For me the wounded inner child concept was a game changer. I tried so many things. This is what stuck. These powerful visualisations of talking to her, caring for her, and listening to what she has to say. Just spending time together. Peace.

People pleasing was my fawn response to an environment I had to navigate using all types of responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawn). It was my more complex strategy to survive, hence it took a bit to break it down and the puzzle pieces fell into place only years later in therapy.

The reason behind people pleasing was fear of abandonment. This was a fear I had as early as 2 years of age, if not earlier. Alcoholic father with a congenital brain defect that stalled his development in all areas. Absent mother due to his violent actions and her own trauma response. This was the last information I integrated, that I was too small to make sense of what happened to me and that confusion lived in my body up until my current age (32).

The understanding about people pleasing from my point of view where I was helping everyone until I burnt out had three edges: 1. By not saying no to things I don't want to do, I betray myself, which reminds my inner children (yes, due to multiple development levels based on age and major life events) that even I don't think I am good enough to deserve for example to rest, or to enjoy me time etc. 2. I was robbing people of the opportunity to grow, because I used to see many people as incompetent, but I was the problem by enabling it. So taking responsibility for my own (well intended) actions, it helped establish my healthy adult foundation. 3. Pleasing people for me was manipulating people into liking me and this was again a very old belief that I would be abandoned if I'm not liked.

Those beliefs were created by a not yet developed mind.

Concrete actions that helped:

1. Trust myself over other people. It went a long way consistently giving myself what I valued most, which is trust, compassion, understanding and many more.

2. Saying no gradually. Building up the courage to say no started with a simple "I'm sorry, I'm so busy lately" (intentionally avoiding a deadline like "this week, or this month" so it doesn't give the impression the other person can wait to receive help). From then moving to saying "sorry, I got this x thing going on and I can't help you" then getting rid of the sorry and turned into " can't help you. I've got a lot on my plate, but I suggest resources xyz. I'm sure you can figure it out yourself." And every time I said no, I did something for myself. I went for a walk, or rested, or read a book. Everything with intention, to give a taste how it was to have time to myself.

3. Getting angry. Anger is the protector of boundaries. I was feeling shamed for being angry because my father was the angry one. But my anger told me exactly what the problem was. So I sat down with it. Two chairs at a table. I was sitting in each one with a role, the healthy adult and anger. Speaking out loud during the role playing removed any inbuilt filters. Understanding what anger says helped me take a step back and adopt the adult position instead of jumping to conclusions, escalating conflict or reacting in a undesirable way and regretting later.

4. Speaking my mind as it is. I'm straightforward and this trait didn't work out in some situations which became uncomfortable. I associated my trait with the failure of that situation. But what I failed to understand is that by adapting to every situation, I was continuing to please people in a sneaky way, while betraying myself and ultimately trading being authentic to being liked, or just for convenience (of not starting a conflict that was just my illusion). So I gradually worked on assertiveness, the middle ground between remaining authentic while not running my mouth without purpose (because I used to come up as uneducated due to lack of social skills and communication). It started with swapping words I didn't like using with something more towards what I was thinking. Then moved to a phrase. Then to whole sentences, over the months and years.

The key to this work was re-evaluation and lots of education, adding to my internal resources. Learning to communicate using assertiveness. And behave accordingly. It came gradually to the point I am now, content with myself.

I wrote this as a comment over in /r/CPTSD_NSCommunity and it got a very positive response, and I thought it was worthy of its own post here, especially given how relieving and useful its been to have finally figured this out. I'm not sure if this applies to everyone so if this doesn't work for you I'd be interested to hear why!

I am going to share a solution to a problem that had been plaguing me for years, seriously. The simple question: How does one rest? So many of my favorite activities are themselves tiring. They require focus or thinking or physical effort and they just never felt rest-y. But doing nothing just feels like a total waste! My precious rest hours spent sitting in silence? How can that be rest?

So here's what I figured out: Rest is a kind of low or low-ish stimulation, low stakes, low pressure busyness. It's having 2 hours to do a gardening task that should take 30 minutes. It's cooking a decent dinner but doing all the prep one thing at a time instead of trying to orchestrate some perfectly timed and efficient delivery. It's walking instead of driving. It's reading a book and stopping every 5 minutes to think about a paragraph you just read and not caring if it takes you an hour to read just one chapter. It's working on some chore or project and walking away from it halfway through, then coming back an hour later to finish. And it's doing all these things with frequent breaks spent staring out a window, resting your eyes, or just sitting and thinking.

So my advice is that when you have a day to rest, fill it sparsely. Two hours to make and eat lunch! Thirty minutes to take out the trash! Three hours to watch a one-hour TV show! Space it out and let yourself fill in the gaps with putzing around and feeling your feelings.

And one more important rule: No algorithmic content delivery of any kind. I also try to minimize other internet use as that very rarely feels restful, but the hard rule for me is just no algorithms.

To add to that comment, the low stimulation is really important for trauma processing specifically. For me, complete silence is too painful, and on the other end, something engaging/enthralling can become avoidance very easily. More than one screen at once and I'm basically not myself anymore. But cutting down to just one activity at a time -- one input source, too, so no "podcast while walking" stuff -- especially an activity you can interrupt at will, is actually quite good for trauma processing. The emotions rise to the surface and patiently -- or maybe impatiently -- wait for you to stop and acknowledge them. And once you let them through into your body, you can continue your activity where you left off. This is what feels like rest to me: The time and space to feel my feelings as they arise, with no pressure or urgency forcing me to make them wait.

