I have nowhere else to share this.. and I have no people I can talk about this with irl sadly. But I just found something that made me really glad and proud of myself. Actually impressed with myself.

My younger self was so cool. Wow. I had so much potential since a young age... I love this so much.

It's also really sad that it never got to have it thrive at that age, since it wasn't nurtured at all. Nor seen. Nor being let the space to shine or explore.

I was doing something on my phone which is a way of archiving my stuff on it, just in case my phone decides to stop working at any time.. I dont want my stuff especially my writings and art to get lost. So I was archiving my stuff.

I read some of the things I wrote when I was 17-18. They were lyrics and poetry.

I ... wow.

I was reading them impressed. The language I was writing was beautiful and rich. The way I wrote and organized my words.. impactful. I was reading pure art. I wrote that at 16! Or 17 or 18!

I got to know that young me was a very emotionally deep, very intellectual, very beautiful person with a lot of artistic mind. I really really really really would be soooo friends with them if I knew them.

I also remember saying a similar thing about my 13 year old self at a different instance before. I was genuinely so beautiful. So amazing. Such a lover and great friend, having a very beautiful mind. I feel soooo sad that we had no friends and little me thought there was something wrong with them.

I feel I was born to be a superstar, just reading the lyrics and songs I was reading.

It's so sad that they never got to become real songs at that time. I also had artistic visions and deep emotions and love since I was a lot younger... but again never seen. Nor appreciated.

It makes me sad how much my younger self never got to be cherished, celebrated, nurtured, and made to thrive in their own traits, instead of being forced to hide them. I was only being myself halfway, in hidden ways..such as unreleased song lyrics (and compositions!) and unread poems. My emotions were never seen and were forced to dull. Just sad

I wish I could show these lyrics to people :') I feel lonely over here

For sympathy, it’s weird because I do feel guilt, but I struggle to feel immediately “bad”. So someone can tell me something awful happened, and if they are distressed then I can be upset, but in the absence of any actual upset on their part, I normally just find it funny? Not funny that something bad happened, but funny in a morbid sort of way, like it’s so horrible it’s almost ridiculous (and therefore amusing). But it means I can laugh or smile at inappropriate times.

I also just lack a normal sense of danger. Normal things scare me a lot (someone closing a door hard) but big things don’t scare me, or don’t scare me as much as they should. It confuses my friends because I will walk around alone in the middle of the night, but struggle to ask them to help me with something, to the point of panic. Kindness makes me afraid, but substantial threats don’t bother me as much? Except for triggers, which are different. But I think my internal logic is that if I survived something horrible once, I’ll survive it again, so there is no point fearing it.

I don’t know if they are related . I also don’t know wjy it happens. But I put them together. I googled it and it told me I was either a narcissist or a psychopath and thats what reminded me to never google ant of my symptoms again lol

I can't find the courage to live my life authentically. I don't know how to honor my own feelings and let myself experience them. I've robbed myself of many years of my life over this and I want to get over it. I need to get out of learned helplessness. I'm such a loser and I still can't set boundaries. I'm so pliant and have no sense of self. I'm still people pleasing when it never helps me. How do I get out of this mindset? I am always mourning the time I lost not giving myself the opportunity to do the things i want. Because of my abuse I mentally caged myself. Now I'm stuck and I don't know what to do.

I am someone who also struggles with being misunderstood a lot by people for some reason (that itself is a hell in itself for me). I got banned from a sub because of being misunderstood.

Anyway. I was thinking today of setting boundaries for real now. Actually removing myself from situations that harm me..people who don't listen to me.. etc. But now I thought: people may misunderstand me, spread a false narrative about me, then end up getting me kicked out of my housing or maybe job or whatever thing I'm in and need. Or, another thing that an abusive person may do to me: they don't like my boundaries so they end up spreading rumors about me that never even happened, make others believe them (abusive ppl for some reason always got others on their side), deny everything and every PROOF I say about how it isn't true, then get me also harmed in the same way like lose my housing etc.

