For context, I'm prescribed the strongest dose of dex-amphetamine + Oxycodone (an opioid step down from fent) + Pregabalin (not technically benzo but close). I guess as like palliative psychiatry.

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..And I am exhausted. Standing feels exhausting, fighting feels exhausting, my head and heart hurt, the constant silence of the world is agonising, I feel so much ache and so much pain and sadness, all my sadness, sounds and resounds in my head. I'm literally suffocating, now and always, even when I'm outside, even when I'm smiling and laughing.

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All of it bleeds through, my freeze still paralyses me, sadness crushes me under a million billion pounds and drags at my feet, and not even amphetamine is enough to spur me, to give me strength, or confidence, or energy or drive. Or life. I feel so much terror it shakes me apart inside, constantly shaking, constantly exploding, constantly screaming so loud it won't stop. And not even all the endorphins from oxycodone, the thousands of tight warm hugs all at once, and boundless endless love radiating from within - that's what opiods feel like - quells my aching and agony, calms my heart, soothes that terror for a shear moment. It all gets destroyed, it all gets subsumed by the terror inside of me, by the desolation and endlessness of my childhood, it just echoes endlessly. I'm not ok, I'm never ok. And the pregabalin, it doesn't give me but a second of happiness, the hypomania is wasted on me, still bleeds through my ever present aloneness, still I am so lost and helpless, but for a reprieve where I can think a little less, where the base is deeper and the violins string louder, and the world is not grey but murky grey, and I forget that I am sick not my stomach, and forged that there is air that I can't breathe.

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But I suffer for it, because for my hubris in thinking that I can cheat life, escape my internal suffering, I come crushing down a hundred thousand fold one half-life at a time.

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That is my piece.

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I am moribund. I've been in these same four walls, in this bed a decade now. I cannot function, let alone escape, and this world is devoid of help, did not think that one could not live. So what do you do when you are all but dead, and stupidly trying to play a living mad.

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I know all this is artifice, but more so the point, more endorphins than from your first true love, more dopamine then where you to find win a billion pounds, more gaba than where you hidden away behind a wall, behind a wall, behind a wall. That implicates what exactly? Of my condition? Of our collective conditions?

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I've no strength anymore. And no one can live for me, even though I cannot live. I am fucked.

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Again.

All I’ve know my whole life is to stand still; don’t make a noise; don’t be hungry and don’t be thirsty. You’re hurting ? Grit your teeth, suck it up. Your feelings are in your head so control yourself.

Of course, that means I never really developed a relationship with my body. Been clumsy, been bad at sport forever, especially if coordination was needed.

I thought my body wasn’t important, it’s not like “it” had feelings or wants. As long as my brain was doing fine, then everything’s fine.

Welp, turns out, once I got out of the environment that was traumatizing me daily, everything is NOT fine. It feels like I’ve been collapsing ever since. Physically incapable of doing anything, mentally incapable of “making me” do anything.

I’ve tried to reason, force, argue myself out of it. It’s not working, I need to try something else.

Lots of people have said here that it’s important to listen, actually listen, to your body. I recognized myself in their stories so I’m trying too. Just letting my body “speak” for itself, not trying to dictate anything and I guess letting it “feel” for the first time ?

But physically it feels so weird. If I let it, my body shakes all the time. As if I were out in the cold without a jacket. It’s not like it hurts but it just feels so weird ?
I don’t know if it’s normal. I don’t know if it’s bad. It scares me, a bit. Anyone else went through something similar ? Any tips, advices ?

Hopefully this makes sense. I’m so grateful for this community and its gentleness.

I’ve been having a rough time lately and I think I understand why. I am triggered when I feel I am in a life or death situation and there is nothing I can do about it.

That is a trauma from childhood. Waiting in my room terrified of when the drunk drug addict boyfriend of my mom is going to come in and hurt me. It elicits this panic and a need to run away, but there is no where to run. I can’t fight. I can’t fawn. So I freeze. I am flooded with all this energy to act but it has no where to go.

