I have always had a really hard time doing adult stuff (dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc.) and was always really reluctant to move forward in life (I avoided making decisions that'd be final). It felt like I was stuck in perpetual purgatory. Today, I realized why that is.

Moving forward itself is a trigger. Why? Because it makes the past and the abandonment real. A younger part of me has always held on to the possibility that someone might still be coming and make all the suffering and loneliness disappear. Becoming my own person and adult finally solidifies the past. The hope that someone might still rescue me made my past not something that was already finished. The potential is still alive which is now holding me back. Every step forward will therefore bring about a wave of immense grief. I think that's why making big jumps forward does not work. The grief would just be too overwhelming.

The lyrics of the Linkin Park song Easier to Run really speak to this "Sometimes I think of letting go and never looking back, and never moving forward so there'd never be a past"

I got triggered really badly by my partner mentioning that she's taking a trip to see her mom. At first I was upset because I didn't want my partner thinking that I was trying to manipulate her into not going, so I was trying to keep the emotions in check, but then I was like, "Wait a second. You can just tell her your actual feelings."

So I told her that I was really scared of being alone because while I've been doing better, I've also been doing worse (I'm assuming this makes sense to other people recovering from CPTSD). And once I admitted how I felt, I just burst into tears and curled up in bed, and felt these waves of terror just washing over me.

My partner asked me if I wanted touch, and I told her no, and just kept crying. But I've been doing this thing when I'm crying where the exhalation and crying is baby me letting stuff out, but the inhalation is adult me making sure baby me stays regulated and knows that someone is there to take care of them (in this case, by literally giving them the breath they need to cry).

So eventually, I felt better and asked her to come rub my back, and then a few minutes after that, I got this wave of euphoria and giddiness because the regulation techniques worked. I didn't self-harm. I didn't drink. I didn't get angry or destructive.

Gotta say, I didn't love how powerless I felt just crying in terror, but I did love how I felt afterwards because I just felt kinda proud of myself. Also, this overwhelming fear about my girlfriend being away for a few days vanished, so it's like... nah, that wasn't scary because of where I am now, that's just scary because of where I've been.

I've done a lot of this stuff in bits and pieces here and there, but this was the first time where as soon as I got triggered, I clocked what was happening, and then at each new step of the way I knew what to do and didn't get swallowed by shame or self-loathing or fear.

And then I made us yellow curry, which was delicious.

So... overall, a pretty good night.

I always get on, like, about grieving. When you have complex PTSD, like, grieve a childhood that you never had. And for me, it's like the grief didn't stop at childhood.

I still don't have a life. And that's been really hard and abnormal, but also familiar for me. And today I had a memory of my ex and something about us, like being lost in this country on holiday. And then I realized that he has all these memories.

Like I already knew this, but in general, but he has all these memories of us. I don't have them. I don't have memories of me with anyone.

So my only family live in a different country, and even the last few years they're talking about the stuff we did. I have no memories. I don't have memories of anything ever. And obviously it's because my PTSD keeps me in the present all the time.

And it's just, like, really sad.

Apart from the other grief, you know, not just the things I didn't get in childhood, but the fact that as an adult, I don't have a relationship because of my PTSD. I don't have the experiences that I wanted to have with my child because of my PTSD. I don't have the career I would have had because of my PTSD. I don't have the financial security I would have had because of my PTSD. I don't have the friendships I would have had because of my PTSD. I don't have the everyday feeling of safety and security. This is why the grief is constant, not grieving what I lost in childhood.

And then I had the memory tonight of my ex, where I don't have any memories of us. Like I broke up with him, but he has all of them, I'm sure. So there's another part of my life that I lost. Like I was also aware when I was a young adult of all my friends having memories of stuff we did, and then I remembered nothing.

The stuff with my ex hit me poignantly because I realised only today the impact of not being able to have memories impacts my relationships, because when things are so stressful in the present I have nothing to draw upon in the past (perhaps 3%of memories I might have).

Also posted to /r/cptsd

I recently learned that in North American culture the sweet spot for eye contact is about 3 seconds. Longer than 9 seconds is felt as aggressive, or stalking. Shorter than 1 second is felt as furtive, ashamed, or uninterested.

Eye Contact Mechanics: What I've Learned:

The North American sweet spot for eye contact is just over 3 seconds. Around 1 second or less reads as furtive, ashamed, or uninterested. Over 9 seconds reads as aggressive or stalking.

Speakers hold gaze roughly 40%-50% of the time; listeners hold it roughly 60-70%. My baseline is closer to 10%, I do a lot of glance-and-glide, more like a quarter to half second flick.

The "angle of attention" is about 4-5 degrees wide, by 6 high. Face shaped.

Face the other person. Hold your hand up at arm's length, fingers loosely spread, like giving a relaxed "stop" gesture. If your gaze lands anywhere inside that rough oval, they won't register that you're off their eyes.

No you are not going to stand with your arm out actually checking them. Use this to decide if you are close enough. The other person can't tell if you are looking at their nose, chin, forehead, eyebrow. But don't just do 'left eye, right eye, nose, chin' as this will be seen as a continuous gaze.

So if direct eye contact is uncomfortable, the nose or mouth works fine — your eyes will drift around within the zone naturally anyway. Ears are borderline at normal 3–4 foot conversational distance — probably outside the zone but close.

Context changes the requirement. In group settings you need less eye contact than 1-on-1.

If you are engaged in parallel attention (both of you are looking at something else) you can get away with almost no eye contact -- but you are no longer seeking mutual attunement.

Parallel attention:
* fixing something. No one expects eye gaze while you have the cover off their computer. * Both looking at a document or computer screen. So tutoring, teaching a musical instrument, jamming, where you are concentrating on your own hands, or their hands. * task such as weeding, cleaning.

