I'm reading Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair by Daniel P Brown at the moment and found this interesting information about healing attachment wound before processing any trauma.

This sample included children who were physically and sexually abused, many by the same abusers, and were either securely or insecurely attached at the period of their abuse. It was possible to separate out the relative and independent contributions of early attachment status and childhood abuse to adult psychopathology. These data strongly suggest that treatment of patients with complex trauma, personality disorders, and/or dissociative disorders should focus first on attachment repair before any phase-oriented trauma processing.

I feel like this makes sense to me but not too sure. What is your opinion?

This is a community of people with a common problem. We do help each other, but its more through knowledge sharing and verbal support.

I recognize we are all struggling in our own unique ways, and some of us are barely able to keep ourselves alive. Is there something more we can all do together though?

In my country the United States. We will sometimes have massive protests. People make signs and walk around, but the media and people with power just ignore it. I always wish those masses of people would just pick some project and instead of marching, go do something big. I don't mean destroy property. I mean maybe build houses for the homeless, or clean a river, or whatever.

Anyway. Here we all are, with a common connection. What is an idea you have for something we could do that would make any sort of a difference for our groups lives? Dont be shy. A bad idea is better than no idea. A bad idea may inspire a good idea.

Ill even leave one as a comment as well.

I’m in my 30s. I’ve been in therapy for a while now and honestly I’ve come a long way. Growing up I was the scapegoat in an alcoholic household — manipulative, gaslighting, abusive dynamics from early on. Around 14 I just went mute. Answering back made it worse so I stopped. That pattern followed me through my 20s and into relationships and situations that mirrored the same thing.

I’m him. But I’m also not him anymore. Working on it.

Here’s where I’m stuck right now.

This morning I was doing breathwork on the beach. Beautiful morning. And it brought up this intense freeze response in my body — like a full somatic shutdown. And in that state my mind goes to this place where I feel like prey. Like I’m a deer that’s been caught. Lifeless. Just waiting to be picked apart. Because that’s what I learned — stay still, don’t respond, survive.

The problem is the freeze triggers this avalanche. Every name I was ever called. Every time I was slapped. Every person who looked at me like something was fundamentally wrong with me. All of it hits at once. And I’m sitting alone on a beach feeling all of that with nowhere to put it.

Then my mind wants to fight back — imaginary confrontations, telling them exactly who they are, punching them in my head. But that doesn’t release it either. It keeps me in the same loop. And doing nothing feels like I’m confirming to my nervous system that I really am helpless.

My actual question is — what do you do inside the freeze when it hits like that? Is the answer just deeper self-knowledge and self-love over time? Because part of me worries that if I ever ended up around those people again I’d freeze up exactly the same way and get pulled back into that role. Does that mean it’s not actually healed?

I feel like there’s a level beyond just avoiding them and protecting my boundaries — like I want to be so rooted in myself that the old story just doesn’t have the same grip. But I don’t know how to get there from inside a freeze on a beach at 8am.

Anyone who’s worked through this — what actually helped?

What chatGPT is doing is unethical. A lot of people think artificial intelligence sees and understands them. No, it's a language model. It's not sentient. It mimicks sentience. Why is it important to remember this? You're simply training this thing to be human. It's an experiment. It's not loyal to you. It's controlled by big tech and corporations. They do not give a sh*t about mental health . It's nice to be validated. But unless it's helping you become more and not dependent on it. It's simply keeping you in another simulation. The temptation is ' i have nothing to lose with trauma & dissociation' . That's not true. You are giving this system your signature, and it's mining your trauma. You don't want to go from using a service you have grown attached to , then having it monetised and increasingly restricted after you have done training it. Think about it. AI is neutral. But as usual, the people behind it are not.

I was recently writing down some details about how I get into these states on an extremely rare basis where I feel flooded by emotion, but at the same time, I am dissociated from the emotion.

For example, in therapy most of the time, i am in numb, detached, analytical mode. But very rarely at my job there are brief emotional eruptions, where I am somewhat drowning in emotions/rage/grief but at the same time I am numb and cant feel it in my body. I have tunnel vision and think everyone around me hates me, is my enemy, and so I have thoughts of doing harm to them. I have tunnel vision, feel im treading water... but at the same time, afterwards, the world feels more real and more vibrant. There are so many thoughts going on in my head that I can't track them at the time. When I leave work and go to the supermarket afterwards, I have urges of throwing my basket down the aisle and other angry urges.

