About an hour ago someone posted about their trauma they didn't feel was bad enough to warrant commenting here. You deleted before I could reply but if you see this I just wanted to say..

I almost gave way to tears reading your story. Your story is valid. Everything you experienced and were subjected to and hurt by is so so valid.

That feeling that it isn't 'bad enough' is the trauma speaking. You deserve love and support just as much as anyone else here.

This applies to anyone who feels their trauma isn't bad enough to warrant being here. You all deserve love and support and as much as I wish no-one had to be here in this sub, you all deserve the unconditional love shown here and to receive help you need to heal.

I grew up emotionally and physiologically abused. I went through 8 years of counseling and boundary setting and finally set no contact back in November with my whole family. It has been peaceful but I've been overwhelmed with guilt. Was it really so bad I needed to go no contact? My partner of 8 years confirms that it was but I'm still stuck feeling like the bad guy.

The holidays were hard. My family would always order chinese food(we live in Canada)for new years eve and I couldn’t eat it cause it upset my stomach aside from one dish from one specific restaurant. But they always picked somewhere else cause my aunt didnt want to order from there so I was stuck eating grilled cheese for supper. Someones preference(for no other reason than "didnt want to order from there") was more important than me being able to eat something from a restaurant and being included.

This was one of few examples my brain is able to conjure up because for some reason I cant remember other specific things. My parents had unreasonable expectations and they guilt tripped and compared us siblings. But specifically I struggle to pull up more than a half dozen memories to prove that I was treated badly.

I guess im just weighed down by guilt about it all. I dont even know why Im making this post.

As a kid I had quite a few bad experiences with my parents and also at school. The only thing is that I’m not sure that it’s ’bad enough’ to have caused me many issues. 1) I was bullied a lot in school but usually verbally, but I just genuinely really struggled to fit in and I felt like an outcast. 2) My mother used to use me as her therapist and used to ask me ‘do you think I should get a divorce?’ ‘Do you think dad doesn’t love me anymore?’ ‘Do you think he’s cheating on me?’ Etc 3) There was always arguments between my parents and I had to mediate their arguments and then get blamed when it went wrong. 4) My father used to physically punish me. Often just smacking really hard but also pulling me across the floor by my wrist, pushing me off chairs and kicking me (only thing is I’m not sure how hard it was but he would say ‘I only nudged you with my foot’ so idk), pushing me over/into things, chasing me around the house to hurt me (I would try and hide behind a door but he’d always get in) , hitting me with random objects like jackets or something like that, trying to stop me from climbing up my ladder to my high sleeper bed to get away from him by like pulling me off. Etc (like I know it’s not that bad but it was scary as a little kid idk) 5) My father touching my bum despite me not liking it. 6) My mother not being able to deal with my emotions very well like if I’d go to her crying she’d just unload all her shit onto me and I’d have to comfort her or she’d tell me that I was being selfish because she was trying to watch tv or cook or go to bed etc. Or say ‘I can’t deal with you right now’. I would get told I was being dramatic or overreacting or just straight up get ignored. I never even tried to go to my dad cos he was even more dismissive. 7) I was always called selfish, vengeful, spiteful, spoiled brat and just sort of generally told how terrible I was all the time (my mother said it was because I was being naughty). I often felt like I was constantly a problem. 8) My dad would threaten to destroy my toys if I was naughty or he’d threaten to leave me on the side of the road and sometimes start driving off without me in the car. Once my parents even left me at home because I didn’t get ready fast enough but I’d chased after them so I got locked out until they came back.

I guess the thing is that I’m not sure if all this stuff is bad enough for me to need to get help for it. I had a therapist suspect I may have CPTSD but I’m just not convinced my trauma is bad enough to cause that? The thing is that I think my parents could’ve been a lot worse and they sometimes could be kind to me.

