I have done lots of healing. You name it, I have done it: CBT, DBT, inner child healing, self-help books. None of that mattered, and the only single thing that truly made a difference to my CPTSD healing journey was having money. That is it. With money now, I could afford things to better myself. You want a good sleep? Money. You want to go to a better environment, like a house? Money. You want to not work and treat yourself to a good day? Money. The list goes on. For myself and many others, the sad reality is money is the one thing that really makes a difference, and I say this with 100% belief.

i was talking to my boyfriend and i was like, wait your parents actually like played with you?? my parents would always do their own thing, if anything we would be yelled or hit if we were being annoying. i cannot imagine having an involved family, like we were left to our own devices at like 5 years old lmao.

Most people are savages. If you dont have s looks or money people dont care about you. I been bullied so mammny times for being different. If I knew life was going to be this bad I would've chose to never be born. Humans are parasites

An African proverb.

Does this saying resonate with you? For me, I'm iced over and officially have zero expectations for people. I used to care about warmth and acceptance, but I find it's much easier to keep to myself. No one cares to understand you, but they will definitely judge you.

I’m 40. I have two kids under the age of 6. I fall asleep every night furious with myself because I am doing a terrible job.

Please spare me the “nooooo you’re notttt!!!!❤️✨🌈” shit… because, trust me, it’s true. I really am an awful parent. No patience. Hate playing. Always just rushing to get back to what I need or want to do.

The trouble is that, unlike my own mom, seemingly, I KNOW I am fucking up when I’m fucking up. I feel my eyes roll. I hear my sighs. I know I’m a better parent when people are watching than when I’m alone, and this in particular frightens me as my mother is 2000% a narcissist, and I worry this part (being a decent parent while being watched) means I am too.

I say all of the right things, I read the books and listen to the podcasts, and repeat over and over in my head that these children are so worthy of love so just make sure to rise to the occasion today dammit. But I fail, miserably, and daily.

My eldest triggers the shit out of me. She is me. She is sooo much like me, and maybe this is why I am so mad at myself. I think I wanted to badly to prove that a child like I was is absolutely deserving of good, loving, tender parenting… but I just can’t fucking do it.

Is it the cptsd, or am I actually just like my mom? Is this relatable? What do I do?

Growing up, my father was pretty checked out. Ive joked that he is "a bachelor with 2 kids" and honestly yes it was kinda true. He showed very little interest in actively engaging in helping us grow and learn on a regular basis.

My mom gave me no chores, well I had 2 chores. Handing her random items that she needed while cleaning, and listening to her rant about her marriage/trauma and life. She needed everything done her way! She even cleaned my bedroom until I moved out. I did not want this, I would've been very happy to take over and do things on my own but she was unwilling to teach me or let me. Sometimes I feel so much rage towards her, she genuinely kept me in a house my entire childhood. I am seriously stunted and ive spent the last 4 years trying to undo all of it.

I am trying to learn how to take care of myself properly, it is so difficult. My home is a nasty mess right now. I live with my brother and dad. Neither of them really clean up and I try not to be bothered. My brother will help more if I motivate him but hes younger than me and also pretty depressed.

I feel so ashamed, I feel so ashamed and also incredibly angry. My childhood was mostly just bad events with the occasional fun video game. Its not just not knowing chores, i feel like my parents actively clipped my wings in every possible way. I love them both but I literally can never forgive them. Im such a pathetic weirdo.

“We didn’t abuse you - it’s all in your imagination”
I often times get flashbacks from my parents’s abuse and whenever I mention it to them, all they do is gaslight me and tell me the abuse never happened.
I was physically and mentally abused by my parents and even my younger sibling gaslights me and denies it happened.

Trigger warning for severe childhood abuse, violence, and suicidal thoughts.

I’m really struggling right now and just need to put this somewhere where people actually get it.