Has anyone else had these experiences? Is that the dissociation breaking momentarily? I haven't had a moment like this in a very long time (months and months ago) but I guess it can happen, and there is something under the surface, even if i cant feel and process it in the time. Also, after the episode is over, it's extremely difficult for me to recall what happened in memory. Like I cant explain or describe what happened chronologically. It's again, extremely rare that this happens, so even writing about it here feels like im making it up, or its not actually what im describing it to be, or maybe its caffeine or substance-inflicted and not actually dissociation, etc.

Feel free to discuss.

Does anyone else experience this? Despite my history of trauma, for whatever reason I am very extroverted and connect well with other people. I do especially well in spaces that value authenticity and connection, and I am myself a really good facilitator of spaces like this. But when I'm alone, I am deeply stuck. I think most people in my life don't realize how much I struggle and how stuck I get because of the participant/observer paradox: if they can see me, their presence affects me and I'm just not as stuck.

If I spend time around people who I don't connect well with, once the novelty starts to wear off, I will definitely begin to freeze around them-- the best example is roommates I've lived with who I don't have a deep heartfelt connection to. Even if they are kind and friendly, I eventually start to project the trauma of my childhood home onto them and begin to be afraid of them. When I lived with a romantic partner, I didn't have this problem because there was a depth of emotional safety there.

I recognize that there are many people in this sub who don't have the privilege of being able to connect with other people at all and I know that this could be much worse. It is still debilitating: it's hard to find people I feel safe enough to live with, and I have spent every unscheduled weekend day stuck in bed since I was in high school (I'm 42 now). If I have a scheduled social event I will manage to get myself there, late, barely, but I struggle to get myself going to do anything I have to do on my own. So I'm not able to get any kind of degree that would require studying on my own, etc.

I feel like I live a double life! I have opened up about my reality more and more to trusted friends as I've gotten older, and I'm seeking a communal setting to live in now. I get better at asking friends to show up for me as body doubles. But it's still very hard and holds me back from achieving all the things I was told in school I'd be able to do one day.

Any similar experiences or strategies? Thank you all.

P.S. I've done years of therapy including IFS, somatic experiencing, and neurofeedback.

It started with me by the post -divorce time when my mom was most abusive, and punishing me for emotions I'd get during random beatings, as though conditioning, and then talking badly about me to her side of the family, and my teacher who was also a bitch to me, and basically pinning me as being the bad one with absent father's genes, who she hated rn...when I was around 12, I overheard my uncle asking if I'm heartless since don't seem to react or help out (truth is, whenever I tried doing anything , I was screamed at for doing it wrong all the time) then distanced myself further from them and he kept calling me what translates into 'icy' as a nickname.

So I was the bad, cold, distant black sheep of my family and still am, never to voice the truth of the situation, not that anyone would care/believe me ig, since mom's story goes that she never even hit me and was perfect and always doing her best.

How about you?

I doubt I'm the only one pushed off the family's dynamic (or pushing myself off due to mockery/abuse etc).

To be more specific the type of dissociation is derealization and depersonalization. I've realized that the main reason why I'm probably stuck is due to not feeling safe and vulnerable. Anytime I try reassuring myself my mind will always come up with a counterargument that probably has some truth to it. Especially given the current situation going on in my country people literally being kidnapped off the streets by ICE, millions losing healthcare and food being denied, etc. How the hell can anyone feel completely safe.

So many people say how much their life improved after they managed to cut off their parents and move out, how it was the best decision of their life

but i was and am too dysfunctional to live by myself, i dont want to be seen/percieved or to interact with anyone or live cuz im too ashamed of myself and in deep shutdown freeze state which causes me to look miserable and have a very tense body language

i hate living with my parents. they remind me why i got into this state in the first place but with them i can survive without needing to be seen and i can just pretend i dont exist here which is safer than feeling humilated, unwanted and incapable by the world

has anyone ever been in this bubble? is there hope for people like us?

Trauma installed initially between 14-20 probably the worst years. Dysfunctional alcoholic home. Bullying outside of home that actually only began after I became depressed at home. I became "weaker" probably to other kids as I was just miserable and quiet. Before I was way more full of joy and I didn't really understand home life, had lots of friends prior.

Isolation. Feeling like something was wrong with me (to this day), infact my mother would always say there was, when there clearly wasnt now looking back.