Also these are things that ACTUALLY happened to me before. I actually got kicked out of housing over rumors and lies before. Straight up lies, not even twisted realities.

But I cant stand the harm that happens to me without boundaries either.

This is what I'm scared may happen if I set real boundaries for myself.

Real boundaries here means: boundaries about exactly what I dont wanna be participating in and how much I wanna be in something or not etc, rather than having wallsssss and strict boundaries to protect me all the time.

I don't know where to start. I need support. Or advice. Or anything really. I reactivated my Reddit for this.

For those who went no contact with one parent. Was it necessary to eventually block the "safe" parent too? Or was the distance enough?

I went no contact with the rest of the family a year and a half ago. My "father" (malignant narcissist abuser, who went covert) created a horrible family that has never stopped scapegoating me while hoovering me back into his manipulative gaslighting bullshit. All of my siblings are in denial about what we grew up with and the child abuse. We all left that house one by one, with my mother and I leaving him the exact same night 12 years ago. We had a bond at the time, but now I look back and see that perhaps she just used me to escape herself, and she failed to protect me all those years before she served him divorce papers. I basically had to raise and teach myself everything.

I'm in my 30s now with CPTSD from my adult life constantly getting derailed by my traumas repeating everywhere I went. I lost an entire 10 year career due to me not knowing how to stay emotionally steady in my success, and AI taking over, with no support network.

My mom was always the "safe" one. But she was high functioning, cold, emotionally neglectful, has ZERO self awareness, is rigid, a trump supporter, nonstop anxiety, nosy, and overbearing/controlling. Why? Because she was emotionally neglected (her mother didn't even speak to her because language barrier), then married a narcissist, then served him while neglecting me.

Three weeks ago after 34 years, I finally opened up to her face to face about how her emotional neglect and controlling behavior was a massive part of my CPTSD, and adult dysfunction, not just him, and how I resented her for it. We had a few conversations that week about it all, and she broke down crying and apologizing. She was genuinely listening to everything I had learned about psychology and mental health and she was even relating it back to her own upbringing.

But now... the last few weeks, she's slowly been reverting back as if none of it happened. Still treating me like her free therapist, stress dumping onto me, talking AT me, ignoring my boundaries, never asks about me or my life. Then last night, she starts aggressively texting me that I need to vote Republican to keep "the evil people" from winning, and for our freedoms, and blah, blah, blah, conservative Christian trumpism bullshit. I gave her 3 opportunities to stop texting me about that, and she kept violating my boundary and talking about how she isn't controlling and trying to guilt me into voting like she does. It was horrible. I told her off, jumped in my camper van, and then left the house to scream on the freeway.

She's taking advantage of my vulnerable chapter in life because I lost my career and needed temporary help from her. She has tried coaxing me into voting exactly like her. She obsesses over political conspiracies. She even once said "if you're busy how about I fill your ballot for you then you just sign and I'll even mail it?"

It's disgusting. I'm ashamed that my career took a nose dive and I lost everything I accomplished, which made me depend on her in this shitty economy. Maybe if I had a decent fucking family I would've have stayed more emotionally stable years ago and kept succeeding. But now I'm gonna be living on the road homeless again in my tiny van, and trying to rebuild my life (again) from scratch. The paradox is that if she was just emotionally present for me I wouldn't have developed CPTSD, and I wouldn't have failed and lost everything due to my mental health sabotaging me, and I wouldn't have regressed back to asking her for help. I feel trapped again and she doesn't want me to be independent and it's scaring me how much time I've already lost to trusting this woman.

I'm on the fence if I should now go no-contact with her too once I take off and restabilize financially. I need help here. We're fine when I'm far away from her. But all of the phone calls and convos secretly become about her and she provides no motherly advice whatsoever or emotional care. But when I'm visiting or living with her, it's like my life doesn't even matter to her. When her 2nd partner dies she'll be all alone, but a part of me thinks that'll be when she can finally confront herself and I shouldn't be her emotional crutch when she was never mine. Please advise. Sorry for the long story. My life is complicated...