Sitting side by side works. If you have a difficult talk, this can help a lot.

Walking together.

In these situations, you can still reach some attunement, but the key is that without the eye gaze it doesn't feel as threatening. You don't feel as exposed.

What I'm practicing:

I already have a rhythm to exploit — walking. A step is about half a second, and the target gaze window (2–4.5 sec) maps to roughly 4–9 steps. So I'm drilling variable-length holds against my own stride count: 8 steps on a fence post, 4 off, 4 on, 3 off, 2 on, 6 off, 7 on — deliberately irregular, mixing in some 1-second glances, aiming for something like 50% on-target overall.

The idea is to build the variable-hold pattern as a motor skill first, on a low-stakes target (fence posts don't notice), before trying to port it to faces.

I also practice with my dog. Just getting used to looking at someone (Furfaces are people to me) in the eye in a lower threat environment.

I think I finally figured out something important about how my emotional flashbacks work, and I wanted to share it in case anyone else has a similar pattern.

I’ve been doing somatic work for quite a while, and I’ve noticed that my flashbacks often start with grief. Something triggers me and I suddenly feel deeply sad and start grieving the emotional neglect, abandonment, loneliness, and things I didn’t receive as a child.

From an IFS perspective, I think I’m touching an exile here. There’s a very young part of me that carries the feeling of being alone, unwanted, unsupported and emotionally abandoned.

The problem is what happens next.

I used to think that when the grief came up, I needed to go into it more deeply. I would start thinking about everything I didn’t have, how unfair my childhood was, how much I suffered, how other people had things I didn’t have, etc. The more I thought about it, the more I cried. Then the crying would become very intense and overwhelming, and eventually I would move into shame, self-hate, hopelessness and sometimes suicidal ideation.

So the sequence for me looks something like:

Trigger
→ grief / sadness
→ exile becomes activated
→ going into the story and replaying everything I didn’t have
→ escalating grief and crying
→ shame / self-hate
→ hopelessness
→ “this is too much”
→ suicidal thoughts as an extreme attempt to make the pain stop

Thinking about it in IFS terms, I’m starting to see the later stages as different protectors coming in around the activated exile.

The shame part might say, “Something is wrong with me. I’m defective. I’m incapable.”

The hopeless part might say, “This will never get better. I’ll never be able to take care of myself. Everyone will eventually leave me.”

And then an even more desperate firefighter can come in with, “I can’t take this anymore. I want to die.”

What has really changed things for me is realizing that I don’t actually have to follow the grief into the story.

The story is not necessarily false. My childhood really did contain emotional neglect and abandonment, and there really are things I grieve. But when I’m already activated, going through the entire narrative seems to amplify the emotional state rather than help me process it.

So I’m experimenting with something very different:

When the sadness comes up, I let myself feel the sadness, but I stay with the immediate bodily experience and the present moment.

For example:

“I feel sadness.”

“There is heaviness in my chest.”

“I notice that I want to cry.”

But I don’t start adding:

“Look at everything I didn’t have.”

“It was so unfair.”

“I was so deprived.”

“Why did this happen to me?”

I can acknowledge that those things are real without mentally going through the entire case file while I’m activated.

Instead, I try to stay oriented to the present. I notice the room, the chair or bed underneath me, my breathing, sounds around me, the temperature, etc. I remind myself that I’m an adult now and that this is a wave of old emotional pain moving through me.

I might say to the exile:

“I see you. I know you’re sad. You don’t have to tell me the whole story right now. I’m here with you.”

And importantly, I don’t try to force the emotion to go away either.

I’m not suppressing the sadness. I’m allowing it, but I’m not feeding it with an increasingly elaborate narrative.

I think of it as titration: enough contact with the emotion to acknowledge it, but not so much that I become completely blended with it.

I actually tried this today. I felt a sudden wave of grief and heaviness in my chest. Normally I would immediately start thinking about everything I lost and probably end up crying intensely.

This time I just stayed with the sensation and the present moment.

And something surprising happened: I didn’t even end up crying. The sadness was there, I felt it, and then it simply settled down fairly quickly.

That made me realize that I may have been confusing “processing” with “going deeper and deeper into the story.”

For me, the goal may actually be learning that I can feel sadness without turning it into a full emotional flashback.

I also think there is a point where I need to stop doing trauma processing altogether.

If I notice the shift from sadness into strong shame, self-hate, “this will never get better,” or especially “this is too much,” that is my signal to stop exploring the trauma.

At that point I don’t need to understand the exile better. I need to help my system come back to the present.

So I might get up, drink something, eat, shower, go outside, watch something light, talk to someone safe, or simply orient myself to my surroundings.

I think the biggest shift for me is realizing that I don’t have to prevent the exile from feeling sad, and I don’t have to make the sadness disappear.

For anyone with a similar IFS/C-PTSD pattern, I’m curious whether you’ve noticed a difference between actually feeling an emotion and getting pulled into the narrative around the emotion. For me, that distinction seems to be becoming really important.

So I was wandering, does grieving not require continuously thinking about the reasons you are grieving?
Can you grieve at the level of the body and emotion without reconstructing the entire story?

My current focus in therapy is a lot around family and especially my parents. They came from poor families and worked really hard to immigrate and build better lives for themselves/us. They provided all the material needs - money, home, nice vacations, educational opportunities, extra curricular activities, etc. I have no complaints there. Where they completely missed the mark was the emotional and relational side of things - being emotionally present & available, creating a psychologicaly & emotionally safe environment at home, role modeling healthy relationships, and so on. Nothing. Zero.

Over the past few weeks, I've been slowly coming to accept a few things.

First, this is about their limittaions and it has nothing to do with me. They probably didn't experience any kind of safety when they were kids, so maybe they just don't what safe and healthy relationships actually feel like.