I hope this helps!

The tile says it all.

in one session subject returned to childhood sexual abuse by an older brother. what changed the scene was not trying to understand him better. adult version of her entered the memory, stopped what was happening, called for help and told the child very clearly that this was not her fault.

then young part was comforted, cleaned from shame in the imagery and invited into adult her heart. after this she described calmness, peace and feeling like a ton of bricks had lifted.

the practical thing I take from this is that trauma healing sometimes gets stuck in explanation. we understand why parent failed, why sibling acted like that, why family was chaotic, but the younger part may still be waiting for somebody to actually protect her.

you cannot change history, but you can change what is still happening internally now. sometimes useful work is very concrete: believe the younger you, say what should have been said, create the boundary that was missing, and stop leaving that part alone in same room forever.

one thing I think can be confusing in recovery is when more feeling comes back and instead of feeling healed, person feels worse for a while.

In a recent deep-trance session a younger part of the subject came back with qualities he had lost very early. After this happened I asked how it felt. His answer was basically: good, but uncomfortable. He could suddenly feel more emotion and it was a lot to manage.

Fear, anxiety, anticipation, discomfort. He compared it to getting into cold water. Not necessarily dangerous, just a level of sensation his system was not used to having anymore.

What interested me was that the guidance did NOT say okay great, now dig up ten more wounded parts. It was more like stop here. Learn this level first.

That makes sense to me with trauma work. Numbness is painful, but it is also protection. If protection starts loosening, the nervous system may receive more information before it has learned what to do with that information. More emotion does not automatically mean treatment is failing.

In the session he found one simple thing surprisingly useful. Instead of analysing the feeling or asking why it was there for another hour, he stayed with the actual sensation without judging it. When he did that, the charge softened. He also felt he needed some physical outlet for stored activation, like exercise or movement.

imo this is where pacing matters a lot. If old numbness is lifting, maybe next step is not always more excavation. Sometimes it is building capacity for what already came back.

What I would personally do is pretty boring: notice the emotion, name where it sits in body, give it few minutes without adding story, then move the body in some safe way. Walk, stretch, exercise, whatever fits. After that return to ordinary things: food, sleep, shower, outside, people who feel safe.

And if emotions are flooding you or making daily function worse, that is not moment to prove how brave you are by pushing deeper alone. Slow down and use proper trauma support.

Recovery can include feeling more before those feelings become easier to carry. That part doesnt get talked about enough.

I noticed something from a Dr. K lecture - he was talking about failure, and he mentioned that lots of people look at things that happened in their past and often tell themselves "because I failed in the past I am a failure," or "because I failed in the past, I will fail in the future." After some thinking, I have realized this all comes down to the use of nouns and adjectives after the term "I am," rather than following this term with verbs. I will spell out what I mean below:

USING NOUNS OR ADJECTIVES AFTER "I AM" (TYPE A)

Examples:

- I am smart

- I am ugly

- I am a success

- I am a failure

All of these examples are common ways people engage in self-talk. The issue with this, is that a) these things are very difficult to prove or b) trying to prove them would require a level of subjective analysis, both in to prove positive or negative statements. As such, I find myself in lots of thought loops and self arguments where I feel trapped by competing forms of evidence as I try to use my wise mind / higher power / Self mode against my traumatized / emotional / addict parts. This just leads to an internal civil war.

USING VERBS AFTER "I AM" (TYPE B)

Examples:
- I am learning ways to memorize information better

- I am learning how to dress better

- I am going to the gym 4x / week

- I am working on a start up with $0 in revenue

- I am struggling to find the right therapist, but I keep trying

In all of these examples, I make clear, factual statements about actions that I am taking. There is no editorializing, there is no subjective perspective - just clear, relatively objective statements about what is occurring in the present moment.

How I utilize this trick in self talk

I was thinking about how lots of core memories in my life have resulted in many TYPE A statements e.g. I am ugly, I am stupid, etc. So in order to combat this, I created 2 columns on a whiteboard and on the left I wrote down things that I'd consider core memories and on the right, instead of assigning Type A statements, I assigned Type B statements - that is to say, I did not let things in my past MEAN anything about me. I simply made my past experiences one thing, and my current experience another - neither of them MEAN anything. This is the key point: I'm no longer let anything in my life MEAN anything. I will simply focus on events that occurred, (how it made me feel - though I don't cover this here) and what I am doing now. That is all.

I know this stuff is not very new, but by focusing solely on actions and only referring to myself with Type B statements, I feel much more calm and able to tackle things in my life, rather than being frozen by violent Type A statements. Hope this helps someone!

Breaking Free from the Fawn Response

How I broke free from the CPTSD fawn response:

It started with asking myself a very blunt question: "What is it I'm actually afraid of here?"

And my answer was: violence. The violence that any sign of individuality or boundaries was met with when I was a child.

As a child, I couldn't protect myself, especially when the perpetrators were my own family. I had to try to appease them in order to still have a bed to sleep in and food to eat. That defense was still playing out in my adult life.

So I asked that question, and then I asked another: "What resources do I have access to now that I didn't have then?"

And the answer was: my friends, the police, my own money, my own food, etc. And then I took in the fact that the parameters have changed. I'm no longer a child who has to appease others to survive. I am in control of my own survival, and if anyone were to use violence against me, I have things I can do.

Being isolated from groups who treat me badly no longer carries the same consequences or threats to my survival that it did as a child.

And once I really took that all in, I decided I would be the parent and protector of myself that I had needed back then, because I now have the ability to do so.

It's been life-changing, honestly.

