I've realised lately I've been avoiding the outside world due to my trauma. In the past I've been molested and raped. Everytime I go outside I get 2-3 men staring like I'm a piece of meat, it feels dehumanising and makes me so uncomfortable. Can anyone relate?
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I am struggling almost every afternoon with anxiety. This has been going on for over a month and I just thought about maybe it is the heat that is setting it off. Has anyone else noticed this? I just start feeling a little funky and just not all there. I feel some numbness on my face and kind of like I am going to faint.
I've been Journaling past painful experiences as they come up the last few days. Try to sit with them. Try to look at myself compassionately and without judgement them thank my mind and let it go. To say it's painful and difficult would be an under statement. Anyone else ?
Thank You ❤️ 🙏
Hi Everyone, I'm new here and I have experienced cumulative/complex trauma, a few different types that I'm not going to disclose because it feels a bit too much for me to do that right now.
My trauma ended at the end of April last year and there was 41 years of it and I'm in therapy, I've been in and out of therapy for 17/18 years but there was something I missed that meant I was being re-traumatised during recovery, sabotaged I guess by a family member and for the first time since it...
I don't know if I need another therapist. I've been with my current therapist for over a year now, and I will admit that I have shown progress with my current therapist. I'm better than I was, for sure, but I don't know how to talk to her about certain things, and I feel like I've hit a wall. I was previously diagnosed with DID, and I was getting better with allowing my headmates to front and not masking as much, but then she told me I don't have DID. We spiraled, and then all that progress...
Without going into all the details/ background, I had a therapy session on Tuesday and the topic was suicidal thoughts and how that's played out over the years both during childhood trauma and since then.
This (relatively new for me) therapist is so weird... He's a specialised trauma therapist and he's good at his job.
But I don't really "gel" with him well on a personal level.
Anyway, so this session was completely about this topic of suicidal thoughts and feelings.
While I'm glad that...
Some days I feel like my senses are hyper sensitive. My ability to hear things is overwhelming and my ears feel different. At this point everything becomes annoying, even talking with people holding basic conversations. I hear the mouth breathers, the spoon scraping against a soup bowl, chewing with your mouth open, clicking a pen, clipping nails, lawnmowers etc.
I feel anything that touches our skin despite being told nothing is there. Well, it is and I feel and no one can tell me...
This is an odd one but I’m throwing it in. Over the past 2 nights I’ve had some very unusual dreams. I’m not going into details but they are of me being not just free but also a dynamic determined man. A cross between a roving troubleshooter and traveller. I’ve woken up today and wonder if it’s possible to make that dream version of me real?
It seems that many of us have been diagnosed and re-diagnosed and misdiagnosed and been accordingly mistreated for all of our ailments. I recently saw a post by arfie describing just this. I have often thought and would like to know your thoughts on whether most, if not all mental illness stems from trauma. Thanks for enlightening me with your input from your experience. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. ❤️
I try to learn about trauma and ways to improve my symptoms, but sometimes this makes it worse ): right now my looking into core beliefs turned into looking into attachment stuff and now I'm triggered and missing my therapist.
I am kind of new to this. She is my first long term therapy, I've seen her about a year and a half, and I am so deep in the maternal transference thing with her. She knows and being very open about it has helped a lot. However sometimes I still hurt so bad!! Like...
Just wondering what insights you all have on this. When does it cross the line from burnt to depressed? How can you tell? And what can you do to avoid it?
I know I'm burned out. Absolutely. And I keep trying to add things in that will help mitigate that. Like more time at the gym, more contact with other people. Better nutrition. Better sleep. And it will feel like I do a little better for a week or two, and then a little worse (with poor choices around coping skills, mostly, and mostly...
Nobody may understand the depth of these feelings, but please try not to guilt-trip me or rub this in, because I already feel bad and terrible enough. When I was 13 years old, I had anger problems, was getting my medications adjusted, got bullied and abused when I was younger, had some mental illnesses. When I was 13 years old, I made a mistake by being mean and abusive to my pets, and I cannot forgive myself for this even though I stopped when I was 15 years old and I am now currently 18...
