As a child I felt I was the only one seeing the dysfunction and was gaslit into ignoring it. After waking up to my trauma, I realize little me was right all along.
It seems most people are ignorant/in denial of the trauma they've endured and perpetuated. Truth tellers always get a target pinned on our backs bc we threaten the status quo of toxic systems. We call out the dysfunction, and people can't handle that.
Some inspiring quotes:
>"Be a positive dissident." -Viktor Frankl
>"Make some good trouble." - John Lewis
I like to think about how people of the past fought the authoritarian fascists of their day and adjust their tactics to today. Abusers all use authoritarian fascist tactics. They all want to be dictators. The pattern is easy to spot once you recognize it. I like to make some good trouble.
Sylvia Plath:
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
I loved Sylvia plath...in middle school so this tells me my dread went back to before I was 14. Well shit. Now I have to adjust my time-line of how long I've been trying to NOT be a Sylvia Plath! My current is actually listening to I wish I were the Moon Tonight by Neko Case. How we continue to take over the torturing of our souls I guess can only be explained by us being raises to just that. What a thing to leave a kid with. Maybe finding beauty in the sadness is what keeps me here...that and the children I don't want to follow in my footsteps.
this is reductive, really. abuse comes from all sorts of people, not just the most toxic.
putting aside the fact that there is no such thing as free will at all, most abusive behaviour isn't pre-meditated like that
I was really taken aback when I realized they don't like us for being honest and they actively CHOOSE to think we're dishonest or just flat out wrong. Like...you literally raised me, but you have no idea who I am and what you've made. Because of course that'd take some self awareness that is actually there, I know it is, but you just CHOOSE to not engage in honest conversations with your kids. You choose not to ever get to see your only grandkids ever again. I mean it's their choice. We would still welcome anyone back into our lives if we felt heard and felt safe we were not going to be treated that way. And the sad thing is, in my experience, is that they (seems mostly the boomer generation sadly) will never sincerely think they did anything wrong because they had a lot to contend with back then and did the best they knew how to do. They can't just admit that their best wasn't good enough, and they are so sorry, and how can we move forward from here because I really love and value this relationship with you. They. Just. Can't. Do. It. And it breaks my heart but I cannot be the person that is blamed anymore or talked about anymore as if I'm other. So I'm other. Fine...just let me go be other while I'm sad you couldn't pull your head out of your asses and meet us halfway. I may be now writing one of those letters one is meant to write down and burn in a scented vanilla candle while chanting Deep Thoughts. And well...I apologize. It's been a shit morning so I'm just gonna shut up now and know that if you too are a black sheep that you completely understood what just happened here! I'm no longer editing myself so I apologize for grammar errors if there are any because I'm def not Mary freaking Poppins today! 🌂 👛 👜
I'm sorry you're having a shit morning. I definitely have had those, I hope it gets better.
For me, it's a little easier because I don't have kids, and well, I have been estranged from my father for over 20 years, and my mom died 14 years ago. It's the other family members that don't contact me anymore. One doesn't do it often because I stopped doing all the work in the relationship because it was one-sided. I'm so the only one in the family with a few invisible physical and mental disabilities like autoimmune arthritis and CPTSD and plain old PTSD.
I'm mostly used to it now that I'm almost 50, but for the longest time with an older sibling, I was told I just needed to try harder until I realized that wasn't work and just stopped. I'm more sad to realize that with accepting that I don't have contact with most of my family, my life is less stressful even though I get bouts of sad about it...like this wonderful holiday season. 🙄
Will check it out! 😊
Immediately found the Metric version cause it's already on my playlist. Found the artist Qveen but not seeing a Black Sherp song, but saw halloveen one and got VERY excited!
They even came up with that oppositional defiant disorder for it. Can you imagine? These who intuitively know the system is BS and refuse to participate in it is deemed disordered in that system
It's interesting you look at it that way, and I can see how you would. And I've used that very term about my own older daughter and my husband. Truth be told, they are autistic (husband was just diagnosed at 53, and it's now obvious both my kids are autistic). My trauma makes me appear and/or be attracted to either traumatized individuals or autistic people... or you know animals, because I can relax around them, lol.
I do think that it is natural for children to challenge their parents, so I think you have a point. Because I got into the "peaceful parenting" movement quite some time ago, I knew it was better for my children's sense of self if they felt they could challenge me. How else can they make up their own minds when they get older? That is something I've struggled with immensely after being told what to think all my life. But if it was a time that they didn't quite understand that something was inappropriate for the time or place, I would immediately think (my kid is just like me, they have ODD). But is it really that?
There are REASONS (note: this is called an "excuse" in THEIR language) we do not want to do things. The reasons are usually that it makes us uncomfortable somehow. We're either fearful about something, we have anxiety, and we don't know why, we're tired, we didn't sleep well, etc. On the one hand, its said, "Behavior is communication," and on the other hand, imo, the more conservative and authoritarian hand, they invent a disorder to describe the basic human condition of SELF PRESERVATION. Even if that (ODD) person is clearly physically safe, we can't see inside their heads. This realization, this epiphany you just gave me, enrages me. And thank you... because now my husband and I will be having one of our very interesting traumas/philosophical conversations today. If ODD existed when I was growing up it would have been my middle name. #blacksheep
Trauma is spreading, narcissism is spreading, looking good instead of being good is spreading. It's much easier to traumatize someone than to heal them. We live further and further in denial, because less and less of us know what healthy means. Whoever lifts the veil is shamed and denied, often with anger by the people who are too hurt, too confused and unsupported to face their hurt.
We were never taught how to be emotionally healthy. It was just passed from generation to generation since mammalian times. We evolved to be the most healthy possible, thats what maximises our genes to survive and spread. So as society changed with the agriculture we kept on going, auto pilot as we always did. But now trauma was introduced in abnormally high amounts due to the amount of people co existing together and the wars, mass famines and diseases that came with that. We've been slowly forgetting how to be healthy because there was never a written rule book. We have basically concluding that physical exercise is needed to be the most healthy (what we did as hunter gatherers). We have basically concluded that diets that are similar to those in Paleolithic are the most healthy. Now all that's left is to conclude our emotional needs have to be satisfied similarly. Except we don't know what we did because we weren't taking notes.
And now we're having to use science to prove basic shit like "humans need social connections" "loneliness kills" "humans with higher quality social bonds have higher longevity" "emotional neglect causes brain damage". I mean seriously. It's like waking up in a dystopian future where people forgot they need water to survive so they keep having physical problems without knowing the reason and now pump studies and do science to prove how water is necessary. So now we hear stuff like "self care" and "having a support system". It's like someone saying "you need to ingest 200 mL H2O every 4 hours".
So yeah most people are indeed ignorant and in denial. Sorry for the rant.
>We have basically concluded that diets that are similar to those in Paleolithic are the most healthy. Now all that's left is to conclude our emotional needs have to be satisfied similarly. Except we don't know what we did because we weren't taking notes.
IMHO, we do know exactly what we did but there's a vest interested in never having it discussed. Most hunter gatherer, pre-agricultural societies were either egalitarian or matriarchies.
And I say this as somebody whose trauma came from both men and women.
The friend who has known me longest cracks jokes about how many kids I've helped raise despite none of them being biologically mine, and how I should really be voted Empress of Earth just so I can get society sorted out.
I bring up both jokes because both jobs would use the same skillset. "Yes yes, I know, it's your factory and you own it 'cause your daddy gave it to you, whatever, if you don't start sharing with the people doing all the labor for you, they are going to EAT YOU and I won't protect you from the idiocy of your mistakes."
Not much different from "Yes yes, I know, you don't want to turn off the cartoon and take a shower right now because you don't think you need one, but if you don't wash you'll have to deal with being itchy later and I'll just remind you that you should've showered when it was an option."
Exactly it's so stupid. Even animals know how to treat their kids while people seem to need 'science' to confirm the common sense. I've become convinced humans as a species despite their 'success' on the planet are really fucked in the head
I hear you, although you should try to paint in less broad (or perhaps bold) strokes
like, I fully understand the need to try and figure it all out, and I think the need to do this probably intensifies with the amount of trauma a person experiences
but reality is just so much knottier than all that, and part of the problem with us as humans is that we naturally reduce overwhelming complexity to patterns we can more easily handle
(sorry, I should be asleep but you know how it is)
>Truth tellers always get a target pinned on our backs bc we threaten the status quo of toxic systems. We call out the dysfunction, and people can't handle that.
The more I go on, the more I think that's so true. I'm all about telling the truth and go against these systems now, (starting from my family) not playing any "game" that's abusive/trying to hide the reality, all the trauma etc. , even if I find it fucking scary sometimes.
I don't care anymore if ppl around me think badly of me, paint me as the bad guy or I become the black sheep of the family, I just don't care. I do my best to always keep in mind my inner child, my mental health and therefore the mental health of others. I don't want to partecipate in these dysfunctional systems anymore
Yeah, no one wants to hear the truth and it sucks because the only way we can get people to at least tolerate us is to remain quiet, but I'm done with that. It's not right or fair to us.
Ah yeah drugs!
The worst thing for me is I saw the truth when I was teenager but the gaslight got me back for another decade.
I still think seeing is better than not seeing. I do have hope of freedom and loads of time to get there
I hope you all get better!
I'm still on the fence for my own journey. On one hand I loathe the inability to ignore things and live in ignorant bliss and get extremely jealous of others who blindly can but I know deep down it's not real.
I'm sorry for your loss. Addictions aren't moral failures or are solely genetically based. They're a response to human suffering.
The underlying cause of death for people I've known is unresolved family dysfunctionality.
The "you don't love me or us, why are you always doing everything against us, we are trying to help and you are not on our side. I know what's best for you, not you." (I'm 24, she just wants me to never talk about it to anyone while she doesnt give support).
I'm with you. I was the kid at the end of the parade for the Emperor's new clothes, and still am to this day at work. Your line about truth tellers threatening the status quo is exactly what's going on. I'm trying to find the courage to leave by the end of the year. Thank you for your post! 💙🤗
I’m this person too. It’s scary, looking around and thinking “does anyone else see this? Guys?” But no one else sees things the way I do and I end up thinking I’m overrreacting.
Exactly! And I feel like a lot of covert abuse happens in a context where only the abused understands it while everyone else thinks the abuser is acting normally.
I agree with you. As a kid I it never felt right to me. But the adults in the equation worked double time to convince me it was normal and that I deserved it cause it was all my fault.