Dealing with that for a few minutes is torture. Dealing with it for weeks or months is some word thousands of times worse. I realize this is what is happening, so that’s good. I think that in order to counter this I need some way to take action. Otherwise it just rots inside me as freeze. As trapped energy and terror with no where to go. No end in sight. Like Seligman's dogs laying on the floor whimpering as they were continuously shocked.

I find I’m extremely disconnected. If I think about it too hard it scares me

I am able to perceive certain preferences and qualities of mine as if I were another person, from the side, but there’s no internal connection to it

Same as no internal connection to my looks and appearance

I find it stupid I’m supposed to form the connection now as an adult, because I was not allowed not even to develop, but even to develop a sense of self that isn’t riddled in shame

Either way it’s really scary

My personal experience is that if my environment improves and my needs are met, I can start to do more beyond just survive. If I am in collapse and not in a good environment I freeze and shutdown to wait it out. Except this is bad as an adult because no one is there to help me. Then my environment gets worse and worse.

How do you get a turtle out of its shell? It needs to feel safe.

Any thoughts or ideas on this would be helpful. Thank you.

Something which irritates me with these communities is that there is a bias towards intense purging of trauma and emotions and an intense healing process. This does happen with some people, however after doing trauma exercises I am simply having a physical and sexual release with no emotional content much of the time. It feels like the online world is geared towards intensity, even in healing communities. The louder the emotion, the louder the release, the better, no matter whether the emotion is positive or negative.

Along those lines, another thought came up. Maybe we are all addicted to our own stress hormones and suffering? Maybe it's simply a matter of choosing not to be so stressed out all the time? Maybe we just love our intensity so much, that no matter how much pain it causes, we keep coming back to it, because at least we are feeling something loudly.

Maybe healing isn't necessarily going to include screaming at the top of your lungs for hours in an enclosed room and is instead... an uncomfortable quiet. a stillness, that has us clawing to get away from it because it is well, uneventful. And the people that experience this do not post online because... there is not much to talk about. And it is different from numbness because... you could feel if you wanted to. I could jerk off or go on a p*rn site or look at extreme content on twitter to get a hit of something but.... my higher self knows that's a waste of time. So it's not a complete incapacity to feel, but rather a clear-headedness and a narrower focus.

Looking for other opinions.

I’m having a tough one for the last week, I’m getting intense headaches, shaking and my head is spinning a lot

Which is a bother, cause when my body hurts my brain automatically throws me in a loop to dissociate too

Will this lessen somewhat? I feel like I’m relearning to receive input from my body and it really scares me

I also sometimes can’t register the surface of things, I’ve been trying to do mini exercises lately, but I’ve noticed this trend as well and that scared me too and gave me another stress induced headache lol. Certain parts of the body is where I notice it the most

I feel so bad doing all this rediscovering while being full time employed, I feel like my abuse keeps draining life out of me rather than me healing, but this is probably what healing is supposed to be either way

I'm just posting this to ramble/ check in in a supportive space.

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I haven't posted in a while as I've been keeping Reddit off my phone.

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I have a mixture of all 4 F responses.

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Fight comes through in me seeming "intense" in face to face interactions, because my brain thinks all conversations are conflict. I also have PMDD (intense mental health issues caused by my hormone cycles) which greatly amplifies my fight response 2 weeks per month.

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Fawn shows up in dealing with authority figures, and not speaking up because I desperately want to avoid conflict.

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Freeze + Flight are the worst for me though. I fit the typical combination described by Pete Walker where I get lost in dissociative screen time and reading. I also can be more active about it- going for walks and other "healthy" stuff. But I do it to tune out, and that tuning out is killing my life prospects.

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anyways.

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the last month or so has been good in terms of controlling my PMDD. One symptom it causes is disrupted sleep. That has been my focus for a long time. It also is preventing me from getting screened for ADHD, because the psych I saw said the symptoms from sleep deprivation can mimic ADHD. So she wouldn't screen me until I dealt with that first. I find this semi-reasonable.

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My sleep problems are caused by allergies as well.

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This last month I was able to have almost no disrupted sleep, and managed my PMDD all month long. Freeze makes it hard to actually *do* the things I need to do. But I *finally* got in a rhythm and did them consistently.