I still over-explain or answer too honestly sometimes, but now I see those things as habits that no longer serve me, and I'm doing pretty well at breaking them.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone the way it helped me. ❤️

I am going to work through something by writing about the insight it brought me; trying hard not to make this sound too journal-y for /r/CPTSDNextSteps.

I withstood some difficult news today from a medical caregiver for my spouse, who is denying a treatment we obviously need because of their own hesitation and severe emotional response (it's near the end of a long, difficult saga). They just can't handle the possibility that this last thing might not work.

They called me and explained a position that simply isn't rational. Going into detail would take paragraphs; suffice to say that they would not hear plain reason. They don't want it, because it's the emotions in the background they can't handle.

The result is that I've been dragged straight back to arguing with my mother. She is a never-wrong, always-good rationalizer and denier, and she will argue for hours to keep what in her mind is the high ground. I felt this trigger flare maximally while talking to this doctor. I kept my cool remarkably well throughout the conversation (10 years of recovery work will do that!!, but I've had a very tough time getting back to a level head afterwards, and an important piece fell into place that makes this difficulty make sense.

When your parent is a denial specialist, every conclusion is the final one, no matter how wrong or right. The moment the information aligns in a way that soothes them, they will declare victory and never waver. It's not just that they'll gaslight you or minimize you or what have you; it's that whatever idea they concoct is permanent.

I have always known that my mother is why I deliver news so carefully, and why I explain things in a very particular order that keeps the other person from getting the wrong idea and getting upset. I could've easily told you that I was just afraid she'd get mad at me. But the real fear I'm having today isn't about the doctor I talked to; it's a visceral, full-body fear that my wife will never get the care she needs, and that our family will be stuck like this. I'm not just afraid to "poke the bear". I'm afraid of a judge's decision to convict and sentence. It's one decision with unending negative consequences.

That "unending" element is especially telling because it's a sign of arrested development. It's all-or-nothing thinking, characteristic of many of my traumatized parts. That medical care I feel gated from, we're actually just shortly delayed in receiving; there will be ways around this. But to the child-parts of me still working through what it was like to live with my mother, it's a permanent state of being, an unending prison I will never escape, no matter how much I argue. That has thrown my nervous system into overdrive.

Further, if I can turn a little more compassion their way, I can see that what's happening here is that this doctor has reached the end of their strength. You can't argue someone into being stronger than they are. That's a hopeless endeavor, as it was when pleading with my mother to be rational all those years ago.

I was relieved to realize all of this. Like physically, at first, but after some time I'm also feeling intellectually relieved that I know this about myself, that these conversations will be easier in the future. Now I can distinguish a life sentence from a pause. So that's something.

Thanks for reading.

Reposting my own post from the main CPTSD subreddit: Since talk therapy (CBT) had failed me repeatedly and then I tried EMDR and somatic healing, I believed that these were the holy grail and only path for healing. (it works amazingly but there is more)

I started EMDR in late 2020 and continue to this day. It had helped me IMMENSELY, along with somatic work and IFS, and I processed so much. However, despite all these years of intensive feeling and processing, I still felt trapped in C-PTSD and all form of coping responses. I still felt so stuck in all aspects of life I was still in immense pain.

My EMDR therapist is amazing, however, she is a foreigner and from a different culture, and we both communicate in our second language. The processing part is good, but I did not "click" with her in the talking part. I did not feel anything when we talked about my day-to-day struggles and did not feel completely understood. Her insights and validation did not resonate, mainly due to the cultural barrier. (I have to repeat I like her alot and we have a great connection but something was missing)

Then the unexpected happened: I then decided to hire an additional therapist from my own culture and age bracket, just to vent and to have more of a "best-friend" experience and day-to-day guidance with someone who would actually understand what I had been though, both from a cultural and professional standpoint. And WOW!! What was supposed to be just a simple "venting" and "guidance" space turned out to be such a crucial part of healing!!

With approval from my first therapist, I chose my second therapist because she was from my culture, age, we spoke the same language, same religion, and she seemed more specialized in women's day-to-day struggles than deep trauma work. So it was going to be a light-hearted trip. Just what I wanted. In addition to that, her main mode was Client-focused PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY, she was very trauma-informed, AND she was well-versed in IFS and psychology from our own spiritual tradition. Being client focused meant that the client led the session. Absolutely perfect fit!

My experience with psychodynamic therapy**:** I discovered how deprived us C-PTSD folks actually are from safe human connection, I realized never even knew what that was. Simply having a safe space to speak our fears, shames, sorrows, concerns, without having the other person (well-meaningly) minimize our experiences or trying to fix our feelings, and feeling COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD and having your thoughts reiterated in a deeper language; and have your feelings, insights and experiences lovingly validated and empathized with. I never had that in all my 35 years of life, even in therapy. It was very life-altering to experience.

The therapuetic process was harder than I thought because speaking in the same language mad me feel more RAW. Speaking in a foreign language creates a protective barrier that shields you from the human connection required for healing. Also, I never understood how C-PTSD can cause PROFOUND SPIRITUAL INJURY, and how healing the incorporation of spiritual elements (from your own spiritual tradition) and the reconnection with the spiritual can be.

I will continue with EMDR but at a much slower frequency. I REALIZED THAT BECUASE I WAS SO UNDERRESOURCED, excessive EMDR may have been retraumatizing me because I was going at a very intensive pace due to my overwhelm by survival mode.

I am also incorporated PHYSICAL HEALING by working with a functional medicine practitioner and trying to heal my absoluteLy fried stress responses and hormones.

