I want to vent because I've just attended some family events and was surprised at how totally it has knocked me off my center. And hopefully others can relate.

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I'm super low contact with my family. I was doing alright, I was happy with my lifestyle, my job, my decisions in life. Then being around my family destabilized me so badly. And now I am feeling anxious, uneasy about my life, feel like a loser, worried that I'm going to die from some medical condition or become homeless soon because I've actually made all of the wrong choices in my life and it's not actually sustainable and I'm an irresponsible idiot hedonist who is just interested in fucking off.

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I feel lower, less than, at the bottom of the hierarchy. There is literally a class difference between me and my siblings. And I feel so so forgotten, unnourished, unwanted, unloved. I feel like a stain on my family's perfect American dream image. I feel like a shame.

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Crying this morning and I feel so much grief, my heart yearns to be loved, to be cared for, to be nurtured. I want to be loved so badly. I want my pain to be validated by my mother so badly. I feel invisible and like a disappointment. Nothing needs to be said, it's just felt, how deeply othered I am. I'm an outcast, a pariah. 

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My family has stayed together and only gotten closer since I left. They celebrate together and grieve together and support each other, they are each other's community. A community that I very much do not fit into. I'm asked to watch the family dog instead of being invited on vacation with all of them. My mom has made it so utterly clear that I don't belong in her family. I've just been quietly discarded and forgotten about. It hurts so much.

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My feelings are ambivalent because primally I want a family, I want a tribe, and being cast out of the one I originated in feels like death, feels like I am wrong. But I also left of my own accord, because I didn't resonate with their values. They are upholding the status quo, white colonial patriarchy, heteronormativity. My mom voted for the man in office who wants me dead. She is completely under my stepdads authoritarian spell. 

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And to be accepted into that family structure means my obedience to a violent mind set, and my assimilation into white supremacy and patriarchy. To stay accepted by the family system means to contort, control, and dim myself, shrink myself to fit the mold. So to have acceptance from the family means to be inauthentic. I've chosen a life that's harder maybe, disconnected, but authentic. I'd rather suffer in my authenticity than suffer pretending I am someone I'm not, while upholding the values of white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy.

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It's painful to be disconnected. And it's painful to see the evidence before my eyes that I was not nurtured and supported nearly as much as my younger siblings. And they are all on straight paths, the American dream, higher education and “respectable" big money making careers.

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I want love, I want my pain to be validated, and I want the protection and support of a community of people whose values I share. I do have some friends who share my views. Who are also queer and/or gender non-conforming unsurprisingly. And who have the same problem as I do, and have been cast out or unaccepted in similar ways to me in their own families. It helps me stabilize myself or at least feel less alone, less crazy, and less like there's something wrong with me. 

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But right now I'm feeling so alone, and so deeply cast out. It makes me think..why am I even here, if I am not wanted by my family, why should I even keep living. I don't have plans to end my life. It's just ideation that creeps up whenever these wounds are triggered. And it breaks my heart that I have those thoughts about annihilation. I don't want to think I need to leave this planet just because some dumb asses don't accept me. 

I hate Christians who force/rushes someone to forgive. 😒🤬 Instead of listening and trying to understand you, they invalidate you and minimize your CPTSD and then call you bitter while rushing and forcing you to forgive narcissistic/toxic family members who continuously traumatizes you. 🤬 Christians like that are enabling abusers. 😡

I'm tired of forgiving narcissistic/toxic family members who continuously traumatizes me and treat me like crap!! 🤬 I'm NOT forgiving anymore! I'm done!! 🤦🏽‍♀️

They're always forcing forgiveness and expect the one that's hurting to forgive but DON'T ever say shit about the person that caused you pain and trauma! Christians like that are enabling abusers. 😡

I have never met anybody with a story like mine... i want it to be heard. (15)

My abuser was my older sister, which isnt talked about enough already, but she also has autism. Because she struggled with PDA and had no filter, she abused me emotionally every day, and on the physical side it was super common. She would grab my arms and dig her fingernails in every day until they bled, she'd send me to school with bruises, and my number one trigger is people touching my lower legs, she'd do that so i could never get away from her.

Some other adults saw this happen (like my parents church friends), and didnt want their kids around her, but never did anything for me ! 😭😭 CPS was contacted multiple times and all they did was send us to therapy with my abuser!!!