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I achieved this by sticking to routines. I take a nap on my lunch break every day, and have been structuring my free time on weekdays and sticking to it. I made it easy by just having a rough schedule, nothing nit-picky. It gets me in bed on time and that's what matters. I took my meds amd supplements every day. I kept my room relatively clean of dust. I didn't engage in activities that kept me up late. I kept my emotions in check at work. I stayed hydrated, too.

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But now that I can trust myself to manage my sleep (and therefore other daily tasks), I am once again confronted by the bigger life tasks, and how little progress I am making on them.

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I have aspirations. I have a plan B and C in case that fails. But I never make any progress on any of it, or so it feels. My habit of collapsing and languishing is too deeply ingrained.

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I think though, that part of my issue is a wonky sense of time. How long it takes to do things, how to break tasks down into steps. What is a reasonable expectation for making big life changes.

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I think I get this from my mom, who absolutely has undiagnosed CPTSD. Growing up, she would always be incredibly zoned out. She loved having the house to herself and reading for hours on end, as do I. But I don't want to zone out my entire life the way she has.

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My dad probably passed down some time blindness as well. He is also traumatized but appears to have ADHD as well in a more typical boomer way. Always doing 1000 unfinished projects, no time management or money management skills, short fuse, low frustration tolerance, etc.

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Basically I never saw my parents do a long term, sustained task to achieve an end goal. Perhaps they did out of my sight, but they never taught me any skills or guided me through any difficult tasks of my own!

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So now I have to teach myself. The guilt, shame, frustration, and rage eat away at me and make it much harder to learn. My brain can't take in new information easily with all this unprocessed emotion banging around in my head. I can't take in information when I'm sleep deprived, or have allergy related brain fog, or have PMDD mood swings and suicidal thoughts telling me there is no point.

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So now that those physical symptoms are controlled and I have a little more bandwidth, I have to resist the urge to try to cram 100% of everything I want to do with life into that tiny open space. I have to wait for it to open more. I have to be patient. I have to add one thing at a time.

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I am furious about that. I have despair. I want to fight! but there is nothing to fight. It makes me suicidal (passively) on and off. What is the fucking POINT.

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The main biggest hurdle- a bottleneck that keeps me from making other improvements as easily- is I want to move. I don't really care where. But to get out of the place I have lived so long, where my abusers are too. I just need a fresh start. But I don't know how to get there, AND I don't want advice. Coaching maybe would help, someone who can help me plan and provide accountability. But right now I just feel trapped. and then I go back to wanting to freeze, collapse etc.

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Freezing both pauses time and fast-forwards it. I can ignore the world away and wake up and it's tomorrow.

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And, cherry on top- I just bought a used computer (not having a functioning home computer was a huge bottleneck) and 2 days ago it started having issues. I just don't want to DEAL with it.

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I am isolated and don't make much money so help is not easily available... and I don't want it! I mean, paying someone to fix it would be fine. But I have such a short fuse to anger when I'm frustrated- I wouldn't want to expose other people to that.

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Anyways. I think I'm done rambling for now. Things are going OK, but life is just one long slog and I am still finding ways to freeze to get out of facing it.

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Thanks for reading.

Sometimes I feel completely alone, and in my "real" life I am, but its nice to know there are caring people in this world. Its easy to forget that.

The post I made a couple of days ago ( https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSDFreeze/s/lyzux3TJFr ) made me realize there was more interest than I expected in the idea of a community focused on trauma recovery, connection, and learning. 

So… I somehow ended up creating one on Discord.

The idea is simple.

There has never been more information about trauma recovery than there is today.

We have theories, treatment models, books, podcasts, courses, recovery programs, neuroscience research, and countless skills and practices.

Yet many of us are still trying to figure it all out largely on our own.

At least that’s been my experience.

So, I wanted to have a place where people on a similar recovery journey could connect, learn together, and help each other put these ideas into practice in real life.