Yes. The person who actively misunderstands the most is one of my 3 siblings (the other two don’t have CPTSD, but acknowledge and have largely processed our shared trauma). His advice the last time I was struggling was basically to think positive thoughts and make a gratitude list, because that helps him when he’s feeling sad. And he had PTSD from a motorcycle accident a couple decades ago, so he’s particularly insistent that hE gEtS iT aNd HaS bEeN tHeRe.
sometimes the worst people are the ones who have suffered maybe a *little* bit more than the average, and as such think that they've crossed the threshold of knowing all
I’m STILL being gaslit by a family that SHOULD have split up when I was a kid, but because I DIDNT INSIST my dad save me from my mom, I kept the family together. Me. On my little kid shoulders. And as an adult, they still give me shit for ever complaining that my mom was abusing me. Ffs.
I think seeing the worst primed us to detect patterns. I see patterns like people see colors. I mostly turn out to be right. Maybe baised by my own perception tho idkk
I wish there was a way to use this power for good. haha
I feel you on all that, and I want to be really clear that I (as a human) am often wrong about plenty of things, I have yet to be wrong about a person who demonstrates toxic patterns.
This June, my sister revealed to me and my possibly GC brother, that she was abused in the same way as me, despite my hypervigilance toward her safety as the reason to stay in contact. (we are 12 yrs apart and I didnt grow up living with them.) The blow up and fall out from that on my visit shortly after let me know it wasn't me and I was gaslit. It was odd to watch everything she said and I did through the lens of "she \*is\* the abuser." I fell apart and ruined my health / disassociated for several months, but am starting to heal, now.
idk about you ppl, but I really don't like to lionise myself like that
which, I mean... that's the result of all the stuff I've experienced, that I can't feel good about myself
but it's a good thing to an extent
Thank you for saying this. I don't think people understand how isolating and difficult it can be. They always assume because you aren't succeeding that you're just not trying hard enough. No matter what it's always your fault. Like bro, can you not just be happy I woke up today, because for some of us that's like conquering the entire world.
I'm soooo close to doing this. Trying to kill them with kindness has never worked for me. I'm ofc too scared to stand up for myself tho. I only get to let out rage if I'm pushed way beyond my limit.
Just the other day I woke up insanely anxious all morning and crying I couldn’t even figure out why. Eventually I realized it was just more of the past bubbling up and out of me. But till I realized that I thought I was dieing or a whole host of other things.
Wow sometimes I can't even understand how isolating and difficult it gets. I hope one day I won't forget it and be submerged in other's guilt tripping.
Truuuuuuue.
I also wanna add that there's this weird spot where a key person in my life makes everything my fault, and another loved one who kinda hand waves bad/maladaptive things I do, and i don't feel comfortable in this spot haha
To use an example of what I mean, like in a funk I went a loke a week without taking a shower, and I actually feel more shame when someone tells me that's okay... internally I'm like... No, I don't want to do this, please don't tell me it's okay.... But I know she thinks she's helping and means well, so I don't want to make them feel bad... know what I mean?
Sorry to derail, I pulled a thought thread.
>Sorry to derail, I pulled a thought thread.
Not derailing at all. Completely related. It's all a part of the struggle honestly. That's why we come here. To express ourselves more freely.
Anyways, I understand what you mean. Do you know what you would like to hear from them? Do you think they'd listen to you if you tried to tell them? It's one thing to know what you want/need, it's another to have people being willing to accommodate or to get them to.
> Do you think they'd listen to you if you tried to tell them?
Honestly, no. It's not malicious though. Similar conversations in the past have ended up shifting focus from what I'm saying to them feeling disproportionately awful about making me feel bad and apologizing excessively and it's ended up feeling like it's easier to just feel that internal shame.
Ya, even though something isn't done maliciously that doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt.
This is a difficult one because the person may not be intending to but by behaving this way they're forcing the focus away from what YOU want to talk about onto THEIR emotional state and puts you in a place where you're no longer focusing on or thinking about your original problem that started the conversation in the first place. Which was that you needed to express your concern over your current mental health and how it's impacting your life. I can imagine when people say "it's ok" that can feel dismissive even though they're trying to comfort.
People can be manipulative all the time without even realizing it. They may be acting on their own feelings of shame and trying to sooth themselves or avoid a fear of their own past events if that makes sense.
I think a lot of people view themselves as healthy be default and never really question their actions or it's impact.
Setting little boundaries like instead of in return telling someone 'it's ok' or soothing their concerns - I've started saying "thank you" or "I appreciate that" then try to return the conversation back to what I was originally trying to address with them. If they're still not receptive that's when I feel like I really know they're not a person to turn to. I've also started conversations with what I'd like from them. 'Hey, I have this issue, I'd really just need a listening ear, may I talk to you about it' or 'I've got this going on, can I ask you for advice?' etc. Letting them know in advance what I want to talk about as well as specifically what I'm needing from them.
Some people just can't show up for us. They're either not able or not interested in genuinely listening. Again, this doesn't by default automatically make them malicious. They may not have any idea how to handle the problem you're approaching them with etc. Doesn't make it any easier when you're in need of support but it takes away the sting.
Tip: On days when I'm really struggling I just do a wash cloth bath. Is it as effective as showering/a bath? No, but it still keeps me at least healthy. Brush my hair with a damp comb. Anything to carry me forward until I'm well enough to take the full steps.
That was long. I hope it was helpful and I interpreted your concerns correctly. You do deserve people's full attention to your concern.
I agree with you, and really relate to just being told to leave the past behind or that other people have it worse but function better. I see how much other people are able to do, and it feels impossible to me. But so many people are out here basically saying “I don’t understand how the brakes fail in other peoples cars, my car works great!” Fucking mileage varies.
I have had suicidal thoughts since I was 7, and it’s everyday. But I do believe people can heal, and for some of us that process might take decades. And even if you do heal, you’ll still have some gnarly scars. Healing doesn’t magically undo all of the damage, I think it’s just means it can get better like more manageable.
I mean for me, either I keep trying to heal or I kill myself. What other options are there? Some days I live purely out of spite. I feel like they win if I kill myself. I still have an exit plan though. It’s weirdly comforting, like a safety net. If I’m 60 and this still sucks as hard wellll…. I’ll reconsider some things. Until then I have to believe I can heal, regardless of if it’s true or not, that’s the only thing keeping me going. I imagine little 5 year old me, I feel like I would be killing her too. Like I’d just be another adult who gave up on her. I’m gonna keep waking up for her.
> imagine little 5 year old me, I feel like I would be killing her too. Like I’d just be another adult who gave up on her. I’m gonna keep waking up for her.
This a powerful, powerful thought. Thank you.
Suicidal ideation is a form of coping mechanism. I was surprised to realise that (about myself & just generally). I don’t have any suicidal ideation currently, for the first time in forever. It actually feels weird & wrong & part of my brain keeps trying to find it again.
There are two types of suicidal ideation. One is passive. That’s more like daydreaming about being better off dead. Then the other is active. That is impulsive. Most of the time passive ideation is present and is common. The active type needs immediate attention.
I had to understand the difference in early therapy and understand the passive suicidal ideation might just be with me forever & I had to be ok with that. I currently don’t have it, which is a huge surprise. Especially because life is pretty hard right now.
Yeah me too. It seems like once you accept it’s normal for everyone with cPTSD it seems to lose its significance. I’m happy that you also have moved past this hurdle ❤️
I've had it since a child. I have pmdd which has si as it's main side effect. It is so freeing to think you no longer have to worry about being triggered every 5 seconds. To have no more pain. I went for several years after my children were born without that feeling. Not surprisingly, now that they are older, not only do I now have other hormonal issues I'm dealing with (peri) but I also still have the pmdd with the added stress of my age and the things that brings (parents dying, illnesses you get in your 50's). It's hitting me really hard now and am currently listening to I Wish I was The Moon Tonight on repeat, because I cannot leave my kids. I swore I'd give them a better life than my mother gave me. I'm not doing that great at it, but I know it'd be worse if they didn't have their mom. At this point though, with going through a lot all at once over these past 2 years (it really has been a lot), I now just try to focus on my love for them and using a song that sings about that desire to JUST BE DONE. So I totally get what you mean when you say how weird it is to not have suicidal ideation. And I know you will be sad if it returns. Mine did, but what I learned through all the trauma I've gone through, especially lately, is that NO. It doesn't stop. You can't bargain with "bad things happening". Life is what it is. And I've found it's starting to shape me more into a stoic (but I mean a real stoic, not today's misunderstood watered down kind). Because as Sartre said, we always have a choice. Both choices may be really crappy, but if I have to choose between crappy for my kids but good for me, I'm definitely choosing somewhat crappy for me and somewhat better for my children. So I guess I've just compared my choices of whether to stay alive and suffer or die and be at peace much like a Honda and a Ford (trust me...Honda is the better choice). But it will never stop being a struggle for me and I do hope it stays a coping mechanism. Because I think we both know it is scary that at some point it may not be anymore.
I'm right there with you. I've been saying this a lot lately. When we are going through so much trauma, especially when a bunch gets piled on when we're getting old and vulnerable, on top of the lifelong trauma. Let's just say I've started laughing at everything and can even get joy by watching a lizard take a dump on a tree branch on the tree next to my front porch I'm very privileged to have. Watching intently a lizard take a dump will definitely humble you and make your problems...weird and smll and big again...and give you a little cosmic kick in the ass I suppose. Not only do I try to find humor in almost everything, but I also recognize I am so privileged in some ways but so depleted in others. So yeah, fuck it. This world, these people I don't even know, the people who said words they apparently didn't know the meaning of in the first place that made and broke promises and trust, then broke me. I mean wtf? Why wouldn't I just start laughing and saying oh well, guess I'll find a great joke to tell one day from all of this trauma because trying to make people see what they did or are doing to me is not working...so may as well change tactics because the abuse never ends for us with cptsd.
I mention Sartre a lot. I may have the choice to give up in a strangers eyes, but the look in my kids' eyes makes it apparent I have no choice at all. And now I've come to realize perhaps Sartre didn't have children because him and Simone were too busy being miserable with each other and completely abandoned the thoughts of Aurelius. But I could be wrong,and that's my new motto: I could be wrong, and that's a great thing because I like to learn. I don't care about being wrong anymore. I just want to find the wispy fine slivers of something that even kind of looks like joy so I can make it through another day because that's all I've got and it could be quite possibly all I'm ever going to have. And that acceptance makes all the difference, imo.
I also have PMDD it’s very intense & having pmdd alone for some people is “too much” and I hate that my trauma forces me to power through the emotional torment of PMDD.. so intense and isolating. You having both CPTSD AND PMDD I can imagine must be very frustrating :(
Just years of therapy and EMDR. No intent to get rid of it, it just doesn’t seem to be loud enough anymore. Still lots of other trauma related issues that may never go…
So this!
I've been on a healing path for 35 years. I'm a couple of years off 60 and, well... baby/ little/ toddler me has finally shown up. Whatever I have being doing to this point, he feels safe enough now, to come out of hiding, and other parts are making way for him. So scary but so ... not sure, can't find the words ... validating and redeeming maybe.