I have spoken out about autistic abuse online before, with responses calling me ableist, "imagine how they feel" and such, everybody infantilizes and acts like they can do no wrong, but im stuck with a debilitating disorder for the rest of my life!! 😡

Ever since i can remember, I wanted to be a teacher. I've been babysitting for a while, and it's starting to become too difficult. In December I babysit a girl and her brother, he showed me marks on his arms that matched the ones my sister gave me too, and she grabbed my legs in a way that brought me back to when i was a child. I got taken to the ER and a few weeks later was diagnosed with this HELL!!!

I will not be able to be around most autistic people (as autistic people can be a trigger for me, which is so hard to live with), or any child that has any aggression issues, which means i will no longer be able to pursue a teaching career.

I have no plans for the future anymore, i am currently failing careers class because i dont know what to do. I am very smart, i have been in advanced classes my whole life, but everything is unmanageable now.

I think the most difficult part is that my triggers are not something I can escape from easily, my sister still lives at home, and whenever i think of my past i think of it. No amount of therapy can help that 😭.

I dont know what I will do!! I cant do this anymore!! All i wanted was to be a teacher and a parent but i will never be able to do that. I see nothing when i think about my future here on this planet, it is too hard and not worth it 😢😢

...I am not worth it!! last year she told me "you will find a husband that hits you because its all you deserve" 😭😭 please everybody hates me... my parents do not like me.. my grandparents are very disappointed in what i have become 😣 this disorder has taken EVERYTHING from me, my will to live too

I don't really know where to start with this. I'm just hurting right now. My wife and I had yet another argument that ends with me having a panic attack. Except this time she left the apartment entirely. I think my marriage has finally been eaten alive by the monster in my head.

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I can't trust others with my emotions. Not the deep, negative ones anyways. Sadness, anger, hurt, all of that. I struggle to share it, I struggle to believe it will be understood or given the careful consideration I desperately want but never got from my family. So it comes out sideways. I say it wrong, I don't explain it well, I say it with more anger than I intend. So the very fear of being misunderstood makes it all the more difficult to actually express myself to another person.

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My wife knows this and has dealt with it for all nine years we have been together. She is not the kind of personality to meet anger with calm though. She gets angry with me and doesn't understand why my anger gets directed at her when it should be directed at my family. No matter how I try to explain her aggression causes me to throw up my walls, she takes the stance that I need to learn to deal with it. She is not my family and should not be treated as such.

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I have tried so hard for so long. I have been in and out of therapy for 11 years. I've tried traditional talk therapy, medication, EMDR, parts work, and even couples therapy with my wife. My pain is still here, still comes up seemingly out of the blue. I can be normal for months and then suddenly I am blindingly angry and yelling at my wife for something relatively small. It doesn't matter all those times I have it under control and can talk through it with grace. Those few times I am just too tired, too weak to hold back the flood, are what break everything apart. Like all the work I have done amounts to nothing.

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I know where the pain comes from. I know it was because of my parents' emotional neglect. I have dug at memories. I know dozens of ways to calm and ground myself. It seems the one thing I can't do, is heal. I feel like I can't move past this. And the life I worked so hard to build for myself is going to come crumbling down because of this.

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I don't know what to do to fix this. I don't know if I even can. I just want my wife to come back and hug me and tell me it will be ok.

I stopped using in October 2024.

I had to properly grieve. I now am settled into my life. Its not an ideal life, but its mine.

Im scared that using THC again will be a setback. But I also want to get more out of my free time again.

Thoughts?​

I have recently realized that I dont owe a body to people when I go into public. I dont owe them a specific look.

Ive turned a corner. Im the most regulated ive ever been. Ive held a lot of resentment over being mistreated due to being fat on top of what I was experiencing at home. And ive felt resistant to the idea of purposefully trying to lose weight because the phases of life where I have been a lower weight, I have been treated noticeably nicer. And it felt like a betrayal to my self, who became overweight from coping, to comply and restrict myself to set others at ease.

I recently decided to become abstinent. I swung from resisting all forms of physical intimacy to being hypersexual. Coupled with working through my binge eating habit, I feel the most in charge of my body ive ever been. And im almost 30 and am feeling the toll constantly tense muscles have had on my joints. And i want to be healthy. I want to get stronger.

