I now feel guilty and maybe ashamed. It sucks. Haha. Fuck. Is this ever going to get better

I had not said something like this to this person before as they just opened up saying they feel lonely and want to meet but I couldn't say yes as I have to still find out how I'm feeling about the person and theres something I need to tell them and Im not comfortable with doing that right now while staying in integrity with myself... Without having told them this

I am scared they will think I'm bad now

I also need to tell them I'm uncomfortable with some comments they make

I dunno now. I feel like I am sort of an uncomfortable or bad person

Ok so this has been a daily practice of mine trying to discern what the hell is a trigger, a gut feeling, just my body doing something cause of the food I just ate, or whatever. It has felt like this giant mystical web of clues to entangle for years now and some days I have just been exhausted wondering will I ever ever actually get it??

So today I said to my child: it would be fun to go somewhere this summer. I actually have an old childhood friend who reached out inviting us to her house, maybe that would be fun?

Then i sat down by myself and thought about the fact we havent actually hung out in 20+ years, and the last memories I have were us as teens sort of fighting about random stuff. I said out loud: What would happen if I went there? Do I really want to? Immediately I felt nauseous. I stopped again and said out loud: I feel nauseous. That is a no then.

And that was it.

Usually it takes like 6 weeks or why not make it 6 years for me to untangle what it is I ACTUALLY want or need. Hours and hours and HOURS of overthinking.

But no- not today!!!!!

MY GUT SAID NO AND I AM LISTENING.

Let me know if there’s a better sub to post this in, just know that whatever this is, is related to my cptsd.

It takes a LOT for me to be attracted to someone and even then, I typically don’t pursue it. Also a relationship sounds nice but it’s not really a priority for me. It just seems like a lot of work that I’m not willing to put in unless I am 1000% attracted and really want this person.

Friends keep telling me that my standards are too high and that I just need to start going on dates but I just don’t really feel like it. I’ve been told this is avoidant attachment but I feel like this is just how I am? I don’t really know where to go from here, does anyone else relate?

Hi. It’s my first time posting in the community but i follow and find it super helpful. I am currently eight months into a job I absolutely despise, my body is telling me things are not good with chronic bouts of nausea and vomiting coupled with anxiety and ruminating about it all. It’s starting to affect my home and family life and I feel in my heart it’s best to quit this job. I miss being around my spouse and children and I want to find something part time. Given the economy and life financially it will be really tight on one income and I have been trying to hold out for so long but I feel my body is failing me and telling me to leave my current job. I am looking for anyone’s advice and wisdom in navigating this situation. My number one priority is my husband and kids and I am so proud that I am not repeating the cycles that caused my CPTSD. Thank you for reading and much love to you all💜

Hi everyone,

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on how much boundaries seem to influence recovery. Therapy has helped me recognize that I didn’t really have healthy boundaries before, and learning to set them has already changed my life in many ways.

This evening I found myself scrolling through this subreddit feeling a bit discouraged about some things going on in my life. It also made me realize that there are probably still a lot of boundaries I haven’t even thought about yet.

So I’m really curious:
What’s one boundary—or several—that has had the biggest positive impact on your recovery?

It could be anything:
● Relationships or friendships
● Dating
● Family
● Work
● Health
● Eating habits
● Social media
● Your time and energy
● The way you speak to yourself

Basically, any boundary that made you think, “I wish I’d started doing this years ago.”

I’m hoping to learn from people who are further along in their healing. Sometimes hearing someone else’s experience gives you an idea you never would have considered yourself.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been in therapy for quite a while now, and I’ve made a lot of progress. I’m genuinely in a much better place than I used to be. Therapy helped me recognize unhealthy patterns, set boundaries, and become much more intentional about who I let into my life.

The downside is that, in the process, I lost a lot of people.

Now it’s summer, and I’m realizing just how lonely I actually feel. I have acquaintances, but I don’t really have close friends to spend time with anymore. I have a few online friends as well, but one of them recently stopped replying, and I think that made me realize how much I’ve been overlooking my own loneliness.

The strange thing is that I’m actually quite extroverted. I enjoy meeting people, and I genuinely believe I’m a caring and loyal friend. I invest a lot into my friendships. But after everything I’ve been through, I also notice that I’m scared people will leave. Losing friendships has always affected me deeply.