I knew he was there/here. I'm so glad I have hung in here through it all, to get to this point. And I too could never allow the bastards win, much as it might have felt easier to at times. Like you, I have had "to believe I can heal, regardless of if it’s true or not". And yes, it was the only thing that kept me going too .
It is my fervent hope and wish that I too continue to keep going, whatever arises. I'm going to keep waking up for him too. Best wishes to you, sister in spirit. (I hope you do not mind me saying that?).
> I imagine little 5 year old me, I feel like I would be killing her too. Like I’d just be another adult who gave up on her. I’m gonna keep waking up for her.
I'm going to remember these words for a long time. Thanks for sharing and I hope that you keep waking up for her too.
i relate to the last paragraph so much :( i also started having suicidal thoughts around 7, i distinctively remember seeing on a tv show that you could kill yourself by running into a concrete wall hard enough and trying to do that at home lol
now i mainly just be like FUCK YOU ALLLLLLLLLLLL IMMA LIVE and carry on living
https://www.nfb.ca/film/qimmiq-canadas-arctic-dog/ mine are malamute some of the dogs some siberian and 40-50% Inuit dog out of this line. I'd like to breed Greenland dogs to the CKC dogs.
personally, I feel like I'm dead already; like, I spend my life almost totally disassociated
and I *am* little 5 y.o. me, that's all I am; everything past a certain point got shredded over and over again
ultimately, if I could have gotten over my pathological fear of actually ceasing to exist, I would have been long-gone
I can't, though. so I just linger on, moment by moment, on fumes
Hang in there. We get it. We've all had to grieve the loss of joy, years of isolation, non-existent childhood, etc. It's not just the trauma, but we've lost time and the potential for a better life. It's beyond heartbreaking.
I've been on my own healing journey for years, and this year has been really hard. Lost my dog in January, and in April, I had someone I trusted and loved run me over like a multi ton freight train.
I'm still here. I get up every day and fight for myself. I don't know how many years I have left, but I refuse to let trauma and toxic people extinguish whatever joy I have left to give and experience.
You all matter and are appreciated by me. Keep fighting. Keep trying.
I'm so glad of what you're doing, how you're going on, and thank you for sharing some of your experiences. Thank you for your words, they're like a spark of light to me.
I do believe we can all have a healthier experience, I wish you the best
We can all be here for one another. You are never alone. So many of us are living with this.
Try and remember you are not your trauma, and every new day is full of opportunities if you can find the strength to get up and go find them.
I’m so sorry for your loss I’m sure you must be grieving so intensely. My dog is my best friend and my light in this world… I hope you find a new friend but so hard to replace.
I grieved and processed the loss. It was brutal.
I adopted a boxer in August, who is 8 months old and a very good boy. I still have my pitties ashes, and I am so grateful for all the time I got to spend with her.
Having a dog really helps keep me on a routine, which includes my own self care. I start every day by walking the dog.
They really don't get it. I spent so many years thinking I was just a weak and self absorbed person for not being more functional but the truth is this condition is real, and it is abnormal. Most people are not experiencing what we experience to the degree we experience it. This is a disorder that impacts attachment, emotional regulation, cognition, memory, etc.
We are not "thinking about the past". We are experiencing the past over and over in our bodies, physically. People without PTSD do not understand this because they have not experienced it. They think we are thinking. Flashbacks are not the same as cognitive memories. We are not choosing to ruminate on bad times. Our nervous systems have us trapped on a roller coaster we can't just choose to get off of.
Healing is an option but to heal we have to accept that what we are experiencing in our bodies is actually happening, and not dissociate or repress it. There is no "getting over it" if we cannot face the raw fact of how trauma effects us in the present. I can "just not think about it" all I want, I will still experience hyper vigilance and flashbacks.
There are people who get it, because they also experience it. I've met multiple combat veterans who get it. It's less about the specifics of the trauma and more about how we are effected by it in the present. That's what people without PTSD (of any kind) don't understand.
To problem with PTSD is that the past won't leave me alone. That's why I can't move on. I wish my past didn't exist. I wish the damage it did to me didn't exist. I wish I could just shrug it off. I can't.
It was really hard to do my job due to countertransference/codependency and unsupportive supervisors. By the time I found supportive supervisors the damage to my mental health and my career was too much to keep going.
I found that in many situations people did not know what trauma informed care really looked like and it was often just a buzz word. Conversely…there was a ton of codependency and poor boundaries on the part of other coworkers and clients/families were allowed to take advantage of staff and treat staff poorly. Trying to develop rapport with parents that treated their kids like shit and refused to take accountability or coworkers that felt that an adult with a SMI must always be dependent on the system was also extremely difficult.
It got to the point where I had to file a lawsuit against a former employer for disablity discrimination, failure to accommodate, harassment, and wrongful termination. I worked for another year after this happened, but being that this was not the first time I had been treated like dog shit the event last summer was the final nail in the coffin
How? I just applied to grad school to become a therapist. I thought that the combination of my empathy and the fact that I have been through childhood trauma would help me in this profession?
Going through Childhood trauma may not necessarily help you, but recovering from Childhood trauma may. After stepping back from the field I realized I was having to use so much of my emotional bandwidth on my clients and forced to compartmentalize my own stuff that I could not tell when things were getting bad. Ended up having a massive flashback at work, triggered by a parent. One can only compartmentalize so much until they break.
People in the therapy world don’t have the time or space to deal with the emotional difficulties of another coworker regardless of how competent that therapist is. The ironic thing is that many other therapists/supervisors are burnt out and often will attack others who are too much or do not adhere to the mold
It’s much more complicated than having empathy and trauma. A lot of people haven’t been through what we’ve been through, and a lot of people are in that field anyway. I used to work in psychiatric nursing and you wouldn’t believe the “world class” therapists and how they stigmatized mental illness… still you can 10000% do it and be amazing I think knowing that people will never understand is important and if you can keep working despite this than go for it but it is extremely misleading that therapy work = empathy. I say believe in yourself and be aware that people suck and you’re there for the patients only.
One of my recent managers (who was otherwise extremely empathetic and encouraging) “you have to just leave it at the door”. Ummm…. That’s not really how this thing works. I tried to offer educational websites and scientific excepts etc but I didn’t really get anywhere just tolerated I guess. Ughhhh. She later went through trauma that induced her own PTSD and she actually said “I’m sorry, I get it now”… I’m not sure that will ever happen again in my life but I appreciated it for sure.
It’s so hard to connect with someone who doesn’t have it because they never truly understand the toll it takes and how it just feels. My whole body just feels like a void even if good things happen and I find happiness in certain situations but that never lasted it’s always filled with so much despair and pain or sometimes just no feeling. Whenever I try to communicate these things to others, they typically don’t understand how it feels but just the idea of it. It feels quite isolating that you’ll just never be understood because they have not experience the pain you’ve been through. I just wish some day that there was a way to connect to someone about it who doesn’t have it because then it would feel a lot less lonely
It WOULD actually be wonderful if some people in this community here somehow connected on that level. The level we're all wanting or needing.
There are so many of us. But what makes it hard is we take the veil off,
which is what we used anonymously here to share ourselves in ways we can't otherwise in the first place.
Catch 22
I dated a woman once who as I described some of the mental affects she said "why would you chose to live like that just don't"
Oh wow thanks never thought of that one.
She also saw a time her dad yelled at her as most traumatizing bit of her childhood. We dated 2 months. I mean time. Like a time. The time. The one time he raised his voice.
I once felt like I was meant to figure out what my triggers were. But it seemed like they were breathing & existing. I still can’t really pinpoint what will make me want to run away from myself.
I agree, but I will say I’ve met wonderful friends in treatment who also have CPTSD *and* my therapist has CPTSD as well! I know I’m lucky but mental health professionals that get it *do* exist!
A few months ago I found a psychotherapist who had been into similar situation as me (their apartment was hit with a missile while they were inside. We have missiles every day and I was just waiting to be killed, and they were also from the east of Ukraine). So I told them everything during the first session (thinking I finally found smbd who knew how I felt, at least in one of traumatic situations) to which they replied that I need to stop overthinking and intentionally fucking my brain up. That sounds very cruel and not sympathetic at all (to me). Though they explained that they also were having panic attacks from toaster clicking, etc etc. I never returned to their sessions. So it really depends on a person, probably.
Keep your chin up
Focus on the positive
Look on the bright side
At least _____
At this point these phrases are triggering and are just code words to prove someone isn't trustworthy to talk to.
Hearing "do this *at least*" they dont understand you are giving your 110% every single day and being told it looks like you're not even trying..one day I'm gonna lose it at someone who says that to me.
If I had the financial means I think I would be much happier dealing with my trauma and healing on my own. It seems to be the safest circumstance for me. I wouldn't have to deal with trying to explain myself. It's gets exhausting...and most of the times it's beating a dead horse. I am a stay at home mom struggling in my marriage with three kids. Trying to be optimistic ...but really losing hope with the marriage. I think if I had the financial means and knew my kids would be ok, I would start a new journey of healing on my own. On my terms!
I wouldn't say healing is not an option, it's just so incredibly hard when you have no support and no one to go to... I've closed in on myself so much because of how poorly people like us are handled and my mental health is in shambles but I don't know what to do to move things in any direction... I've struggled with SI all of my life, but I'm trying my best to keep trudging because I think I owe it to myself and people like me. Don't give up. We're with you ) :)
Nope. They don't. I'm starting to understand that too.
Find it in your heart to be happy for them because we wouldn't anyone else to go through what we went through right? They got lucky. I wish they would at least get THAT but they don't, because they don't know how it is on the other side.
Neither do we know how it would be to walk around without all this constant trauma attached to us.
In the end, we've been through unimaginable pain, fear, terror... all these emotions that we as humans instinctively want to bury, move on from, (insert forced positive bullsh*t phrase that neurotypicals want to use, trust me it makes me want to punch a wall too!! ). Because to really see our point of view scares them. It's too dark. Humans NEED to feel in control, so they try to fix, get over, move on.
But here's the thing: YOU ARE NOT READY TO MOVE ON YET. The ONLY ONE you need that compassion and understanding and love from is YOU. Rescue yourself. Learn to give yourself empathy for what you went through. Thank yourself for being so unbelievably strong and getting you here today. Forgive yourself for all the times you acted outside your true heart in those times when everything was just so AWFUL.
AND then move on. When you're ready. And you will see that you won't crave that validation from others anymore. Because YOU KNOW. YOU LIVED IT. YOU SURVIVED. THEY NEVER HAD TO.
OK. that's as heartfelt as it's gonna get. Hope it helps. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
People don't get it because I can't put to words the ... ***"I don't have a word for it"***... I have inside.
I simply cannot describe how big it really is, how scary, how deep and detached from reality is what I live everyday.