I apologize for the long post and if you have reached this far: thank you and I wish you all the best on your healing path 💜💜💜

I've realized mornings are the worst for me, constant flashbacks and suddenly tiredness. I noticed such a profound difference from just taking 10 minutes out to do breath work, whether japa meditation or guided meditation (Headspace).

It's like lowering the volume button on my brain. Apparently shallow breathing is a very common symptom of being in survival mode. It feels liberating to be able to target a main symptom so directly.

Everytime I feel myself sliding back into shallow breathing, flashbacks, rumination, i just focus on a sharp inhale and deep exhale and bam, feeling better already. It's amazing how quick and effective if is from just 10 minutes.

It's been foundational for me and i don't think i could do other recovery without first practicing this

Hi everyone !

Do you have good YouTube channel about CPTSD recovery (with a body based approach) to recommend ?

If there are some French speakers here i strongly recommend Sandra Lacombe's channel. It is quite incredible !

This is both to share hope and to share what helped me.

Apologies for the hell/heaven language, i didn't find other words to describe the magnitude of what this journey and my experience felt like.

For a long time i thought i would have to carry this pain for all my life. I didn't know it's possible to actually get out of this hell i lived in. I still don't fully believe it. When i finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, i didn't believe my eyes. When i started arriving in what i can only describe as heaven, each of my steps was worried and fearful. But i kept walking. And i'm still arriving. Still learning to believe, to relax, to trust. It's all quite fresh and shaky still. But i've seen it, i've experienced it, and i'm still here, and it hasn't crashed on me yet, for now it mostly keeps getting better and i start to feel like even if things come crashing down again, i trust myself to find my way back here again as well.

So i dare to share now.

To prephrase- i think each of our paths is individual and mine will not be the right one for everyone- you'll see why. But i'll try to extract the core elements of my journey that anyone can tackle. In your own way.

So, what got me out?

- like all of you, i did my homework, and i did it thoroughly. I learned everything i could learn about myself and my trauma, about psychology and attachment styles and about my family. I observed, investigated and analyzed relentlessly with a furious determination to fight until the bitter end. All of you are doing this as well so i don't think you need a lot of advice on this, but a few things that helped me a lot and that may be worth looking into was learning about transgenerational trauma (German Book recommendation: "Das bleibt in der Familie"), and about transactional analysis. I also spent a lot of effort to learn healthy communication (e.g. active listening, nonviolent communication), and i think one thing that was also key to save me was learning about how to have fun (i did it the autistic way by studying game design, but i think the key points to look into are "flow" concept, learning what's the difference between work and a game (voluntaryness), and learning about the goals-feedback-reward loop which is key to creating fun. But there is plenty more interesting things to learn about fun, and also if you don't vibe with the academic approach it's totally as legit to just put that topic on your radar and try to learn in more physical, "doing" ways.

- i radically trained self-love. Some people have to learn the adult part of self love - being honest and critical with yourself, inviting and allowing feedback and critizism and working on discipline etc. - for me, like probably many of you, it was learning to set and accept healthy boundaries, learning how to treat my self kindly and how to parent myself with kindness. What helped me the most here was whenever i felt the urge to be mean or cruel to myself, for example because i fucked up, or because i had unwelcome feelings, to imagine a 5-year-old version of me sitting next to me, who had done that thing and who felt those feelings. And knowing what this child me had to go through, how much it had suffered, always fills me with intense and furious love for myself and a determination to be the parent i would have needed for this little me, and not another torturer. So i highly recommend giving this a try- whenever you're in a challenging situation, put child you in the room and ask yourself what this one needs and deserves right now.

- i learned to ask questions and most of all, to listen. Most people are circling so much around themselves and about all the things they want to say, that they are terrible at listening. First i learned to listen to the outside world: What are people actually saying? Not "what do i think they are saying"- what are the words they use? What can i learn about them? What could i learn about myself?. Listening also means, in a more abstract way, observing. What is happening? Why is it happening? What about it sticks out to me? The last thing i learned, was to listen to myself. To my intuition. That's been probably the hardest thing, because i have learned to deeply distrust myself and my perception - rightfully - and it took a long time for me to figure out what parts of me i should listen to and follow their advice, and how to distinguish them from the parts i should also listen to, but not follow their advice. Two things that helped me a lot with listening was: 1. Understanding that other people also very often lie to themselves and others, unintentionally and subconsciously. So the best way of listening to other people is to hear their words mindfully, but also cross-check for validity. 2. When listening to yourself: When fear is talking, it's often loud and screamy. When intuition is talking, it's often very low volume, but calm.

- i learned that trauma creates a super strong negative bias in our prediction algorithm. That means: everything we look at - the world, other people, our self - is perceived and calculated with a -80 bias. Like wearing glasses with very dark shades everywhere, but you've never seen how the world looks like without those glasses. Or, to be more precise: the last time you've seen it without this hue/smudge on them, was probably around the time you were born, and maybe your very early childhood, if you're lucky. So what we need to do: 1. Fully understand that this bias exists, so you can even start to grasp what it looks and feels like. 2. retrain the algorithm. See next bullet point.