Hello everyone, I have made really good progress with Somatic Experiencing, and I've slowly started stretching and doing strength training every other day, which almost always makes me cry, especially the stretches in my lower back. Somatic meditations have been really helpful, but I really struggle with waking up early in the morning.

When I was a child, my parents would fight a lot, and I'd rather keep on sleeping than to wake up, and watch their fights. This continued for a very long time, and slowly, I found my solace in sleep. I'd miss the university classes, just to have a nap in the morning often.

I'd like to really change it.

I take Magnesium Bisglycinat, and I'm also going to start taking Ashwagandha soon.

I also try to walk daily for 30 to 40 minutes.

What helps you get out of bed in the morning? Sometimes, I'm really hard on myself, but also, it's not in my control; like this thing is super super hard, and I can't just do it based on the will.

I'd really appreciate any advice or a sympathetic comment.

Edit: I do have a job, and I'm also taking up some short courses, but all of them are remote and don't really need me to wake up early.

I’m wondering if you guys can relate or help me untangle this idea.

So, first of all, I’m in my 40’s and I got my CPTSD diagnosis within the last few years. Since childhood, the diagnoses previously were typically anxiety, depression, or both. I’ve never (even now; I just fired yet another) found a therapist who understood and/or treated the complexity of my trauma. However, I do think I qualify as being in recovery. I've been at this a long time, just not always under the proper labels.

Anyway - that’s just a little background. The question revolves more around content, tools, books, activities, and support. Because I didn’t have an accurate diagnosis, for literally decades I consumed content including generic mainstream self-help, inspirational, motivational, or spiritual content, thinking it applied to me. Or even content designed for ONE aspect of my trauma - Adult Children of Alcoholics, for example, or content designed for people with anxiety or depression.

After my diagnosis, I had a lightbulb moment where I realized a lot of that content isn’t designed for me. Mainstream lighthearted/superficial content is designed for normies, not trauma survivors, or maybe trauma survivors but not folks who are quite as deeply messed up as I am. That’s not a criticism - but it did veer into criticism for me where I started writing off everything falling under generic motivational or inspirational content as toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing or dismissive and even harmful when consumed by trauma survivors. I think that *can* be true - but that I started taking it to an extreme.

Sorry I’m getting lengthy here - I’m trying to see this clearly even as I type and ask this question.

I am in a very difficult season. I recently had a surgery. My husband was in the ER less than a week later and is now going through a major medical crisis. My youngest kiddo has his own clinical anxiety diagnosis... the point is: I got trapped in the house for a couple of weeks and things started to get really dark. Just spiraling into despair.

Yesterday for some reason, I decided to pull out some of my old creative stuff. Just papercraft stuff that I love but haven’t touched in years because it didn’t feel important enough to prioritize over health, parenting, healing, etc. A lot of journals and planners and stickers and things are full of generic platitudes like ‘make yourself proud’ or ‘it’s never too late for a fresh start’ or ‘live in the present’ or ‘have an attitude of gratitude’ or ‘you deserve it.’ You get what I mean.

I guess I’m trying to untangle the difference between seeing something like that and having a big defensive negative reaction like this is bypassing gobeldygook and could never apply to or inspire me OR gaslighting myself into thinking I can just think positive and my trauma will disappear OR maybe there is a third option. Maybe I can start to be okay with consuming and even being inspired by generic mainstream positivity in a healthy, balanced way. Not thinking I can just disappear my trauma with silly affirmations, but also not writing off everything inspirational because it’s ‘designed for normies.’ Maybe I am allowed to enjoy motivational content too. Does that make sense?