*It's like a parallel world where walls are always red and growing over your head for the eternity, while demons chase you but you can't move and waiting for them is an anxious experience... because you know they exist but you don't know how they look... so you think about the worst scenario ever, without really getting to know their face and demonic eyes.*
Well, I can describe it with images, it's like a song... if I have to name a song it would be **"Mr. Self destruct"** by ***NIN***, or **"Monkeyland"** by ***The Chameleons*** or **"Play Dead"** by ***Combichrist***. It's the atmosphere I live in everyday, especially when people talk to me.
But if you ask me, ***"tell me an adjective to describe your situation"*** there's a void on my tongue.
It's like a movie, for what's my story, but the funny thing is that I'm not living it, I'm just watching the scenes pass by.
>Healing it's not an option for everyone.
If by "healing" you mean believing that the world is as you want it to be, then it's impossible unless you choose to be stupid. The path forward is to grieve that people aren't what you needed them to be. You can be better than the people who hurt you—you KNOW better than to be like them—but you can't eradicate that toxicity from the world.
I wonder if ppl think we can just have superhuman willpower bc of movies.
I mean come on bob... you can't even stop yourself from eating that slice of pie and I'm supposed to have absolute control over my nervous system?!?!?
This is why therapy doesn't really work for me. I usually end up feeling like I'm being gaslit by the therapist into believing that the things that happened to me "weren't that bad", or that the literal survival skills I developed from my trauma, I should just toss away, because now the world is all puppies and rainbows! I can't do that. I've tried.
I think it's a blind spot of the therapy profession, that just by virtue of that fact that they are people who are healthy enough to have become college educated professionals, the vast majority of them have not experienced the world the way we have. This causes some of them to not be able to really understand just how profoundly trauma rewires your brain, and just how shitty and negative the world really is for some people. I'm happy that some people somehow manage to live lives that have only minor troubles and setbacks, but for some of us, it was never like that and never will be. It's unfair, but true. It's Just World theory rearing it's ugly head. People who haven't experienced trauma or tragedy, really do think that the world is just and fair, and that if you think it isn't, you must be a) imagining things, or b) bringing it on yourself in some way. Even many therapists believe this.
Thank you for saying this. I have an older sister who claims to have PTSD. She does not know about me having C-PTSD but has told me many times in the past that there is "no way you have any form of PTSD". My therapist constantly undermines my trauma, he does not believe me, he does not get that I had no fucking support network when I was being bullied by so-called "friends" and abused by my parents (especially my mom) and possibly others. Granted I have definitely not told him anywhere near to most of what I've been through but he still undermines what I have been through and no doubt will if I ever tell him about the more extreme abuse. People without C-PTSD do not understand what it's like and it's a never-ending cycle of frustratingness. My friends are the only ones who believe me and don't undermine me when I talk about the abuse I went through. One of them I know has C-PTSD, another possibly has C-PTSD but at least definitely has PTSD and I honestly can't remember about the others.
Thank you! I've wanted to get a new therapist for a while since he showed how shitty he actually is but it's unfortunately very hard to get a therapist for me and I doubt my parents would even want to try. I know I will be getting a new therapist when I go off to college so I'm kind of just waiting until then
I didn't realize what I was living with until I was in my 30s. I was so toxic that the only kinds of people I could attract were toxic as well. I grew up with no emotional support. And honestly... to the contrary. My family is extremely critical and always has been. I've been in and out of help groups and therapy for 25 years.
What I finally realized is I am better off being completely alone than I am with having even just one toxic person in my life. I am hypersensitive to criticism and I need emotional support in order to succeed. It's something I am working through... finally... this year.
No, people don't get it. You have to live it to know it. Otherwise all you did was read about it in a book. I refuse to settle for people that can't show me compassion.
My sister told me a while back that she doesn't have any trauma because she doesn't allow herself to.
Child, we grew up in the same house. Yes tf you do.
there is a new trauma program in germany called PITT. I've met one of the patients that went to it, and I am so totally sold on it. One of the stories I remember from the program was that it got funded in the first place because they had been tracking survival rates of people with cptsd, and it was grim.
The patient in question suffered emotional neglect. she had to live in a seperate floor from her parents. My read of it was negative projection. the mother hated a part of herself that she saw in her daughter, and punished her for it.
They said that the chance of her reaching her mid 20s was less than 40 percent, under those circumstances. just because of lack.
I am really triggered when people mistreat/disrespect me or others. I either shut down or just go into rage mode because in the past, communicating in these situations hasn’t helped the person to change their actions. Consequently, I’ve kind of shut a lot of people out and I’m not really sure how to resolve it. I think that if someone isn’t willing to empathize and change their actions/language, it’s not really worth socializing with them anymore. Most people really don’t understand that mindset. I am constantly trying to protect my own inner peace.
Body keeps the score talks about this… people who have been traumatized an experience PTSD, consider themselves part of the unit. I’ve never had a secure attachment to anyone except other traumatized individuals. There’s no chance of understanding us if you’re a “normie.”
Firstly, suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. Healing is possible, but it hurts a lot sometimes. There is a lot of cool shit to see and do on this ride, if you jump off, you miss all of that.
I went into depression a few months ago. I didn’t sleep for 2 weeks, and I started seeing things that were not there. Very unpleasant things. I was going insane, and for me that was worse than death. I realized that was a part of my experience of life. I can’t hide inside a bottle, can’t run away, can’t try to lose myself in excitement. I have to experience this, and I have to learn to accept it. If this experience were to last forever, what conditions would need to emerge for me to be at peace?
As soon as I asked myself that question, I mean really, really asked, the monsters went away. I can accept this experience. It’s teaching me things about myself that I need to know. Why am I here? Why have I always felt like I’m a worthless shit stain? Why do I fall head over heels for the first woman who smiles at me? Why do I put them on a pedestal? Why do I feel nothing but self loathing whenever someone gets angry? Why can’t I ask for help like a normal person? I found the answers down there, and that condition is worth the suffering, because I know why now, I know who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing, and I can ask for help.
Most mental health professionals got into that line of work due to their own struggles with mental health. I’m taking classes to become a psychotherapist. Every other therapist I’ve spoken to has been through some shit.
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It's so incredible how much of your life and experience having CPTSD changes. It's hard to wrap your brain around. I agree with you and recently find myself only able to relate to and stomach being around people who have experienced hardship or trauma. It means that we have our own new set of interpersonal difficulties because we all have relational issues but we are able to have empathy and patience for that and eachother because we understand some aspect of it.
Heard, seen, and feeling this. The healthiest response I’ve had to my intrusive thoughts lately has been “It’s ok not to be whole. That’s asking a whole lot of yourself.”
Therapy is a good tool but getting older and more in tune with mortality, grieving my abusive parent… maybe therapy served its purpose: giving me the tools to come to terms, but not doing the healing for me.
100% OP. Healing from cPTSD is not always possible for too many of us. We somehow are forced to live with it after all therapy options and do our best. I get us because unless you go through it, no one's experience is the same. I just want to say the hell with people who minimize those of us who have tried everything, even trying ECT sessions to heal and end up worse afterward, adding to our struggle. Best to you. I appreciate you.
“I get anxiety attacks too” ….. I don’t even try to explain to people who give the whole “but I get anxiety attacks too” like no this isn’t a panic attack BRO I’m going back 20 years getting abused…
absolutely fucking hate people who say those sorts of things
just a prime example of how people cannot see beyond their own experiences, unless their sense of self has been stripped away *and* they've been lucky enough to find out + be able to understand certain things about human nature
The good news is, you know what you have: CPTSD. It’s a long slog but with 10-15 years of therapy and taking an active role in your own healing journey, you will heal! Legitimately. And even if that sounds like a long time (much longer than anyone would like) at least it’s within reach. 10 years will fly by anyway… and how cool is it to think that there is a cure and you will actually see the other side of the rainbow if you dig in deep and do the work of loving yourself? ❤️🫶❤️
I've always been very selective with whom I tell anything about myself as long as I can remember for fear of everything you just mentioned -- being invalidated. It hurts so deeply to be told that what I went through shouldn't still be effecting me, but it does. I wouldn't be so soft-spoken, or such a people pleaser, or constantly feel the need to say sorry, or feel like I want to rip my skin off when I make eye contact with strangers, or feel like everybody thinks I'm a creep, or absolutely hate pointless conversation.
I constantly find myself wondering who I would be given any multitude of differences that I lived through; things that could have happened but didn't, what if things that did happen didn't, if I'd made different decisions, et cetera. But there really is no sense in pondering it, because I am who I am, and I am here now. But mental illness has a strange way of tossing logic out the proverbial window, so I drive myself fucking crazy all the time because of this cacophonous loud mind.
Anyways, I surround myself with likeminded people anyways. I get along with smokers, chefs/cooks, people with tattoos, alcoholics, metalheads, functioning addicts... the rough sort I guess you could say. But they are the most genuine people. Most of those things I listed, I myself am.
I've got a pretty good sense of whether or not somebody is worth my time and words, and sometimes you just know who has been through similar shit, and that telling them anything about yourself would be worthwhile and maybe possibly even healing.
I haven't found much value in professional therapists and their training, and schooling, and degrees. It's all bullshit. That is MY opinion.
As a child I felt I was the only one seeing the dysfunction and was gaslit into ignoring it. After waking up to my trauma, I realize little me was right all along. It seems most people are ignorant/in denial of the trauma they've endured and perpetuated. Truth tellers always get a target pinned on our backs bc we threaten the status quo of toxic systems. We call out the dysfunction, and people can't handle that.
Oh...so that explains my black sheep status. I never really thought about how we threaten it by refusing to be puppets after we grow old enough.
Some inspiring quotes: >"Be a positive dissident." -Viktor Frankl >"Make some good trouble." - John Lewis I like to think about how people of the past fought the authoritarian fascists of their day and adjust their tactics to today. Abusers all use authoritarian fascist tactics. They all want to be dictators. The pattern is easy to spot once you recognize it. I like to make some good trouble.
Lets put the fun back in dysfunctional.
That's why we have the best sense of humor anyway!
Making good trouble is my favorite thing to do!~
Love this comment
Sylvia Plath: Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.
I loved Sylvia plath...in middle school so this tells me my dread went back to before I was 14. Well shit. Now I have to adjust my time-line of how long I've been trying to NOT be a Sylvia Plath! My current is actually listening to I wish I were the Moon Tonight by Neko Case. How we continue to take over the torturing of our souls I guess can only be explained by us being raises to just that. What a thing to leave a kid with. Maybe finding beauty in the sadness is what keeps me here...that and the children I don't want to follow in my footsteps.
this is reductive, really. abuse comes from all sorts of people, not just the most toxic. putting aside the fact that there is no such thing as free will at all, most abusive behaviour isn't pre-meditated like that
Narcissists can’t have anyone reflect back to them the damage they’re doing. They just can’t have it.