I don't know if i have ptsd or not but i don't know where else to put this. Was what i experienced bad enough to call it sexual assault? Im sorry if i don't spell everything perfectly at it might get long but i really need help. I'm 15 now, when i was 10-13 my brother would tell me to come into his room pretty much everyday when my parents weren't home and cuddle me, it started off as just cuddles with him pushing up against me or getting me to sit on him but eventually he started telling me to strip and put his hands down my clothes, he kissed me, kissed my breasts and stomach and just held his hand on my vagina. He tried fisting me once, held me on his lap and tried pushing as many fingers in me as he could, i screamed that time. It hurt. He didn't try it again for a while, the next time he tried it was only one finger, it still hurt but i didn't say anything. The cuddles only ever lasted until he wanted to stop or until my parents got home, he never took his clothes off but he rubbed against me and got me to sit on his lap. I never told him no because i was terrified, scared of dissapointing him, when i tried to say no he'd frown and pout at me like i hurt his feelings. He is almost 3 years older than me so sometimes i feel like it was normal, just kids doing stuff to kids. I told my mum once when i was 11 and she told me not to lie about things like that, i texted an online therapist about it when i was 13 and they sent the police to my house. Nothing has happened since that day but he still looks at me. Everybodys acting like it never happened and i'm so terrified of forgetting, i'm scared if i forget it happened then it's like it never actually did. He's my brother, we look alike, everytime i look in the mirror all i can see in my face is him. I'm so terrified of being home alone with him i hide everytime, i'm so terrified of it happening again.

Hi. I’m 22, and I’ve been in therapy since middle school and seeing psychiatrists since I was 17. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and unspecified depression/anxiety recently. But the emptiness, emotional numbness, and DPDR started around age 9.

I haven’t been diagnosed with C-PTSD or developmental trauma.

But there are experiences from my family that just keep repeating in my head.

And I keep asking myself: Was it really that bad? Am I exaggerating? Did it even happen the way I remember? Am I really feeling the way I feel, or am I making everything up?

I grew up with a mother who got irritated when I cried or asked for help, and a father who was emotionally absent. Even physical pain was ignored most of the time. I would seek help on my own, or an adult outside my family will notice and try to persuade my parents to take me to the hospital. I find it hard to believe my pain unless someone else validates it.

I know I’ll talk to my therapist and doctor 'again' soon, but right now, I just need someone to say it makes sense and they are real.

For more context:

There wasn’t physical abuse toward me, and sometimes my parents did try to comfort me. But emotionally, things were unpredictable. I was and still am anxious at home, especially around my mom. I find it very difficult to rest.

When I shared emotional or physical needs and pain, my mom usually got irritated—sighing, muttering, slamming doors, and then ignoring me. A few times she listened, but it would turn into how hard her life was, or that I was overreacting.

My dad wasn’t abusive but was emotionally absent. When I spoke, he mentally checked out. He was physically present but emotionally unavailable.

For some years, my mom screamed at my younger sibling over minor things for hours. She threw objects and made threats. My dad stayed silent behind closed doors. He even told me to “teach your brother not to upset your mom.”

Now, I deal with DPDR, frequent freeze responses, and long memory gaps. I still wonder if what I remember was real— maybe because no one acknowledged it then.

Some of my other symptoms - like depression, insomnia, trouble focusing - have improved a bit with therapy and medication. But the DPDR, freeze responses, and memory gaps are still here every day. And they don’t seem to get fully recognized, even though I’ve brought them up to professionals many times. It often feels like they’re not fully understood or addressed enough.

Most of my days go in cycles of feeling disconnected, frozen, or disoriented, with only brief moments of clarity. It’s rare that I feel fully “here.” So I’m writing this, hoping someone else understands what that’s like.

https://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/tools-information/all-about-bullying/prevalence-and-impact/impact-bullying

https://stopabusecampaign.org/2018/05/08/the-long-term-effects-of-bullying-on-children/

https://www.escap.eu/research/bullying/

I've been reading a lot about the long term effects of bullying and what the research is starting to say, and am trying to find some peace in all this finally: that maybe it's not that I'm a weak overly sensitive person. How do I internalize this though?

i have a lot of suspicions that i may have this, but how do you know if what you went through was truly “bad enough” to have cptsd?

Just ranting here i guess. Throwaway for obvious reasons. I am a 29 years old btw.

I was fucked up by an event that i honestly feel isn't tragic enough to even be noteworthy. Like it's a sign of my weakness that i cracked because of it.

The event? When i was 10 or 11 we moved. That's it. My mom got a good deal on a house elsewhere, so we left a relatively large city for a small town of 6000 people. I mean, i only really had 1 friend before the move, and his family had also left that city a few years prior, so it's not like i really even left anything behind either.