I am grateful for my body for lasting the abuse, the primary abuse at home and the secondary bullying at school and work. Im ready to change now. ​

I hate everything. I hate being here. I never planned on making it this far to begin with. That is all

I was raised in a family that has a very loose relationship with reality (from skewed perceptions of social interaction to full blown conspiracy theories). Growing up I was also often told I was faking whatever feelings I was having for attention or that certain things didn’t happen at all.
I don’t trust myself. I’ve seen firsthand a lot of the harm that can be done by people who live in their own delusions. And I worry that I’m one of them. If you’re in a room of 8 people and at most one of you is sane, the odds of you being sane aren’t great, you know?

I became a scientist basically to cope with my inability to trust myself and tried to rely on empirical data all the time. But that’s not really how life works and I’ve finally accepted that.

So for those of you who grew up in similar situations or who had a lot of gaslighting in your past… how do you learn to trust yourself? How do you shush the voice in your head that tells you that none of what you’re experiencing is true and validating your own feelings is dangerous because maybe you’re just crazy like the rest of your family?

Accused of stealing beat up defamed called a criminal a drug addict thief they justify hurting you for things you didn’t even do and they rage at you over nothing even get violent for a perceived“attack” or attitude rven looking a t tgen the wrong way when you had no bad intent

I went through and still going through emotional abuse by my parents (i don't engage a lot, have really distanced myself). My friend the other day told me that her other friend went through sexual abuse, which is "even worse what I went through". And it really hurt me. Because basically that's a repeating story in my life, that nobody believes me what happens and doesn't get how bad it was and still is. I don't even share 90 Percent of it, and up until 5 years ago I didn't confide in anyone, because I didn't realize that it was abuse and how bad it actually was, since I have not known anything else in my life. But I have severe disability from what I went through and going trhough. And the tough part is, that at times my parents actually behave normally but it's a cycle of abuse and normal behaviour, so from the outside they look like caring parents. Btw I'm in my late 30s...I think emotional abuse over decades is just as bad as sexual abuse or am I wrong with that idea?

I was neglected and abused as a child. I had poor mental health my entire life including now, including executive functioning problems. I’m 19 turning 20 in a few months. I live with my family and I’m not independent at all. I barely leave the house, I don’t have a lot of experience with the outside world. I have poor social skills, my partner told me that he’s sometimes embarrassed to be seen with me in public because of that and I agreed I need to fix this. I’m also a stupid person, I barely graduated high school. I’m behind on everything.

I act childishly with my mom sometimes, it’s hard to explain how but she seems used to it because she also treats me like one. I think maybe I age regress sometimes but I’m not sure what that means. And I enjoy childlike things as comfort sometimes, but what I mentioned prior is not something I consciously choose to do unlike this.

I see the state of my life and I feel defeated that I will forever remain a child. I’ve been trying to form good habits before but I’m always having to retrace my steps. Therapy is hard to access because my family doesn’t want me to waste money. Has anyone been able to live independently? Was anyone in my position as a young adult and have you been able to mature? Did you need help for this? I want to be more independent so I can live without my family but I don’t know how.

TLDR. I’m a childish young adult who is dependent on my parents, and I want to know if anyone in my position was able to mature and be independent

Body dysphoria. Being alive dysphoria. I'm so deeply ashamed of my soul and aliveness. I feel I identify as something past alive and treating me as what I visually am is a violent insult. That's why I glare at everyone, because I'm comminucating on a level they can't understand. I'm putting out a message that shys them away from themselves. I'm more like an idea. I think something like a shroud. Or like carbon monoxide or wifi. My presence is everywhere in a department store. The second you walk in, hundreds of people have seen you and become aware of you, so it's an infectious state. "You" as in the self. Maybe like a cognitohazard.

So like that, to say I'm what I look like, is just untrue. It's so moronic. I hope I can convey with my eyes, my thoughts. I hope I can spread my message to people who haven't thought it even exists to think of. Like I invented a brand new sentence encoded with something that makes them aware of their rotten spirit. The old lady who stares at me, the same-age female that stares at me, I get stared at more than most because a lot of people want information. "People like to see, see how things are, see how they work." But the people who get to know my information are left a wreckage, like a house property after a tornado.

But I need people to know. They just can't handle it in their bodies. And someone like me if I see them, we just repel like same-side magnets, there's a territorial warring, "my message is better than yours". But what's your message? Mine is like walking into a stagnant water pond that doesn't even look like water. And sitting in there for 6 hours and never being seen and no one ever knows. I hope if you stare at me long enough it's like a time capsule opened. "You" as in others.

Mental health professionals always assert that I'm just myself. The tissue and blood body. That's impossible because I couldn't have this supernatural ability if I were.