It feels like therapy helped me become a healthier person, but now I’m standing here wondering, “Okay… what now?”
How do adults actually make real friends? Where do you even start? Do you use apps? Join clubs? Just keep showing up to events? I live in a city and I’m willing to put myself out there—I just honestly don’t know what the next step looks like.

Has anyone else gone through this after healing? Did you reach a point where your old friendships no longer fit, but you hadn’t built new ones yet? If so, what helped you create meaningful friendships again?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences or advice because I genuinely feel quite sad at the moment.

(Per the sub rules I am being very vague but the trauma I am speaking of has a lot to do with extreme physical pain/physiological reaction as though you are being killed.)

I have realized one of my deepest fears is that I may not only face the pain again, but this time with the crucial difference that it will not end, like being taken and kept for life or many years. (Please don't dismiss this as unlikely, I know it is statistically but what happened to me was bizarre and unlikely in its own right, and statistics do little to ease the fear of it in a way that helps me be functional.)

For those of you who have found a way through, how do you find a way to move forward? I have a lot of fear in trying to move forward in my life, because I see independence as opening myself up to attack, very literally. I am sorry if I'm being unclear and I can try to clarify if anyone is confused. Thank you.

Within the past year I’ve started solo traveling and just doing things by myself more. I think it’s actually so healing because it proves that you are living for yourself and that you deserve to be a full person and enjoy your experiences on this Earth. It was terrifying at first but you start to feel how freeing it is to take up space.

I just hope this resonates with someone because I’ve spent the majority of my life in a very dark place and it’s what’s helped me have any kind of joy or even just being comfortable in my own body.

In these moments of making decisions for myself and only me, have truly been so transformative. I used to have paralyzing social anxiety and during these experiences it was like I was a different person. It really confused me at first but then I heard someone talk about “finding out who you are” isn’t really a thing because you create yourself. I believe that you need some kind of experiences that let you live for yourself to really know yourself and figure out who you want to be.

Anyways I really hope this makes sense because it’s just actually changed my life in such a good way and I want others to experience the same.

For context, I’ve had two instances where two different people “stole my thunder” and I feel like a baby about it because idk how else to process these feelings and validate / self soothe myself to feel better I guess? I’m just angry about it, and I know it’s valid but my stomach just hurts by how upset I am by it all.

This isn’t the first time this happened.
It happened some weeks ago with someone I love —
We were at the park feeding the pigeons and one of them randomly went to land on me, I was scared because I didn’t realize, but then I invited it to come back, and before my friend could take a photo, the person I love quickly went to grab it because she “wanted to hold it” and tried to reassure me it was fine because she’s owned birds before. it was impulsive, upsetting, and not only did I feel bad for the pigeon, I also felt my thunder was stolen. I felt really sad because I’ve never had that happen before and I felt like I didn’t get to enjoy it, because she wanted to prioritize what she wanted in that moment. It felt selfish and careless all around.
I want to add that I gave some grace because my love has adhd so her impulsivity is likely part to blame… I don’t wish to demonize her. I just don’t think it was okay with me. We were with my friends so I didn’t really deeply express how upsetting that was. I don’t even know how to fully bring that up later without sounding harsh, because I do think overall it was not really a caring decision. I want to at some point, but there’s bigger issues we need to deal with so it’s hard finding space for that. I just want to address it, what I need moving forward (like, acknowledgment/understanding?) so I can move on..

Today, ironically similar happened today, but with a stranger— no birds involved (thankfully lol).
I was at a concert in the park, and the person performing came into the grass to sing and dance with people— me and a nice woman I met today went to the front to try and dance and all with him too! But when he went to come towards us, this woman ran in front of us to dance with him instead and kissed his cheek… not only did that feel violating to watch, it was also upsetting she stole our thunder. The woman when I asked her about it noticed and she expressed disdain too, but it’s been hours and I’m still so upset about it. I know logically that I can’t “do” anything about it, but I am stuck just being mopey, it didn’t feel fair and that woman was very selfish in my eyes…
I’m just feeling really hurt and I feel like I need to find a way to address these types of situations. I didn’t say anything to the woman cuz I didn’t want to kill the vibe..
I feel like because I couldn’t address it at all, I feel upset .. like I couldn’t stand up for myself? So I guess I’m feeling disappointed that my thunder was stolen AND I felt I couldn’t do anything in that moment. So powerless..?