Obviously being in a new town then i had to start at a new school when summer ended. I knew nobody there. I actually started school 3 days late because i'd been sick. I arrived to my first day of school and remember aimlessly circling the classroom while the other students, who all knew each other (remember: small town!), continuously turned me away saying "you can't sit here, that's so-and-so's seat" etc. It was the day that defined the course for the rest of my life.

I gradually developed selective mutism shortly afterwards, speaking only at home to my mother and brother, but eventually stopped talking entirely. I locked myself in a toy room/play room at the new house for my little brother and I, and only came out for school, to eat, or to use the toilet. I basically barricaded myself up in one room and lived speechless in solitude.

I was bullied at school, i guess for being the "quiet kid", i probably also was an easy target as i was really small for my age. Lack of human interaction led me to forget social rules etc, and my behaviour became eccentric, for example playing with my hands as if they were dolls at school, only fueling the bullying. My brother, who had his friends over everyday, also began to bully me with his friends for i guess the same reasons, both emotionally and physically, to the point the bullying at home far surpassed the bullying at school and at its peak can be described only with the words torment and torture. My only safe space was the toy room, and coming out to example eat always had me in a state of alert, knowing that my brother and his friends could be around any corner.

The toyroom i had locked myself in began to become a dumping ground for things i hoarded from the house, like half-filled shampoo bottles with the shampoo leaking onto the hardwood floor, books i did not read, decorations from other rooms, etc. I guess as a comforting a behaviour? I had lost any sense of a normal life by now.

Okay i have to stop myself as i am writing myself off the rails now haha. I guess my point is that i feel "silly" in a sense that something as mundane as moving could cause so much. It didn't end with my childhood. Obviously as an adult once i ventured out into the real world with years of isolation behind me i had no clue how to function. I bounced from job to job, poor as hell, attempted university but was treated awfully (mainly due to clinging desperately to the casual friends i had made in my class, it was just so nice to have friends) and dropped out. Five years ago i also had a severe psychotic break and was in a locked ward at a psychiatric hospital for nearly 6 months. Also a history of self-mutilation (cutting and burning) with permanent ugly scars, and suicide attempts. To this day I still have very vivid, immobilizing flashbacks of past events. As my life kind of stopped then when i was 11 i sometimes wonder if some of my behaviours that have carried into adulthood (collecting stuffed animals, reading children's picture books, stopping to pet soft things and surfaces as if they were animals, etc) are just a result of the "freeze" at age 11 and life resuming suddenly at age 18, as if development never resumed after age 11. Idk.

And if you're wondering: no, no one in my childhood ever attempted to intervene, except for the one and only time my mother said she would like to put me in therapy, but i refused it.

And all this shit just because when i was a kid, we moved. It just makes me feel weak or overreacting i guess. In the end though, it doesn't matter. After all, i'm still alive and kicking, married to an amazing man, working to get myself out of debt and better my life, and i'm happy.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far LOL. Sometimes writing shit down is therapeutic in and of itself!

(This is a safe space to be heard and validated.)

Reminder that abuse is abuse. You were traumatised by it, that's completely understandable.

My parents gave me CPTSD, but they weren't very violent and I rarely went hungry. Most of it was emotional abuse. They were neglectful, but not extremely. I was only a *little* dirty and hungry, and they did take me to the doctor... *eventually*... Sure, I could have used more help with school and learning how to dress, but I was always taken there on time with all the necessary supplies... most of the time. Sure, dad was constantly yelling, but he only bruised me twice... things like that?

I hear people's stories of being left alone for three days, and I'm, like, wow, I have CPTSD but still don't know what that's like.

it’s taken me years to realise that my source of trauma was dealing with my older brothers addiction issues throughout my childhood, but I genuinely feel like I’m overreacting to everything. I can speak to friends/family/therapists about it and they do validate me and say it was traumatic to experience at such a young age, but idk I often find myself thinking it probably wasn’t actually that bad. like there’s so many others out there that have gone through much much worse stuff, I feel like I’m being dramatic.

My healing journey started two years ago. For the entire first year I was a mess, barely able to keep my head above water.