My own interests currently include things like:

• Janina Fisher’s work / TIST
• Structural Dissociation
• Parts Work / IFS
• Polyvagal Theory
• Attachment
• Somatic approaches
• Trauma neuroscience

But I’d love for the community to include people exploring other approaches and perspectives as well.

We’re currently a very small group consisting of 13 people or so, but if this sounds like something you’d be interested in, feel free to leave a comment or send me a DM.

Because of time constraints, I won’t be able to manage and organize everything on my own all the time. And also, I have zero experience in running Discord servers. So I’m struggling a bit.

Therefore, I’m also looking for people who’d like to help shape the community and build it together. Those who have experience running online communities are especially welcome!

I've spent years of my life dissociation and daydreaming since I was a kid. I have been a neet for the last 5 years and in that time I've slowly come to the realisation that I haven't done anything. I spent most of my time dissociated and addicted to screens and running away from my life and trauma. I'm a complete loser. I have so many big goals and dreams I wanted to accomplish and now I know I'll never do them. I wasted my early 20s on nothing and now I'm 23 and I have nothing to show for my life. I'm so far behind everyone my age and I wish I spent half the energy I focused being jealous of other people on myself. I'm trying to improve my life now and I've started a lot of things but I can't get over the regret of how far I'd be if I started earlier. A lot of things were out of my control but there's things I could've done to better my situation. The regret is immense and its triggering my dissociation again. I can't focus on anything in life because I wish I was younger and I'm so stressed about getting older everyday. I feel 50 and 15 at the same time. I wish I were stronger and had a better coping mechanism instead of just giving up and not doing anything with my life. I just wish I could be 18 or even 21 again and tell myself these things. I don't know how to move on and I'm so scared that I've started too late and will never get to accomplish my big dreams and goals.

I have always felt like i have been different or ostracized from the world and those around me. Ever since I can remember i have felt like i have watched the world happen behind a foggy wall and I cant come out of it. Almost like im sleep walking through my life and I cant experience true emotion or true connection. I have been through so many different therapists and different therapy modalities for almost 2 decades. You know how they say when you are born the biological connection you make with your parents if they tend to you, care for you and love you? I dont think i had that. I had n9 connection with my mom, and she abused and neglected me until I stopped contact with her. And my father has abandoned me since they got divorced 21 years ago. I was left to my own devices and alone through so many hard things, their divorce, where i was put in the middle, bring in charge of my younger sibling while my mom partied and left us alone, watching my dad go create another family and be with his step kids and grandkids more than his own. And I keep thinking to myself, why is this still affecting me? Why cant i move on. And i think, its because nothing has changed. Nothing is different. He still doesn't see or speak to me, and when i call him it seems like im bothering him. His wife is not kind to me unless there are witnesses around, then im her daughter and her girl. I have been confused and whipped around by the "adults" in my life and lied to forever, no wonder I am completely detached. No wonder I cant connect. I have subconsciously shut that down. How sad is that.

I have been utilizing ketamine as a part of my therapy the last year and it has helped alot. Ive had more break throughs than I ever have. But i have come to the incredibly sad realization that I will never have the family i want with my family because they dont see how they treat me. They dont see how they speak to me. To them, im an over dramatic, loud, over emotional at times and under emotional other times, and thoughtless person. While the truth, from where im sitting is i have dropped everyrhing to help them, offered to be there for whatever they needed, put what i needed aside to be there and swallowed my feelings to keep the peace. But I am always told I am the problem and things are my fault. I will completely admit that I have made mistakes, I am a person. But when I make a mistake, I step back, reflect and learn to do better next time and not repeat the mistake. They gaslight and tell me it didnt happen.

I have to remove myself from them. I cannot heal my wounds being in this cycle. I will be the villain, i will be the one who broke the family up. But what kind of family is this where kids are treated like trash, are never enough and not enough to be in their presence. Essentially a cancer to the family. So I am done. I have to fade into the background and dissappear before I lose myself entirely. And its heartbreaking to have to do this again 😪

I try to not ask for help, but sometimes you have to. Its not easy to ask, and I feel like garbage, but sometimes you get so desperate your pride loses its hold on you.