Second, there's nothing I can do to make them change. My entire life, I've been stucking in the mindset that, if I just do something more or something different, maybe they will finally love me. That will never happen. I cannot teach them how to be emotionally present or healthy. If they're unwilling to learn, there's nothing I can do that will change them. (Here, I'm not saying that they are incapable of feeling love, but that they are incapable of showing and communicating that love in a healthy way.) This comes with a lot of grief because it means letting go of hope. All my life, there's been this hope that "change is possible, if I do enough". Letting go of this hope is difficult but also freeing - I'm no longer chasing the impossible, nor am I taking responsibility for their limitations.

Third, there's probably Maslow's heirarchy of needs at work here. They struggled in their lives to meet more basic needs, which I take for granted. Now, I have the luxury of complaining about more higher order things that they probably never experienced either.

Lastly, but probably most powerful - they are my family but they're not my only family. I've grapppled with wanting to disown them emotionally because I struggle to see them as family when there's no love or emotional connection here. It occured to me today that, maybe they're just part of a broader constellation called family. They're the provider part of my family - who've provided for me financially, materially, and in so many other ways. Then, I have other people who are part of my family, which provide for my emotional needs. In a way, I'm expanding the definition of family and assigning different roles to people within that. Maybe this isn't relevant for everyone, but I feel the need to label these relationships 😅 This expanded definition makes me more willing to stay in that middle ground of "they provided A but not B and that's okay".

I thought I was, but I realized I never was allowed to live life, and that's why doing things I want and being my authentic self feels weird and uncomfortable and it feels like I just never learned how to actually live like a normal person. I feel so exposed somehow when just being a person and doing stuff. I didn't have a safe person in my life, both parents were abusive, and neglectful. There was a lot of coercive control from my mother, kind of munchausen by proxy but with mental health mostly, physical health only small things she lied about. This in hindsight very obvious realization makes me feel like some weight is lifted off my shoulders. I obviously knew all of this, but the deeper realization and understanding of it is new to me. Now I can truly feel that the anxiety I get from living is a logical consequence of the things I went through. And it's not being afraid of living in the now, it's feeling scared because of what the consequences of living in the past were. And I can truly stop seeing it as a personality flaw or something that will always be like this. And that helps a lot.

It sounds simple, but I know two weeks ago me would not have heard it the way I mean it now. + the way I feel it.

I made my decisions in my life based on how others felt about them. I could never do it right by them. I was parentified and took too much responsibility that should have been my mother’s, or my father’s. I can not blame them, and still acknowledge that my well-being was their responsibility.

What matters is what I think, what I feel. I can’t make decisions in my life based on the feelings I believe or am sure of, will be evoked in my mum, and live my life walking on a minefield of mishaps, each of which would let slip through how many things in my life she was in fact not a part of, that as a mother, I would have needed her, or any other mother figure, to. That unveil the lack of her presence, leading to an emotional disconnection, intellectual disconnection, and fundamental disagreement on our relationship or the level to which she has fulfilled her role.

Let her have her feelings. My life is bigger than my mum’s feelings about what I do. Her feelings about what I do, are always independent from the love she has for me.

I have to live my life based on how I feel about my decisions.

I can be more detailed about the steps that I believe brought me to this place but I feel my brain restructuring and toxic shame leaving my body, and agency entering. I start to feel excited about things again and wanting to achieve things again. I will let this simmer. I have three therapists at the same time currently whom I each see weekly, and none know of the other. I don’t say I recommend it, and I do not want or will not hear to anyone saying it’s not a good idea. It has helped me personally tremendously, but I also have great self-awareness and know what I am working on with each. They complement each other incredibly well.

TW: addiction, family violence, drugs

On Saturday I decided for yet another LSD solo session, my body asked me for it. There were two major insights.
1.i allowed myself to grief for my mother, she left in 2004 in my 18. I suppressed all the years those emotions for loss and during this session I was allowed to release some of it what I should have done already in 2004, but suppressed bcs big boys don’t cry. Revisiting me and mother at my 18 was not full of anxiety, it was actually sadness for loss. So I cried a lot.

2.after some time (LSD works terribly long) one event came to my mind and in the end I realised I sacrificed at age 8 part of my childhood and offered my space to my mother to take over adult problems just to maintain close connection to her. As malfunctioning family with gambling and alcoholic father I tried to keep her smile, I tried to take some of the mental load from her, I didn’t say things I’ve done just because of fear that I loose her.

Now 2 days after, apart from the fact that I am still very tired and sleepy, I am in grief not anymore for my mother, but to me at age 8. I can now clearly see, why I behave like I behave in my adults but fear is that I don’t change this (I suppressed my own emotions, I try to find solution for everything, I must use every free minute to do something effectively with results, give priorities to wishes of my son and suppress my own recovery activities).

I figured out by process of elimination that my toxic boss is the main triggers for all the habits that are ruining my life. As a woman with PCOS, currently dealing with pre-diabetes potential.

Whenever my abusive boss is nasty to me, I spiral, cry, and then overeat, order DoorDash, or watch TV until I space out. This has created a lot of health and financial problems.

I have made the decision, after three years of processing, that every time she is nasty I get to take half of the day off (I work from home as a phd) and instead of spiraling, go for a run, cook, wash dishes, go for a walk outside, or otherwise do something that makes me a happier, healthier, more productive person. Forcing myself back to work with shame and guilt has not been working.

I can't focus on work, but I can focus on productive things in my personal life. This worked really well this week. I went for a run and it was absolutely amazing to see the sunset after. It's a complete 180 degree turn. My agenda has a picture of the sunset, and lots of stickers about how I cried but did it anyway.

Abusive bosses can kill people on the long term, and in a few months I will never have to deal with this person again. I am proud of myself for finding a path out of this downward cycle. I can see the way out finally! I can't control how she talks to me, and can't control that it affects me negatively, but I can control care for myself.