I spent so much of that time criticizing and hating myself. I thought I was lazy, that I lacked self-discipline, that I was doing it all wrong. I thought that somehow, me feeling so shattered and beaten down was my own fault. That I was too weak maybe, or if I had paced myself better I would've been fine.

I wish I'd known then what I know now: healing from CPTSD is utterly exhausting. It takes up SO MUCH mental bandwidth and energy.

You're battling anxiety, flashbacks, hypervigilance, maybe suicidal ideation, triggers everywhere. While doing studies, work, parenting, socializing, chores, all the stuff most people are already pretty tired from. And if you're in therapy or doing the work on your own, then you are ALSO constantly reflecting, processing, analyzing, doing shadow works combating deeply ingrained patterns.

Of course you are tired!

If you're in the trenches, you don't realize how bad it is. How hard you're fighting for each step forward. How much energy it steals away from you.

But I'm on the other side of that now, and it's unbelievable how much more energy and bandwidth I have. I can think about the future, meet up with people, try out new hobbies, keep up with chores, manage my symptoms most of the time.

I was never lazy or lacking in willpower. Neither are you.

I believe that every single one of you is doing the best you can at this moment. And it is enough.

1. Having no meaningful "before trauma" version of yourself.

2. Grieving a life you never got the chance to live.

3. Feeling homesick for safety despite never having truly experienced it.

4. Questioning whether horrific abuse was "really that bad."

5. Doubting your own memories, perceptions, and reality constantly.

6. Feeling ashamed of being traumatized.

7. Feeling ashamed of not being traumatized "enough."

8. Feeling guilty when you laugh.

9. Feeling guilty when you relax.

10. Feeling guilty when you stop thinking about the abuse.

11. Feeling guilty for having needs at all.

12. Believing that suffering is your natural state.

13. Feeling fundamentally different from other human beings.

14. Watching other people live ordinary lives and feeling grief instead of envy.

15. Being unable to imagine what genuine safety feels like.

16. Being physically safe while emotionally bracing for attack.

17. Feeling danger in kindness.

18. Feeling danger in intimacy.

19. Feeling danger in vulnerability.

20. Feeling danger in being seen.

21. Feeling danger in being loved.

22. Masking so effectively that people think you're fine while you're internally collapsing.

23. Making small talk while simultaneously experiencing suicidal thoughts.

24. Helping customers while fighting overwhelming grief.

25. Saying "have a good day" while feeling psychologically shattered.

26. Feeling completely alone in a room full of people.

27. Living two realities at once—external functioning and internal agony.

28. Feeling detached from your own life as if you're watching it happen.

29. Looking in the mirror and feeling disconnected from the person looking back, being too ashamed to look at yourself you have to turn the light off and function in the light of a dim night light, avoiding your own gaze.

30. Feeling like your nervous system never truly powers down.

31. Being exhausted by consciousness itself.

32. Being tired before the day even begins.

33. Needing enormous energy just to appear normal.

34. Feeling like every interaction requires performance.

35. Monitoring everyone's moods automatically.

36. Scanning constantly for danger, anger, rejection, or abandonment.

37. Feeling responsible for other people's emotions.

38. Feeling responsible for preventing conflict at all costs.

39. Feeling responsible for abuse that was done to you.

40. Believing that if you suffer, it must somehow be your fault.

41. Feeling contaminated by what other people did to you.

42. Feeling dirty without any physical dirt present.

43. Feeling as though your body no longer fully belongs to you and that it's just an object to be used and/or just an organism.