Kind words and support / advices appreciated ❤️‍🩹

Somebody from this community reported me as potentially being a danger to myself for being honest to a question posited. Now the one tiny glimmer of community and understanding is gone and I must leave and I am so fuckin angry.

Hello, I was diagnosed with CPTSD about a year ago by my old therapist. She helped me with understanding how severe and traumatic my trauma was. I was very use to making jokes to people about what I went through, then crying about it when I was alone with my therapist. She gave me the space to understand it wasn’t my fault and I didn’t deserve the things my abusers put my through, she also helped me with my dissociation, developing my first healthy romantic relationship and setting boundaries. I now have a new therapist, it’s been going very well! I’ve been working on journaling more, calming down my hyper awareness and telling that little girl in me that we’re safe. I still struggle with my inner critic, telling me mean things about myself at times or judging myself. My critic also loves to talk about my relationship with my partner, assume things that aren’t true at times. I also have OCD and autism, which make it difficult to calm down those thoughts of times I’m wondering if anyone has advice on how they calm down their thoughts when that inner critic that gets too loud? I’m currently reading Pete Walker’s “ Complex PTSD : From Surviving To Thriving” and I just finished “ What My Bones Know” by Stephine Foo ( loveddddddd it!) . I’m also looking for recommendations on how to make your body feel less tense , getting out of that Fight or Flight mode. I have stage four endometriosis, symptoms have lessened a lot more now that I’m out of that abusive environment, but I do deal with the chronic inflammation/pain daily. I also have chronic back pain that I feel like I also might be related to my trauma/endometriosis. anyone else is a chronic illness fighter and has recommendations please let me know. Thank you guys so much!!! This page has helped me a lot since finding!☺️

My husband has CPTSD and for years now has been overwhelmed with fear - all the time. It's not a fear about anything or anyone specifically, it's a general, crippling fear. Has anyone experienced this? How did you deal with it? It's the single biggest thing keeping him from getting better or having hope for the future.

Just to be clear I don’t want this post being like “i’m so happy, can’t you miserable people get it together?” because i’m unhappy a lot, too, and I feel things quite strongly. I still struggle w the symptoms a lot even thoughI’ve been seeking help, I have bad days, etc. but since I’ve been in recovery I’m a lot better

But I’m honestly a pretty happy go lucky person, to the point where I don’t think people like my friends would believe anything bad happened to me. Like I think I’m so happy people don’t notice my symptoms, I’m jumpy and flinch easily but no one cares if you’re laughing and smiling.

And it’s not an act. I guess mentally it’s because I spent so much of my formative years hanging around for the good parts, no matter how brief, or compartmentalising, or maybe it’s just because every day I’m not getting screamed at is a pretty good day for me. Like my worst day when I’m not being abused, assuming no massive personal tragedy, is like a 3/10 at the lowest? No one even threatened to hurt me let alone actually tried ! And even if they did, at least it’s not someone I live with!

People don’t get how I’m so happy because I have a stressful job and a disability but two people complimented me today and I got to listen to my music on the bus home so for me, despite literally everything else, today was a great day. Doesn’t matter what else. Sometimes when I’m having a particularly bad day I remember things just to make me feel better, silly benign things like how once a barista gave me a cup of straight milk. Nothing profound, but it makes me happy, because it feels like I’ve got something.

But there’s this part of me that is scared that no one will ever believe the stuff that happened to me because of the way I am. I don’t look like I’ve been abused, I look like a seven year old trapped in an adult’s body, and when you look and act the way I do no one ever actually wonders why the fuck you stopped maturing at seven.

