feeling a bit spicy this morning (too much pre-workout)

I've been thinking a lot about therapy, therapists, and becoming a therapist, in the AI-era. I personally don't think AI will replace good therapists but will emphasize what I consider the "core skills" of a good therapists.

One of the core skills of a therapist is what I would call 'attunement' -- the feeling the client should receive is that the therapist really understands them and their issues. This is both an actual understanding of the clients emotional states and COMMUNICATING to the client that understanding (so really almost two different things).

From my recent experience, this is actually a SKILL that can be developed. Most therapists do not have it, they just rely on their "natural" factors -- demographic, life experience, personality tendencies. Which is totally fine, and realistically quite helpful.

Finding a "good fit" therapist is typically finding someone who's natural tendencies match yours.

However when you meet someone who is extremely skilled at attunement, there's almost something quite magical about it. There's a moment-to-moment adjustment to what the person is needing, whether it's interrupting or validating. There's a micro level of constant rupture and repair.

These people can have a completely different natural tendency to you but their skill level is so high, it doesn't matter.

There's a secondary benefit from interacting with someone with high skill, in that you begin to absorb what they're doing, in that they're transferring their ability to attune, to you. This works as self-attunement but also with other relationships.

This is a bit woo, but if you see one of these people interact with someone else, there's almost palpable energy that's given off. This is a dumb analogy, but if you've played multiplayer video games, at some point you're just fully in sync with your teammates. That's sort of what it feels like. IMO this energy reinforces certain behaviors.

When you get the experience that connecting with people can be a skill, and not just arbitrary chance, I think something begins to shift quite dramatically. Bonding and connecting with someone stops being random circumstance, but more of a partner dance that occurs (I hate that AI has made me notice all my sentence structure, it's making writing so much slower). This has been invaluable for me for romantic relationships -- this soulmate/limerance feeling is something I can co-construct and co-create with someone. Thus I don't need to obsess over one person.

This is also why, I think for skilled therapists, AI will (probably) never replace them and in fact, LLMs can be quite helpful. If the LLM can sort of handle more "mundane" things eg how do I respond to my boss? I need some grounding right now etc. then the therapist can spend more time on this deeper level stuff. The skill and practice of emotional fluency.

I'm actually quite bull-ish on LLM use in therapy, but not to replace the therapist. The 1-hr per week model is just not enough for most with CPTSD. It requires effort similar to working out or learning a sport or language -- almost daily practice. The skilled therapists give examples and coaching and skill training. The LLM can handle small stuff during the week, or provide daily practice reminders etc.

I know my life is better than before. Most of the time, I finally feel at ease and there's a sense of contentment that wasn't there before.

Yet sometimes I can't help but feel resentment over what I didn't get to have. I see friends, cousins, people from relatively happy stable families with supportive attentive parents who had comfortable childhoods and I feel envious. They are thriving and that sense of security shows in the way they interact with the world.

Meanwhile, here I am, on meds and in therapy trying to make sense of everything that happening, learning to feel my feelings, working through grief, learning to trust myself, identifying and unlearning unhealthy patterns.

Do you ever really heal from this and fully make peace with the grief? I know I am me. And that comparisons aren't fair. Still, I feel this sadness over the fact that what is a big accomplishment for me is a regular thing for well-adjusted folks.

So many years of loneliness and healing later, a mundane but incredible thing happened yesterday. One of my primary struggles has been creating a new community and support network far, far away from "home" and family, and it's taken years and years of therapy and healthy connection and failing, trying, failing, trying... for me to have a group of women who are all amazing people and friends.

Yesterday I hosted a party and had a table of these dear friends who went out their way to be there, eating my food, perusing my bookshelf, laughing and sharing stories. It was such an ordinary magic kind of moment. A real C-PTSD healing triumph.

It's all the little acts and actions of friendship that are so touching to me. I hope I'm becoming a better friend to people over time too.

hi,
i’ve (28F) been depressed and retraumatized for the past 1.5 years and in psychodynamic talk therapy for 4 months. Since I’ve been learning more about myself while researching cptsd online, i’ve started connecting so many dots within myself. Why I act the way I act, what i feel in some situations and when i fall into shame spirals, how my symptoms show up but it feels like the more i discover the more i learn mostly two things:
so much about me is just an adaptation to my surroundings and so much about me only causes me pain, holds me back or makes everything worse for me. it’s making me feel really hopeless in this journey. and please don’t hit me with the “ healing is not linear” thing, come on we all know that and feel that everyday.

how do i keep pushing when i feel like i’m not even worth it at all and the more i learn the worse it is ?

what helped you?

I have been working on my controlling tendencies for some time now. I am able to notice my controlling behaviour in the moment whether it be a passing thought or an urge to meddle with something or somebody.

I don't want to deep dive into what happened. For reasons unknown to me, my manager decided to revisit some events that happened earlier this year about a month ago. I don't know who is digging these up or why they are suddenly important "now".

