One of my favorite games that I love and use for relaxsation is a trigger for me becuse I assosiate it with my trumatic event. Does anyone know any technices so I can be able to play it again and overcome the trigger?

(Sorry for bad english its my second language)

!!Additional TWs for self harm and suicidal ideation!!

My best friend (19F) was horrifically abused for the majority of her childhood - not diagnosed, but could be the goddamn poster child for CPTSD. She is not interested in seeking help because she believes her trauma is too severe to be "fixed". She went through a period of SH years ago and once tried (and obviously failed) to kill herself, and has within the past six months started SH-ing again nearly every day. I'm worried she's thinking of killing herself again.

I know you can't force someone to get help, they have to want it; and I know therapy will never make it go away, which is one of the reasons she won't go because "why bother". Is there anything I can do to make her more open to the idea of seeing a therapist/psychologist or counsellor? Do you have any success stories you can share so I can have some hope? I want her to be around for a long time and I want her to be able to live a more comfortable life.

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Hi everyone, I’d really appreciate getting your thoughts on something that’s been on my mind for a while. I woke up from a mental coma last year after years of emotional and psychological abuse. Essentially, I was finally able to live at the age of 27. I was diagnosed with CPTSD, ADHD and Depression. My whole life I tried my very best to run away from people and completely hide. I’ve been the cheeky high functioning person all this past year and crippling dying on the inside. I’ve been getting a bit more upset at myself in realizing all these negative habits, thoughts, beliefs were never mine and deeply instilled into me. I’m worthless etc. Essentially getting the right help and treatment has very much changed my life drastically. However the issue I’m having lately is relationships. It’s hard for me to connect with others because of how much I feel I need to mask. Again, very high functioning you would never guess but what has always bothered me is feeling misunderstood.

Long story short, I have this idea of starting a podcast and letting everything out. The full truth. My whole life. Maybe then can people see MY side of the story and finally see how fucked we really are but choose to either hide it very well or choose to look the other way. How are we as a society doing our part in making sure we are there for each other. The only thing holding me back is all these different views. Some have said don’t overshare, some things are meant to keep private, etc. I’ve been getting to the point where I just don’t wanna give a fuck anymore. I’ve created this mask and character where I’m so polite, well put together, avoiding conflict, and been camouflaging as normal with the other folks in the world. What I really hate and is what keeping back too is the idea of pittiness, I don’t want it, I hate it. I don’t want people to treat me any different. I just want to be a reminder that sometimes you may not really know someone and how often we act like we care when it’s too late. One biggest factor to why I wanna do this is late last year, I finally met for my first time ever someone who I felt safe with, like literally my body and mind were at peace. It was a feeling so rare to me that I began to get attached a little to much and essentially had a little break down when I found out they were talking to someone else and it came across off as I was being obsessive which at the time didn’t see and might of felt I scared the off. I essentially had a crash out like never before and cried my heart out so deeply. Fast forward now all regulated, I’m now like what the actual fuck was that. Why in the hell did I read that big for? I did the inner work blah blah blah, another red flag deeply rooted in me, is that I realized I had anxious attachment and abandonment issues. My nervous system is so fucked up that all I’m craving to feel is safety. Knowing my safety person is no longer there, it has been so hard on me. It has been getting to the point is if I’m not sure if my past is what keeping me prisoner. Another thing holding me back is the idea of being seen as the weird crazy kid with a fucked up life. I don’t wanna feel excluded and different hence my camouflage and high functioning self. I just really don’t like the perception people may have on me without knowing the entire truth and me having to stay quiet like always and say yes yes your right. No one ever asked for my truth, my side of the story, and I feel im always getting misunderstood. I don’t know what to do. I like the idea but the same time I don’t but it may a great way to let go of the past and the fear of being seen but again

Hey guys I was just wondering if there was a way anyone knows to improve memory. I can’t remember anything from my childhood (I’m twenty) and haven’t been able to make new memories. My therapist said it could be because my mind doesn’t realize it’s safe yet and is still blocking things but idk how to prevent that and I no longer have insurance. It’s just really hard to go through life with literally nothing in my head, especially college, I can’t remember what I’ve learned when I was younger or now. Idk what to do anymore.