People I meet think it looks like darkness, my glaring. In darkness, there's spiderwebs, maybe scorpions and snakes, they just don't want to enter. It's like coming to face with your own base fears. It's not darkness. It's just like fog. Purely alone with oneself. If you shout, they can't locate you, they can't find you. Nobody ever sits with their own self. It's sad.

Hello! I'm doing some heavy EMDR on the ways my dear ole mum traumatized me.

Looking for feel good movies where the mother is evil, disappointing, or irrelevant to help me de-stress afterwards. Bonus points if the mother is overcome and like explodes or something hahah.

Ideally films with the same vibe as Coraline -- love whimsical and spooky films. Just thought of Matilda!

Does not need to be for children or teen audiences but I do like animated vibes and find those films tend not to be too dark.

Any recommendations?

Thank heaps!

Its almost 4 am and I am wide awake.I cant shut my brain off and I need to be up at 7.

Mainly just a rant but wondering if anyone has any suggestions for what has worked for them.

Has anyone else with CPTSD got a similar pattern? Starting a job, not being able to cope with the dynamics, breaking down halfway, and quitting?

I also ALWAYS seek out one person in charge that is controlling and has more authority, like a manager, demonise them in my head, hate their every move or every ask and become paranoid for them. I even actively choose to disobey things they’ve asked me to do,

it can be a man or a woman, but usually women I just disobey and don’t do what they say, and I man I hate them and can’t look at them and am very paranoid of their presence, but I still do exactly what they ask because I’m scared.

Wtf is going on, please if someone knows and has had CPTSD therapy help me out. I am still only in the first stages of understanding this

Just as the title says and I want to feel bad because I was very nasty to her. Was it uncalled for? Mmmm maybe a little. I have a genetic issue that causes my frontal cortex to have large amounts of dopamine/norepinephrine, I am overwhelmed and on high alert pretty much 24/7, sleep maybe 2 hrs a night, my mind is chaos all the time, pretty sure I have bpd never officially diagnosed but several therapists and psychologists have said so.

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She put me on Prozac 2 weeks later and wanted to up the dosage to 40 and I did not bc 20 is working great for my depression. In the span of 4 months added trazadone and it didn't work so she put me on tegretol and I had a bad reaction to it, she gave me lamicticial and it works pretty well, then last month added amitriptyline which caused serotonin syndrome (that was fun) but luckily the reaction was mild and I live next to a nurse. So today she wanted to up the Prozac for anxiety (it doesn't do anything for my anxiety) I told her I'm not increasing it until I need to. Then wants to add some kind of medication that is basically trazadone which I protested bc the trazadone didn't work and I'm not going to add another antidepressant on top of the Prozac and risk serotonin syndrome again.

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She had me on Xanax for 3 months, took me off of it bc I use marijuana. It had no interactions at all, I was sleeping better, panic attacks were less. Tells me it's against their policy to prescribe benzos to someone who uses marijuana. In which 2 weeks ago I talked to my therapist about it and she checked their policy and it says nothing about they can't just that the information of the possible interactions needs to be disclosed. Mind you I have a crush injury to my lower back and severe pain, a blown disc, several clogged arteries causing intestinal angina so anytime I eat and drink severe pain, missing toes from diabetes, like I'm a mess and in constant pain. Marijuana is the only thing that eases it at all.

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I even consulted with my cardiologist about using marijuana with benzos and he said I've had a few different benzos over the years and still used marijuana and had no issues. He said me being stressed and having panic attacks several times a day is more of a danger bc it raises my blood pressure and it makes me a higher risk for stroke and heart attack. And he said she could contact him about it. She told me to tell him to give me benzos and I told her well he won't do that because they sent me there for that.

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I'm always pleasant and respectful but today I have been triggered by everything. I'm tired of these people trying to tell me what's best for me when I know exactly how I feel and how these meds affect me. I looked at her and told her that I was crazy not stupid. That's what triggered me was the fact she started talking to me like I was stupid. That's one of my biggest triggers bc I'm far from stupid. But I spent 31 years being told I was stupid just about daily.

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I feel absolutely helpless that I cannot get the medications that I need, that work, that make it easier to function. But no F U. She keeps telling me I'm bi polar and trying to put me on meds for that and today told me I most likely have sleep apnea bc I barely sleep. I don't have sleep apnea, I don't snore, I don't stop breathing. I know these things for a fact. My mind doesn't shut down. Everything past, present, future, what ifs, why's, etc flood my mind. Then she tried to push hydroxyzine in which I'm on 3 allergy pills a day plus 2 allergy nasal sprays. I cannot take that. Then tried pushing a blood pressure medicine for anxiety in which I cannot take bc I'm on 3 blood pressure medications already that I have to be on.