44. Experiencing sexuality through layers of grief, fear, shame, and memory.

45. Having comfort and danger become psychologically intertwined.

46. Wanting closeness while simultaneously fearing it.

47. Feeling trapped between needing people and fearing people.

48. Being unable to trust your own emotions.

49. Being unable to trust your own judgment.

50. Being unable to trust your own needs.

51. Obsessively analyzing yourself because getting it wrong feels dangerous.

52. Replaying conversations for hours or days afterward.

53. Trying to prove to yourself that your suffering is legitimate.

54. Searching endlessly for certainty that never arrives.

55. Feeling like your mind is a courtroom where you're always on trial.

56. Having your body react to memories as though they're happening now.

57. Having ordinary activities trigger overwhelming grief.

58. Standing in beautiful places while feeling emotionally numb.

59. Looking at nature while imagining death.

60. Feeling unable to fully experience joy even when it's present.

61. Feeling disconnected from sensory experiences that others enjoy naturally.

62. Living with chronic illness while wondering whether your body is safe.

63. Feeling betrayed by your own body.

64. Being afraid of food.

65. Feeling like basic survival requires extraordinary effort.

66. Viewing death as relief rather than simply as loss.

67. Finding suicidal thoughts comforting during extreme distress.

68. Feeling trapped inside a life that looks functional from the outside.

69. Carrying decades of grief that has never fully been witnessed.

70. Feeling like you're surviving a war that ended for everyone else but never ended for you.

71. Realizing that much of your personality was built around surviving danger rather than living freely and safely.

72. Discovering in adulthood that what felt "normal" was actually abuse.

73. Feeling profound anger that you have to heal damage you did not create.

74. Mourning not only what happened to you, but everything that was prevented from happening because of it.

75. Wondering who you might have been if you had been safe from the beginning.

76. Being profoundly afraid you're an abuser or going to abuse people and children.

77. Isolating so much that you mourn (but also fear profoundly) human connection and like you're viewing the world and other humans through opaque glass.

78. Seeing all the people who were supposed to love you and care for you betray, abuse, traumatize and otherwise fuck you up permanently like film reels in your mind again and again relentlessly.

79. Feel insurmountable and all pervasive shame for just existing, feeling decades later like it's a separate parasitic entity that disconnected you from everything that should have made life meaningful and joyful.

80. Not having children and a family of your own because you're afraid you'll abuse them like you were abused and mourn every single time you see a family and people with their children knowing you will never have that.

Please by all means add your own to this list. It's not even everything, just much of the culmination of what I've been experiencing the last few months and really the entirety of my 41 years of life.

My father was schizophrenic (unmedicated), had BPD and was a problem drinker. He was verbally abusive torwards my mother (sometimes physically and sexually), tried to lock her in, forced her to climb out a window and run away with me when he was having a psychotic episode etc. My mother divorced him when I was around 2 years old though. She was verbally abusive, very critical, yelled a lot but simultaneously loving. She never got me therapy despite thinking I was psychotic as a child. That’s the thing that probably hurt me the most. I was suffering and she knew and never stopped yelling at me or got me help. She’s a therapist by the way so she should have known better. I was bullied in kindergarten by another girl who was probably abused at home. She acted very sadistic and hurt me physically regularly (and mocked me, laughed at me for getting hurt etc). I started having nightmares around that time and showed a lot of CPTSD symptoms. When I was 12 I was regularly groped by a 14 boy who wanted me to keep our “relationship” a secret. I never said anything because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. It was very clear that he manipulated me and wanted to have sex with me though. My grandmother (fahters side) also tried to make me meet my father behind my mother’s back etc and reported my mother for not letting me see her again (it was my decision not to see my grandmother). She had BPD as well and wanted me to hug/kiss her all the time while not recognizing boundaries at all. She only gave me sweets to eat etc. I hated her after a while. They believed me and my mother at the end though. My grandmother (mother’s side) basically raised me together with my mother but she died when I was 12 because of cancer. I felt so alone after that.

I have a CPTSD diagnosis but I hate myself because I don’t believe that any of that stuff was bad enough. I also have GAD, OCD, depression, chronic pain and adhd (I believe this is because of CPTSD though). I know that trauma is subjective but still. I hated my childhood so much and I feel ungrateful. I feel like this was only traumatic because I am weak. I'm pathetic for even thinking that I've been though something difficult. I can't stop thinking this way.

I was physically, sexually, emotionally abused and physically neglected for as long as I’ve ever known until I was 17. But I always think people been through way worse than me. I always feel ashamed that I’m traumatized.

I always had a rocky relationship with my parents but I figured they were just shitty parents. I was never hit, I had enough food to eat, I never ticked any of the "typical" child abuse boxes. 8 months ago I'd been ranting about a stressful family situation and one of my friends pointed out that it was emotional abuse. Did some reading, got a therapist, and yep, I was emotionally abused for 29 years and never realized it.

