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Last night I had a dream that my husband suddenly had no arms, and I was annoyed with him for being mopey about it. We both have some trauma in our pasts and lately I've been so exasperated with his negative outlook on life and his lack of direction -- and then I feel guilty that I'm not being...

We were always hanging on to middle class, although I never got the fancy "bonus" items that other kids my age had (clothes in fashion, etc). As an adult I now realize we were pretty poor but that my mom was good with money and that she went out of her way to make sure I didn't know how dire...

Maybe you were triggered at that time and regret how you behaved -- that happens to all of us. But I would never imagine that a therapist would lose their sh*t when faced with an angry triggered patient. Especially not a trauma specialist! Therapy is supposed to be a safe space to let all that...

Simon and Garfunkel :) Actually both responses so far are S&G. When I was younger I would have said mine was Bird on a Wire by Leonard Cohen. Now I'm not sure.

That therapist sounds pretty terrible. Finding a good fit can really be a process of trial and error, which is really hard to tolerate when we have mental health issues, but know that you do NOT deserve to be treated like that. I know I was so used to being treated poorly throughout my life that...

THIS! I think this is what I'm just starting to figure out. Acting like I'm above it is what's always "worked" for me. Except I just cycle through it over and over that way and nothing ever gets resolved.

Thanks @One step at a time . I did email her this morning about whether or not I could come to the new practice, and she just replied that unfortunately she's unable to accept patients from my current office as part of the terms of her employment there. Sigh. So I guess I'm starting over for sure.

I've had to move on from my previous two therapists because they both moved away from my city. I found the one I'm with now after the last one moved out of state, and have been with her about a year. I've only just started to understand -- partly because of joining this forum -- that I haven't...

I'm the same way! I was a bartender for so many years that I really sharpened my "getting people to like me" skills, but it doesn't go very deep -- beyond a very superficial point, I clam up and stop knowing what to do. I don't know how to take friendships deeper or keep them going, and I can't...

I have always had this problem and only now am I starting to understand how it's related to childhood CPTSD. I've always had trouble connecting with people, and part of it feels like it's because I never learned how -- no stable, reliable attachments growing up means zero models for establishing...

My mom is the cause of my CPTSD, so it's a little different, but after years and years of Christmases and other holidays like this, I finally decided enough was enough. I tried for years to do what she wanted, thinking on some subconscious level that if I could just get it right I could finally...

Do you think there's a chance that one or more of these could be causing a sort of "emotion deadening" effect on you? I had a bipolar friend who struggled with this for a long time after starting a certain medication. She felt better in that she wasn't living the extreme difficulty of severe...

I felt this way for years. Years and years. All of my 20s and some of my 30s. I used to talk to a friend of mine about how everyone else seemed to have received this handbook about how to live life, what to do, why to do it, and how to go about it the right way, and somehow I wasn't around the...

You and I are thinking some of the exact same things today. I was reading about having a fragmented sense of identity due to growing up in a CPTSD environment and not ever having a "pre-trauma" self to even look back on, and there's so much crossover with BPD symptoms that you often get a...

I've also come to realize that it's normal for us to feel this way because we have a functioning sense of empathy! We're not one of those people who steps in a muddy puddle on the way to work and thinks the world is ending because it revolves around us. Despite everything we've been through we...

I've been thinking about this same thing. Been reading the autobiography of a favorite celebrity who is also a trauma survivor and in the chapter I read yesterday he says almost the exact same thing as you. Minimizing trauma and blaming ourselves -- maybe it's just easier to turn it all inwards...

I dreaded Christmas my entire life for these reasons. My mother lives a couple hours away, and I'd always have to drive in on Christmas Eve and spend the night. My younger brother was in high school, then college, so he was living there too. She'd always act like it was going to be this warm...

:)

When I lost my first cat when she was 16, it was sudden and very difficult for me. I was single, mostly alone, and it was sort of the catalyzing incident for me to cut my abusive mother out of my life (she was so unbelievably mean and unsupportive to me about it). But I was able to get myself...

This describes my entire 20s and some of my early 30s. I avoided and possibly dissociated (I'm just starting to understand what that means) any major move in any direction because I was paralyzed with lack of knowledge and life skills. I was never taught any "adult" skills, much less emotional...

YES. If it weren't for yoga I never would have learned how to do deep abdominal breathing. Yoga teachers always say that it "calms the nervous system and shuts off the fight-or-flight response," and I'd think yeah, sure, ok. But then last week I was reading about why some emotions cause physical...

I have cried during yoga too! Years ago before I started really processing any of this. I agree with everyone else who finds yoga really stabilizing. I need it! Especially since I made the transition to a desk-based profession about five years ago. Sitting all day just makes my body attack...

I think this week is the first time i ever realized i have never let myself trust a therapist -- kind of the way i just don't tend to trust anyone with my real feelings. I made myself talk about something this week that had been affecting me strongly for about 6 months and which I hadn't told...

I don't know if this is true for you, but mental illness runs in my family. My father was diagnosed bipolar and ended up taking his own life, and my crazy mom who raised me may or may not have ever had a diagnosis (she definitely wouldn't have told me if she did) but you only needed to know her...

Absolutely. I never experienced physical abuse myself, just severe verbal and emotional -- harsh criticism, emotional gaslighting, invalidation, etc and it's taken me until my late 30s to accept that it's ok to be traumatized by this stuff. Other people experience worse, other people experience...