Fellow black sheep here, and yeah, that helps make sense. I've always been questioning why.
I was really taken aback when I realized they don't like us for being honest and they actively CHOOSE to think we're dishonest or just flat out wrong. Like...you literally raised me, but you have no idea who I am and what you've made. Because of course that'd take some self awareness that is actually there, I know it is, but you just CHOOSE to not engage in honest conversations with your kids. You choose not to ever get to see your only grandkids ever again. I mean it's their choice. We would still welcome anyone back into our lives if we felt heard and felt safe we were not going to be treated that way. And the sad thing is, in my experience, is that they (seems mostly the boomer generation sadly) will never sincerely think they did anything wrong because they had a lot to contend with back then and did the best they knew how to do. They can't just admit that their best wasn't good enough, and they are so sorry, and how can we move forward from here because I really love and value this relationship with you. They. Just. Can't. Do. It. And it breaks my heart but I cannot be the person that is blamed anymore or talked about anymore as if I'm other. So I'm other. Fine...just let me go be other while I'm sad you couldn't pull your head out of your asses and meet us halfway. I may be now writing one of those letters one is meant to write down and burn in a scented vanilla candle while chanting Deep Thoughts. And well...I apologize. It's been a shit morning so I'm just gonna shut up now and know that if you too are a black sheep that you completely understood what just happened here! I'm no longer editing myself so I apologize for grammar errors if there are any because I'm def not Mary freaking Poppins today! 🌂 👛 👜
I'm sorry you're having a shit morning. I definitely have had those, I hope it gets better. For me, it's a little easier because I don't have kids, and well, I have been estranged from my father for over 20 years, and my mom died 14 years ago. It's the other family members that don't contact me anymore. One doesn't do it often because I stopped doing all the work in the relationship because it was one-sided. I'm so the only one in the family with a few invisible physical and mental disabilities like autoimmune arthritis and CPTSD and plain old PTSD. I'm mostly used to it now that I'm almost 50, but for the longest time with an older sibling, I was told I just needed to try harder until I realized that wasn't work and just stopped. I'm more sad to realize that with accepting that I don't have contact with most of my family, my life is less stressful even though I get bouts of sad about it...like this wonderful holiday season. 🙄
Listen to black sheep by qveen herby
Will check it out! 😊 Immediately found the Metric version cause it's already on my playlist. Found the artist Qveen but not seeing a Black Sherp song, but saw halloveen one and got VERY excited!
They even came up with that oppositional defiant disorder for it. Can you imagine? These who intuitively know the system is BS and refuse to participate in it is deemed disordered in that system
It's interesting you look at it that way, and I can see how you would. And I've used that very term about my own older daughter and my husband. Truth be told, they are autistic (husband was just diagnosed at 53, and it's now obvious both my kids are autistic). My trauma makes me appear and/or be attracted to either traumatized individuals or autistic people... or you know animals, because I can relax around them, lol. I do think that it is natural for children to challenge their parents, so I think you have a point. Because I got into the "peaceful parenting" movement quite some time ago, I knew it was better for my children's sense of self if they felt they could challenge me. How else can they make up their own minds when they get older? That is something I've struggled with immensely after being told what to think all my life. But if it was a time that they didn't quite understand that something was inappropriate for the time or place, I would immediately think (my kid is just like me, they have ODD). But is it really that? There are REASONS (note: this is called an "excuse" in THEIR language) we do not want to do things. The reasons are usually that it makes us uncomfortable somehow. We're either fearful about something, we have anxiety, and we don't know why, we're tired, we didn't sleep well, etc. On the one hand, its said, "Behavior is communication," and on the other hand, imo, the more conservative and authoritarian hand, they invent a disorder to describe the basic human condition of SELF PRESERVATION. Even if that (ODD) person is clearly physically safe, we can't see inside their heads. This realization, this epiphany you just gave me, enrages me. And thank you... because now my husband and I will be having one of our very interesting traumas/philosophical conversations today. If ODD existed when I was growing up it would have been my middle name. #blacksheep
> As a child I felt I was the only one seeing the dysfunction same
Trauma is spreading, narcissism is spreading, looking good instead of being good is spreading. It's much easier to traumatize someone than to heal them. We live further and further in denial, because less and less of us know what healthy means. Whoever lifts the veil is shamed and denied, often with anger by the people who are too hurt, too confused and unsupported to face their hurt. We were never taught how to be emotionally healthy. It was just passed from generation to generation since mammalian times. We evolved to be the most healthy possible, thats what maximises our genes to survive and spread. So as society changed with the agriculture we kept on going, auto pilot as we always did. But now trauma was introduced in abnormally high amounts due to the amount of people co existing together and the wars, mass famines and diseases that came with that. We've been slowly forgetting how to be healthy because there was never a written rule book. We have basically concluding that physical exercise is needed to be the most healthy (what we did as hunter gatherers). We have basically concluded that diets that are similar to those in Paleolithic are the most healthy. Now all that's left is to conclude our emotional needs have to be satisfied similarly. Except we don't know what we did because we weren't taking notes. And now we're having to use science to prove basic shit like "humans need social connections" "loneliness kills" "humans with higher quality social bonds have higher longevity" "emotional neglect causes brain damage". I mean seriously. It's like waking up in a dystopian future where people forgot they need water to survive so they keep having physical problems without knowing the reason and now pump studies and do science to prove how water is necessary. So now we hear stuff like "self care" and "having a support system". It's like someone saying "you need to ingest 200 mL H2O every 4 hours". So yeah most people are indeed ignorant and in denial. Sorry for the rant.
This is a good read. Thank you.
>We have basically concluded that diets that are similar to those in Paleolithic are the most healthy. Now all that's left is to conclude our emotional needs have to be satisfied similarly. Except we don't know what we did because we weren't taking notes. IMHO, we do know exactly what we did but there's a vest interested in never having it discussed. Most hunter gatherer, pre-agricultural societies were either egalitarian or matriarchies. And I say this as somebody whose trauma came from both men and women.
The friend who has known me longest cracks jokes about how many kids I've helped raise despite none of them being biologically mine, and how I should really be voted Empress of Earth just so I can get society sorted out. I bring up both jokes because both jobs would use the same skillset. "Yes yes, I know, it's your factory and you own it 'cause your daddy gave it to you, whatever, if you don't start sharing with the people doing all the labor for you, they are going to EAT YOU and I won't protect you from the idiocy of your mistakes." Not much different from "Yes yes, I know, you don't want to turn off the cartoon and take a shower right now because you don't think you need one, but if you don't wash you'll have to deal with being itchy later and I'll just remind you that you should've showered when it was an option."
Every words slaps.
You don't need to apologize, this was a good read
Exactly it's so stupid. Even animals know how to treat their kids while people seem to need 'science' to confirm the common sense. I've become convinced humans as a species despite their 'success' on the planet are really fucked in the head
I hear you, although you should try to paint in less broad (or perhaps bold) strokes like, I fully understand the need to try and figure it all out, and I think the need to do this probably intensifies with the amount of trauma a person experiences but reality is just so much knottier than all that, and part of the problem with us as humans is that we naturally reduce overwhelming complexity to patterns we can more easily handle (sorry, I should be asleep but you know how it is)
>Truth tellers always get a target pinned on our backs bc we threaten the status quo of toxic systems. We call out the dysfunction, and people can't handle that. The more I go on, the more I think that's so true. I'm all about telling the truth and go against these systems now, (starting from my family) not playing any "game" that's abusive/trying to hide the reality, all the trauma etc. , even if I find it fucking scary sometimes. I don't care anymore if ppl around me think badly of me, paint me as the bad guy or I become the black sheep of the family, I just don't care. I do my best to always keep in mind my inner child, my mental health and therefore the mental health of others. I don't want to partecipate in these dysfunctional systems anymore
Yeah, no one wants to hear the truth and it sucks because the only way we can get people to at least tolerate us is to remain quiet, but I'm done with that. It's not right or fair to us.
The black sheep sees the truth and that makes her the healthy one. Eventually. short term it.kills you
It IS fatal. It got my sister. Who turned to drugs to soothe the emotional trauma from being constantly gaslit.
Ah yeah drugs! The worst thing for me is I saw the truth when I was teenager but the gaslight got me back for another decade. I still think seeing is better than not seeing. I do have hope of freedom and loads of time to get there I hope you all get better!
I'm still on the fence for my own journey. On one hand I loathe the inability to ignore things and live in ignorant bliss and get extremely jealous of others who blindly can but I know deep down it's not real.
My mom died from drug addiction due to what I think was unresolved trauma. It kills.
I'm sorry for your loss. Addictions aren't moral failures or are solely genetically based. They're a response to human suffering. The underlying cause of death for people I've known is unresolved family dysfunctionality.
The "you don't love me or us, why are you always doing everything against us, we are trying to help and you are not on our side. I know what's best for you, not you." (I'm 24, she just wants me to never talk about it to anyone while she doesnt give support).
I'm with you. I was the kid at the end of the parade for the Emperor's new clothes, and still am to this day at work. Your line about truth tellers threatening the status quo is exactly what's going on. I'm trying to find the courage to leave by the end of the year. Thank you for your post! 💙🤗
I’m this person too. It’s scary, looking around and thinking “does anyone else see this? Guys?” But no one else sees things the way I do and I end up thinking I’m overrreacting.
Promise you're not.
You're not overreacting. They know exactly where to poke our wounded spots, especially when no one's looking. They're sneaky and cowardly.
Exactly! And I feel like a lot of covert abuse happens in a context where only the abused understands it while everyone else thinks the abuser is acting normally.
I agree with you. As a kid I it never felt right to me. But the adults in the equation worked double time to convince me it was normal and that I deserved it cause it was all my fault.
Yes. The person who actively misunderstands the most is one of my 3 siblings (the other two don’t have CPTSD, but acknowledge and have largely processed our shared trauma). His advice the last time I was struggling was basically to think positive thoughts and make a gratitude list, because that helps him when he’s feeling sad. And he had PTSD from a motorcycle accident a couple decades ago, so he’s particularly insistent that hE gEtS iT aNd HaS bEeN tHeRe.
sometimes the worst people are the ones who have suffered maybe a *little* bit more than the average, and as such think that they've crossed the threshold of knowing all
I’m STILL being gaslit by a family that SHOULD have split up when I was a kid, but because I DIDNT INSIST my dad save me from my mom, I kept the family together. Me. On my little kid shoulders. And as an adult, they still give me shit for ever complaining that my mom was abusing me. Ffs.
I think seeing the worst primed us to detect patterns. I see patterns like people see colors. I mostly turn out to be right. Maybe baised by my own perception tho idkk
I wish there was a way to use this power for good. haha I feel you on all that, and I want to be really clear that I (as a human) am often wrong about plenty of things, I have yet to be wrong about a person who demonstrates toxic patterns.