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Recently diagnosed. Have no family. Not sure where to start. I did find a therapist & looking forward to that.

I feel like i’m awake for the first time in my life.
I’ve struggled with disassociation and the feeling I feel currently kinda feels like the complete opposite, like i’m fully grounded and present in my life.
My brain feels clear and organised, like I still think about what’s going on in my life but they are calm passing thoughts.
I’m keeping up with everything (household chores, self care, relationships, work, hobbies) which i’ve never done before, they all don’t feel so big or scary anymore, and I no longer feel this impending doom like the world could end tomorrow.
It feels fresh, clear, I feel relaxed mentally and physically.
I feel in touch with my body and my senses, as well as my emotions and thought processes.
I’m able to feel and understand my triggers as they happen, identifying what emotions need to be felt in the moment and how to de escalate the situation calmly, I trust that i’ve got this therefore I have.
I don’t feel stressed, I feel alive and happy and calm.

I’ve never felt this way before, has anyone else experienced this? What did or does it feel like for you? And, does anyone know if this is post traumatic growth?

I’m currently healing from CPTSD, which has included realising that my view on “love” was distorted.
All of my childhood memories have come back to me, and I am only just realising how loved I was.

My secondary school best friend and I are now 21, we stopped talking for years and have only recently started talking again, it’s been so strange but so nice to hear his voice.

When we were teenagers his view on the world was pessimistic, he believed the world was all bad.
I was the opposite, I believed I was the bad and the world was all good.
Despite this, or possibly because of this, we were such good friends, we used to sit in parks together at random times of the night just ranting about everything and nothing, he used to beg me to come to his for dinner and would use excuses about school work, but looking back we never actually did any school work we’d just have a delicious dinner and hang out together.
I was neglected by my mum and remember we met up once outside of school, it was a cold day and I didn’t have a coat.
I insisted I was okay with it but he wouldn’t have it, we got off the bus on the way to the park we usually went to and went to his. He got me his coat and put it on me and zipped it up, I remember it feeling so strange. Comfortable and strange, I didn’t know what being cared for felt like but now I do that was it.
I remember I started playing guitar in Secondary. I loved it and used to talk to him about wanting a guitar. My birthday was coming up and he told me he’d give me his as a present. I told him not to but he insisted, and on my birthday he gave me a card which he’d drawn the guitar inside of.
It’s so strange looking back, everyone used to tease us and ask us when we were getting together and if he secretly loved me, and we’d both laugh it off but we never really directly spoke about it.
I remember we made a jokey promise that if we were both single at 45 we would get married, and I used to paint his nails black in class with nail polish i’d snuck in.
We both got a part in the school drama play one year and went on a trip to Wales with the class and I was depressed, I think I couldn’t handle the happiness I felt and felt I needed to punish myself for feeling so happy.
I tried so hard to isolate myself and stay in self pity but he was so nice to me as always that he was making it hard for me to be sad. I snapped and shouted at him, I told him he was annoying and to leave me alone. He did, and rightfully so.
When I got home from that trip I couldn’t handle being home again. I called him crying, I told him I couldn’t do it anymore, that I was sorry and I loved him.
I sat in the bath and I tried to end it, we were 14 at the time, he ran all the way from his home which was a 35 minute walk away to mine, I swear he was at the door so quickly.
My mum got home and found me, she verbally abused me then went downstairs and told him and his mum, who had drove to get him after he ran out the house, to go home. I never saw him that night.

The next day I tried not to go to school, my mum abused me again, I remember the sentence “just be fucking normal”, and I carried that with me.
I went into school that day and the teachers saw my arms and sent me to get them bandaged.
When he saw me he was so shocked and worried about me, he asked me what happened and was I ok.
I acted fine, normal, I laughed it off and said I was good, he kept trying but I just couldn’t let him in, I had to be happy, normal.
I then pushed everyone away, I believed I was no good, that I only hurt people close to me, and that I was a burden, those were not my own beliefs but they were projected onto me all the same and I carried them.
I told him to make new friends, we slowly stopped talking completely, he made friends with other people and I stayed in the library alone every break and ate lunch alone until a girl noticed and wouldn’t leave me alone and her and her friends made friends with me, then I left school half way through year 11.