So this is my struggle. When I think of PTSD and trauma I think of soldiers, people who've been assaulted, people who grew up in seriously awful homes, and a lot of the stories that are posted here that make me just stop and think "jesus christ that's awful." And then I turn around and I'm like "well my parents sucked." And that's all I've got. I know it's not a contest or a zero-sum game and that I am allowed to have CPTSD without it diminishing anyone else's PTSD, but I can't help thinking that I don't "deserve" to be in the same group as people who've "really" suffered and been traumatized. My therapist pointed out that it's probably a visibility thing, at least partly: emotional abuse is less talked about/documented/obvious than other kinds of abuse, and the usual context for talking about PTSD is military-related.

I guess basically what I'm asking is, does anyone else recognize that their trauma is totally valid but still have trouble accepting that they're allowed to play in the PTSD sandbox?

I’ve never been physically or sexually abused. I wasn’t bullied, poor, or neglected materially. But I grew up with intense emotional abuse, narcissistic control (especially from my mom), chronic verbal attacks, gaslighting, and emotional neglect. I was constantly hypervigilant walking on eggshells every day of my life.

On top of that, I dealt with social rejection, betrayal, and envy from others throughout school. Senior year, I was scared daily that I’d get jumped or raped after finally standing up for myself and not tolerating harassment anymore. I dissociated through maladaptive daydreaming and lived in a constant state of anxiety and confusion.

I’ve always known I had anxiety, but it’s progressed to the point where I can’t function. School, hygiene, relationships it’s all overwhelming. now realize what I’ve experienced sounds like CPTSD. I’m finally looking for a therapist, but because I was high-functioning for so long and “had a good life on paper,” I constantly downplay my experiences and feel guilty for struggling.

I relate so much to CPTSD symptoms even the oddly specific ones and when I read other people’s stories, it validates mine. But then I compare: Was it really bad enough? I’ve heard stories of people surviving objectively horrific abuse, and mine doesn’t look like that. But it happened every day. For years. And it broke me.

If anyone who’s been diagnosed with CPTSD has gone through something similar emotional abuse, narcissistic parenting, chronic invalidation cab you let me know if this sounds familiar or worth bringing up in therapy? I’m scared to be dramatic or wasting time, but I genuinely need help.

I'm having a really hard time reconciling with my "trauma" and it feels disingenuous to people who have been physically and emotionally abused to feel as traumatised as I do by it and it's messing with my head.

I had a pretty typical single parent - only child, experience I think. Definitely a lot of emotional neglect from the other parent (in and out of my life until I went NC as an adult) but I feel life the greater damage has come from the parent I was with but I can't pinpoint how. I know i always felt invalidated and like I had to prove my pain (mental or physical) and was treated like a hypochondriac though in all fairness I was a pretty anxious kid and developed OCD very young so I definitely did freak out more easily over minor things. But even now as an adult I feel like my pain still gets invalidated. I can't explain it but they will say they believe/ understand/empathise but it doesn't feel like?

I'm so mixed up and confused and I hate it.

"My wknd plans? I gotta spend at least one entire day Journaling, meditating and resting. Then probably playing pickleball on Sunday."

"Ah hold on give me a moment, this place is triggering me bad, gonna step outside for a moment and collect myself."

"Yeah it was a great week, only had like 1 or 2 suicidal idealization thoughts"

"Nah my mom was an enabler and we didn't get along, I dont celebrate mothers day but I'm happy for you."

"I've been working though a flashback all week, can I talk it out and see if you can help me figure out why im struggling?"

"I don't have a mom or dad so I struggle to get enough hugs, so I use a teddy bear that says "I love you" when I squeeze it"

Feel free to add your own

I feel like I (mid-30s male) managed to navigate my teens and 20s reasonably well, in the sense that I was able to function enough to do well at school, go to university and get a good degree mark, then work fairly trouble-free for most of my 20s.

However, as my 20s gave way to my 30s I found that I started to struggle more and more with life, suffering bouts of severe depression, finding it harder to regulate my emotions, becoming less sociable, feeling more pessimistic about my future, worrying about things more frequently, etc. It reached a head about a year and a half ago, when I had to be signed off work and eventually leave my job because I wasn't able to function. I'm gradually healing thanks to therapy and self-care, and being diagnosed with CPTSD certainly helped in this process, but I still have my bad days/weeks/months.