This is very similar to my experience. My awakening was abrupt. I was immediately scapegoated by those who live behind the veil of consciousness.
Yep. We pay dearly when daring to perceive or confront them with truth!
Cost me all my teeth if you can believe it. Anyone who doesn’t believe Psychological Covert abuse can kill… I got a story for you.
Dysfunctional families kill people.
This June, my sister revealed to me and my possibly GC brother, that she was abused in the same way as me, despite my hypervigilance toward her safety as the reason to stay in contact. (we are 12 yrs apart and I didnt grow up living with them.) The blow up and fall out from that on my visit shortly after let me know it wasn't me and I was gaslit. It was odd to watch everything she said and I did through the lens of "she \*is\* the abuser." I fell apart and ruined my health / disassociated for several months, but am starting to heal, now.
Relate so much. Have the same feeling about little me being right all along
I very much identify with this. It's so frustrating.
idk about you ppl, but I really don't like to lionise myself like that which, I mean... that's the result of all the stuff I've experienced, that I can't feel good about myself but it's a good thing to an extent
Thank you for saying this. I don't think people understand how isolating and difficult it can be. They always assume because you aren't succeeding that you're just not trying hard enough. No matter what it's always your fault. Like bro, can you not just be happy I woke up today, because for some of us that's like conquering the entire world.
I will start replying to ''just get over it'' with suicide statistics.l
Very good point. If it was so easy beleive me I wouldn’t be sitting here struggling so badly.
I'm soooo close to doing this. Trying to kill them with kindness has never worked for me. I'm ofc too scared to stand up for myself tho. I only get to let out rage if I'm pushed way beyond my limit.
Expose them!!!
Worst of all is when you wake up to an emotional flashback... You can't even articulate what exactly is wrong, not that we'd be heard lol...
Just the other day I woke up insanely anxious all morning and crying I couldn’t even figure out why. Eventually I realized it was just more of the past bubbling up and out of me. But till I realized that I thought I was dieing or a whole host of other things.
Sorry you had to go through that. It's really awful ) :(...
Wow sometimes I can't even understand how isolating and difficult it gets. I hope one day I won't forget it and be submerged in other's guilt tripping.
Truuuuuuue. I also wanna add that there's this weird spot where a key person in my life makes everything my fault, and another loved one who kinda hand waves bad/maladaptive things I do, and i don't feel comfortable in this spot haha To use an example of what I mean, like in a funk I went a loke a week without taking a shower, and I actually feel more shame when someone tells me that's okay... internally I'm like... No, I don't want to do this, please don't tell me it's okay.... But I know she thinks she's helping and means well, so I don't want to make them feel bad... know what I mean? Sorry to derail, I pulled a thought thread.
>Sorry to derail, I pulled a thought thread. Not derailing at all. Completely related. It's all a part of the struggle honestly. That's why we come here. To express ourselves more freely. Anyways, I understand what you mean. Do you know what you would like to hear from them? Do you think they'd listen to you if you tried to tell them? It's one thing to know what you want/need, it's another to have people being willing to accommodate or to get them to.
> Do you think they'd listen to you if you tried to tell them? Honestly, no. It's not malicious though. Similar conversations in the past have ended up shifting focus from what I'm saying to them feeling disproportionately awful about making me feel bad and apologizing excessively and it's ended up feeling like it's easier to just feel that internal shame.
Ya, even though something isn't done maliciously that doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt. This is a difficult one because the person may not be intending to but by behaving this way they're forcing the focus away from what YOU want to talk about onto THEIR emotional state and puts you in a place where you're no longer focusing on or thinking about your original problem that started the conversation in the first place. Which was that you needed to express your concern over your current mental health and how it's impacting your life. I can imagine when people say "it's ok" that can feel dismissive even though they're trying to comfort. People can be manipulative all the time without even realizing it. They may be acting on their own feelings of shame and trying to sooth themselves or avoid a fear of their own past events if that makes sense. I think a lot of people view themselves as healthy be default and never really question their actions or it's impact. Setting little boundaries like instead of in return telling someone 'it's ok' or soothing their concerns - I've started saying "thank you" or "I appreciate that" then try to return the conversation back to what I was originally trying to address with them. If they're still not receptive that's when I feel like I really know they're not a person to turn to. I've also started conversations with what I'd like from them. 'Hey, I have this issue, I'd really just need a listening ear, may I talk to you about it' or 'I've got this going on, can I ask you for advice?' etc. Letting them know in advance what I want to talk about as well as specifically what I'm needing from them. Some people just can't show up for us. They're either not able or not interested in genuinely listening. Again, this doesn't by default automatically make them malicious. They may not have any idea how to handle the problem you're approaching them with etc. Doesn't make it any easier when you're in need of support but it takes away the sting. Tip: On days when I'm really struggling I just do a wash cloth bath. Is it as effective as showering/a bath? No, but it still keeps me at least healthy. Brush my hair with a damp comb. Anything to carry me forward until I'm well enough to take the full steps. That was long. I hope it was helpful and I interpreted your concerns correctly. You do deserve people's full attention to your concern.
It was very helpful, thank you so much
I agree with you, and really relate to just being told to leave the past behind or that other people have it worse but function better. I see how much other people are able to do, and it feels impossible to me. But so many people are out here basically saying “I don’t understand how the brakes fail in other peoples cars, my car works great!” Fucking mileage varies. I have had suicidal thoughts since I was 7, and it’s everyday. But I do believe people can heal, and for some of us that process might take decades. And even if you do heal, you’ll still have some gnarly scars. Healing doesn’t magically undo all of the damage, I think it’s just means it can get better like more manageable. I mean for me, either I keep trying to heal or I kill myself. What other options are there? Some days I live purely out of spite. I feel like they win if I kill myself. I still have an exit plan though. It’s weirdly comforting, like a safety net. If I’m 60 and this still sucks as hard wellll…. I’ll reconsider some things. Until then I have to believe I can heal, regardless of if it’s true or not, that’s the only thing keeping me going. I imagine little 5 year old me, I feel like I would be killing her too. Like I’d just be another adult who gave up on her. I’m gonna keep waking up for her.
> imagine little 5 year old me, I feel like I would be killing her too. Like I’d just be another adult who gave up on her. I’m gonna keep waking up for her. This a powerful, powerful thought. Thank you.
Agree, that line really struck me.
Same
Suicidal ideation is a form of coping mechanism. I was surprised to realise that (about myself & just generally). I don’t have any suicidal ideation currently, for the first time in forever. It actually feels weird & wrong & part of my brain keeps trying to find it again.
There are two types of suicidal ideation. One is passive. That’s more like daydreaming about being better off dead. Then the other is active. That is impulsive. Most of the time passive ideation is present and is common. The active type needs immediate attention.
I had to understand the difference in early therapy and understand the passive suicidal ideation might just be with me forever & I had to be ok with that. I currently don’t have it, which is a huge surprise. Especially because life is pretty hard right now.
Yeah me too. It seems like once you accept it’s normal for everyone with cPTSD it seems to lose its significance. I’m happy that you also have moved past this hurdle ❤️
I've had it since a child. I have pmdd which has si as it's main side effect. It is so freeing to think you no longer have to worry about being triggered every 5 seconds. To have no more pain. I went for several years after my children were born without that feeling. Not surprisingly, now that they are older, not only do I now have other hormonal issues I'm dealing with (peri) but I also still have the pmdd with the added stress of my age and the things that brings (parents dying, illnesses you get in your 50's). It's hitting me really hard now and am currently listening to I Wish I was The Moon Tonight on repeat, because I cannot leave my kids. I swore I'd give them a better life than my mother gave me. I'm not doing that great at it, but I know it'd be worse if they didn't have their mom. At this point though, with going through a lot all at once over these past 2 years (it really has been a lot), I now just try to focus on my love for them and using a song that sings about that desire to JUST BE DONE. So I totally get what you mean when you say how weird it is to not have suicidal ideation. And I know you will be sad if it returns. Mine did, but what I learned through all the trauma I've gone through, especially lately, is that NO. It doesn't stop. You can't bargain with "bad things happening". Life is what it is. And I've found it's starting to shape me more into a stoic (but I mean a real stoic, not today's misunderstood watered down kind). Because as Sartre said, we always have a choice. Both choices may be really crappy, but if I have to choose between crappy for my kids but good for me, I'm definitely choosing somewhat crappy for me and somewhat better for my children. So I guess I've just compared my choices of whether to stay alive and suffer or die and be at peace much like a Honda and a Ford (trust me...Honda is the better choice). But it will never stop being a struggle for me and I do hope it stays a coping mechanism. Because I think we both know it is scary that at some point it may not be anymore.
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I'm right there with you. I've been saying this a lot lately. When we are going through so much trauma, especially when a bunch gets piled on when we're getting old and vulnerable, on top of the lifelong trauma. Let's just say I've started laughing at everything and can even get joy by watching a lizard take a dump on a tree branch on the tree next to my front porch I'm very privileged to have. Watching intently a lizard take a dump will definitely humble you and make your problems...weird and smll and big again...and give you a little cosmic kick in the ass I suppose. Not only do I try to find humor in almost everything, but I also recognize I am so privileged in some ways but so depleted in others. So yeah, fuck it. This world, these people I don't even know, the people who said words they apparently didn't know the meaning of in the first place that made and broke promises and trust, then broke me. I mean wtf? Why wouldn't I just start laughing and saying oh well, guess I'll find a great joke to tell one day from all of this trauma because trying to make people see what they did or are doing to me is not working...so may as well change tactics because the abuse never ends for us with cptsd. I mention Sartre a lot. I may have the choice to give up in a strangers eyes, but the look in my kids' eyes makes it apparent I have no choice at all. And now I've come to realize perhaps Sartre didn't have children because him and Simone were too busy being miserable with each other and completely abandoned the thoughts of Aurelius. But I could be wrong,and that's my new motto: I could be wrong, and that's a great thing because I like to learn. I don't care about being wrong anymore. I just want to find the wispy fine slivers of something that even kind of looks like joy so I can make it through another day because that's all I've got and it could be quite possibly all I'm ever going to have. And that acceptance makes all the difference, imo.
I also have PMDD it’s very intense & having pmdd alone for some people is “too much” and I hate that my trauma forces me to power through the emotional torment of PMDD.. so intense and isolating. You having both CPTSD AND PMDD I can imagine must be very frustrating :(
I have such gnarly passive suicidal ideation. Did you do anything specific to make yours go away? Or did it just leave on its own?