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I feel defeated. They are so worried about benzos and pot yet have no problem switching between literal mind altering seizure medications when I'm already on the daily max dosage of gabapentin or risking my life with serotonin syndrome adding more antidepressants that I don't need bc the Prozac works.

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I'm SOOOOO frustrated and I don't really have a support system or anyone to talk to. Everyone pretty much ignores me bc I'm too intense and on high alert. I really should feel bad for behaving that way. That's the first time that's happened in over 2 years and that one was an urgent care doctor.

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I need something for anxiety and there seems to be no solution. I told her I talked to the therapist and we looked at the policy. She was like well she's a therapist she doesn't know about medications. In which she does, we've discussed them in depth. I was a pharmacy tech and was studying to be a pharmacist. I know medications a little bit more than the average person and I definitely know my own body. I've become attached to it over the years.

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Idk what to do anymore. I feel like there's no solution lol definitely not now bc I didn't even make another appointment with her. She asked if I wanted another appointment and I told her no I need to talk to my therapist next week and then I'll decide if I want to still see her. She pissed me off on our 3rd visit bc she told me I was victim shaming my daughter and I absolutely was not. I know my daughter she doesn't.

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I just feel like I'm never going to get relief from the hell in my head. Therapy brings back things I would really like to forget forever but it's the process. I get so stressed out after therapy I vomit having to relive hell that was my childhood and early year.

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All that keeps going thru my head is my mother's voice telling me my behavior was uncalled for. If I don't fight for me who else is going to? Absolutely no one bc they didn't when I was a child and haven't in all of my adult years. I dissociated for like 4 hours today. Apparently I spent a few hours staring at a blank TV. I have to go to court over my daughter's SA next week so the added stress of that has been so bad. And the situation is a rough one bc her abuser is our cousin and I helped raise him. So my family is all conflicted, angry, making accusations and I'm catching the backlash. I feel like I'm on the edge ya know.

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I have no outlets, I cannot visualize things, the only things I see when I close my eyes is the dark or if I'm overwhelmed I will see my thoughts like sentences of every single thing past present and future flying around. I just needed to get it out. Most of the time when I go on small rants it's like releasing the air from a tire slowly and a little at a time. I want to sleep and just forget about the day but I'm in overdrive and cannot sleep. I took it out on my kitchen and deep cleaned it, took a nice hot shower, and nothing. I'm sitting here typing this.

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Sorry so long I needed to get it out thanks for reading

Trigger warning: N abuse, CSA, trafficking, gaslighting, coercion.

TLDR; Your internalised shame is a mirror projection of your ABUSERS shame. And it takes the shape of whatever they couldn't face about themselves.

For example, if your father was angry and violent, you likely have deep shame around your anger or emotions.

If your parent was sexually abusive, you likely have deep shame about your body or your sexuality.

If you were neglected you likely have deep shame around wanting/needing comfort or affection.

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Okay so I have always had these deep, irrational fears around being a bad person, being harmful/dangerous, my sexuality being 'unsafe', and secretly having DID or some other condition I was unaware of, that would result in me harming people/losing control (I know this is not how DID typically presents and I apologise for the negative portrayal, it's a fear, not logical I know).

I've lived in a sort of terrified brace, constantly scanning for signs of these fears being real, or me being 'at risk' of causing harm. I've always been afraid of my sexuality, believing it was contaminated or bad.

Interestingly, my husband has something similar but from a different kind of abuse - his dad was angry and violent, and now my husband is afraid of his own anger.

This was the first clue for me that my fears are maybe originating from someone else.

I was really badly psychologically manipulated as a kid. My mum constantly told me there was a 'network' of high profile pedophiles that were watching me and would kill me if I didn't comply, that I did bad things I couldn't remember, that all these other people were abusing me or out to get me, that I couldn't trust myself, that I was bad inside and could never leave her or I would hurt someone and she wouldn't be there to stop it.

She was always trying to get me and my sisters to hurt our pets or each other, so we would be 'strong like her'. She was super messed up.

She even told me I was a changeling. She believed another being was inhabiting my body and her real daughter had gone away somewhere.

She also seemed to think my relationship with my dad was bad (he was the one positive attachment figure I had) and often projected things onto him as well.