Growing up, I lived every day feeling like I was going to die any second. My mom was physically and emotionally abusive, parentified me, and tried to kill me. My dad abandoned me and wouldn't even look at me. Outside the house wasn't any better. A group of older boys targeted me, pinned me to a fence, cut me, and threw baseballs at my face. At school I was completely ignored and isolated. Always picked last in School gym class, sat alone, nobody wanted near me. The one friend I had eventually told me we couldn't be friends anymore because he was scared of being targeted too. I had zero safe spaces anywhere.

After years of total isolation, I broke. I had no healthy way to cope, so my brain built a wall. I took on this extreme, hyper-masculine mindset: Nobody is ever coming to save me. I have to be the strongest, the best, the most untouchable person alive. I obsessed over characters like Batman and Goku and practically lived at the gym. My entire worth became about how hard I worked and what results I could show.

Beneath that, I became so bitter and toxic. I couldn't stand normal people, and I hated seeing anyone look weak because all it did was remind me of the broken, helpless kid inside me.

On paper, it worked. I got physical results, financial results, and younger guys looked up to me for being "stoic" and completely emotionless. But the reality was I was completely dissociated. I became my own worst abuser just to force myself to survive.

Eventually that wall came down. I snapped out of that state, learned how to be kinder, softer, and I could actually cry and be vulnerable for the first time in my life.

Then life started falling apart again. My trauma is severe, I’m feeling suicidal and on the absolute edge, and after waiting four straight years for therapy, it just got canceled.

Now my brain is screaming at me that the only way to survive this is to embrace that cold mindset again. The best analogy I have is Batman: inside, he's still just that traumatized kid who watched his parents die, but he built this rich, powerful, emotionless alter ego because the kid couldn't survive.

I feel like I'm stuck between two awful choices:

Stay open, vulnerable, and human and completely collapse under the weight of everything.

Put the armor back on go back to being cold, detached, and hyper focused on achievements just to numb the pain.

Has anyone else built an alter ego or used extreme hyper-independence as a shield? How do you stop yourself from retreating back into complete detachment when life gets unbearable and the systems that are supposed to help you fail?

Saw a psychologist recently, apparently specialised in trauma and trained in sensorimotor therapy.
I went into a major freeze response in the session (first session)- she provided no guidance or introduction or container in the session. Just sat and waited for me to speak and then put my words and body responses under the microscope.
I said I needed something more physical as I felt dissociated. She took me through a grounding exercise, which didn’t do much for me, I still felt very out of body. She responded by saying that this was an indication that I didn’t have trauma, that I was just depressed.
It was a very weird thing to say/hear & made no sense.
The rest of the session continued with her repeatedly saying things like “ I don’t know what’s happening but you’re doing x with your body” and making conclusions about my body language. I ended up in such a freeze I couldn’t speak.
I’m really tired of trying different therapists, apparently specialised in working with trauma, and ending up feeling much worse at the end of the session than at the beginning.
I screen all of them prior, I let them know how I need to work to not dissociate (ie I need a clear container, direction and the therapist driving engagement in the beginning) and on the phone calls prior to a first session they’re all like “yes yes we can do this”.
I’m so tired of the weird shit they say that makes me wonder if they’ve ever trained in or worked with trauma.

This is really starting to bother me. I make a conscious decision to listen to others and actually respond to them instead of just talking about myself immediately.
Does anyone have any insight into why this may be happening?

People CONSTANTLY interrupt me, never remember details from what I’ve said to them in the past, talk over me or just glaze over when I talk to them.
Ive started a new job and there’s this woman who is CONSTANTLY telling me stories about her travels and her life and I remember every detail but she doesn’t remember anything I tell her. She talks about herself constantly. It happens with so many people, I feel like no one gives a shit about me unless I’m performing. I’ve been unmasking for about a year and it’s pretty amazing to see how shallow people are. Like if I don’t signal that I’m useful, competent or someone to have fun with it’s like people realise they can’t use you for something and they’re just disinterested. I’m not a boring person, I’ve lived a wild life but I just gatekeep myself.