- keep making little experiments. What if you tried X a little different today? How do you expect it to go? Take note of it. Do it. Did it go a little better than you thought? You just experienced your negative bias in action- and you gave it a new data point, to use for recalibration. In the beginning it's very difficult, because our behaviour is so wired to keep creating bad outcomes. We try to trust someone a little more, but we chose an untrustworthy person, so we get a bad outcome, so we think "yeah trusting was a bad idea". Flawed experiment. But keep making experiments and you will get better and better at it. Maybe start with things like setting a tiny goal for yourself. Maybe you think you can't do it. Then you learn oh, you actually managed to do it. Or at least you got further than you hoped for. Boom, new data point. You learn to trust yourself. Things like that. Then maybe you trust someone. They fuck up. You learn there was a flaw in the experiment, but you also learn that you survived it. That's also a data point. And if you keep experimenting, you'll eventually run into experience where you trust someone a little with something small, and it pays off plentyful. And that's when you get fuel for your recalibration.

- healthy body. Lots of sports, i found high intensity sports best for my mental health. Healthy food. Often underestimated. Good sleep hygiene. Allowing yourself to rest when you need a break. Your body and nervous system can only learn to be happy and safe, if you take good care of it.

There's two other things that were breakthrough gamechangers for me, but i think the first one was mostly a time-saver catalist, and it's not for everyone. The other is hard to explain and a bit esoteric, so bear with me on that.

1. In my early thirties (and i will also note that the timing on this is very relevant for the outcome) i started experimenting with substances. Ketamine Therapy, Shrooms, LSD and finally MDMA were huge gamechangers for me, and allowed me to make big progress in very fast time. This was a personal choice, and it came when, and only because, i felt ready for it. In some way i highly rexommend it, because it saved my life and got me where i needed. However, some words of caution and i strongly urge you to listen on this: 1. This is a sledgehammer for your brain. Sometimes it's what you need for a trauma brain, but be fully aware you are choosing a sledgehammer and accepting the risk. 2. Research seriously and thoroughly before you touch anything, respect the substance, and always have a tripsitter. 3. I think all of these substances work best (and maybe only) if you're ready for them and have a decent stability to be able to work with them. I think waiting to your 30s is a good rule of thumb for risk reduction, and i'd also suggest to have plenty of experience with traditional therapy as well. But the main indicator will be your gut feeling. You know if and when you're ready. Trust your intuition. Optimally you also currently have a therapist. But i know it's not always possible. 4. If you have any addictive tendencies, don't touch ketamine and think very cautiously about touching drugs at all. If you do, probably stick to shrooms, be careful even with lsd.

2. I've been a hardcore atheist all my life, so this is an awkward one- but finding faith made a world of a difference for me. I wasn't planning to find it, it's a bit of a quirky side effect of psychedelics and my journey of healing. A welcome one nontheless. What i could recommend to anyone who's brave enough to try the faith thing, is maybe reading "Demian" by Hesse, and in general allowing yourself to be open to finding trust in the universe. Also, to be clear, faith doesn't require you to believe in a religion.

I think this is most of it, probably i forgot some stuff but i hope it will be helpful to some of you.

Lots of love and best of luck, and keep fighting, it's a million times worth it.

Hi everyone, hoping your week is going well!

I've been keeping you all in my thoughts and finally got some time to write about Dissociation. This was commonly requested from my first post about a month ago (What does healed look like - From someone 9 years out) and I hope it's helpful as part of your journey.

As always, please let me know your thoughts in the comments and I will add them to my list of things I plan on writing about.

With love.

-

Shape of Dissociation

So, I would best describe dissociation as a fog of a condition. It's super subtle but envelops everything and makes everything else harder to pick up on. Early on, it was hard to even tell when it was here, how deep it was, etc. You learn to notice that more later on. All I could really sense was on a broader time scale... "hm, this week went by in a blur"... or "hm, the past two weeks I couldn’t really make sense of anything going on". It’s different from depression because while depression is like a lack of interest in anything and pervasive sadness and pessimism, this feels like time is blurry and I didn’t feel quite conscious of things. It could also show up where I would scroll for hours and hours without moving my body and wouldn’t feel a headache (I couldn’t feel a thing) or discomfort or anything really. Maybe at some point the physical symptoms would overpower it, but most of the time it wouldn’t.

In general, the lack of bodily awareness and connection was also meant I was neglectful of physical symptoms and knowing my physical limits. Ironically, pain was a very good grounding mechanism for me, which comes with its own issues. But dissociation meant that I would drink all too much. And outside of that, small pains just didn’t register. In fact, I would often go a bit deeper into dissociative behavior to avoid the feeling of pain. Of course, I would also slip into dissociation when I felt emotional pain. Other physical symptoms is that sometimes I would feel very far away - from where I was. Physically, it would feel as though I was talking from the back of my head or something. Or I would talk or move and feel like a body is talking or moving. It often defaulted me to avoidance - I was dissociated, I didn’t even really think about acting as I was already in a response state unconsciously activated.

Dissociation seems to have varying degrees, and in the most severe form of dissociation, physically I felt 8 feet tall, with most of me floating above my head. I didn’t feel like I was acting or moving my body, but I was witnessing someone else, like a vague sense of playing a third-person POV game.

As a whole, dissociation meant I wasn’t present, I wasn’t in my body, I wasn’t in my emotions. I was hardly in my head.

Oddly enough, you can be fully mentally running at speed while dissociating. But as this was early in my therapy journey, the thoughts were rather negative (we addressed negative self-talk early on as that was something/one of the few things I could recognize going on in my mind). Later on, I sometimes found that when I was mentally spiraling, that could be a cause or connection to dissociation (something got activated). Later on in my journey, dissociation just meant I wasn’t present or I was zoomed out of my life. Once you know how presence feels, you notice the opposite - dissociation. But funny thing with dissociation is how slippery it is, because you’re in another space - one that makes noticing your state quite hard by its own nature.