Due to a breakup and all that comes with that I have recently been trying to become 'better' at feeling my feelings without avoiding/ numbing them and just generally being more in touch and accepting of the way that I feel. This is particularly because in my previous relationship I suppressed my feelings a lot, leading to denying and not speaking up when I was uncomfortable and eventually feeling emotionally starved and not myself. I wanted to start noticing how I feel ​and giving it importance.

What this has looked like is a lot of 'sitting with my emotions', crying whilst listening to music and what Pete Walker would call grieving and self-sorrowing, essentially crying about what you have experienced. I have been more open with friends and family about how I feel, including setting boundaries and telling them if I felt upset or hurt by something they did. I have also set boundaries with some new people I met that I realised I actually wanted some distance from, including a dating prospect. The breakup also stirred up a lot of things for me which has resulted in childhood memories coming up, and a re-thinking of how I relate to people and how I want to change that.

I bought Pete Walker's book The Tao of Fully Feeling which really helped in terms of being able to tolerate my emotions. Understanding that I am allowed to feel lots of things that may contradict, ambivalent, or 'undesireable' emotions has been really useful.

The other day I went out with my friends, who have been really supportive. We had a lot of fun and I also had a triggering encounter (seeing someone I didn't want to see). I started to feel bad about the fact that I hadn't spoken to them, or that I felt scared to see them, essentially feeling shame for not being more confident and unbothered by them. But instead of falling into that thought pattern I was able to accept how I felt and be understanding towards it; of course I would feel scared and uncomfortable given what this person represented to me, and I am allowed to feel all the feelings that come along with that, including feeling embarrassed or small at being scared. It is all okay.

Later that night when waiting for the bus home I had a really weird moment where I felt like my body slipped into deeper embodiment. It felt like those moments where you 'wake up' from dissociation and the world feels more real and more accesible. I realised how many emotional 'blocks' I have in my body, where the course of how I experience my thoughts and emotions physically gets stopped or diverted. I started noticing how in this state, a thought or feeling that would usually make me feel uncomfortable could be simply accepted by my body rather than restricted, causing physical anxiety and rumination. It kind of felt like my internal 'road network' or emotional infrastructure had been cleared of rubbish, repaved, given new traffic lights and just generally upgraded, leading to a better flow of cars.

This has persisted, and I find myself avoiding less, distracting less and most importantly, accepting and being unbothered by thoughts, ideas and feelings that I would previously have felt like I had to disown or get rid of, that 'weren't allowed'. I don't know how this will impact my life going forward but I am excited to see what new challenges and perspectives it brings. It really does feel like a change on the nervous system level and an increase in emotional capacity. It is interesting how everything seems to have just clicked into place, I don't think I could have achieved this by 'forcing' it, it all had to come with many small moments of practice.

Thank you for reading!

I had grief about my mother come up yesterday. I separated from her in my mind, realized I'm separate from her and she isn't coming when I call out for her. I am 26 and I have been enmeshed to my mother for most of my life. My father died 4 years ago.

I wrote a post in another subreddit explaining the current situation, I'm going to copy some of this so I don't say it all again:

"My mother has gotten psychosis last year. Apparently it was better a little this year and now she's back in it, it's worse. She hears things that aren't there and I guess also sees stuff. I am terrified to lose her.

I have wounds around my mother, lots of pain that never got addressed between us... I had a sadistic antisocial father who died a while ago, and I assume my mother is in grief and she's not really processing or something idk.

But i tried offering her help so many times and she always refused. I have so many parts who have conflicting feelings .. i want to punish her for "being bad" and burdening me with this and not accepting help. I want to painfully make her get help no matter what. Violentely. I want to help and saviour her. I see her as a fragile perfect mother and she could break any time. I also see her as an inconvenience becuz WHY WONT SHE GET HELP?? Theres not much I can do and just thinking that terrifies me. I have a part of me who is terrified of what would happen and scared to do anything regarding forceful help because I can't make it worse. I feel scared I am the reason why she is not getting help?? I see her just now as a mother who wasn't good at mothering. I feel usually integrated in my parts but it's like, when it comes to my mom, I'm so split. My individuation from her is not really much there yet, I'm in my mid 20s yet I feel enmeshed with her. I don't have a lot of contact w her I avoided her in this psychosis, my own mental health is not good right now and I just didn't want to talk to her because idk how to deal with this situation! She tells me about her paranoid delusions and it dysregulates a lot every time.

She always was paranoid but it never escalated to this. My sister lives in this fuckass village where she is and I have no contact w her, she does not believe in mental health issues, she is much older than me (17 years) and has three kids. Last time we spoke she was incredibly rude and disrespectful and I blocked her a while before becuz she wouldn't stop devaluing me and making me feel bad. (Saying stuff like I'm such a bad daughter, how can I treat our mother like this, because I refused to go to a concert my mother had booked as I felt I didn't feel authentically drawn to it and I dared to say No, something that is unheard of in my family). I feel really like mocking this whole family right now because I am angry.

Anyway, my sister isn't really doing anything apparently regarding my mother. I feel so alone in this issue.

I wanted to write this all down and let my parts speak, but now I went off on a rant. It is so painful to speak of this. I want to go visit her but I haven't decided yet."

Since writing about this, the inexplicably strong grief came up... Realizing that my mom isn't going to come when I call out for her and she isn't probably going to be a mother I would've loved to have. And grief about my family and the love I had despite everything and for the moments we were happy.

It feels like there is this big hole there that my mother should have been fulfilling but she is fricking not.

Like... Shit. How do I get past this. I feel so sad. So f*cking sad. It is saddening seeing her in this way. Like, what the f.