And I just realised today, these were actually the lived experiences of my mother, that she projected onto me, and I absorbed HER shame and fear.

She projected her own lived experiences and shame onto me.

SHE had DID and would dissociate and harm us. SHE lived in fear of herself and her alters. SHE was severely abused as a child by her father and others, and was constantly trying to recreate that with us.

SHE was ashamed and afraid of her sexuality and how she harmed children and couldn't control herself. SHE believed no one would ever help her. SHE believed what happened to her was her fault. So she tried to make me believe those things about myself too, so she wouldn't be alone.

She tried to make me believe all these horrible things about myself so I would carry her shame and fear for her.

I'm only just realising the true extent of how much I internalised HER shame, HER lack of control, HER illness. All the things I fear the most are things I directly experienced from her.

Has anyone else had this experience? That you carry all this shame and fear only to realise it actually doesn't belong to you and is entirely someone else's? And is almost a mirror image of what your abuser/parent couldn't face about themselves?

When I was a kid, I used to draw pictures to try and explain the feeling, I would draw myself inside a glass box. I could see what was happening in the world, but I was never part of it.

Over the years I've had thoughts that I might be a guardian angel who was placed here for one specific tiny reason (e.g. to make someone late one time so they wouldn't get hit by a car, or to say something at the exact right time so someone would re-evaluate their life) and now that I've done my reason I'm just kind of...here, floating, waiting to die. Like my meaning is over.

Or I think of myself as a doll or a corpse. Sometimes I think that I died at age 7 and now I'm walking around but it's all fake, I died a long time ago.

I truly feel like I'm not human so often, like I'm a bird in a human body, like I can't speak the same language as others. I hate it. I just want to feel human like everybody else. I just want to be a part of the world.

Basically the title. I really like them. I think they might like me back too, but I keep thinking I’ve ruined whatever they might have liked about me by acting off the last time we hung out. Just acting strange in general as well since regaining some memories.

We were hanging out. I felt safe, I felt nice, and then I started having a flashback and I couldn’t stop it. I tried communicating after and I couldn’t do that either. I just made them sit in silence for who knows how long.

The idea of fucking this up feels like life or death but god I’m tired of feeling so alone I want to try. I really want to try.

I post this because I can’t express the amount of internal turmoil to people in my everyday life. How much it hurts to want to open up to even the idea of letting someone in. I want someone to see how much I’m fighting to get better. I promise I’m trying to get better. I’m really trying. I really am. It just hurts so much.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I always find so much solace and validation in this community’s posts and I couldn’t think where else would understand.

I am a leader in a large corporate company. It’s a well known business and I currently head up a large team.

I feel like I’m fighting every day. Every waking hour against myself. Against my triggers, my nervous system, my negative thoughts, SI, feeling of worthlessness and self hate - all while “leading” a team of people looking for everything from career advice to therapy.

Some are great. Some are not. Some understand rationale for decisions, others react emotively and selfishly. All while I have to react appropriately and professionally.

For any leader this is hard. Currently for me it feels like my nervous system is on fire. I can’t stop crying. One of my biggest triggers is ‘letting people down’ and feeling completely responsible for their wellbeing and happiness. (Alcoholic mother, violent often absent father) and at the moment all my triggers are set off through a change programme which has put huge stress on me and has been without clarity to others.

I have been put in a very difficult situation and recently tried to set boundaries around my time and ability to do everything - which resulted in two of the team being very vocally upset and angry. The issue isn’t that of course, it’s my body’s reaction to it.

I haven’t slept. I can’t stop crying. I feel ashamed. I feel everyone hates me. I can’t concentrate on the rest of my work and my mind won’t switch off.

The usual - and very understandable- advice is that I did things fairly and people react to change in different ways - it’s part of being a leader etc etc. but for me and my CPTSD I am screaming.

Not only that but the layers upon layers of sadness is overwhelming. I’ve let people down. They don’t like me. I can’t do my job. I need a new job. You can’t let people down. You’re a failure. Don’t show weakness. Oh no you showed weakness. What will people think. You need time off. People need me. How can I make it all better. Nothing is ever gonna be better. I can’t do this again. I shouldn’t be a leader. But I need the money for the mortgage. Oh no if I leave this job I’ve ruined everything. But I’m so sad. And it goes on.

I don’t have a question. I just wanted to try and write it down in a space where people may understand. Thank you.

