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  1. One step at a time

    What IS Selfish… anyways? How do YOU define selfish? What does it mean to you?

    Here's my rough draft, thinking out loud: I have needs, everybody else has needs. When those needs are not the same, sometimes I prioritize mine and sometimes I prioritize other peoples'. If I think that I prioritize mine too much, then I think I'm selfish. If other people think that I...
  2. One step at a time

    What would you choose?

    Night out camping (assuming I have the right stuff for the weather) Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?
  3. One step at a time

    Sufferer Relief from CPTSD!

    I'm glad you found the site. It's been a really helpful resource for me, and I hope it will be a useful support for you too.
  4. One step at a time

    Other Let's talk about torture.

    Hey, well done. You talked about it. I don't blame you. You had no choices - you were 8, a kid in an awful situation. That doesn't make you disgusting. Glad you're here now.
  5. One step at a time

    Colorful and hopefully optimistic but maybe hateful occasionally

    These are really, really solid. And you worked for them. This would be worth bookmarking and coming back to frequently. Well done :)
  6. One step at a time

    Did my therapist purposely trigger me to prove her point??

    These are two moments that stand out / bring up questions, for me. A therapist's job is to help us explore our feelings and reactions. If you are expressing a sense of growing confidence / competence around the skills in the worksheets, it would make sense for her to encourage you and help you...
  7. One step at a time

    When “I’m a failure” is true

    A forum glitch wasn't letting me post earlier. I'm posting my response without catching up on what others wrote. Failure depends on your goal, right? - If my goal is to make a lot of money, I have failed. - If my goal is to have a stable* place to live, I've succeeded. - If my goal is to be...
  8. One step at a time

    What would you choose?

    Torch. As in fire, not as in British English for flashlight. Hot tea or iced tea?
  9. One step at a time

    Just writing - Feeling Storms & Intrusive Thoughts

    We need each other. People need other people when the road is hard. And you've come to a place where other people get how hard it is. Healing is a lot of work, and it sounds like you've come really far to be able to work on TheThing, whatever it may be. So we can all celebrate how far you've...
  10. One step at a time

    Please help me, I feel like i want to die

    I'm glad you reached out here. That's a great first step. You are doing your best, even when things feel really dark. You said that fantasizing about death provides relief. What kind? Is it the relief of escape from pain? From your current circumstances, or from particular thoughts?
  11. One step at a time

    Sufferer 42 y/o... crap I hate this

    Welcome. Not EMS, but other long-term trauma, and what you wrote fits right in here. This is a big one for me. Survival = continuing at any cost and putting the best face on it that we can. Until now, at least. Healing seems to involve taking that face off (for brief periods and in safe...
  12. One step at a time

    Breathing

    I've been there, where all I could do was sit and try to breathe. I'm imagining sitting with you.
  13. One step at a time

    What goals would you wanna meet before discharge?

    Current goals: - low/no SI - ways of managing shame and dissociation when they come up, so that they don't hijack my ability to make social connections, do my work, function. - balanced boundaries/relationship with biological family, so they don't send me spinning. I imagine I will go biweekly...
  14. One step at a time

    Idealizing someone and comparing myself

    Thanks all for asking good questions. I was definitely in one of those "can't find my way out of a paper bag" places. It made a real difference to read what you wrote. Definitely true. I know that in reality, they make mistakes and have hard days and probably things have gone wrong in their...
  15. One step at a time

    Idealizing someone and comparing myself

    Righto. I'm doing a thing. I'm (1) putting someone on a pedestal, idealizing them, and then (2) envying their supposedly perfect life that I actually know little to nothing about. I'm (3) reflexively comparing myself to them, and then (4) experiencing intense shame and desperation. I...
  16. One step at a time

    Labels and struggling with people knowing

    Echoing others, most people don't know. In order of distance: A few close friends know that things were complicated until a certain age, and I'm not a fan of my biofamily. Two friends know I have PTSD. My partner know some of my triggers and could probably guess some basic facts about my...
  17. One step at a time

    Today my “coworker” (my pet)...

    My coworker went beserk in the middle of a meeting. I tried to continue, but couldn't hear the client over the ruckus. Might have to lock the coworker out of the meeting room, if this continues. Even if the coworker cries about it.
  18. One step at a time

    Constantly swapping tasks or actions

    YEP. This. All the time. My recently-discovered strategy is that I write down what I'm trying to do, on paper. And then I just keep checking: what was I doing? Any time I think of something else that I should do, I write it down on a running disorganized mess of a to-do list. So that if I've...
  19. One step at a time

    What does "feeling present" feel like?

    I think feeling present is a spectrum. It helps me to know that non-ptsd folk also move along this spectrum day to day and moment to moment. I dissociate a lot, all the time. Every once in a while, especially when I'm at my healthiest... my vision goes less flat? I can see textures more...
  20. One step at a time

    Have I destroyed the therapeutic relationship?

    It's possible (and likely) you did nothing wrong by sending that email. Your therapist can probably see how much this matters to you, and knows that meeting with you to talk about it may feel much warmer and more meaningful in the end, even if it is scary at first to talk about it together. If...
  21. One step at a time

    How much does your therapist charge?

    $75 per 50 minutes without insurance. This is below the usual minimum on her sliding scale.
  22. One step at a time

    What makes venting healthy? unhealthy?

    Good point - definitely want both! And clarity on what's mine and what isn't. I was a mess when I wrote the post, so I was defaulting to either/or. I'm not sure what you were asking here: Can you clarify?
  23. One step at a time

    What makes venting healthy? unhealthy?

    This person definitely needs support outside of just me, and they aren't getting that support. They had a terrible experience with a therapist for several years as a child, so they have been completely against the idea in the past. Over the past six months, I have been open about my own...
  24. One step at a time

    What makes venting healthy? unhealthy?

    Yes, so something like consent is part of it. And consent can be withdrawn. The person needs to not fly off the handle so much that it is hard to bring themselves back, or so much that they stop being able to "see" the other person? Cause if the person flies off the handle and is ranting and...
  25. One step at a time

    What makes venting healthy? unhealthy?

    There are lots of contexts in which venting is a perfectly healthy, normal thing to do. On the other hand, someone just spoke to me in ways I found triggering, which is making it hard for me to see the conversation clearly. Afterwards, the person described their own talking as "venting," and...
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