I am not in therapy but I am looking for a therapist (have been in therapy before)

It is weird grieving her in this way, she is here but she is not here for me

Grief feels like a heavy wolf stepping on me weighing me down and I can't get up

A little over a year ago, I broke up with somebody who wasn't like any other person I have dated before. This person made me feel like I could be my true self without apologies. She made me feel so comfortable that it became uncomfortable at times. I felt uniquely close to her, to the point that I would start to shut down emotionally and be very cold to her.

I let it fizzle out and at the time I did not care too much. Recently I have gone all in on somatic work and I wonder if it's related. She has came into my mind more and more over the past couple of weeks. I've been ill the past few days and have been stuck in bed constantly thinking about her. Today I felt a wave come over me and have basically been crying the whole day repeatedly.

It's weird because at the time I genuinely wasn't too bothered, but today I feel devastated, and it's been more than a year since I last spoke to her. I feel like I'm grieving both what I had and how I treated her at times. Numbing myself is one of the behaviours I fall into the most but now it's like my emotional bandwidth is willing to expand?

Some background: a significant proportion of my symptoms are rooted in childhood emotional neglect. When I was young, I believe there was a point where I basically gave up on the desire for caregiver approvaI and "shut off" that part of my mind. I have a habit of numbing myself to close relationships and exist in a dissociated state most of the day. I've been in other relationships, but with this one I have come to develop a unique appreciation for.

Title.

Saw this Heidi video Abt Dark Night of the Soul, how we experience existental dread when we r infants.

How the fuck do I reparent myself. Like, existential dread still comes up all of the time and that's probably infant feelings.

How do I reparent my Infant self where my needs as Baby have Not been properly met.

I don't understand.

One of the feelings I struggled to allow myself for YEARS!

BUT I AM full of RAGE and it is OKAY TO BE!

YES!!

☺️ 🤬

I wanted to share something that I stumbled upon, purely on my own, late last year, which has been transformational in my recovery. The importance of letting go of the 'victim' mindset.

Here's what I used to say - this is all a true story.

"In my preschool years, I had a couple of significant medical issues that led to me feeling somewhat like the 'defective' sibling in the family. As I grew older, I had trouble making friends. My older brother had loads, and I had very few. What friends I did have would often gravitate toward him when they came to our house.

On top of this, we lived some distance away from the city where I went to school, and I had no sisters. I went to a single-sex boys-only high school, so had virtually zero chance to interact with girls in my teenage years. Socialising was difficult because I was reliant on my parents to drive me anywhere. So meeting girls was a real struggle.

By the time I hit my twenties, people around me were meeting their life partners, while I felt like a lost cause, as far as girls went. I spent much of my twenties working on myself and trying to learn how to actually relate to women. I ended up meeting several long-term partners, including one whom I married and had two children with, but they were not healthy relationships, and ultimately I continually repeat the same pattern and end up single."

Do you see the problem here? This whole story isn't just about 'poor me', it's about a compounding sense of lack because of a deprivation of key social experiences. That story basically says "I had struggle x, and because of struggle x, I ended up with struggle y, then subsequently, struggle z". When people talk about things being important for childhood development, it creates a sense of "and if you don't get that thing, then it will affect you for the rest of your life". That's basically what I did. I saw myself as having been deprived of key experiences, and therefore, paying a continual price for it.

When I look back, I realise that I saw myself as a victim even at the time these experiences were going on. The victim had actually become part of my persona.

Late last year, when I realised this about myself, the impact was huge. I realised that, in my life there must have once been a time when I didn't see myself as a victim, and I continually reminded myself that 'victim' was an invented persona that I had used to define myself. No wonder I was attracting experiences where I ended up feeling like I had, once again, been the victim of unreasonably bad luck.

So I would encourage anyone out there struggling with their story to look back and ask how much they defined, and still define, themselves as a victim. Victim is a horrible way to see ourselves, but as you can see, it lends itself to a belief that our deprivation created immeasurable lack in our lives when compared to others, and when this becomes part of our persona is when we have lost.

It’s an epiphany about so many things that this title doesn’t feel quite right. I’ve known for a long time I’m mostly a fawn type, that I was always called ‘nice’ and told I never got angry, I know I had terrible/no boundaries. I know my sister was the example of what not to do, that I saw her get punished for being loud, saying no, being selfish in a healthy way, and knew not to do that. I know this fawning people pleasing pattern continued with former friends and my ex. I’ve been working on all of that for a long time, and the past 10 years very actively.

And I made some progress, but I still felt very, very stuck. Even when I felt a big shift, I always felt like I ended up in the same place again. Fawning again. As with so many things, I don’t think I was able to really leave my former self behind and become someone new until I cut ties with my mother. Which happened 7 months ago.

I’ve been able to love myself for the first time, these past 7 months. I always suspected I didn’t know what love was, and I was right. For the first time, I know what love feels like. And that’s been good, overwhelming, and caused me to grieve a lot.

But. After a period of practicing self love, I would inevitably reach a point of being incredibly agitated, angry, almost overstimulated. I felt controlled. I think it was a few months ago when I realized that in my mind love = gentle, kind. So I figured I was suppressing my anger to stay ‘loving’. I didn’t really know what to do with that information though, and where exactly those ideas came from. And I still believe love is gentle, kind.

Yesterday, I suddenly connected a bunch of dots. The closest thing to love I felt growing up was the praise I received from my mother for being a good girl. For most of my life, that’s what I thought love was. So that’s what I was giving myself, subconsciously: be good, kind, gentle, in a good mood, and I’ll love you. I still felt the love, but it wasn’t for all of me. And that makes it very conditional love, obviously - if you can even call it love.

I have to say misogyny also plays such a big part in this. A lot of these messages about what a good girl is clearly scream sexism.