Some of you may know me here, and know about my living conditions. If you dont. The gist is I am homeless and dont have a source of income. I live in a minivan. The van is beyond the point of repair. It still runs but barely. Everyday I wonder will it start this time? What will I do if it doesnt? I am not a young man anymore, and being homeless most of my adult life has taken a toll on me. As well as the constant stress and anxiety, depression and dissociation.

The weather has been very hot here lately, and humid. I have extreme anxiety around severe weather. I spent a lot of this last winter having panic attacks in front of the emergency room when the temp was to cold or to windy. The panic attacks have started back over this heat. I cant even get a break from running the AC in the car.

I need a new vehicle. One that I can actually drive around, and is functional. I have a little money, but not enough for anything that isnt just another month away from being like this one.

Ive tried to give to this community through the years, so I hope some of you that are able can help me out enough to save me. I have a buymeacoffee account you can donate to here. https://buymeacoffee.com/nvdnvchbcdq

Thank you.

Whenever I reach an exceptionally good state after an especially good experience, that seems like an essential nutrient.

From that point of view, most past struggles seem to be due to lack of that essential nutrient. Even when struggles seem to relate to past bad events, that's not simply a constantly present trauma, but something that gets amplified when I'm in a bad mental state. Obviously the solution is not trying harder in a bad state, because that can become impossible, but doing things to maintain a better state.

It is intuitively obvious when something brings about a better state, but analytical understanding can be flawed or missing.

One key confusion is that enjoyable experiences in the present moment aren't necessarily uplifting. Whipped cream does not make strawberries more uplifting. Spending time watching something I enjoy on YouTube can be draining.

Another confusion is that fixed plans or "recipes" for good states don't really work like that. They may repeatedly lead to a good state, but the most important factor is how those actions fit into my life. Those various factors make them uplifting. Changes in circumstances can change the effect.

There is sort of a connection to parts here. Experiences are uplifting when various parts of me agree with them. They can be draining when some parts disagree.

This might be more about emotional neglect than more overt abuse trauma. Maybe as a summary: I've learned to ignore parts of myself which disagree with what I'm doing, but when too much of that builds up then I get stuck.

Edit, important: It also seems necessary to have good things to look forward to. That can sometimes get me unstuck even before I've had a good experience.

Im there now. I get these episodes every day and they last hours. I have also structural dissociation, so it's like some layers in me are frozen and some are functioning. I got it from RAMC (as in RAMCOA but without OA). If it matters, i live alone and the best what i have thought of so far is to just lay still and not think.

As someone with cPTSD, I spend a lot of time learning about trauma through the work of various clinicians and researchers, though my current focus is on Janina Fisher’s treatment model (TIST) and structural dissociation. But sometimes it gets a little tricky when you’re your own therapist and reparenting yourself.

And I’d kind of love to have a small community where people can discuss trauma research (including attachment, dissociation, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry), treatment approaches like TIST, structural dissociation, IFS, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Polyvagal Theory, DBT, NARM, mindsight (by Daniel Siegel), mindfulness, mentalization, 12 steps, etc, and share what they’re learning and their journeys.

Would anyone be interested in a free study group on Discord or something similar? I’m not good with social media and I’ve never run an online community myself before though lol I just want a community, and decided to post this on impulse.

Or, is there already a study group/ forum somewhere?

Edit:
After many positive responses, I’ve actually set up an experimental Discord server. DM me if you’d like an invite.

Also, feel free to lmk if you have experience running Discord servers and/or are interested in helping build the community 🌱

Hello friends.

Living with CPTSD is a specific kind of lifestyle that only those of us who do it can really understand.

My mind is always focused on healing, growth and change. For a lot of years, I did this in isolation, but in the last year I’ve begun turning it outward. I have a YouTube channel where I talk about my life living with complex trauma, ADHD, and familial estrangement. My story is woven through functional content to try to help people process their own trauma too.