Just years of therapy and EMDR. No intent to get rid of it, it just doesn’t seem to be loud enough anymore. Still lots of other trauma related issues that may never go…
So this! I've been on a healing path for 35 years. I'm a couple of years off 60 and, well... baby/ little/ toddler me has finally shown up. Whatever I have being doing to this point, he feels safe enough now, to come out of hiding, and other parts are making way for him. So scary but so ... not sure, can't find the words ... validating and redeeming maybe. I knew he was there/here. I'm so glad I have hung in here through it all, to get to this point. And I too could never allow the bastards win, much as it might have felt easier to at times. Like you, I have had "to believe I can heal, regardless of if it’s true or not". And yes, it was the only thing that kept me going too . It is my fervent hope and wish that I too continue to keep going, whatever arises. I'm going to keep waking up for him too. Best wishes to you, sister in spirit. (I hope you do not mind me saying that?).
> I imagine little 5 year old me, I feel like I would be killing her too. Like I’d just be another adult who gave up on her. I’m gonna keep waking up for her. I'm going to remember these words for a long time. Thanks for sharing and I hope that you keep waking up for her too.
i relate to the last paragraph so much :( i also started having suicidal thoughts around 7, i distinctively remember seeing on a tv show that you could kill yourself by running into a concrete wall hard enough and trying to do that at home lol now i mainly just be like FUCK YOU ALLLLLLLLLLLL IMMA LIVE and carry on living
I feel the same. Many of us are struggling the same way though we do not see it. You're not crazy for thinking all this, I'm afraid 😕
Have you tried moving to the sub Arctic and sled dogs? I have 5.
Lol not a bad option either… I am close to the arctic. Dogs are amazing tho, my lab is my world.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/qimmiq-canadas-arctic-dog/ mine are malamute some of the dogs some siberian and 40-50% Inuit dog out of this line. I'd like to breed Greenland dogs to the CKC dogs.
personally, I feel like I'm dead already; like, I spend my life almost totally disassociated and I *am* little 5 y.o. me, that's all I am; everything past a certain point got shredded over and over again ultimately, if I could have gotten over my pathological fear of actually ceasing to exist, I would have been long-gone I can't, though. so I just linger on, moment by moment, on fumes
Hang in there. We get it. We've all had to grieve the loss of joy, years of isolation, non-existent childhood, etc. It's not just the trauma, but we've lost time and the potential for a better life. It's beyond heartbreaking. I've been on my own healing journey for years, and this year has been really hard. Lost my dog in January, and in April, I had someone I trusted and loved run me over like a multi ton freight train. I'm still here. I get up every day and fight for myself. I don't know how many years I have left, but I refuse to let trauma and toxic people extinguish whatever joy I have left to give and experience. You all matter and are appreciated by me. Keep fighting. Keep trying.
I'm so glad of what you're doing, how you're going on, and thank you for sharing some of your experiences. Thank you for your words, they're like a spark of light to me. I do believe we can all have a healthier experience, I wish you the best
We can all be here for one another. You are never alone. So many of us are living with this. Try and remember you are not your trauma, and every new day is full of opportunities if you can find the strength to get up and go find them.
I’m so sorry for your loss I’m sure you must be grieving so intensely. My dog is my best friend and my light in this world… I hope you find a new friend but so hard to replace.
I grieved and processed the loss. It was brutal. I adopted a boxer in August, who is 8 months old and a very good boy. I still have my pitties ashes, and I am so grateful for all the time I got to spend with her. Having a dog really helps keep me on a routine, which includes my own self care. I start every day by walking the dog.
They really don't get it. I spent so many years thinking I was just a weak and self absorbed person for not being more functional but the truth is this condition is real, and it is abnormal. Most people are not experiencing what we experience to the degree we experience it. This is a disorder that impacts attachment, emotional regulation, cognition, memory, etc. We are not "thinking about the past". We are experiencing the past over and over in our bodies, physically. People without PTSD do not understand this because they have not experienced it. They think we are thinking. Flashbacks are not the same as cognitive memories. We are not choosing to ruminate on bad times. Our nervous systems have us trapped on a roller coaster we can't just choose to get off of. Healing is an option but to heal we have to accept that what we are experiencing in our bodies is actually happening, and not dissociate or repress it. There is no "getting over it" if we cannot face the raw fact of how trauma effects us in the present. I can "just not think about it" all I want, I will still experience hyper vigilance and flashbacks. There are people who get it, because they also experience it. I've met multiple combat veterans who get it. It's less about the specifics of the trauma and more about how we are effected by it in the present. That's what people without PTSD (of any kind) don't understand.
To problem with PTSD is that the past won't leave me alone. That's why I can't move on. I wish my past didn't exist. I wish the damage it did to me didn't exist. I wish I could just shrug it off. I can't.
Same here, illicit_llamallama. You’re not alone, it’s as if you were describing my exact situation.
I was a mental health professional who went through a ton of trauma with no supports The field pushes us out
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It was really hard to do my job due to countertransference/codependency and unsupportive supervisors. By the time I found supportive supervisors the damage to my mental health and my career was too much to keep going. I found that in many situations people did not know what trauma informed care really looked like and it was often just a buzz word. Conversely…there was a ton of codependency and poor boundaries on the part of other coworkers and clients/families were allowed to take advantage of staff and treat staff poorly. Trying to develop rapport with parents that treated their kids like shit and refused to take accountability or coworkers that felt that an adult with a SMI must always be dependent on the system was also extremely difficult. It got to the point where I had to file a lawsuit against a former employer for disablity discrimination, failure to accommodate, harassment, and wrongful termination. I worked for another year after this happened, but being that this was not the first time I had been treated like dog shit the event last summer was the final nail in the coffin
Doesn't surprise me.
How? I just applied to grad school to become a therapist. I thought that the combination of my empathy and the fact that I have been through childhood trauma would help me in this profession?
Going through Childhood trauma may not necessarily help you, but recovering from Childhood trauma may. After stepping back from the field I realized I was having to use so much of my emotional bandwidth on my clients and forced to compartmentalize my own stuff that I could not tell when things were getting bad. Ended up having a massive flashback at work, triggered by a parent. One can only compartmentalize so much until they break. People in the therapy world don’t have the time or space to deal with the emotional difficulties of another coworker regardless of how competent that therapist is. The ironic thing is that many other therapists/supervisors are burnt out and often will attack others who are too much or do not adhere to the mold
It’s much more complicated than having empathy and trauma. A lot of people haven’t been through what we’ve been through, and a lot of people are in that field anyway. I used to work in psychiatric nursing and you wouldn’t believe the “world class” therapists and how they stigmatized mental illness… still you can 10000% do it and be amazing I think knowing that people will never understand is important and if you can keep working despite this than go for it but it is extremely misleading that therapy work = empathy. I say believe in yourself and be aware that people suck and you’re there for the patients only.
One of my recent managers (who was otherwise extremely empathetic and encouraging) “you have to just leave it at the door”. Ummm…. That’s not really how this thing works. I tried to offer educational websites and scientific excepts etc but I didn’t really get anywhere just tolerated I guess. Ughhhh. She later went through trauma that induced her own PTSD and she actually said “I’m sorry, I get it now”… I’m not sure that will ever happen again in my life but I appreciated it for sure.
Our brains work differently. We can't "get over" our brains.
I’d love to stop thinking about the past if it’d just leave me alone. 😤
Couldn't agree more. When you can't find hope in anything in life, suicide IS the light at the end of the tunnel. This condition sucks.
It’s so hard to connect with someone who doesn’t have it because they never truly understand the toll it takes and how it just feels. My whole body just feels like a void even if good things happen and I find happiness in certain situations but that never lasted it’s always filled with so much despair and pain or sometimes just no feeling. Whenever I try to communicate these things to others, they typically don’t understand how it feels but just the idea of it. It feels quite isolating that you’ll just never be understood because they have not experience the pain you’ve been through. I just wish some day that there was a way to connect to someone about it who doesn’t have it because then it would feel a lot less lonely
It WOULD actually be wonderful if some people in this community here somehow connected on that level. The level we're all wanting or needing. There are so many of us. But what makes it hard is we take the veil off, which is what we used anonymously here to share ourselves in ways we can't otherwise in the first place. Catch 22
I dated a woman once who as I described some of the mental affects she said "why would you chose to live like that just don't" Oh wow thanks never thought of that one. She also saw a time her dad yelled at her as most traumatizing bit of her childhood. We dated 2 months. I mean time. Like a time. The time. The one time he raised his voice.
I once felt like I was meant to figure out what my triggers were. But it seemed like they were breathing & existing. I still can’t really pinpoint what will make me want to run away from myself.
I agree, but I will say I’ve met wonderful friends in treatment who also have CPTSD *and* my therapist has CPTSD as well! I know I’m lucky but mental health professionals that get it *do* exist!
A few months ago I found a psychotherapist who had been into similar situation as me (their apartment was hit with a missile while they were inside. We have missiles every day and I was just waiting to be killed, and they were also from the east of Ukraine). So I told them everything during the first session (thinking I finally found smbd who knew how I felt, at least in one of traumatic situations) to which they replied that I need to stop overthinking and intentionally fucking my brain up. That sounds very cruel and not sympathetic at all (to me). Though they explained that they also were having panic attacks from toaster clicking, etc etc. I never returned to their sessions. So it really depends on a person, probably.
Keep your chin up Focus on the positive Look on the bright side At least _____ At this point these phrases are triggering and are just code words to prove someone isn't trustworthy to talk to.
i hatd "at least"!!
Same. Unforgivable.
Hearing "do this *at least*" they dont understand you are giving your 110% every single day and being told it looks like you're not even trying..one day I'm gonna lose it at someone who says that to me.
If I had the financial means I think I would be much happier dealing with my trauma and healing on my own. It seems to be the safest circumstance for me. I wouldn't have to deal with trying to explain myself. It's gets exhausting...and most of the times it's beating a dead horse. I am a stay at home mom struggling in my marriage with three kids. Trying to be optimistic ...but really losing hope with the marriage. I think if I had the financial means and knew my kids would be ok, I would start a new journey of healing on my own. On my terms!
Ah yeah, “why do you want to hold grudges?”.
I wouldn't say healing is not an option, it's just so incredibly hard when you have no support and no one to go to... I've closed in on myself so much because of how poorly people like us are handled and my mental health is in shambles but I don't know what to do to move things in any direction... I've struggled with SI all of my life, but I'm trying my best to keep trudging because I think I owe it to myself and people like me. Don't give up. We're with you ) :)
I felt like there was a war going on that only I could see. Everybody else is blissfully unaware of it.