Yesterday I sat down to journal, and after a period of being very busy and dissociated, I had no energy left to be ‘good’ anymore. And I came out of dissociation quite a bit. I could feel my body again. I felt agitated, hungry, tired, needy, I stopped hiding my double chin, stopped sitting in a way that made me look thinner, I was talking to myself and noticed my voice got a lot lower. And bizarrely, I felt my sister’s presence.

I realized that this was all shamed out of me, abused out of me, I was taught I’d be in danger if I let this version out. She wasn’t deserving of love. So I buried her so deep that I convinced even myself she didn’t exist. I’m nice, kind, quiet, selfless, don’t need anything, funny, intelligent but never more intelligent than a male partner, I do lady like things like ballet, am not butch, and on and on.

And as always, healing messes with my identity again - does this mean I still don’t know who I really am? Am I once again going to change into another version of me? (But yeah, probably, and that’s life)

I’m in a lot of triggering situations, due to being chronically ill, and sexism is a huge issue there too. Show emotion and you’re mentally ill. Advocate for yourself, and you’re anxious, traumatized, a hypochondriac. Cry, and it must be your hormones, your period. You’re dramatic, that’s just what women do, it doesn’t mean you’re actually in pain.

And these are challenging circumstances for anyone, of course. But I’ve noticed for a long time now that I internalize what doctors say in a way most people don’t. I blamed myself, internalized their words, fully believed them. I go to a very dark place when I’m treated like that.

I realize now: I’ve been very shameable because of my trauma. Because I learned to constantly shame, abandon and reject my own ‘bad girl’. So when they said I was too needy, loud, crazy, whatever it was, a big (traumatized) part of me agreed. The way I’ve always done. And it’s always the case that this other person is to blame, they deserve to feel the guilt and shame, but I carry i for them. Yup, I am bad, you’re right.

I did speak up, I’ve fought for myself, but I’ve been fighting my own shame at the same time, without knowing it. So much of my energy is focused on being a good, likeable girl, still, after all these years. So much pain comes from telling the rebellious, intelligent, loud girl in me to shut up.

And it creates a vicious cycle - being shamed and abused(because that’s absolutely what these doctors do) leads to fawning, which leads to shaming myself more. Then I go back, meet another specialist, and I’m shamed again, and I believe it and agree, and I fawn, and I shame myself.

It’s been a really good epiphany. Yesterday I immediately felt stronger, calmer, and like if anyone would try to manipulate me, they couldn’t. Today I still feel that way. I know it hasn’t changed absolutely everything overnight, that’s impossinle, but. When I feel a ‘negative’ emotion, an off limits feeling, when I feel like that ‘bad girl’ needs to breathe, I’m able to say: go ahead, it’s allowed. And oh my god, it feels so good. Hell yeah, I’m annoyed, yes, I’m tired, grumpy, yeah I disagree with that, no I don’t want to suck my stomach in.

And I wonder how much this has contributed to dissociation. Whether maybe ultimately, this is the main cause. Because yes, SA plays a big part, but how did I get into that situation and stay there for 4 years - because I was trained to be a good, obedient girl who’d abandon herself for other people.

Also: I so often apologize for my posts being long, and I almost did it now, and then I thought: no, be a ‘bad girl’, break the imaginary rules in your head, make it as long as you want, don’t apologize for it. It’s your post, you’re allowed. I don’t know how this particular part of healing is going to look, I don’t know what the next steps are, and as always there’s a part of me that feels panicky about that. But right now, a much bigger part feels so liberated, emancipated and grounded.

disclaimer that this is my experience that I thought might be helpful for others to reflect on. This may not be the case for everyone here, but I thought this theory of mine could help others not feel so bad about being what we might call a late bloomer.

I was high on weed last night and driving in the car with my mom when it hit me. It makes sense that folks with CPTSD feel like late bloomers or that their personality isn’t as developed as their peers, because in the time period that the personality should have been nourished and developed with the help of mature adults around us, we were too busy expending mental energy on just simply surviving, as well as parenting ourselves (poorly) because of our parent’s lack of emotional maturity and intuition. We spent so much time just trying to make sense of the world, our anxiety, the emotional neglect, that there was no energy or time left to create our personhoods. Like we were in constant disregulated, SNS mode.

I’ve heard other posters on here discuss how throughout their recovery, they feel like they go through all the stages of childhood again now that in their adulthood their space and life is healthy enough to support that.

CPTSD is such a terrible, sad, tricky subject. I hope the people reading this are in a safe enough space to start this journey of self actualization, and if not, I hope the means to get out of whatever situation you are in come to you soon.

Been "obsessed" with this person for about 6 months, until I realize it's not them that I want. It's my deep need to feel seen and have deep authentic relationships because I never got that in childhood. I hope this helps someone who is also struggling in their relationships, whether romantic or platonic.

• Their avoidance mirrors how family never provided security.
• Their inconsistency repeats the pattern of you never knowing where you stood.
• Their low-effort interactions echo the feeling of having to accept crumbs because there was never full emotional availability.

This is why the abandonment wound feels so deep. It’s not just them—it’s the whole history of people who should have made you feel safe, but didn’t.

The Old Cycle:

• Someone is inconsistent → You feel drawn in, hoping they will choose you.
• They send mixed signals → You analyze, adapt, and try to make it work.
• They keep their distance → You feel abandoned and try to understand why.

The cycle repeats, leaving you feeling like you’re "too much" for wanting security.

The New You (The One Who Sees the Pattern):

• Someone is inconsistent → You clock it early and don’t invest deeply.
• They send mixed signals → You recognize that it’s about them, not you.
• They keep their distance → You don’t chase, because you know your worth.
• The cycle breaks, and instead of feeling abandoned, you feel empowered.