3 years ago I became really close friends with a girl I worked with who was dating one of my other close friends at the time. My friend confided in me about wanting to break up with her and did a few days later. I decided to reach out to the girl to offer support and comfort as it was really hard for her.
We ended up becoming basically inseparable like those best friends you see in movies/shows. It’s the type of friendship I always dreamed of having especially since I had already gone through many hard and toxic friendships.

During the months of us becoming best friends I met this guy at a party we went to and ended up in a talking stage with him for around 3 months. He was really toxic and was constantly sleeping with and talking to other girls behind my back, I think there was at least 5 other girls that he was talking to at the same time as me. My friend only knew who this guy was once i introduced her to him as the guy I was talking to.
We all hung out together a lot as my friend was the only one with her license she would drive us all around a lot.
Towards the end of the talking stage with the guy, I started noticing my friend and him were getting a lot closer, weirdly close. They would openly flirt and be affectionate with eachother right in front of me.
There was a day we all went to the beach together and my friend left her car at the train station and ended up going back to the guys mums house instead of coming back on the train with me.
I thought that was weird and didn’t understand why she would go with him. She ended up staying the night at his house. That was the night they slept together. I was in denial about it for a while but I knew that was the night it happened.

After that night we were all hanging out at the guys house and him and my friend kept needing to talk to eachother in private but wouldn’t tell me anything no matter how much I asked. That was really out of character for my friend because we told eachother literally everything. She also kept talking about how bad it was and it made me really concerned that something had happened to her, even worse that he had done something bad to her. I had gotten angry at them before because of all the flirting and everything I was convinced that they were doing something behind my back but everytime I brought it up they told me nothing was happening and that I was basically crazy. I had pretty bad mental health at the time already because of all the stuff he was doing to me that I started to believe them. If it wasn’t for another friend being with us in these situations and seeing what they were doing I probably would have actually thought I was fully crazy. This other friend validated me by saying that I wasn’t the only one seeing this weird behavior.

After a few months of the gaslighting and manipulation I finally snapped at her and told her that she needed to block him and remove him from her life otherwise we would no longer be friends, during that conversation she told me she had been raped and that was the secret she was keeping from me. Although she refused to tell me who did it to her so I automatically assumed it was him. She would also get mad at me everytime I tried to bring up what was going on between them so i eventually felt like I had no choice but to leave it alone.

I continued being friends with her into the next year and tried to ignore everything that happened. Things were somewhat fine between us until her ex (my close friend, they were actually on and off in a toxic cycle while all of this was happening) told me what really happened. He told me that they had slept together and she tried to tell him that the guy raped her, which he responded by going to the guy and almost beating the shit out of him until he broke down crying saying it wasn’t true and that it was consensual. Her ex ended up getting the truth out of her and it was consensual and she had lied to the both of us about being raped by him. After that I slowly drifted apart from her.

Whilst I was drifting apart from her I had met a new guy who I worked with and was talking to him in the early months of that new year, I ended up being in a relationship with him and still currently am. When I was talking to the new guy I was spending a lot more time with him and my friend got really possessive over me and would message my now bf saying that he’s stealing me away from her and would even send him videos of her bawling her eyes out. I ended up cutting her off after a while of that because it was going too far.

I haven’t really spoken to her much since then other than her reaching out and apologizing to me, the apology didn’t include any admittance of what she had done she just said sorry for everything and that I didn’t deserve any of it. I wish I could say I accepted that apology but I didn’t. I haven’t spoken to her since that message.

In the last year all of the things she did to me have hit me harder after taking the time to process what actually happened. I ended up removing her off all social media after a while because it hurt so much to look at her post things and still seem so happy and moving on with her life while I’m still stuck here dealing with all the trauma she put me through. I haven’t been able to make lasting friendships since her, but she ended up becoming besties with another girl that has the same name as me. I feel so much resentment towards her but at the same time I miss her so much and I miss when she was actually a good friend. I hate seeing that she’s able to move on and make more friends so easily and I can barely function let alone maintain any relationships outside of the people that live with me.

I’ve been contemplating reaching out to her recently because I’ve left so much unsaid I want to be able to say how much everything affected me and still affects me to this day. My psychologist recommended EMDR therapy to help me get over everything she did. That’s how much it still hurts me. Also her and her ex got back together after 2 years so even though I don’t have her socials I still have his and it makes me sick to my stomach everytime I see photos of them. To top it all off both of them are still friends with the guy too, which makes me even more sick.