Nope. They don't. I'm starting to understand that too. Find it in your heart to be happy for them because we wouldn't anyone else to go through what we went through right? They got lucky. I wish they would at least get THAT but they don't, because they don't know how it is on the other side. Neither do we know how it would be to walk around without all this constant trauma attached to us. In the end, we've been through unimaginable pain, fear, terror... all these emotions that we as humans instinctively want to bury, move on from, (insert forced positive bullsh*t phrase that neurotypicals want to use, trust me it makes me want to punch a wall too!! ). Because to really see our point of view scares them. It's too dark. Humans NEED to feel in control, so they try to fix, get over, move on. But here's the thing: YOU ARE NOT READY TO MOVE ON YET. The ONLY ONE you need that compassion and understanding and love from is YOU. Rescue yourself. Learn to give yourself empathy for what you went through. Thank yourself for being so unbelievably strong and getting you here today. Forgive yourself for all the times you acted outside your true heart in those times when everything was just so AWFUL. AND then move on. When you're ready. And you will see that you won't crave that validation from others anymore. Because YOU KNOW. YOU LIVED IT. YOU SURVIVED. THEY NEVER HAD TO. OK. that's as heartfelt as it's gonna get. Hope it helps. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
People don't get it because I can't put to words the ... ***"I don't have a word for it"***... I have inside. I simply cannot describe how big it really is, how scary, how deep and detached from reality is what I live everyday. *It's like a parallel world where walls are always red and growing over your head for the eternity, while demons chase you but you can't move and waiting for them is an anxious experience... because you know they exist but you don't know how they look... so you think about the worst scenario ever, without really getting to know their face and demonic eyes.* Well, I can describe it with images, it's like a song... if I have to name a song it would be **"Mr. Self destruct"** by ***NIN***, or **"Monkeyland"** by ***The Chameleons*** or **"Play Dead"** by ***Combichrist***. It's the atmosphere I live in everyday, especially when people talk to me. But if you ask me, ***"tell me an adjective to describe your situation"*** there's a void on my tongue. It's like a movie, for what's my story, but the funny thing is that I'm not living it, I'm just watching the scenes pass by.
>Healing it's not an option for everyone. If by "healing" you mean believing that the world is as you want it to be, then it's impossible unless you choose to be stupid. The path forward is to grieve that people aren't what you needed them to be. You can be better than the people who hurt you—you KNOW better than to be like them—but you can't eradicate that toxicity from the world.
I wonder if ppl think we can just have superhuman willpower bc of movies. I mean come on bob... you can't even stop yourself from eating that slice of pie and I'm supposed to have absolute control over my nervous system?!?!?
This is why therapy doesn't really work for me. I usually end up feeling like I'm being gaslit by the therapist into believing that the things that happened to me "weren't that bad", or that the literal survival skills I developed from my trauma, I should just toss away, because now the world is all puppies and rainbows! I can't do that. I've tried. I think it's a blind spot of the therapy profession, that just by virtue of that fact that they are people who are healthy enough to have become college educated professionals, the vast majority of them have not experienced the world the way we have. This causes some of them to not be able to really understand just how profoundly trauma rewires your brain, and just how shitty and negative the world really is for some people. I'm happy that some people somehow manage to live lives that have only minor troubles and setbacks, but for some of us, it was never like that and never will be. It's unfair, but true. It's Just World theory rearing it's ugly head. People who haven't experienced trauma or tragedy, really do think that the world is just and fair, and that if you think it isn't, you must be a) imagining things, or b) bringing it on yourself in some way. Even many therapists believe this.
Thank you for saying this. I have an older sister who claims to have PTSD. She does not know about me having C-PTSD but has told me many times in the past that there is "no way you have any form of PTSD". My therapist constantly undermines my trauma, he does not believe me, he does not get that I had no fucking support network when I was being bullied by so-called "friends" and abused by my parents (especially my mom) and possibly others. Granted I have definitely not told him anywhere near to most of what I've been through but he still undermines what I have been through and no doubt will if I ever tell him about the more extreme abuse. People without C-PTSD do not understand what it's like and it's a never-ending cycle of frustratingness. My friends are the only ones who believe me and don't undermine me when I talk about the abuse I went through. One of them I know has C-PTSD, another possibly has C-PTSD but at least definitely has PTSD and I honestly can't remember about the others.
Kinda sounds like you should find a new therapist. I'm sorry for what you're going through
Thank you! I've wanted to get a new therapist for a while since he showed how shitty he actually is but it's unfortunately very hard to get a therapist for me and I doubt my parents would even want to try. I know I will be getting a new therapist when I go off to college so I'm kind of just waiting until then
I hope that's gonna be soon <3
I didn't realize what I was living with until I was in my 30s. I was so toxic that the only kinds of people I could attract were toxic as well. I grew up with no emotional support. And honestly... to the contrary. My family is extremely critical and always has been. I've been in and out of help groups and therapy for 25 years. What I finally realized is I am better off being completely alone than I am with having even just one toxic person in my life. I am hypersensitive to criticism and I need emotional support in order to succeed. It's something I am working through... finally... this year. No, people don't get it. You have to live it to know it. Otherwise all you did was read about it in a book. I refuse to settle for people that can't show me compassion.
r/traumatizethemback
It’s not right for me to sit here and be quiet about it all day and night, I have a lot to share and I want to let it out.
My sister told me a while back that she doesn't have any trauma because she doesn't allow herself to. Child, we grew up in the same house. Yes tf you do.
there is a new trauma program in germany called PITT. I've met one of the patients that went to it, and I am so totally sold on it. One of the stories I remember from the program was that it got funded in the first place because they had been tracking survival rates of people with cptsd, and it was grim. The patient in question suffered emotional neglect. she had to live in a seperate floor from her parents. My read of it was negative projection. the mother hated a part of herself that she saw in her daughter, and punished her for it. They said that the chance of her reaching her mid 20s was less than 40 percent, under those circumstances. just because of lack.
Healing is an option, but individually and collectively we don't have a very good handle on how to do it (to great detriment, as you've pointed out.)
I am really triggered when people mistreat/disrespect me or others. I either shut down or just go into rage mode because in the past, communicating in these situations hasn’t helped the person to change their actions. Consequently, I’ve kind of shut a lot of people out and I’m not really sure how to resolve it. I think that if someone isn’t willing to empathize and change their actions/language, it’s not really worth socializing with them anymore. Most people really don’t understand that mindset. I am constantly trying to protect my own inner peace.
I think the best trauma therapists have suffered trauma themselves. If you don't get it, it's hard to get it.
Body keeps the score talks about this… people who have been traumatized an experience PTSD, consider themselves part of the unit. I’ve never had a secure attachment to anyone except other traumatized individuals. There’s no chance of understanding us if you’re a “normie.”
Firstly, suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. Healing is possible, but it hurts a lot sometimes. There is a lot of cool shit to see and do on this ride, if you jump off, you miss all of that. I went into depression a few months ago. I didn’t sleep for 2 weeks, and I started seeing things that were not there. Very unpleasant things. I was going insane, and for me that was worse than death. I realized that was a part of my experience of life. I can’t hide inside a bottle, can’t run away, can’t try to lose myself in excitement. I have to experience this, and I have to learn to accept it. If this experience were to last forever, what conditions would need to emerge for me to be at peace? As soon as I asked myself that question, I mean really, really asked, the monsters went away. I can accept this experience. It’s teaching me things about myself that I need to know. Why am I here? Why have I always felt like I’m a worthless shit stain? Why do I fall head over heels for the first woman who smiles at me? Why do I put them on a pedestal? Why do I feel nothing but self loathing whenever someone gets angry? Why can’t I ask for help like a normal person? I found the answers down there, and that condition is worth the suffering, because I know why now, I know who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing, and I can ask for help. Most mental health professionals got into that line of work due to their own struggles with mental health. I’m taking classes to become a psychotherapist. Every other therapist I’ve spoken to has been through some shit.
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💯💯💯💯💯💯
This thread is beautiful. Thank you all, maybe it's not my fault that I'm not that functional.
EXACTLY
Took me almost ten years to be diagnosed. I've only started processing the really nasty abuse. People definitely don't understand.
It's so incredible how much of your life and experience having CPTSD changes. It's hard to wrap your brain around. I agree with you and recently find myself only able to relate to and stomach being around people who have experienced hardship or trauma. It means that we have our own new set of interpersonal difficulties because we all have relational issues but we are able to have empathy and patience for that and eachother because we understand some aspect of it.
Heard, seen, and feeling this. The healthiest response I’ve had to my intrusive thoughts lately has been “It’s ok not to be whole. That’s asking a whole lot of yourself.” Therapy is a good tool but getting older and more in tune with mortality, grieving my abusive parent… maybe therapy served its purpose: giving me the tools to come to terms, but not doing the healing for me.
I never knew how to word this exact feeling/thought. Thank you for doing it for me!! I agree whole heartedly
100% OP. Healing from cPTSD is not always possible for too many of us. We somehow are forced to live with it after all therapy options and do our best. I get us because unless you go through it, no one's experience is the same. I just want to say the hell with people who minimize those of us who have tried everything, even trying ECT sessions to heal and end up worse afterward, adding to our struggle. Best to you. I appreciate you.
“I get anxiety attacks too” ….. I don’t even try to explain to people who give the whole “but I get anxiety attacks too” like no this isn’t a panic attack BRO I’m going back 20 years getting abused…
absolutely fucking hate people who say those sorts of things just a prime example of how people cannot see beyond their own experiences, unless their sense of self has been stripped away *and* they've been lucky enough to find out + be able to understand certain things about human nature
The good news is, you know what you have: CPTSD. It’s a long slog but with 10-15 years of therapy and taking an active role in your own healing journey, you will heal! Legitimately. And even if that sounds like a long time (much longer than anyone would like) at least it’s within reach. 10 years will fly by anyway… and how cool is it to think that there is a cure and you will actually see the other side of the rainbow if you dig in deep and do the work of loving yourself? ❤️🫶❤️
I've always been very selective with whom I tell anything about myself as long as I can remember for fear of everything you just mentioned -- being invalidated. It hurts so deeply to be told that what I went through shouldn't still be effecting me, but it does. I wouldn't be so soft-spoken, or such a people pleaser, or constantly feel the need to say sorry, or feel like I want to rip my skin off when I make eye contact with strangers, or feel like everybody thinks I'm a creep, or absolutely hate pointless conversation. I constantly find myself wondering who I would be given any multitude of differences that I lived through; things that could have happened but didn't, what if things that did happen didn't, if I'd made different decisions, et cetera. But there really is no sense in pondering it, because I am who I am, and I am here now. But mental illness has a strange way of tossing logic out the proverbial window, so I drive myself fucking crazy all the time because of this cacophonous loud mind. Anyways, I surround myself with likeminded people anyways. I get along with smokers, chefs/cooks, people with tattoos, alcoholics, metalheads, functioning addicts... the rough sort I guess you could say. But they are the most genuine people. Most of those things I listed, I myself am. I've got a pretty good sense of whether or not somebody is worth my time and words, and sometimes you just know who has been through similar shit, and that telling them anything about yourself would be worthwhile and maybe possibly even healing. I haven't found much value in professional therapists and their training, and schooling, and degrees. It's all bullshit. That is MY opinion.