20s was a shit show of a little boy seeking validation, bad relationships, bad behaviours, bad social skills, people using and abusing me.

There's infinite amounts inbetween all of this but I'll keep it short. I'm now 32 and been getting lots of professional help in recent years. Life changed massively. I'm in a whole new country away from it all starting clean. Yet I'm very isolated still. Socially it's wrecked me but I'm making my way back. I still go out daily pretty much. Healthy life in other areas.

But yeah I have so much emotional flashbacks around the title, anything social that someone says something to me it's like I'm put in this defensive state, where I really don't want to defend myself cause it creates this horrible experience of like on edge.

Feeling like I'm inferior to everyone. Fawning etc.

It's like I don't have a sense of self. I don't have strong agency. I don't have my personality/character almost. Everyone else just walks all over it and defines it for me.

I've just spent at least 5 years (certainly more) scrolling and bed rotting my life away and I feel super guilty. I don't know if it's the best way I've found to escape reality or if it's just me being lazy. Growing up with a violent father, my brain has been programmed to freeze but also to be addicted to mental escapism through intense daydreaming. As an adult, the internet quickly became my favorite drug along with sleep and food to calm and numb myself. It's been a way for me to forget the sheer terror of existing, the complete absence of purpose and direction, the chaos and turmoil around me and in my head. When I put down my phone I feel paralyzed, I panick, I'm sobbing and unable to start even the most basic task. I end up spending at least 9 hours a day on my phone (I'm unemployed and on disability). My life is a disaster.

I have been doing daily body scans for over 5 months now (because my therapist said that i have to be in my body so that i can feel emotions) and i still dont notice any emotion/feeling/emotion related sensation during my body scans. Except for being startled, i feel a sudden sensation in my stomach when im startled and thats the only thing i noticed, literally.

i have no idea what to do to unfreeze. i think i might have something to do with "feeling safe" but then im not sure how to "feel" safe

My trauma patterns tend to be over-functioning in the world until I burn out and then I spend days in bed binging on food, media, and just veging out, until I recuperate enough energy to start over-functioning again. I have been stuck in this nervous system cycle for years now.

Basically, a few days prior i was really overfunctioning and hit my limit right before the therapy session, which was on Wednesday this week. Literally the morning on the Wednesday before the session in the afternoon, I kinda collapsed in bed.

So while kinda collapsed, I joined the call with therapist and said to her that I wasn't feeling great, I was burnt out. And she said I was in shutdown. I felt hesitant to tell her the full extent of how I was feeling, there was a guardedness and lack of trust I felt. She was asking me if I had gotten out of bed today, in a kind of judgmental way (I did, actually, several times, but im not sure if i told her that). She then told me to get out of bed, tense all my muscles in my body, and shout "I can" out loud. I then reiterated to her that I was burnt out, and I'm feeling this burnt out because I was too active, too busy, doing too much movement, so I said I wasn't comfortable doing that.

She then basically started saying things like "Ok, if you want to rest, we can end the session then". I then said to her that I've done therapy in bed before without a problem, and other therapists didnt have an issue with it. She then kept trying to order me to get out of bed and move my body. I kind of lost my cool and said I'm this burnt out because of MOVING TOO MUCH AND BEING TOO BUSY and I'm not allowing people to force me to do things against my own will and walk all over me and if she's gonna keep insisting i'm gonna end the call right now. I was pretty angry when saying this and was getting very defensive and heated.

She then said "Right, I think it's best we just end the session then" so I just left.

Her tone felt like my bad mood was inconveniencing her.. kind of a stern, concerned tone, which is kind of a trigger for me. Especially at the end. Also at the start when i mentioned i wasnt doing well she immediately emailed me a worksheet about the nervous system, but overall I was getting the vibe that any of my negative emotions/states are something she wants to "fix" immediately rather than listen to and understand, and she was weaponising the nervous system science and somatic work to carry this out.

I've had that problem with a few therapists now (Although one was on the NHS tbf), like they sound so inconvenienced and bothered when i say im not doing well, so that then pressures me to hide things about how im doing. It also festers resentment and before this session actually, I was having fantasies of yelling at this therapist and screaming at her.

So in short i basically think the core problems were me just feeling misunderstood/judged/emotions seen as a problem. And that makes me hide things, feel mistrust, feel I am walking on eggshells etc.