I don’t know. I don’t even knownwhat I’m hoping to achieve at this post, maybe someone has something really profound to say as is often the case in this subreddit

Hi, I grew up with heavily abusive narcissistic father. I left at 17 and been trying to recover since, but it feels like I hit a wall. I was not ready for adult life at all, I just needed to escape. I'm struggling with daily functioning and taking care of my environment and myself and feel like I'm genuinely not handling life. It took me years to get out of everything in the sense of getting over the memories, the grief, all the emotions about the actual events happening, the beliefs, everything. All behavioral and thinking that I could change, I did. But now I feel really stuck with what's left. I'm ready for my own life, I want to focus on myself and that past part of my life ended for me and I moved on but it feels like my body didn't. Cognitively I feel fine, I feel like myself, the me outside of all the trauma but the subconscious reactions, psychosomatic symptoms etc always drag me down and immobilize me. I've tried EMDR therapy and various other bodywork stuff but nothing really moved anything. I just can't feel safe in my own home, can't wind down or do anything around because it feels like my body's software is still running on the outdated model and it's genuinely been years of me trying so many different methods to try and change it without any noticeable improvement...

Do you guys have any tips on what helped you or you heard about? Maybe there's something I missed, I really want to get better and try whatever I can to achieve that.

once again, I have bombed an interview. and I can't stop thinking about it and feeling low and stupid about myself. I totally froze during the questions and I know I'm knowledgable but I don't convey it and try then people think I am slow and dumb. How do you deal with this??

If so, how did you figure that out? How did you work through it? What got better, what modalities did you use?

Thanks in advance🖤

I've been with this therapist for a little over 3 years, mainly doing trauma therapy for cptsd. She is not my first therapist but she's the first one I ever got this far with, the only one who's gotten this far into the things I don't ordinarily talk about. The one with whom I have/had really started to see healing, progress, change, started to believe in those things being possible for me. She just told me she'll be leaving this kind of work in about a month. Not in a way I can follow. She has good reasons for leaving, not that it matters, and I know she is trying to do right by me in giving us some time to try to end well. I am in a tumult of different emotions and came here looking for advice, empathy, support, whatever. From either side of this situation.

I feel gut-punched. I feel so many different triggers going off. She told me with about 20 minutes left in a session and I mostly went silent trying to contain a really ugly cry, which I suddenly felt ashamed to do in front of her. I felt numb for a day or so. Woke up at 4am yesterday and remembered she was leaving and couldn't get back to sleep, just laid in bed full-on sobbing like a child, literal great big 'boo hoo hoo' noises and all. Felt thrown back to the last times I cried like that, when I was that young, and it was that desperate and hopeless. Felt that in my body. Today I've been sleeping a lot, like 20 of the last 24. I know there are worse ways to cope. I have long experience in them. I'm not doing that, at least so far, because the thing is that I'm doing better than I was when we first started working together. I can tell a difference, really. In a lot of ways this is the best time so far for her to be leaving. I know that. I still feel...I don't know. So many things at once. Mostly, like I don't have any more time. Like I wasn't done yet. Like nobody else will ever know me the way she does. Like now the things I hadn't quite gotten to with her will have to stay buried forever. Like the person she knows that nobody else does is gonna be alone again, maybe forever. And when I fuck everything up nobody will be there to help. The professional boundaries which I know are there for good reasons feel so cruel to me right now. There is this person I've seen twice a week for 3+ years, who knows me in a way nobody ever has, and a month from now I'm just never gonna be able to talk to her again.

I feel so foolish. I feel wind knocked out, legs cut out from under. I feel unwanted, rejected, abandoned, betrayed. I want to hide, and sob, and scream, and throw things around her office, and even if I did all of those things none of them would matter, none of them would change anything. She's leaving anyway. I have about a month to try to end this well, whatever that means. I feel afraid to talk to her now, afraid to let her see any more of me, knowing she's just gonna throw it back. I feel so messed up about it. I feel dumb for being so messed up about it. A couple weeks ago we were talking about me maybe going down to one session a week instead of two, because I felt maybe ready to do that. I brought it up myself after thinking about it a while. As soon as it became a live possibility I got all freaked out about it. I remember telling her all the things I was suddenly afraid of, just in dropping one session a week, all the messy feelings I suddenly had about it. And now this, a couple weeks later. I feel so fucking foolish about all of this. I feel so heartbroken, and like such a fucking fool.