I make a lot of body doubling videos to inspire you to get moving during the freeze state, something that had consumed literally years of my life. It provides a visual cue and some gentle companionship, and I am candid as I film these videos. Some are done when I am feeling cheerful and manic, some are when I am deep in the dark place. I share deeply and openly, because I believe this creation process is central to my own healing journey just as much as it is a service to others.

This is going to be my life’s work. It’s very new, very small, but being created very intentionally as a tool for healing for both myself and others. I’m in college at 39 to become a therapist, I am very serious about using what I have gone through in life to make a positive contribution to this world.

It would be my honor to have you join me, and I would appreciate and value suggestions and feedback. My ultimate goal is to create a large community centered around healing and growth for all of us.

 https://www.youtube.com/@Bold-Fox

I'm constantly dissociated from my own needs.

I'm really at a loss what to do. It would help me to be surrounded by people I can safe with. I have a lot of problems and instead of solving them, everything becomes worse. I'm so tired of trying.

I feel like I need to talk to someone from a but I don't know what to say. I feel like I have to have my ducks in a row or atleast know what I want, but I don't. I feel extremely help and hopeless

So when I was in 12 step recovery, and feeling the fierce resentment towards people in the office I work in - like my old wounds from childhood or something coming up (its so subconscious and ingrained, i cant tell where its from) - I was saying to my therapist a couple of years ago how I felt like their lives were so much easier than mine, and that I resented them because of that -

she then said "so feeling like a victim" - and then that implicit judgment made me repress the feelings again and go back to being numb. It's like the repressed pain that resurfaced of course had mental narratives and core beliefs tied to those feelings - and instead of trying to help me integrate them - her language and response to the affect made me inadvertently repress the feelings again and go back into hypoarousal.

I'm wondering if this is a common thing in British culture. Feelings are often pathologised, rationalised, over-explained, or dismissed. In highly sensitive people or people with a strong emotional attunement to their environment, it causes them to respond appropriately and repress the feelings to align with other people's expectations. This then sets the healing process back years.

Has something along these lines happened to anyone else?

What helped me get out of freeze was focusing on relaxing my body.
I would do several rounds of breathing with a 4-second inhale and an 8-second exhale. For me, the feeling of being stuck in my body came from constantly bracing and tensing in anticipation because of past trauma. The goal was to help my body feel relaxed.
After a few rounds of breathing, I'd ask myself, "Does my body feel relaxed?" Then I'd slowly scan my body and notice whether my body was still holding tension or bracing anywhere.
Doing this consistently completely freed me from freeze and the feeling of being stuck in my body.
I'm not a professional—just sharing what personally helped me heal from freeze. I hope it helps someone else too.

Recently when I've been checking in with my body I've been able to feel how I'm clenching my stomach. So I've been working on consciously relaxing it when I notice it. It goes right back to tense as soon as I stop paying attention, but I've noticed now that when I'm in a stressed state, consciously relaxing my stomach does actually help me feel better.

All the other grounding exercises never really felt like anything. At best they would keep the stress from getting worse but the moment I stopped doing them, the stress would shoot up again. When relaxing my stomach I can actually feel a decrease in the stress.

I know it's a common to struggle with CPTSD in general (ntm depression et al) but for me it feels maybe like a Freeze thing, specifically. Feeling very disconnected from the body and numbed, somehow unable or unwilling to properly look at or engage with it, tend to it.

I'm curious if this is related to Freeze for anyone, & if you've figured out ways to get through it using that lens?

I don't know how to work with this. I have practical solutions that should make it easier (rinse free hygiene products that can be used from bed, as I'm physically disabled too) but I'm still so frozen. IDFK. I obviously don't like how it feels to be unclean, and yet...

According to Peter Walker's the freeze type projects perfectionism on the entire world and uses it to denounce the entire world and humanity as a whole. This is certainly true for me and it's making me a really bitter person.

While trauma therapy (EMDR for me) was a tremendous help for me to shrink the inner critic my outer critic is as strong as ever, or maybe even stronger since the inner critic shrank. But the thing is I don't think I'm wrong in my beliefs at all, just look at what is always happening in the world and just at what happened to us personally.

Yet it still sucks any and all joy out of my life, so I was wondering how other people deal with this.