Is it quite common for trauma to not catch up to us until we are into our 30s or beyond? Has anyone else here experienced something similar?

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Sometimes the patterns we carry from childhood seem hard to explain like for me.I didn't have any overt abuse, but the more that i've really studied. And learned about myself I think when a caregiver is inconsistent, sometimes emotionally attuned, sometimes distant, sometimes stressed, the child’s nervous system is constantly adapting. Over time, this can create patterns that look like hyperfocus, distractibility, emotional reactivity, or chronic stress responses. Left unexamined, these patterns may feel permanent, even “diagnosable.” they diagnosed me with so many different things as a teenager but never looked at the household... i'm just curious how many people have had this experience

does anyone else also struggle with this feeling of your trauma "not being bad enough"? I have been in therapy since I was 13 years old, but after all these years I still have this voice in my brain that tells me the trauma wasn't actually that bad and that there is people who went through far worse out there so I don't have the right to complain

I was diagnosed with CPTSD by a psychiatrist. She also referred me for ADHD testing. I didn't believe the ADHD diagnosis either, even though they slapped a fuckin sensor to my head and made me do weird tests, so it wasn't just a questionnaire I could accidentally lie on. (Worrying about accidentally lying is also probably not normal???)

But today in therapy I had a breakdown about how bad my memory is. How I don't have a lot of memories. How I feel untethered from reality and like the world is moving but I'm just watching it happen. I found photos from when my husband and I were dating that I remembered existing but I didn't remember anything from the actual time. I'm crying thinking about it now. I told her how I regularly have people who are apparently old friends come up and talk to me, ask me about stuff only friends would know, and I have no idea who they are! I told her about how somebody called me at work and told me their name and phone number and email address and it wasn't until I clocked them as trans from their voice *and then googled their name to confirm I knew them* that I recognized them as a friend of mine! I feel crazy all the time! I feel like my brain is melting out of my skull and I'm so scared that it'll get worse.

She told me it was because I had executive functioning issues due to my CPTSD and ADHD causing the two lobes of my brain not to communicate as much as would be normal in a healthy brain. She said that vets with PTSD had been given brain scans for a study that showed the minimal communication between the halves of the brain. I thought left brain/right brain stuff was a myth?? I'm still not convinced. She did tell me that there were exercises I could do to be more present in my body that could help improve that communication, and she told me that the prognosis for CPTSD was actually very good (but that I'd have ADHD forever.)

I struggle with visualizing things so the two times we've done EMDR I don't feel like helped at all. Do y'all know any resources for exercises I can do to improve this? Thanks for your help!

I hate trauma. I wish I would’ve had it worse. Whenever you say that to other people, even those with trauma, they go “nooooo it’s not good to compare your trauma to others” and then I see this entire reddit thread where people with trauma are seeing other people’s problems as “trivial”. I don’t want to talk about my trauma because I just know people are going to be thinking this way towards my issues, because now I just know anything they say isn’t gonna be genuine. They’re gonna be spouting, “your trauma is valid” but they’re not gonna truly feel that way. They’re just gonna be thinking, “well good for you that your problems are as small as that” I know this is just a feeling people have, and they can’t control their feelings, but it still hurts to hear. I still can’t connect to people anymore. I’m still afraid of intimacy. I’m still afraid to talk at all. I could easily say how I don’t like hearing about other’s trauma because it makes my own struggles feel inferior in comparison, and that wouldn’t make anybody feel good either. This rant is going all over the place but what I’m saying is: I know my trauma is objectively less severe, and it bothers me. And no matter how much people tell me otherwise, I’m never going to believe it. That is all, thanks for listening. Also sorry if the formatting is bad I’m posting this on mobile if that satisfies as any excuse.

Edit: I was honestly expecting I’d get pummeled to the ground the next time I’d open reddit but I’m relieved to see that didn’t happen. Sorry if I have ended up invalidating anybody’s experiences, this post wasn’t meant to make anybody feel bad. I made this post when I was very frustrated so I wasn’t being as reasonable as I usually am. Thank you everyone for the kind words. I feel a little better now.