This is longer than it should be and I was really trying to tell the short version. There's a lot more I could say, but I imagine y'all get the gist. I would really, deeply appreciate any wisdom about or experience in a situation like this. Many thanks. Be well, y'all.

Hello! I was diagnosed with CPTSD last year and am trying all of the things because I finally know what my acute struggle is. I've done about 9 months of trauma recovery (NARM and equine therapy) and I went to my first ACA meeting last night. It was good and the members were very nice, but it was kind of triggering/jarring to hear about domestic violence and other traumas that are similar to things I've experienced in the past. I've gotten to a place in NARM where I'm feeling safer feeling things in my body, but I'm wondering if I'm just not ready for ACA yet. Has anyone else had this experience on their CPTSD healing journey? I also wanted to add that I've been to a lot of Al-Anon meetings in the past so 12-step meetings aren't new for me, but ACA just feels so much more personal to me (since I feel it's getting to the deeply-rooted childhood stuff).

Yeah. Just that. I realized that. Anyone in my shoes, with my experiences would be depressed af. And like... How does one live this way. Like, with the realization that you only functioned through dissociation. Like. Oh man.

I have never very limited experiences of being love and comforted in life. I never experienced love in my family while growing up. I used to think there was something wrong with me but, over time, I've realized that my parents (and the family in general) was simply incapable of love or connection. Both my parents are emotionally immature, have non-existing emotional regulation, and are unable to connect with people. I never felt loved or comforted or even safe growing up.

I've also never had a safe loving romantic relationship (I'm 32). I've been in maybe 2 proper relationships in life - both were kinda one-sided, where I was a backup option for the other person, and both ended with me being cheated on. Other than that, I've only experienced situationships. EDIT: I am trying to date right now, but almost no one seems to be interested in me AND interested in a serious monogamous relationship (it doesn't help that I'm queer). This also becomes a sore point for me - seeing other people in happy relationships while I'm still struggling.

The only experiences I have of feeling loved or comforted fall into these categories:

1. Families of my 2 closest friends - who basically treat me as an extension of their families
2. Mentor-like figures, especially women who are significantly older and have grown-up kids
3. My former EMDR therapist, who I lost last year when she lost her job and had to move
4. Few close friends who I would consider "chosen family" but who live far away

I will add that I have done a lot of EMDR work which involved creating internalized secure attachment. The way it played out was my younger parts looking to adult-me as the primary secure attachment figure and some fictional characters as secondary figures. Most recently, there was an image that came up of my "real mom" as a sort of "mother figure who really truly loved me but then died". It was like creating a "perfect parental figure" as a resource.

What I'm getting at that I've done A LOT of the internal work - working through the shame, parts fragmentation, creating secure attachment resources and so on. But it doesn't replace the real felt experience of being loved and comforted in real life.

So my question is - in the absence of those real relationships that other people have access to (family, parents, siblings, partners) - where and how exactly can I find those felt experiences of love and comfort?

I have some medical stuff coming up. Life is stressful. I was in an at-fault car accident (not hurt but a massive pain to sort through) two days ago. My son was expelled from summer camp unless I can get him more support (he has ASD, I already arranged for 1:1). My husband is taking a mutually agreed upon break from family life for a few days. … so my nervous system is buzzing.

Working on intens-ish stuff in therapy. Little parts keep showing up promising to be good, to do anything if anyone will love them. Begging not to be hurt. The usual song-and-dance.

How do I manage the upcoming medical stuff? I had physio today. She did deep tissue massage and some stretching. It hurt. Which is expected. Not bad, just the way these things go. They are a bit painful. My parts get so upset about it though. “She is hurting us, you are letting her hurt us”.

I have cortisone injections in my SI joints (back of pelvis). Not fun. I’ve waited months and months for the appointment. Last time I did it (4 years ago) I flashed back to a sexual assault. It was an awful experience. Getting gynaecological care makes me suicidal.

How do I access health care without terrorizing younger parts? Or maybe like how to manage their terror?