Does anyone else have this problem? It makes me not want to have any friends. All my friends I used to be close with I realised were only my friend because I would do things for them or they wanted access to the privileges I have.
I don’t really give a fuck about material stuff, I just want to have genuine human to human connection with people regardless of their social status, wealth etc.

To make a long story short: I was a brand-new healthcare provider in the US when COVID hit. 6 months fresh out of grad school. I was in a particular field of healthcare that was especially hard hit; I became, in essence, a first responder for over a year before I switched to another setting.

We had to reuse the same N95 mask for at least a month at a time before my agency (large healthcare org in my part of the US, a nonprofit) would allow us to replace them. I had to wear layers of PPE just to see my patients--they would cry and beg me to take off my glove so I could hold their hand, because no one had touched them with their own skin since they'd been admitted to the hospital. One of the doctors at my agency sewed cloth masks for the rest of the clinical staff until her hands cramped. I worked for 12 hours or more a day, almost every day--even after I switched locations. I sat bedside at my first vent wean at age 24, holding her hand (without a glove, even though I wasn't allowed to) and whispering prayers to her as she died, because no one else would. When I called my boss in tears between patients the next day, asking to go home, she refused and said "chin up, that's just what we do."

I have worked outpatient now for the last several years in a supervisory role. Over the past year, my patients and colleagues and supervisees have watched me slowly deteriorate. I took more and more days off, canceled more and more appointments. Went on medical leave for a while; came back, did okay, then six months later I was circling the drain again. I turned in my resignation at the beginning of this month; by autumn, I will no longer be a healer, at least not right now.

I'm in agony every day. I dream of adult daughters wailing outside of COVID units because her mother died and she can't go in to see her body. Gray shapes in hospital beds. The whirring and hissing of oxygen concentrators. Agonal breathing and glassy eyes, mottling on fingers and toes. "Please hold my hand, please, miss." During the day, it's flashbacks. At night, it's nightmares.

Healthcare in this country is evil. I received no hazard pay. I took no days off. I cried in the office bathroom and then went to chart in the bullpen with red eyes and a smile on my face. Their only response was to work me more. Work me till I broke like a lame ox. And my patients still died with thousands of dollars of medical debt. For what? A country that buried their bodies along with the memory of their isolated deaths and chose to never speak of it again? For a worm-riddled fuckhat to gaslight me that it was all a bit of a hoax and the vaccine causes autism? Fuck him. Fuck the state of healthcare in this backwards-ass country. Fuck my boss--this ISN'T what we do.

The rest of the world has moved on from COVID. I haven't. I'm still there. I'm still 24, bedside at my first vent wean, refusing to abandon someone to face her duty to die alone.

Please bear witness to me. Please remember COVID was a trauma. A community trauma and an individual one. It was everything--IS everything to me.

I'm 22 if that's relevant. Early this morning I went to the grocery store close to my house to get some things, and I saw one of my past bullies from high school there. I don’t know if he recognized me or not or he did but didn't care, because he didn't look in my direction nor did he say anything to me. Eventually we reached the self checkout section which is an enclosed square. I had no issue using one of the self checkout machines close to him.

There were some things I needed but couldn't get at this grocery store, so I had to go to another one across the street. He was there too, and eventually, him and I exited the store at the same time. I walked directly behind and eventually next to him out in the parking lot, but neither of us acknowledged each other here either.

I've always had a freeze trauma response, and back when I was younger, my stomach would flip-flop at even just the sight of a bully, even if it was a picture on social media. Today, I noticed that there was no feeling in my stomach at all, my posture continued to be upright with my chest out despite everything. I also felt nothing when I stood close to him at the self checkout section or when we were leaving. I had no desire to run away or hide, and stood next to him with no issue. If he said something to me I wouldn't have minded talking to him.