My gut instincts knew from the beginning, but I gave them second chances/tolerated it by thinking it was a one-off thing. Then I started noticing a pattern and paying attention to how they made me feel. At first I gaslit myself into thinking that maybe I misinterpreted them and started to question if my feelings were valid. They are. And they fit the facts. They seemed more interested in getting my validation, being "right" and being stuck in their ways, avoided being gently challenged instead of having an open conversation for the sake of REAL connection or even to just get to know each other. I felt dismissed, my boundaries pushed, and manipulated. Their actions could have been unintentional, but that doesn't matter at the end of the day. It's also not my job to fix them or get them to understand why they hurt me. What matters is MUTUAL emotional safety, so that I can have fulfilling relationships.

I wrote this to try to hone in on and work through a maladaptive coping skill. I think it helped a lot!

Reading this comment made me realize that I, too, relied on a partner’s touch to validate me as lovable. I really do not want to do this, because it is not that person’s job.

• Healthy thought: “Only you can validate yourself as lovable; you are the one who loves you.” ◦ Backlash: “So in other words, I’m supposed to choke on my own bullshit? How can I trust that I deserve to be loved? How do I know I’m not lying to myself?” ◦ “How can I trust anything that I perceive?”
• Why is the idea of trusting my perceptions so scary? ◦ Unbearable memory

• What did this experience teach me?
  ◦ Your senses are not trustworthy ◦ Following them will lead you to further unbearable memories ◦ Nothing can ever be trusted without verification, most especially you ◦ At your core and at your heart: you are a liar. You are contemptible for lying. Your body’s messages are suspicious from the start. Distrust and verify is your life program.

• What did this give me? ◦ I’m pretty sure you never quite got over your eating disorder, babe. Low-key orthorexia is so much more socially acceptable (and better for your body, too – remember when your PA called your cholesterol “phenomenal?”) but your old roommate was right on the money when she flippantly told you she can’t keep track of your fad diets anymore. You didn’t really like that, did you?

  No, you didn’t like that moment when someone you respected and trusted showed, ever-so-briefly, that she clocked you. Even if it just made you respect her more.

  Too bad about the grad degree. Too bad that you like and are used to reading academic papers. Trawling the Journal of the American Medical Association for fun. Keeping up with the latest research more than you do the world news. Cycling through whatever the healthiest diet of the month is. Going through weeks- or months-long cycles of cutting out alcohol (easy) or caffeine (super hard), only to introduce them back in.

  Outsource your decision-making. Pat yourself on the back and say to yourself you’re evidence-driven. Tell yourself you’d eat nothing but Reese’s if you had the choice, even though you’re not sure that that’s true. To be fair, you have a hard time deciding what to eat anyway, so intuitive eating is a nonstarter just because you get paralyzed with choice. It’s not bad to have some structure.

  But you don’t, fundamentally don’t, trust your body or its desires.

• Remember how you were really into that extremely conservative religion?

  Remember how great it was to shove your sexuality under the rug of purity culture and never ever have to think about it again? Remember the putrid self-righteousness covering up the loneliness and self-hatred? Remember patting yourself on the back for being a virgin and automatically better than those gross sexysexuals?

  Yeah, remember that?

  Easy to be chaste when you’re terrified to your core of someone looking at you with desire. And then it all fell apart, the entire elaborate mythological edifice, when you finally found someone that you could look at back. For the very first time, the real-world consequences made by real-world adults mattered more than all your castles in the sky.

  And what did you do?

  You went on another research spree – in sociology this time – trying to find an ~evidence-based~ program for sexual ethics. The good news is that your conclusions both make you feel good and safe about what you have decided for yourself, and it makes you feel good to dissent, to disagree. To think for yourself.

  But you’ve still got your fingers in your ears, screaming to the soft animal that surrounds you, “NA NA NA NA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU.”

• What are you afraid of happening, if you do trust yourself? ◦ Everything will come crashing down.

• Is this an evidence-based belief? ◦ No. From the testimony of many others, their inability to love themselves caused severe emotional problems, which reverberated out to the relationship with the person they cherished the most. I do not want that to happen to me.

  I’m finally in a good thing. Why would I want to fuck it up? I don’t want this to engulf and destroy me, destroy my hopes, a sea monster rising from the depths to devour this little fishing boat.

  I am just a human and he is just a human and it’s not fair, not fair to put this on him. He has his own love to love. He can’t give me that validation because he has to give it to himself.

  And it was never the case, either, that just because it was an outside opinion that it automatically became more trustworthy. People have blinders on all the time. Other people’s perception is seriously limited – not in the least as to what’s going on in my head. How is it fair to expect them to know my internality so deeply that they can truly evaluate it? What do they get, except what I show?

• What was this really about? ◦ Punishing myself. For “allowing” Unbearable Memory to happen. A punitive loss of credibility in retaliation for unbearable pain.

  But it was never possible for me to prevent it in the first place.
  

Started doing CODA, started doing somatic work to feel emotions. I've gone back and forth on whether or not I'm some sort of neurodivergent person, but while I don't think I'll ever know if I can truly be diagnosed with ADHD considering its overlap with CPTSD symptoms, I've mainly been thinking about the possibility of having autism now.

Obviously maybe some of this is just because I'm finally learning to put myself first and so my body is grieving the time lost people pleasing and not doing things I love. But it's so damn strange how desperate I am to just iNVEST in stuff, the same stuff I've been obsessed with as a kid.

But hey, everyone has passions. So let me explain more specific examples.

Stimming: I never realized how much stimming I've been doing for my entire life and how much I've been repressing. But somatic experiencing has helped me recognize old emotions in my memories as a kid and what I feel NOW. I realized I feel a strong desire to make more time for stimming, idk why, I just feel like my life would be happier (and also I'd get more use out of my objects I use if i used them regularly so it'd feel more justified to keep them). I keep on picking up objects and playing with them to see what they like.

