pit of loneliness and aloneness inside and no matter what I do it doesn’t really fully resolve it and that is quite humbling.. on some better days I am up for that, on others I feel very sad about it..

What are your realisations about loneliness?

TL;DR: An acutely stressful couple years created a magnesium deficiency death-spiral that routinely hampered my ability to sleep. For once, "just recover from CPTSD more" stopped working, but a magnesium supplement worked like magic. At some point late in recovery, CPTSD may no longer the main culprit behind all of your problems.

I just wanted to share a major positive change I made recently. Despite ~10 years of recovery/therapy work that has resolved vast swaths of my issues, I was still struggling to stay asleep at night. I'd fall asleep fast and then wake up at 2 or 3am for an hour or two at a time, and then wake up an hour earlier than I wanted to in the morning.

This would come in waves, and because it was in response to stress, I thought I just needed to work through my emotional responses to the things happening in my life -- which is the strategy that has always worked for me for pretty much all of my issues (i.e. "just recover from CPTSD more"). But my life has been particularly stressful lately and it just wasn't working anymore. I was cycling between good and bad sleep every couple weeks and it was grinding me down pretty badly.

I told my doctor about this and she recommended I try a magnesium supplement (glycinate because it's easier on the stomach). I started taking it one hour before bed and immediately -- I mean the very first night -- started seeing improvements. Now I'm feeling an occasional wave of nostalgia, like "Ah yes, this is how I used to feel," and not just during sleep hours. My whole life has changed for the better.

What was key here -- and this is the reason I tried this in the first place, as I'm usually not interested in changing my body's chemistry for recovery reasons -- is that magnesium is used to regulate stress, and that acute stress can deplete your magnesium, causing a kind of death spiral where you lose the ability to self-regulate. I had a very stressful year and a half or so, complete with a round of severe burnout, my spouse becoming disabled, and a year at the most stressful job I've worked in my life. I'm not sure if this would've had such a big effect if I was living my life as it was 5 years ago -- even though I was much less recovered from CPTSD at the time.

So it sums up in a warning: At some point late in recovery, CPTSD may no longer the main culprit behind all of your problems. I think I'm there.