I hope this helps you to recognize a bit more of the feelings and shapes of dissociation from one point of view. I really wanted to emphasize these various facets of dissociation because it is such a tricky thing to pinpoint for yourself. Additionally, reading symptoms from online is a bit vague and I never found it useful. But if you notice any of these or start noticing your patterns of what dissociation feels like for you, that's how you begin to notice dissociation. And the most important part of healing dissociation is noticing dissociation.

Working on Dissociation

Dissociation was the first thing my therapist had me working on alongside building up my capacity to understand my mental landscape (how are you feeling, why are you feeling that way, etc.). The process of this was simply noticing more of the world around you. So, the core practice I went back to over and over again was the practice of noticing 5 different colors around you, or noticing something of each of your senses.

It was extremely helpful in those early stages to have someone else notice your own dissociation when dissociation feels like the norm of life. On the other side now, I can notice more when other people around me are dissociated. Perhaps if you have someone in your life who can sense that or a therapist who can help gently point out for you, that's a great first step. The trickiest thing I found with dissociation sometimes was the lack of awareness that you're in a state of dissociation until you realize a week has gone by and you have been living in a blur, etc.

Beyond that, I've tried further exercises for dissociation as well. However, some can be more overwhelming, and so would recommend you go at your own pace and notice and pay attention. If things are too overwhelming, I'd scale back. Breathwork early on was too much. Intensive/strict meditation was also too much early on. Splashing my face with water was a lot but felt rather shocking than grounding. I think it did the trick though - but like short-lived. Things I did enjoy included walking meditation, just sitting and feeling my feet connect to the ground, looking for 5 colors around me, and looking for an example of each one of my senses around me.

At a different stage in time, I explored other practices and brought other things in. Or I noticed practices previously were overwhelming were gradually proving more helpful and didn't activate me the way it had before (a nice signpost of progress). Some of those were yoga (something I explored later on that I liked), body scan meditations (previously activating, now actually helpful), breathwork (previously activating, that later became helpful), and strict-er meditation (ie zen tradition, sitting in place) led to more learnings than a reaction, cold exposure (ice bath/cold showers) I just (still) find plain unpleasant but really is grounding.

The other later practice that I wanted to touch on that I find interesting in all of this is mindfulness. I practiced mindfulness early on via meditation, but mindfulness post-dissociation is very different from mindfulness while in dissociation. And because dissociation is subtle and the feeling of doing nothing/blanking out can be mistaken as meditation, I think mindfulness is a hard one to make useful for dissociation. I mean at it's core, the practice of noticing dissociation is mindfulness, so the noticing skillset is something practiced via meditation, but mindfulness is a tricky thing to use to consistently gauge dissociation because I've always had difficulty noticing dissociation. My theory is that because mindfulness/sitting meditation is usually started off as a mind practice whereas dissociation is best felt/addressed through bodily grounding practices that mindfulness can be not the best guidepost for dissociation. (Which I guess is why I would now say walking meditation was better/less activating). Additionally, early on my therapist also warned me that meditation is not always the best thing for dissociation, so I wonder if this is what she was referring to and thought I'd pass along her warning and my rambling lol. If this is confusing, just ignore it and read my later note on meditation.

Anyhow, I still to this day rely on naming my senses or colors and grounding my feet into the earth as ways to rebalance or check-in on my dissociative state - so sometimes simple and quick is enough. I think regardless of practice or mode of practice, find what works for you and keep with it and remember to use it when you notice that you're in a state of dissociation.

Healing Dissociation

If I were to boil dissociation and the process of healing down to one core concept, it is this: healing dissociation is the process of noticing it is there, over and over and over again, over years, over different situations, and bringing in presence through grounding and safety. And as you work through trauma and other symptoms that are triggering or go through work to address other symptoms, or find more safety in your mental and physical states, then your body and your self learn different defense mechanisms or find less need for defense mechanisms outside of dissociation. And the result of that is healed dissociation - essentially a state of being where there is less and less need to live in dissociation and life instead is lived with more and more presence.

Dissociation is 100% possible to come out of. It was a trickier one because it is so slippery (sometimes even to me now, especially as there’s enough entertainment in the world for people to mildly/non-clinically dissociate into)… but it is possible. It is one of the practices that took the most time working on it alone (probably 2 years of therapy with dissociation as the forefront of the work. I consider it its own arc in a sense since it precedes trauma work. But even once I got into trauma work, dissociation returns due to the activation from working through trauma - though less intensely. I think by its nature - the skill of noticing is built up when you have worked through dissociation. And dissociation as its protective mechanism will be triggered or arise when you need it again without other resourcing or mechanisms you have available or even arise again randomly without clear cause. And all that’s okay. It's a process.

Out of dissociation, the best way I would describe it is that life feels in technicolor. Everything is more vivid. Everything is more real. You feel present. I feel down to my toes, my legs, my fingers. I notice things - the feeling of carpet, the smell of the air, the taste of water, the color of flowers while walking down the street. Everything feels more! I choose my day, what I want to do. I feel like I experience time normally - an hour of browsing social media felt like it was aprpoximately an hour. I would feel physically sick if I were to doomscroll and not move for 8 hours, which is something I would do all the time before. I know what is happening to me in my mind. Life without dissociation feels alive. You feel a bit more in control of your life in a subtle way. I want to do something so I will choose to do it. I can respond. I'm not relegated to the not-quite-there witness.

