When you’re deep in survival mode, it’s hard to imagine what healing could even look like, let alone feel like. For me, healing is starting to feel less like winning a war and more like waking up in a place where I’m finally safe to breathe.
It’s not always a big, flashy moment. Sometimes it’s small things — like laughing without guilt or sleeping through the night without armor on.
If you had to describe what healing feels like for you, even just a glimpse, how would you put it into...
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Ugh... I find this topic sooo frustrating and confusing.
I don't seem to be able to talk to any other Dr's or medical providers (other than psychologist and psychiatrist) about my PTSD.
It's a real problem, because it does affect other (physical) health conditions, at least some of the time and if I speak to Dr's about it they're either like "Huh...?" or "OMG...!!"
It seems the only treatment outcome of telling them is negative.
I had a really serious lung embolism last year and when the...
Today marks the day I was born. I am not sure how I feel about it. Normally I feel no need to have a big celebration. I see other people so into them and I find that pressures me. I feel pushed and expected to be excited and happy. Can’t I just enjoy the day? If I am in the mood… or not feel anything special, if I am not. What is your take?
One of the things that I've noticed recently is that I learned very early in childhood to "cut myself off from myself" in distressing situations, by dissociating, or by repressing my emotions and "functioning" amidst trauma...
This is a habit that I've kept ever since... Not even realising, that that's what I'm doing.
It feels like this may be the next big healing step to take... To stop automatically doing that... To refuse to "abandon" myself like that...
I have read, listened and heard so many times I am the only one who can regulate my life. When I was young this concept was so far from what I was able to digest, or understand. I was to in full panic mode and thought I was damaged and crazy...fast forward through years of therapy, tablets, begging, searching and turmoil and here I am confronted again at the age of 59. Will it end?
I was looking for the magic pill, that would end all my suffering. Today, I do use tablets as a base to...
I don't know if this is a type of depersonalisation... If it is, it started very early for me, as far back as I can remember... From early childhood trauma.
I never really feel like I'm human. I feel like a bystander, watching all the other humans going about their business.
It's the same as watching animals, out in nature or in the zoo. I understand them and can sort of relate and can empathise... But it still feels like some other species.
It confuses me. I don't understand it or why...
Whenever I talk to my therapist about things that happened when I was little, I feel embarrassed and ashamed later. One of the biggest times was when I talked about being slapped really hard when I was a toddler. It does feel exposing, but it doesn't seem like it's just because it feels too vulnerable. I think I'm really embarrassed to talk about being hurt (physically yes but mostly emotionally) and not being cared for when I was a child. It feels like I'm sharing all of these examples of...
I don't have any friends anymore. In my family, no one really likes each other and they feel like strangers. We (DID) used to be best friends with our twin sister, and it felt natural.
Fast forward to today:
Having friends felt like an obligation, in addition to my home life. plus confusing
The sad thing: we are the ones who caused it. After a series of sad events, I isolated, my parts took over my day to day functioning therefore any friends I had would pick up on the changes and it...
What it says in the title. Has this something to do with the cptsd or not? Do others here have this too? For example humming traffic in the distance, a fan somewhere outside. I play music than. But than somehow the background noise seems to bite itself into my head. Am I listening for danger that's not there? And loud music doesn't bother me.
during the psychotic breaks of my early recovery (70's), political rants/crusades were such a dominant symptom that i was guided toward, "media fasting." my intake of newspapers, magazines and books was staggering. my reading speeds were equal to staggering amounts of reading and i preferred reading over socializing. my studious love of research gave me extra fuel for the prostelytizing extra oomph fo creative crusades. my soapbox was outfitted with a speaker system and neon lights...
I've given some background on my childhood trauma in another thread. To cut a long story short, when I was a teenage boy, I was made to women's shapewear. Some class bullies thought it really funny to make the chubby class nerd wear a girdle. They forced me into it that first time, took pictures, then gave me the choice: start wearing it regularly or face public humiliation.
And this is the thing that's eaten away at me for all those years. It was a choice, and I chose to cooperate. I...
I'm struggling with this question at the moment: Is it okay to refuse to talk about much of my trauma, in romantic relationships?
So, I'm 48 now and my stance on this has shifted over the years... When I was very young, pre-trauma-therapy, I didn't talk about my trauma at all in romantic relationships... Basically because I didn't talk to anyone about it, not even to myself internally.