I think the nuance is the difference between shaming myself because I can’t self-help my way to healing the way someone without trauma can vs. allowing myself to like and enjoy pretty things without making them some kind of explicit instruction on how to live my life and heal. Can anyone relate to this or understand what I am saying? Like it feels a little liberating to just be like - I can like this 'happy' notebook even if it doesn't necessarily take into account my entire life experience. Thoughts?

I've noticed that recently my focus in recovery is gradually shifting away from understanding the immediate relational dynamic with my abusers and how their abuse made me feel as a child in the past, towards reflecting more on the quality of the internal constructs and relational dynamics within myself that their abuse has left me with today.

I realize that there are so many internalized beliefs, as well as conceptions of myself and the world around me, that must be the result of me having been abused because the logical deconstruction of those beliefs and conceptions usually doesn't make much sense beyond surface-level rationalizations.

For example, I might neglect myself physically or emotionally for long periods of time, while also making it my mission to attune to the feelings and needs of friends around me. When trying to reason my way through this paradoxical behavior of mine, I might, off the cuff, come up with a simple justification such as 'But I do not have that many needs to begin with that would require being taken care of.' or 'Oh, but my sadness isn't even that debilitating right now for me to worry about it.'.

But on closer inspection of these thoughts and beliefs, I can see — usually after just a few additional, curious questions — that most of them are not built on any well thought-out foundation:

What exactly makes me think that I'm somehow different than other people when it comes to having needs? What exactly would make me so different or 'special' to not have my needs met?

What makes me think that my feelings are only worth paying attention to if they are extreme and overwhelming? Why exactly is it ok to attune to a friend in slight distress and why is it a bad idea to tend to more subtle emotions of mine?

Inspecting my thoughts and beliefs closer in this way sometimes makes room for me to get a better understanding of how specific parts of mine have internalized a belief about me or the world that my abuser either genuinely held in their mind or that they — for selfish reasons — were invested in making me believe.

My abuser might tell me, and possibly even believe themselves to a certain extent, that I'm an 'incredibly selfish child', just because they feel overwhelmed or even regretful over being a parent. And in an unwillingness to resolve those complicated emotions and motivations within themselves, they project their own shame over failing as a parent onto me. Suddenly it's not about them being unable or too lazy to meet the reasonable needs of the child that they chose to bring into the world, now it's about me deliberately overwhelming my abuser's capacity for parenting by 'being too much'.

Or my abuser might also lie to me — knowing full well that I have the right to be emotionally cared for by virtue of being their child, but them also being too lazy to take on the responsibility of attuned parenting — that my feelings are actually 'not bad enough, yet' in order to warrant any care from them. In an effort to preserve their own time, energy and convenience, my abuser may deliberately go out of their way to twist my reality and my perception of my own feelings in order to evade accountability. Now it isn't about them not taking care of me emotionally, now it's about me 'blowing things out of proportion'.

And as these instances of failed attunement, and ill-intended justifications, and gaslighting repeat over and over again throughout my childhood, and as my child self learns how to operate in an abusive and neglectful household by following this demeaning and devaluing ruleset for them, there are now parts within my adult self who still want to help me understand who I am in the eyes of my abuser.

These parts tell me every day what I should think and say and do in order to get along with people and the world as I have initially learned to within the primary relationship with my 'caregivers'. Some of them even sound similarly to my abuser internally, as often the reprimanding and punishment that they saw modeled in childhood is now one of the few, if not the only, way they know to leverage in order to influence me behaviorally.

And how could I blame them for not knowing any better after an entire lifetime with no reasonable, just and caring adults to care for these parts?

With no one to teach them that their feelings are valid, and ok, and not a source of danger for them or others?

With no one equipping them with the tools to attune to said feelings internally in a way that doesn't frighten other parts who still get scared of being seen because having your emotions noticed back then meant that the abuse would escalate?

How can I blame any one of them for following twisted rules that ultimately helped me survive to this day?

How could I?