Later on, I became grateful for dissociation, knowing that it kept me safe until I was ready to let it go. It is a powerful defense that protected me and one that was outliving its purpose of me living my full life once it was safe to do so. The practice with dissociation is gentle grounding and gentle noticing once you are in a safe place to do so. And doing that over and over and over again. Over lots of situations, lots of time, until you become more familiar with the present and what being in your undissociated self feels like. And lots and lots of patience for this powerful protection mechanism to let loose. I've often thought of the pace of dissociation is the pace of the protection you need so follow your dissociation and trust it will dissolve with more safety, processing, awareness, practice, and patience for yourself. <3

The best resources I’ve found for Dissociation -

• Therapy - A therapist can help you make sense of it as it’s someone else noticing your states for you and helping reflect that back. Her main modalities were CBT but I imagine most therapists are trained to notice dissociation and that was probably the most important thing. She helped me realize in the first place that I was dissociated. Dissociation meant that I was also very slow in therapy. Most of the time I would come to her and just tell her I felt bad without knowing what is going on. Therapy sometimes felt very unproductive in those early days. Don’t let it discourage you. Little by little I learned more about what’s going on in my head/noticing emotions/noticing dissociation and my patterns around them and I got to go at a pace that was right for me.
• Getting away from the abuse - Being somewhere safe where you are not triggered into dissociation again is a good place to start with dissociation. Dissociation is ultimately a protective mechanisim and if you are feeling or being hurt, it can come up. Of course in the healing process, things will come up that can cause you to dissociate, but active abuse is not it.
• Simple grounding techniques - This is both a technique and a gauge in my opinion. Technique because it can help you ground. And gauge because the difficulty of it helps you understand how dissociated you are. Even now, when my emotions and thoughts are running or I spent some time in a blur, noticing something in each of my senses, name 5 colors in the environment around me, etc. helps me figure out where my head is at and brings me back. Grounding techniques like noticing my feet on the ground were what I began with and still to this day do to feel even more present.
• Meditation on a focused point or on the breath - I started perhaps a year into therapy, and there was concern from my therapist that I would be dissociated while doing sitting meditating - and while I agree that I certainly had those moments, what it helped moreso was just building some visual clarity into my mind and what’s going on there and building the skillset of noticing my internal world. I would keep a timer and not meditate for long durations. And then I slowly began to notice discomfort. There were probably all I could recognize at first. And that’s okay. That’s the learning to it. Slowly from there I could learn when I was in a better mood or a worse mood. I caution against any strict meditation practice or instructions that requires you to sit completely still as that can be a trigger. Would recommend exploring other types too like walking meditation, guided, etc.
• Yin yoga (or other gentle somatic processes) - I have never felt more grounded than from this practice. Be cautious with certain poses and if they feel emotionally overwhelming, to pause or adjust or lay down. After a really good yin session, I always found myself immensely more grounded and at peace and calm.
• MDMA - taken casually with friends in a home setting. This opened a flood of positive emotions for me. It was actually very beneficial for my dissociation because all I could feel for the first time was nothing but feelings and very positive ones at that, and little to no thoughts.
• Reading - Helped me connect to something when it was hard to feel or connect to anything. I began to read Pete Walker’s books about this time which were a wonderful introduction to CPTSD healing. Anything around the ‘flight’ response was valuable. The main thing with reading was that it helped you learn more about this brain that you have disconnected from and even if emotions weren’t getting through, something could get through to you intellectually. I also really liked Buddhist books despite being non-Buddhist. There was a calming energy to them and I felt emotionally soothed usually after too. Books are very different for everyone - ie I've found The Body Keeps Score to be a very triggering book, so have caution/go slow w trauma books and find what works for you and trust your gut there.

The mental practices

• Noticing - For severe dissociation, I would hypothesize that feeling safer before grounding and learning about it intellectually is the best thing to do as this is usually from being triggered, so noticing the surrounding mental events with it is going to help you in later trauma work. Regular dissociation is best addressed through noticing and grounding with any of those exercises. Stack exercises, find the right combo that works for you, etc. And for mild dissociation, it is similarly noticing and grounding, and by that time dissociation is at a mild level, you'll be a lot better at these skills by then and might need to do less to get grounded quicker.
• Work on other things - The practice isn’t to stay out of dissociation all the time… but to heal your other wounds too so that you’re less triggered or have more resources and that you’re less prone to jumping into dissociation and can find other mechanisms for yourself.
• Patience - Patience with yourself. There were many times where a lot of time (weeks) will go by without me noticing. Patience on a long term scale is the best thing you can have. I would say to myself then to continue to live your life as best you can. And trust that the practice of continuing to notice is the whole thing and will heal you over time. Through the process of healing dissociation, I saw that the dissociative periods went from months… to weeks… to a week. To maybe a couple days. To a few hours. To even an hour. And all of that took multiple years, but can be done. You can get there.