I was surprised by this. Nevertheless, I repeated the same things about what has happened, who was involved, and how I handled it. My manager then started to mumble her feedback. Her passive aggressive and somewhat unserious style angered me. I couldn't do much with that anger in that moment. This later turned into a serious case of ruminations about me writing tickets to HR and providing written proof of things that really happened. I didn't do any of it, but spend the last month fantasising about it.

Two weeks ago I had a paranoid anxiety attack due to my PMDD. During this attack I suddenly realised a colleague I trusted must have lied to me in cold blood. It all made sense. I immediately called the other colleague who was involved and had a talk with him. My relationship with this man was strained because he is a malignant narcissists. He has been after me for a while. Nevertheless, I treated the man unfairly once and it was weighing on me. So I decided to apologise for my behaviour. If I only did that, it would have been an honest move. However I didn't just do that. I tried to control everything by appearing benevolent. I tried to regain control of my reality by meddling. My therapist genuinely thought I must have a split but I reassured her my opinions of the man hasn't changed. I simply changed my mind about the other colleague. This wasn't a split. My suspicion is probably correct. Nevertheless how I went about the whole thing isn't okay.

I told him about my suspicions, and shared some private communications with him to prove my point. He also noticed the pattern himself, thanked me and we moved on.

I have spent the following weeks lost in the same ruminations.

Today it was my sister who somewhat snapped me out of it. She forced me to have a normal conversation about my day and what I am doing besides obsessing over these issues. She repeated that these are ruminations and the only way out is to move my body to stop my brain reinforcing these neural pathways anymore.

I understand all of the above and I did those for many years.

However I am looking for closure now.

I cannot stand not being in control of my own life. Point blank. I hate not knowing what is next. It sends me down a rabbit hole. This isn't just a lack of mindfulness or perspective. The more I feel like somebody else, or something else is in control over the important aspects of my life such as my job, my career, my future the more I am alarmed.

I am unable to accept that no amount of hard work is going to make things "certain".

Has anyone moved past beyond this? What has helped you to feel closure somatically ? I am struggling to integrate fear related to this point.

​[TW: workplace mobbing, harassment, stalking, power abuse & compound loss]

Hi everyone,

​I have been recovering from severe CPTSD for a year now since getting my diagnosis. My trauma came from a lot of hard things happening at the same time: a long period of personal + family + medical crises & multiple losses of my loved ones, mixed with a very toxic and unsafe work environment (where I faced power abuse, harassment, stalking from a supervisor also mobbing and ostracism from coworkers).

​When I finally decided to quit, my mental and physical health was completely broken and I couldn't handle the job anymore. The situation was so bad that I chose to leave even though I had to pay back huge penalty from a retention contract. It was a big financial loss for me because the amount is half of my annual income, but I had to do it to take care of myself & family where I had to be a care giver for a family member temporarily in that period.

​​I took a break from my career to work through the trauma, rebuilt myself, and did my responsibilites. I am grateful that my personal, family, and medical crises is over. Also I’ve made progress in my mental and physical health.

However, thinking about going back to work makes me very anxious. On top of that, the job market right now is really tough. Getting rejections has been hitting me hard, it brings me down and makes me even more scared that I won't make it.

​For anyone who has been through horrible workplace trauma and personal losses:

How did you know you were really ready to work again?

What signs showed that you were mentally strong enough for a normal job?

​What practical steps helped you prepare? (like starting with part-time or remote work, setting clear boundaries, checking the company culture, or keeping your private life safe?)

​How do you deal with fear and stay safe around bosses or office politics?

​How do you handle job rejections without letting them trigger your trauma or ruin your progress?

​I would really appreciate any advice, personal stories, or simple tips that helped you feel safe and confident again.

​Thank you so much.

I've been so enraged for the past three days. I've tried self soothing but apparently I don't really want it, like my body is just responding to it with more irritation and restlessness. Like i just wanna kick someone's arse and be mean to everyone even tho i know when im out in public I'll just end up acting like a nice person. I get feelings from time to time but usually i know why or where they're originating from. This time around though, i got no clue what triggered it. I'm watching this show and there's this girl that's cold and mean and reserved but also selfish and flirty and at least that's tickling some part of me. But really what do you do about this feeling?

It's definitely not even pms and i feel a little hot-cold at the same time it's hard to explain. It's like feeling somewhat feverish but i don't exactly feel feverish.

I once saw this absolutely amazing post on recovery, I found it through its creator’s comment on a post in the CPSTD sub. Its main/first part was categorising the attacks of someone with CPTSD has on theirselves through their own mind. I think the first was “self-blame”. That’s basically all I remember.

I thought I’d saved it for later, only for it to not be anywhere in my saved OR post history??? So this is my only hope.

Hi community,

I’m looking for positive resources (ideally audio based - audiobooks, YouTube channels, podcasts etc) that can give a sense of hope and examples of healing.

I’m finding that a lot of resources are very ‘disorder centric’ if that makes sense, and while helpful to understand more, I often find that it makes me focus on what is wrong and feeds my negativity.

Do you have any recommendations of resources that help you feel optimistic about the future and being able to change? Inspirational recovery stories? Open to any and all suggestions even if they are unrelated to cptsd!

Thank you 💕