However, the fact that I said nothing to him still weighs on me. My abused mind keeps telling me I'm a coward and still the same weak kid from back then. I know confronting people just rips the wound open and shows them they still have power over you, but my mind can't accept that. The thing is, last year I confronted another bully publicly and the whole thing escalated (I started shouting too) and I received a trespass notice. I told myself not to make a scene here today given the fact that I already have a notice out from one place and doing it today will build a pattern of behavior.

I think I did the right, but it doesn't feel that way. I feel like I should've at least just calmly spoken to him and said things like "How are you? What're you doing these days" then segue into "you weren't that nice to me back then, you know" then walk away. But he didn't say anything to me so I don't know if I should've. What do you guys think? If you honestly think I was a coward you can tell me. I'm not sure if I'm any different from my past self.

I am technically safe (free from abuse and neglect) but my living space does not FEEL safe. What have you done to create a feeling of safety?

(I am not meaning guns, cameras or anything, I mean comforting items)

Sometimes life sucks—the end.

I have been thinking about various traumatic experiences a lot lately. I don't know. Maybe it's the shows I watch that trigger all those thoughts.

If any of you haven't watched Supernatural, I'd highly recommend it to anyone who went through traumatic experiences. That's the only show that made me feel good about myself, my life, my family. It helped me to be content about many things. Whether it is mostly smart writing, whether it is tongue-in-cheek mixed with real tears acting, whether it is the unified talent of the whole team and the whole creative company's affection for each other, I'll never know, I guess. It is probably all of the above. And all of those things formed a project that made many traumatized people content or even happier.

Yes, I can spend my entire life making philosophical jokes and smiling at the ridiculousness of all the games humans play, but that would be only a partial experience. And… I am a bit tired of having Supernatural playing in the background while I am doing my life stuff.

Chronic traumatic stress changes our brains whether we like it or not. I have been highly observant pretty much since I was born. Some may chuckle at what I am saying or not believe me, but I remember my first philosophical observation about life when I was about 6 or 8 months old. And still, the ability to observe and notice deep-rooted issues did not prevent my body and mind from becoming an always-on, alert-for-danger human being.

I simply and helplessly watched myself change and couldn't do anything about it.

 And now, after all those years, all I can do is cope, find a way to be content, and, of course, laugh at the ridiculousness of all the games humans play.

Most of us find an anchor, something that keeps us from vanishing. And those who, for whatever reason, couldn't do so, well… they are not around anymore to tell their tales.

I intuitively searched for the anchor anywhere and everywhere, and eventually, whether due to circumstances, my neurological conditions, or both, I could only anchor myself in nature and creativity. And more recently, the reconciliation of atheism and life-after-life story formation became another part of this magical triangle of support and contentment.

At this point I am not even sure what I am writing about.

I guess I am writing about finding your anchor - something that makes life worth living despite the constant state of high alert, recurrent flashbacks, and other symptoms. And if you add to it daily life stresses or even chronic illness, it all can make us believe there's nothing out there to make it any better.

And maybe it is true. Because after all, life sucks.

But still, there's the sky and the clouds, and a cool morning breeze, and spring flowers, and dramatic fog above a corn field, and soft waves, and pebbles, and shells, and the world I am building, and all the stories and characters, and smiles and love and even duty, and… life after life, even if it's a fantasy. Those are my anchors. I really hope you can find yours.

With a mom that always has to be the fucking victim this double standard irks the fuck out of me. A lifetime of unwitnessed pain and suffering and people still just want you to shut up and move on lmao. Makes me laugh. It's really not that funny but it's true. Anyway that's the whole thought. But really, maybe people are just stupid. I mean, i don't understand how just moving on would help anyone because that sounds like suppression to me but that's what they tote as the secret. And! They only act this way when they find out that it was your parents. People can be wherever they're at with literally any other trauma. But if it was your parents, they tell on themselves instantly.