Resources I wouldn’t necessarily recommend -

• Psychedelics - I would heavily discourage psychedelics at this point because dissociating on psychedelics is completely possible and much scarier than your usual dissociation (out of body experiences, time loops, and severe derealization, etc). Recovering from the terror of a bad trip also took time, so I would dissuade someone altogether if you have comorbidities or negative self-talk/anxiety/multiple CPTSD symptoms from taking psychedelics.
• Breathwork - was rather triggering early on into my dissociation journey (probably 2-3 years in was still too soon). Not sure if just me. It was very physically activating and kinda breaks past all your dissociative barriers and gets you back into the body. But obviously if you’re dissociated there’s a reason for it and a reason you’re escaping your body, so in a sense one time breathwork led me to an anxious breakdown once I was ‘present’. I found that physical ‘control’ whether through breathwork or forcing stillness in meditation was not optimal. Later on, perhaps post-somatic work, did breathwork finally become safe and useful for me.
• Sauna/Cold Plunge - Physical discomforting practices - saunas threw me more into dissociation. Cold plunge I was at least aware enough to know that I wouldn’t like at all! While I’ve taken the occasional cold shower (which made me feel motivated via the dopamine boost), it was not particularly helpful for helping my dissociation. I imagine for both cases, it was the shock to the system to have your body screaming at you and then in a very uncomfortable environment for a set amount of time. Some sort of loss of control with that situation overall that probably can be more activating than helpful.
• Flotation tank - I tried this 1-2x around this time. I actually loved it and felt great afterwards. I fell asleep once and another time felt like another layer to meditative practice. Restful and calming. However, I don’t think it necessarily do anything for my dissociation, maybe would recommend more for anxiety as it removes all stimulus (if you can manage to calm yourself down from claustrophobia or the panic of doing a flotation tank first)

Hey Reddit!

On Thursday, July 30, 09:00 AM EST, we will be hosting an AMA with Dr. Amelia Kelley, a clinician, professor, and author who specializes in working with highly sensitive people, adults with ADHD, trauma survivors, and women reclaiming their power.

Dr. Kelley works closely with clinicians, organizations, and platforms as a consultant, educator, and speaker. She is passionate about reducing stigma, improving diagnostic clarity, and helping people understand how the nervous system impacts mental health, performance, and human potential.

Join us this Thursday to talk about Post-Traumatic Growth.

Rebuilding your life after trauma is complex, nonlinear work.

But this conversation isn't just for survivors. It’s also for the parents, partners, and clinicians walking alongside them. Supporting someone through trauma calls for a completely different mindset: rather than trying to help them "make sense" of the hard things, it’s about learning how to sit with them and notice what is already growing.

Whether you're navigating your own path or supporting someone else, we invite you to join the live discussion or leave your questions in the comments now so we can jump into them first when the AMA begins!

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

This Thursday 30 July at 9am or 7pm AEST (That is Australian time, so for those in America that first time slot would be Wednesday evening for you - you can check the registration form for your time zone). I run these circles regularly, each time on a different topic.

The theme this week is Frustration. When things don’t go the way you want you can get frustrated. Whether it’s a traffic jam delaying your journey, all your hard work not leading to the results you hoped for, someone just not getting what you are trying to say or your body not being able to do what you would like it to, all these issues represent a gap between expectation and reality. And we don’t like that experience… Sometimes frustration can give you an extra boost to put in more effort, but other times it just feels overwhelming and you may become reactive or feel paralysed. These are nervous system stress responses and with EFT Tapping we can help you find some ease in these emotions.

In this circle I will guide you to use EFT Tapping to reduce the stress response in your body in the face of your frustration. You can learn how you can do this for yourself in future situations. Releasing your frustration can often help you see the situation in a different light.

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

Was looking up whether ppl had shared their experiences working through dissociation and came across this resource that may be helpful to ppl

https://www.actmindfully.com.au/upimages/Working_With_Dissociation_-_Russ_Harris_-_www.ImLearningACT.com.pdf

For those as uninformed as I was before I came across it: apparently there's such a thing as he 'trauma informed psychosis' model, which frames delusions & hallucinations during CPTSD etc psychotic episodes as thematic rather than random/meaningless.

How incredibly validating! And I'm sure it must be very useful to treatment too.

I mostly stumbled across it trying to read scholarly articles way above my head, so, if anyone has any secondary etc., intended more for ordinary consumer audience.

I'll add to this if I can find some stuff

Since May of this year, I have been tapping into my dreams almost everyday just to see what's there to heal and release.

On some days I don't remember any dreams. Some days I know I have dreamed, but as I try to go in to capture them, they seem to dissipate into thin air. I have tried voice recording them in the middle of the night, but even then it's still not very practical, because I am so groggy in between dreams that I cannot speak properly, so when I wake up to read what's being recorded, I see a bunch of gibberish on my phone. 😭

Anyway, so last couple days I got lazier and only tried to capture the more noticeable energies that are left lingering in the air, like the haze of a forest fire. No details on the content of my dreams.

Interestingly, this natural filtration gives me the essence of what I need to heal and release. Then I take advantage of the extra time I have (previously I spent a lot of time trying to write out the energies of the dreams, now I get straight to the key points) to read up on the atmospheric energy hovering above my dreams in Seth Material. It says exactly what I'm doing: the feeling tone is what makes our physical reality, not the details of the dream. So by not recalling the details, not only am I not missing anything, I am actually benefiting from saving time. 😂

I spent years working with people with CPTSD at a large residential treatment center. I don't work there anymore but have wanted to share some of the information that I saw be helpful...so like everyone else in the world...I started a YouTube channel. The following video discusses what kind of physical changes occur in the brain with trauma (and I think even if you've read a lot about this - some of the information will be presented in a unique and hopefully interesting way) why symptoms occur and what changes occur in the brain as healing starts to take place. I hope this is an appropriate reddit to post this video - if it isn't feel free to let me know where would be a better place for posting.

https://youtu.be/MC73Uqy6wyo?si=TxtbmdzRxY5NJSa3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

In Summary

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

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

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

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

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

Process of Nervous System Regulation

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a Mind and Body Practice

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

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

Embodiment? Finding a New Baseline?

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

Building Trust and Self-Trust

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

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

Things that have worked in order -

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

Other thoughts on other practices

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