I recently lost a sibling and I didn't have anyone's support, no comforting words, just nothing at all from anybody. I couldn't even get anyone to go to the funeral with me. Of course I was very upset over the loss but nobody seemed to notice or care.
People seem to think I am so strong, that I can handle anything that life dumps on me, probably because I have learned how to act that way. Probably because they didn't see me cry, didn't think I was going through a hard time.
I feel really...
Does anyone with intense anxiety feel afraid of everything? You lose total concentration, you can't perform tasks or Hobbes, you get stuck in it all the time and when you do something it leaves you with the feeling that you're not having fun, that you're wasting time, all this fear arose from threats that I suffered, my unconscious is remembering the difficult moments, I had a crisis today, I was getting better but after riding on the back of a motorcycle on a road it may have triggered this...
Hi i’m new to this forum and have CPTSD.
Can anyone relate to this? A lot of the time i try to distract myself or disociate. Any time anything bad / traumatising happens i disociate it which usually takes like a week. I feel useless/worthless so i try to study or think / journal to figure out things but end up feeling inferior again because other people are so far ahead. All the time i feel like i should be doing better but even when i am working at reasonable/good jobs i feel unworthy and...
Hi. I have been taking Sertraline for cPTSD for several months now and don't find it is working. One of the reasons for taking it was due to waking up every night with an intense feeling of stress in my mind as well as constant anxiety. However, I haven't felt any benefit and instead of calming me it's made me more irritable and tense. I don't wish to take sleeping medication rather an SSRI or similar that can help me. Would anyone have any recommendations as to what has worked best for them?
An AI engine came up with the following "mindfulness" approach for dealing with flashbacks - instead of getting swept away in the experience, try to put some distance between yourself and the events. Try to bee like an observer, describing the scene and what is going on without judging or getting caught up in it.
I then got into a discussion with it about the person in the scene - should I see him as me or try to see him as someone else. It came up with the following:
I'm curious as to...
Sometimes I google images of dead people.
My grandmother died recently. I saw her body. My relatives were crying, but I wasn’t. Her adopted daughter was just sobbing. It was so weird. After it was all over, I cried at night when no one was looking, because I was scolded for crying as a child and I’m afraid to show it. When I looked at images of corpses on the internet, on the one hand I wanted to evoke some kind of feeling in myself, but on the other hand it calmed me down. Because I...
Is this part of recovery and adaptation i wonder... I struggle with relationships. My neighbour has made malicious allegations against me, and it's threatening criminal liability, my career and housing. All ahead of an upcoming trial. I am in despair, despite the trauma of the investigation process, becoming unwell with ptsd, and moving from full time employment and full time masters study, to SSP, to tribunal for pip, and adapted working, I finally felt my life moving forward, actually...
That's what's been keeping me in the house. Keeping me from any social interaction. Keeping me from moving. I've been looking over my life and I'm feeling soo ashamed over it that I'm afraid to walk out my door. I need to find a way to process this. It's going to destroy my life if I don't. I guess I've never been very good at pulling myself up with my boot straps.
It's when your mind is refusing to let your body move. I retired 4 months ago and have spent countless hours in front of the TV. Even the most mundane of tasks are pretty painful. I'm both scared and ashamed of myself right now...
I'm at mid-life and finding some massive changes happening at this juncture of life.
One is that I'm realising that as a child, I created a so-called "false self" to survive the trauma.
And at mid-life, this "role" is starting to crumble... It feels quite threatening... I still feel like I'm going to be punished for not sticking to that role, as I was in childhood.
The false self is a concept by the Psychologist Donald Winnicott:
I find myself so nervous and overthinking too much in social situations. I always feel like I was just too much. I look back and feel like I acted so stupid. Wondering if this is just part of it?
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...
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...