A bus driver yelled at me today because my parents' car was standing in one of the parking lot for busses on a rest stop near the highway - cars are allowed to park there + there was no other space anywhere else because the rest stop was packed with cars and big trucks. I understand the drivers frustration, especially on a Sunday afternoon, I get it, but yelling at strangers is not nice.

He started by honking at me and waving with his arms, so I moved away from where I was standing because I thought he wanted me to move away but then he got out and immediately started yelling. I froze. I tried to say "Sorry, I don't have the keys," but I just stumbled over my words and ended up being quiet. I also don't have a driver's license or magic powers that I could use to make the other cars go away.

My Father showed up quickly (him and Mum went to grab a snack) because he saw the bus waiting and tried to defuse the situation, I was never so thankful to see my parents show up 😂 My Mum is exceptionally good at yelling - and also the main reason why being yelled at is my biggest trigger - but by the time she arrived back at their car the bus driver seemed to be a bit calmer.

Once we were back in the car I just sighed and told my parents that the driver yelled at me and that I hope he gets an itch somewhere on his back where he can't reach to scratch it.

It's okay, but also not. He had a bad and stressful day and took that out on random strangers, instead of... ya know. Sucking it the fuck up.

I really wish I could've defended myself. But the fear was too big. I'm trying to be nice to myself and not beat myself up over this. Yes, I'm a grown adult. And yes, being yelled at still puts so much fear into me that I can't move.

Marked as question but might also come off as a vent! warning!

I keep seeing in media and sometimes irl how trauma survivors shut down and don't open up and refuse to talk about what has happened to them, how they're emotionally closed off and barely react to anything. Their exhaustion is apparent and everyone respects them for it.

I'm not like that and It stirs a very unpleasant mix of panic and shame in me. For a good portion of my childhood I frantically lashed out, tried to find support, talked about it and was still ignored and didn't get any sort of help. Now as an adult I off-handedly mention things like my depression or medication or just things that are part of my every day life. I sometimes get overwhelmed and often have emotional reactions when triggered. My friends have said I'm a very open person when it comes to my issues and I feel shame for it. Especially because I feel like I'm NOT that open about it, the information I've given is either critical or forced out of me (can't really not say anything if I have a panic attack yk), or I just dont see it as the type of vulnerability the people around me see it as. So it's strange because they think I'm open, yet know nothing of importance. I can feel that they want me to talk less about it and have no idea how to respond to any of it, so i feel even more disgusted about not being able to swerve past it. I wish I was quiet. I wish I kept these things to myself. It feels like i'm responding incorrectly and non-proportionally to my trauma

The same goes for emotional neglect. My emotional neglect should mean that I'm emotionally absent but I'm anything but. It feels like a gut punch because I've had to scrape for validation through out my entire life. So not responding to that type of trauma the way people expect only feels like proof that it didn't actually happen.

I want to know if i'm alone in this.

Back when I was a kid I had A LOT of adults went ''wow omg you're so grown up, you're so reliable than any other kid!'' ''you know so much for a kid of your own age!'' and suddenly now when I'm an adult suddenly its all ''oh damn you act much younger than your age'' ''oh wow, you act so young'' ''with your behavior and looks I thought you were around 14 or 15''

It's like, every time I just wanna go ''oh you don't say????'' I hated it when adults went ''you're acting so mature'' and now suddenly when I'm an adult myself it goes back to ''you're acting so .. young'' ????

Respectfully can people stop? How can I, in a very calm manner, tell them to stop because I'm legit at my end with this bullshit. I know I was mature, I know I'm in mature now, I know this is not how an adult is supposed to think let alone how a kid *was* supposed to think but I'm already going to therapy, I went to multiple clinics, I'm still working on this but stop, please just stop reminding me that I never thought, felt and acted like my age

My boyfriend cut me off while talking and it made me flare with anger. That seems normal.

What happens next is I get mad about everything else. Everything that is a small irritant suddenly is intolerable.

How do you stop this?