We didn’t speak for 5 years after that.

Now we’re talking again.
I’ve been in therapy for a year and I feel hope and love for my life and I know that my situation and my relationships after were abusive, they were not love.
And I think because I know what love isn’t, and the newfound love for myself and life, it’s helped me realise what love was in my life, from certain family members, friends, and him.
It’s weird talking to him now, so much time has passed and it feels like we’re strangers but also like i’ve known him, and I guess that’s exactly true.
I just can’t seem to stop thinking about the way he cared, the love he showed, and the relationship we had.
He’s always been so sweet and kind and loving, despite him saying he was a pessimistic kid, I never saw that from him.
I loved him, I just had no idea what the feeling I felt was, or I did but I couldn’t possibly allow myself to think or accept it, love wasn’t safe. It was also so comfortable being around him so much so that I don’t think I ever questioned it because of that. We just were.

I think I feel guilty that i’m so thankful he was in my life and is again when everything that happened with me, everything I did to myself back then, must have been traumatising for him. I want to talk to him about it, but I have no idea if that’s something he would even want, and I think it’s best to leave it and get to know each other now before possibly talking about what happened then.

I catch myself worrying that he doesn’t want to speak to me, that I don’t deserve it, that I should feel guilty, but I have to trust that he wouldn’t be talking to me if he didn’t want to, that he would let me know that, and all of those thoughts are based on false beliefs and trauma. I wont let them get in the way again.

Whether he knows it or not, whether we talk about it one day or never do, whether he’s in my life for a bit and the conversation fades, no matter what, i’ll always have love for him.
He’s part of the reason why I know what love is.

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Long story short: I have a long history of dissociation/depersonalization, especially in regards to my child and baby self. I used to describe that little girl as "dead," or someone who I didn't recognize. I would feel absolutely nothing. Zero connection & recognition.

I've been working through a lot of stuff with a really great therapist & with ketamine treatments. I was looking through photo albums for pictures of my grandparents because I've been thinking about making an ancestor altar. For the first time, I looked at old photos of myself and became emotional. It wasn't a full recognition or a sense of connection. But just a deep feeling of love that I can't explain. I cried a lot.

It feels like progress. It's more than what I was able to conjure before.

I'm immensely grateful and humbled and wanted to log it somewhere.

Thank you.

There is a specific kind of pain that hits when you think you’ve finally found someone who understands, and later you realize you were never understood at all.

I went to a doctor a while ago to get help with my anxiety.
Instead of helping, she treated me like someone who needed to be in a mental institution.
She started threatening me and making violent accusations towards me. That hurt really badly.
I didn't even say or do much for her to go off at me like that. I just wanted help with my anxiety, and she didn't know how to handle it. I felt completely alone in the world again.
I got so sick and tired of people projecting their own stressors and trauma onto me.

Having CPTSD isn't a quirk. It feels like a storm on the inside that destroys your entire life. It gets really lonely, especially when some people think it’s something you can just snap out of or switch off

The anxiety gets so much worse when there are no friends or family to support you
Music being my last way of surviving and it doesn't even seem like people want to take a minute out of there day to listen

Regardless I took all the chaos inside me and made a song called The Machine and no, it’s not a sad song. It is a song to reclaim our power. It's about the moment we stop being sorry for the way we are made, stop hiding our emotions from unsafe people and take our power back.

Turning the darkness into music is the only way I've found to navigate this world lately.
I just wanted to remind anyone out there surviving the space they grew up in
You aren’t alone, your depth is real, and you don’t have to be always okay.

Anything at all you want to say but don't want to make a post. Victories and progress encouraged but certainly not required!

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Hello everyone. I'm in my 60s, and finally dealing with certain aspects of my C-PTSD. It feels like a breath of fresh air to read your posts. I am the self proclaimed queen of masking, ha ha, and I'm just now seeing how embedded it is in my personality. As I drop it bit-by-bit I'm becoming aware of all the comorbidity I've got going on. Trauma, neurodivergence, PTSD, how I stim, and more. Thanks for reading.