Then, after I started trauma therapy, I was in a long relationship that lasted 15 years. This partner...
What’s the actual difference? Is there a difference between being selfish and being assertive? How do you say no to things without it being a selfish action on your part?
Not sure how to put this but will try. I think I’m trying to formulate ideas. I noticed that in popular culture anger is considered generally negative and toxic and something that needs to be tempered and managed. I do agree with that to some extent. And also, recently it is no longer considered healthy to vent anger as it tends to just amplify it further.
But! (You knew that was coming.)
It seems to me that some of us were conditioned to be repositories for anger from others and to...
One step forward two steps back. I had a long week of appointments, telephone calls and functioning. I feel better once I get out of bed. Getting out of bed is another thing. I panic when I wake up so exhausted.
I went for a walk yesterday with a friend and my body felt like lead. I was eating but have stopped again as I buy food but cannot seem to cook it. I isolate myself. I try to take a day off thinking but it is almost impossible without watching TV.
Everything triggers my...
Would you choose to not have trauma if you could?
I’m not entirely sure myself. I like who I am and I feel I wouldn’t be the same person if I didn’t have those experiences; even if I do have a lot of shame, regret, self-pity, etc.
I do sometimes wonder what kind of person I would have been. Would I be happier as that person? Would I have a better or worse attitude towards adversity?
How do I stop a bad memory from popping up when I do or think about a particular thing? I made a mistake recently and this memory keeps popping up in my head most times I do or think about a particular thing, I feel hopeless, any drugs for this?
Do you have a good relationship to your inner kid? Do you talk to your inner kid? I do and some people I know do too, irrespective of whether they had childhood trauma. I also know a lot of people who have no access to their inner kid too, tho.
How about you?
https://www.betterup.com/blog/inner-child-work
So it seems I'm no longer able to "do" therapy...
There's a thread here currently on the forum about the question of "would you want to know" about your childhood trauma... For me, I always have known... All of it (well, most of it)... There's never been an option of not-knowing or un-knowing...
So, I've always been dealing with all-the-fallout right from the start... And I went to see a counsellor in my early 20s and said "I'm not coping anymore... I've been holding all of this mess from...
For years, I thought something was wrong with me. No matter what I did, it was never enough. My family dismissed me, my professional circle turned on me, and people I trusted walked away without looking back. I was left questioning everything—was I difficult? Was I broken? Was I just imagining things?
Then I saw the pattern. The gaslighting, the scapegoating, the mobbing—it was all by design. The people who erased me needed me to believe I was the problem because it kept the spotlight off...
I have a quick question about eating issues. Technically, I have Bipolar 2 depression so although I manage it I've accepted it as part of my life.
I'm slowly becoming more resilient but I have trouble with either not eating or eating way too much when I have an episode. I did see a dietitian and it was all solid advice but when my brain feels like mush I suddenly don't care. I just want to eat carbs and sugar or I don't want to eat at all and I drink so much soda! I was to where I had...
I have seldom memories of childhood and what resulted in me being removed from one parent and nearly removed from the other. In the past few months I'm getting random flashbacks of tiny snippets of things with no context, and part of me is desperate to know more and fill in the blanks, and another wants it all to be forgotten. I was more than old enough to in theory remember some of what happened and it was over a time period of years, but there is nothing. I can join some sketchy dots...
This core belief is weighing heavily on me atm, because it's time to finally let it go...
And right now I'm too bone tired exhausted to write more than that...
Growing up, all the C-PTSD trauma in our family was a family secret that must not be talked about. It's been a long journey and struggle to be able to speak about it and to experience validation of it.
On that journey, including trauma therapy, I feel like there's been an over-focussing on the trauma, to some degree. It makes me feel like most of my childhood/ life is broken, damaged, full of trauma.
But there have been many, many blessings in my life too. And I don't know how to process...
What's your view on how far you should push yourself in therapy? I obviously know that none of it is going to be easy but with me....We start on a subject... spend 1, maybe 2 sessions on it, I will decide it's too hard and ask to stop and we move to something else. So, I did it when it came to my ex and we never went back to it and now with talking about the more recent incident, I don't want to carry on with it (haven't told her that yet) it all just really threw me and I still don't feel...