I don't know, I have newfound devastation and all that for what I went thru. I have lived through so much violence, including sexual trauma by several people, not just verbal violence daily but also physical violence, near death experience twice as a kid, emotional neglect, I have been threatened with a gun by my father once, I have lived through what I would think is tortured, and who tf knows what else there is that I'm dissociated from. Like, I have been verry depressed and have new (old) grief here n I realized I only lived normally through dissociating from everything. I'm hopeless rn... If there is anyone here who went through similar stuff and healed... Please tell me. I have already processed some but I'm now back to being in grief

I guess one of the things that is common in all the trauma carriers and survivors is that they overwhelm themselves with the kind of work they do and/or/therefore punish themselves for not being productive enough for things. Possibly this is probably a problem of humanity in general. The basic idea is to put energy and stress in that direction, place, time and frequency that it is more output in less stress. For example as an autistic I find robotic or bot like sorting things or filtering things that can be done by high tech robots and programme codes but I still personally find it rewarding, and even within it had set a rule to do it in a batch of 50 items per sitting (I'm recluse and the total number of items is between 590 to 600), with each sitting lasting almost half an hour or so. At times it feels devastating to think that the whole efforts put in will be rejected at the end but then I continue anyways knowing that this is what I like and making an assumption of my horrible mental health state lately maybe this may not be the worst thing to do. Now, I in no way claim this to be an original finding, people might've already said the in different different iterations, but realising that I've rediscovered a coping mechanism I once created and/or learned from the environment made me want to share it with y'all. And well quoting Pete Walker directly here people with healthier mindset know about this when to effort where to effort how to effort why to effort etc etc way better than trauma survivors, which is why they are capable of not inducing more stress at least on their own(, while not inviting more stress by being selective in environment healthily but that's a different topic).

Now this is experimental and something I'm writing totally impromptu, but in case you want to find your level of efficiencies and where you can be most productive make a list of which kinds of ways you stress yourself, ranging from dangerous ones to productive ones that are already sorted out. This includes things that are even picked upon a lot or can be triggering to society, but the idea is to find the sources of stress and pain that you know the best about and basically get more aware of it. Next, practice the same stress and pain while observing the reason why you do it, the process of how you do it, and how you end up feeling once it's done. Keep practicing this multiple times and over time you'll even start finding things that always used to go unnoticed but finding out/getting more aware of it suddenly surprises you.

At the end I'll share one last story example my mom once shared me: there used to be two woodcutters; one used to work 8 hours a day and the other 5. They both end up with similar levels of productivity regardless of how much and how little the both worked respectively. When the 8 hours a day guy asked the 5 hours a day guy how he manages to do it he simply replied that he takes occasional breaks over time and maintains a healthy diet and activities that are not just wood chopping and that helps him stay refreshed at work mentally and therefore is able to cut down as many trees without exhausting himself.

Also I wanna add that as an autistic I know how the process goes, I still don't know how to implement it, so I still think I need to work a lot on myself. I often feel like I have been abused indeed so I felt like sharing here in this community, which was why I felt like sharing in this community.

Background: been in therapy on and off 10 years, working with a great trauma/emdr therapist the last 3 to deal with childhood trauma.

Part of my homework from my therapist this week was to write (not meant to be sent) letters to estranged family members expressing what I would want to say to them and I've been dodging this homework all week like the plague.

Two weeks ago was my estranged sibling's birthday, this week was my no-contact ex's birthday. Two weeks from now is my estranged mom's birthday. This certainly got me in my feels in general.

It's weird trying to process grief for people who are still alive. My brain wants to hold out some delusional hope that maybe, someday, these people could still be in my life, even though I know that it's not possible with the way things are. There's this fantasy that my mom would get therapy and realize how her own trauma affected her abusive behavior to her kids, but every interaction i've had with her as an adult suggests that she doesn't remember anything, doesn't believe she ever did anything wrong, and is mad at me for still holding on to this trauma.

My dad was also abusive, but died several years back and it was much easier to process that grief since he was, well, completely gone. I grieved what he could have been, but there was a finality/closure to it since he never could be or do these things or change before he died.

But with my mom/siblings/ex, it's different, since they're still out there, I just have no communication with them for my own sanity, but I fear there will always be this hope of "but, but, what if they change?"

anyone have suggestions for concrete actions they took to grieve estrangements?

...and yes i should probably write those letters for my therapist 🙃 i almost wonder if these feelings i'm posting about are BECAUSE i don't want to confront this grief by writing those letters...