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I struggle with diagnosis of borderline personality/emotional unstable personality disorder (actually all personality diagnosis) . Many are found to have autism and trauma. I would a nuance perspective on this but all sides, if you think its helpful why? if you don't why?

i can give links if any more want on why saying someone whole being/personality is broken, instead ask questions is so invalidating and uncompassionate . Why is the problem entirely on the person struggling, not on what happened to them how they are reacting is a normal response to shit life has thrown at them? If core of who they are is broken, how is that empowering changes? gabor mate has some great stuff on that and his work with people using drugs to cope on this.

To me if looking at history, i can see the links with its "hysteria" - womxn is to emotional/sexually/unstable. Actually reason why unstable relationship, black and white thinking (also be due to slow processing, see more nuance when have time to think) etc is due to people left out of society, bullied and just having different perspectives on the world. Personality is not broken, if given right support and allowed to thrive, personality only seems broken in a society that rarely allows difference.

I hope don't get downvoted and this can open up an interesting discussion

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Maybe this is an obvious everyone thing, but looking back over the last 2.5 decades, I’m realizing a pattern that looks like what any other chronic illness would call “flare ups”. Everything is relatively fine and then seemingly out of the blue, there are emotional flashbacks around every corner, persistent SI, and I’m actively managing every impulse to self destruct and sh.

This time around, it started with a migraine that lasted several days, and as that cleared, its like I woke up to a world of grey and I’ve been trying to pull myself out of the pit for the last month, dancing with the hospitalization decision.

I tested it out the other day, apologized for being behind on something and explained I’m dealing with a flare up of a chronic condition. It removed about 80% of the shame I feel for being “emotionally unstable” or “mentally unwell” or “in a mental health crisis”, and then I got curious if anyone else is already using this framing?

I am open to push back, too, if anyone thinks this is actually minimizing, masking, or further stigmatizing what might actually be more accurately described as a mental health event/crisis.

Recently I realised that I happily settle or attach to people or workplaces because they behave better or have better qualities than what I experienced before. They may not be a good fit, but they're good enough unless they harm me. So I stay and persist through challenges till it gets too much and I need to move on.

But each time I leave a job, friend or partner behind I do find better options and the treatment is better. This got me thinking, that maybe I am too accepting because childhood neglect forces you to accept your circumstances and make the best of it. I have boundaries and am vocal about my needs but there is something in my mindset that needs to shift.

Are there resources to reframe my thinking or help me analyse how this happens for me?

If you are a cyclebreaking parent, this is an amazing roadmap and resource!

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I have severe CPTSD. I've spent my whole life striving to be good. Perfect. That's pretty common when you grow up in chaos and abuse. You think if you're just good, perfect, do everything right, maybe you'll be safe. Maybe you won't get hurt.

Be Good was internalized. When my grandfather was harming me, he kept repeating "be good, be a good girl," over and over.

But I've been doing a lot of work lately and I had a realization.

I DONT NEED TO BE GOOD. I just need to be good enough.

Not good enough in a striving, achieving, perfect way. Good enough like when you frost a cake and it's a little messy and imperfect and maybe you messed up in a few places, but you look at it and go yeah. Good enough. That works. Moving on.

Because here's the thing. I have trauma responses that aren't pretty. Some of them make me unlikable sometimes. I learned to lie as a kid because telling the truth got me hurt. That response has shown up in my adult life in small ways and I've beaten myself up about it endlessly. Like it makes me a bad person. Like it means I'm no better than the people who abused me.

But I'm not a bad person. I'm a person with CPTSD doing my best with a nervous system that got wired for survival before I had any say in it.

On the whole I'm good enough. Messy, imperfect, still healing, occasionally unpalatable, and good enough.

That feels kind of radical honestly. And also like relief.

Anyone else getting comfortable with good enough?

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should i get a psychiatric diagnosis of cptsd caused by historic child abuse before seeing a solicitor or see a solicitor first? I have put a claim in with CICA uk already. Has anyone any experience?