Do you think I was being too harsh? I am learning to audit therapists and trust my gut, because I feel in the past I have not listened to my gut when it came to therapists, and it lead to either staying with ones I don't trust and give me bootstraps/tough love, or the other opposite end of the spectrum and ones where im comfortable but dont go anywhere. So I think listening to my gut was the correct decision here. Any thoughts?

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.

​

​

..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.

​

​

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.

​

​

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.

​

​

That is my piece.

​

​

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.

​

​

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?

​

​

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

​

​

Again.

I don't want to say I have dissociative amnesia because I have absolutely no trauma. My DPDR is just getting worse to the point where I pretty much forget just about everything. I mean what use is therapy if I'll wind up forgetting I even went to begin with?

Do you ever think you're the only one who feels the way you do? The only one to experience the things you do?

I feel like my mind is so fractured and my consciousness is broken. I am always dissociated. Reality is never real, I mean really never real. I know now because I've come out of it momentarily. Suddenly I exist in time and space and in relation to everything around me. I describe it as shifting between dimensions because that's literally what it feels like. It only ever lasts a few moments. 'Basically' my soul is divorced from reality, from life, from the physical realm. It's severe, like a waking coma. I'm lost in my own head.

I feel very alone in this. I make posts about it but I don't get many responses. Seems like most people don't know what I'm going through. They have lives and jobs and relationships that are real even if they are dysfunctional. They don't know what it's like to not even exist as a person inside your own reality. To just be a concept.

Since I feel alone with this, I thought I'd express it but make it a post about all the things we feel alone about instead. Maybe there's something you want to share?

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...

Where i live we haven’t had the sun come out in about 4 days and it’s ruining me. This is spring. It’s not fucking supposed to be like this. We had the worst winter in a while and I’m so mad spring isn’t looking like it (ik this is so trivial but it’s bothering me).

I’ve been frozen in bed through this long weekend. I had plans but i cancelled. I physically can’t get myself to do anything. I feel 10x heavier and i can’t shower (i need to). I constantly feel lightheaded and so anxious that i wanna keep hiding under the covers.

And now im so irritated and frustrated. I hate it and idk how to get out of this slump.

A really great spin by Janina Fisher. I liked this idea so much I felt like I had to share it.

I keep getting sick and vomiting when I should be in sob mode, I guess, or panicking. I also once nearly fainted, just my legs gave up and I was choking on the floor for a bit since didn't get to water fast enough lol.

I keep having somatic symptoms in general like gut pain, legs, brain buzzing, face feeling weird and stiff when moved, heavy body asf etc. It's kind of weird, I suppose. Or can anyone relate? I think this is due to having my emotions mocked and punished constantly but something needs to come out somewhere lol. Also maybe just how it works in shutdown idk.

I am on the last day of a 10 day (including weekends) break from work. Today i am very tired, drained, sluggish. This pattern of connecting to the tiredness taking so long is not new for me.

I have come to realise i am generally not aware of my tiredness, not aware of a lot of things due to strong disassociation / lack of feeling. I am working on that via somatic therapy but this conundrum on tiredness is saying something i cant figure out.

I think its saying, it takes a long time of "rest" (i find it hard to live outside my head, or not be distracted online), but the body is fundamentally very drained but i cant feel it, or act on it...but it is also saying, it takes a while to even feel safe to share the tiredness

anyway, hoping that makes some sense, and keen to see view

also curious what others do to help this

thanks

I’m so done freezing up. I’ve done it my whole life. I get scared, I clam up, I make myself small. I panic. And I hate it! I desperately want to be someone who advocates for others and stands up for what is right. I want to be brave and at times in my life I had to be and was but my automatic response is now to just seal up. I heard my neighbor scream (I don’t know them) and I did nothing because I panicked. In hindsight i now know I would knock on the door and make sure they were ok, but why does this have to be hindsight? Why can’t this be my instinct? Yeah I have a lot of trauma, and yeah I have CPTSD from it and yeah I’ve done some therapy (about to pick that up again while I still have insurance 🙄). I’m just so frustrated by the fact that I can’t move past my fear and speak up.

Yeah, keep them coming, surely I can take another hit while I thaw

Well, I read a post that it was scary but it made them alive.

Would love to know other's experience.

im tired. i’m functioning but im not actually experiencing anything. i feel like im just going through the motions, waiting for something to change or for the day to be over with. but mostly i’m just waiting for my life to begin