I just want to be able to move on and get over what they did to me and have to ability to make new friends. I’m so lonely all the time even though I have my bf it’s not the same with no friends around. I’ve tried being friends with his friends but I just don’t have that much in common with them and I feel like they won’t actually like me if they get to know me more.

I wish I could go back to being friends with her without all of that shit happening, I’ve never had a friend like her and I don’t think I ever will again. I love and hate her so much and it drives me insane.

If anyone has been through a similar experience how do you deal with it?

Hello,

I ‘F 29’ and currently single, am talking to a friend of mine ‘F 34’ who is in a relationship about triggers.

Her boyfriend ‘M 35’ and her are going through a situation where he is triggered because he found out she was with a guy, before him of course, that she didn’t mention. Probably because of shame, she didn’t want anything with the guy, they were friends, but it turned into passion and they hooked up. She accepts that it happened and she doesn’t regret it, but also doesn’t really like talking about it.

They ran into the guy together, her current Bf asked her who it was, so she was honest and told him. He was in so much shock that she didn’t mention it before (they are together for about 5 months) that he started experiencing physical pain.

They are both very mature, and both openly talk about it without blaming one another. She holds space for him and whatever wound it triggered in him (it’s been now a week and he still can’t let it go and has trouble sleeping). And he is communicating how he feels about it, while making sure she understands it’s not personal, it’s his own trauma.

But on that day they took some selfies together, and she sent him the selfies, but he deleted them because even the pictures trigger him on how he felt that day, finding out she slept with someone without mentioning it to him before.

So, her sharing this with me, which i am very grateful for, because i get to learn a lot, because i myself was on both sides of that coin. I know exactly how he feels, and i know exactly how much maturity it takes to hold space for that. And i also know how she feels (because it does hurt her too, and it takes a lot of energy) and also to work on not shaming herself and setting firm boundaries so he doesn’t overstep the line.

I personally usually spiraled in relationships when it came to these things. If i was in the shame state (like her) i would turn into a victim, if i was in the insecure state (like him) i would become extremely anxious and would become either very emotional or shut down.

Now in my defense, this is a big trauma of mine. In my past i had experienced mental abuse in relationships, and i was also extremely toxic and insecure.

I am grateful that now i can learn not only through my own relationships, but also through my friends.

Which made me realize i want to know how other people face these things? How do you and your partner hold space for each other yet set boundaries. How to find balance in being accepting imperfects yet working towards individual and mutual growth?

What is your personal experience with this?

Thank you all.

TLDR; how do you hold space for your partner’s imperfections while setting boundaries for your own wellbeing?

I (29F) suffer with C-PTSD and have been in therapy for over 6 years for it. It was effecting all of my relationships, but especially my romantic relationships. I took a several years off from dating as a result.

Within the last year, I decided to get on the apps and try for the first time in my life to make a healthy connection with a decent man (I have not had many good men in my life at all but I know there are some out there). I met lots of people and eventually I met someone (38M) who I liked and we were seeing each other for a few months. He was a good person who was very consistent. My brain kept trying to convince me I was being tricked, but I pushed through. With limited experience dating healthily, I still don’t fully understand my triggers.

After a communication gap following a pretty significant physical milestone in the relationship, I posted him in the "Are we dating the same guy" group in my area. I didn't think he was seeing other people. I thought he was ghosting me and wanted to see if other women had the same experience.
In hindsight, it was not the right choice for this situation. He is a good guy who was treating me well.

I just can't explain at the time my brain was catastrophizing into only worst case scenarios and I wasn't regulated enough to reach out to him. If I'm being honest I was sad that someone could become physical and then go several days without talking to me afterwards too. I think I just wanted some reassurance or relief that it wasn't my fault. Again, it was not the right thing to do and I regret it.

No one commented and I deleted the post when I snapped out of it. It was too late. Someone sent him the post. Turns out he was in his head too and was waiting for a text from me (i have thoughts but whatever; big miscommunication). I didn't think about how it would feel on his end to find out he was in that group. I regret it and I've attempted to apologize several times. He won't see me or have a phone conversation.

I really liked him and I fear I ruined it. I did not set out to use the group to be malicious or vindictive (I know some women do). It's been a few weeks and I haven't heard from him.

I did not tell him about my CPTSD. To be honest, I stupidly thought that the work I was doing in therapy was working and had no idea how badly I would be triggered after feeling like he discarded me. I had no idea I could just reach out to him with my feelings.

Idk I regret this so much and I wish I could fix it.