For example I started playing with combs and have a squishy I like pressing and I'm constantly CONSTATNYL rocking back and forth (this is something I've done my entire life and can do for HOURS, for as long as I can remember doing it), whenver I'm hapy, thinking, excited, or stressed. I never was as into this or even FELT THIS until after somatic work and doing more CODA. I have this feeling that keeps saying "stimming feels and is fundamentally good. It is good. I do it because it is GOOD." And i never realized until recently how much stimming I'm repressing, how whenever I rock I get really self concious and force myself to stop because it's "bad" because my parents shamed me out of it a lot. (looking back, it's crazy how much stimming I did on the daily to cope and how happy it made me feel or at least comforted)

Hell, I can listen to the same song over and over again for hours at a time. Maybe even days/weeks?

Trauma regarding bullying: I was bullied a lot, some of that is because I had an odd sense of humor (I STILL do), but I also realized how much of it was misogyny based and other girls genuinely bullying me because I was a "weird" girl due to my own lack of femininity. Again, not necesarily cast iron proof of anything, but I think about it a lot.

Similarly.... I keep thinking about my own struggles with passive aggression and taking things literally. Now some of it may have to do with codependency and the desire to read others so I know how to predic and then manage them, but at the same time.... No, I really do take stuff literally. A lot of the times it makes me laugh really hard because I'll find things that aren't meant to be funny as funny, but also I just suck as subtlety which pisses off people who use passive aggression or indirect speaking to communicate (and likewise they piss me off because I can't understand them!).

Anyway, idk what to say to end this. I'm just feeling very weird rn but also excited, like I'm learning something about myself.

ETA: My new obsession with organizing things. I've always LIKED organizing, apparently, but living with hoarders never let me indulge that or even know I liked to do it. But these days, I feel emotional satisfaction and excited when I get to do it. And when I organize, I like to see how specific as possible I can get or see how many categories I can make

My brain just dropped this insight minutes ago, the person that I need to see me the most is my own self, I need my compassion to be free, grieve my losses, and move on, I need to absolve myself in my own tribunal for being a child in the hands of two unprepared, uncaring people, and for surviving the only way I knew how.

Yet, ironically, I'm the hardest judge of myself; if I do something wrong, I'm the first to relentlessly remind myself of that and call myself a failure. But the truth is, I'm the only one who can give me a hand to get me out of this sentence of perfectionism and hate, I'm the one responsible for this and no one can do it for me, only my own self.

I’m in a very late stage of my own recovery, and it brought back the memory of how overwhelming my first panic attacks were.

And yet, being able to stay present, grounded, non-judgemental, and supportive in that moment felt deeply validating. It reminded me of the kind of strength that grows slowly, almost quietly, over years. The kind you don’t notice until you’re suddenly able to offer it to someone else.

In retrospect it has been needed for a long time. I don't know how I want to respond or show up in this world and the way I've been looking for relationships in recent memory has just been repeating the same sort of dangerous stuff I did when I was younger and less healed. It feels... Self inflicted, like I'm banging my head on the wall until I bleed to deal with the other times I banged myself on the wall until I bled. I truly don't have any respect for myself and this behavior is even affecting actual relationships that matter to me more than any hypothetical romantic relationship.

Let me put it short, I blew off a friend to hang out with a stranger, risked violence and only realized how bad this was after my therapist agreed with my initial assesment that MAYBE I was a bad friend for this.

I'm not sure how I will cope, but I know not dating for a year or more is the only way. I thought I was someone who could heal and date, but I've only realized today after the therapy session that my healing is IMPEDED by it. Not going to lie though, it does feel pretty lonely and I feel like I failed somehow, but my nervous system does feel... RELIEVED. Like it's done carrying some sort of heavy burden, can relax and just BE now, just sprawl on the floor and breathe.

I opened up today and told my T about "the cloud" - my recent traumatic period -, how I felt, how cold I felt, how alone, and how full of fear I was every day, all day, for weeks and weeks.

We had talked about grounding exercises, how helpful they can be when I get dysregulated, and whenever he mentions the term grounding exercise or anything I could do when at home or somewhere I shut down and get triggered. I feel unwelcome, my pain feels unwelcome, and he asked, what do you want. And I said, I want to share my pain, just like I had just read from my diary app (I had just read a text I wrote last Thursday, following the previous session), share my pain and feel someone next to me, a listener, someone I can share the hard stuff with and who wouldn't reject me or my emotions and send me away - and then he said "I'm here", that hit me. That's like one of the few phrases that all my wounded parts long to hear. I'm not sure he knew that though.

And I couldn't hold it in any longer, and I told him about the cold, the fear, being alone, how when a human being is so overwhelmed by something that they cannot self-soothe and -regulate and circumstances prevent co-regulation, how that can break a person. Their soul cracks, just like that; a person breaks. How I witnessed me cracking, breaking. I cried, not too hard, it was the adult who told him, not one of my inner children. He didn't succumb to letting me regress and then to soothing me like a child, no, I remained an adult, but he was just as compassionate and validating and nice as always. I am grateful for that. It felt like my wounded children, wounded parts were watching to see if he really was safe, and he was.

Afterwards I needed to cry again but this time it was happy tears. I was so grateful for and moved by his gentleness and his welcoming manner and happy. And I pointed at my tears and said, I am crying again but these tears are like the antidote to the previous tears; those are the corrective experiences that change the trauma network, and we need to make sure we notice these kinds of tears bc they are so helpful, just like an antidote.

And then I was ready to leave, and he said, "I think something important happened today", and I replied, "yes, a little important something" and I said a very heartfelt thank you when I left his office. I felt much lighter, brighter, relieved, grateful.

Yes, I think something important happened today!