Imagine your eyes are perfectly fine but your brain is wearing glasses. For a time everything is fine and the glasses work OK but then different traumas start to happen and cracks begin appearing on the glasses. Despite your eyes working perfectly, the cracks on the glasses distorts things severely and your brain is then given a completely distorted image which, more often than not, it will respond to incorrectly. So whilst you're physically seeing things perfectly, the cracks that are causing the distortion are then forcing the brain to react in an inappropriate way because it can't make head nor tail of what it is seeing and needs time to decipher it. This is why a lot of psychiatrists will tell us to not respond immediately whether it's to an email, a text message, or whatever it is that had triggered us. It's triggered us because of the distortion. If we wait until the next day, the brain has been able to compile the image in its proper form which allows us to respond appropriately.

By saying I'm jealous I don't mean to undermine their suffering I just mean that I don't remember ever being different and I envy that they ever got to feel like a person that's not utterly broken, even for a little bit. I have nothing to remember and reminisce about. I have always been abused. Before I could walk and articulate. I am inherently fucked up because of it and I know I will never get better. Left abusive home 9 years ago and I still live like I'm there. I don't go outside if I don't have to and I am scared of every interaction. I started seeing a new therapist in January but I can't look him in the eye or engage much out of shame and fear so things are going very slowly. I don't have a family or friends - I live as if I don't exist. Just exactly as I was taught. They won.

So I am trying to heal my childhood trauma since I am like 16 🙄 I even majored in psychology and have been in therapy for a long time.

I am coming to the conclusion that “healing” it’s a scam. You just become aware and try to stay away from everything that triggers you (bad people, bad relationships) and that’s it, if you’re lucky, of course.

I am starting to think that healing is just a myth. Am I wrong?

I have really bad body dysphoria from childhood trauma, and today my friend took some shocking pictures of me. She joked about sending them to our friends and I asked her not to but she still did and everyone laughed and made jokes.

This is a menial example, but shit like this seems to happen to me all the time, across every part of my life. Everyone thinks I’m more than happy to be the butt of the joke, and recently I have been standing up for myself and getting called ‘grumpy’ for doing so.

Does anyone feel like no one sees, hears or respects them?

Secret is this, sex offenders always turn on each throw each other under the bus and kill each other and always well involved in making drugs and steal each others drugs, sex trafficking networks are much, much more dangerous to part of and high chance of death and tortured to death then even strictly just drug dealing networks alone. If sex trafficking of women and children then drugs are always involved but then not all drug makers and dealers are sex traffickers of women and children if you get what I'm saying. One FBI or DEA or police officer detective looking into them, the whole network goes down. God is great.

Edit: Biggest child sex trafficking families run the churches as well I suspect with many are well involved in money laundering and drug dealing.

It’s really has consumed me, Im going 10+ years of CPTSD I just feel like I can’t hold a normal conversation without brining something up, I don’t even mean too it’s just that it’s become so normalised in my life I forget this isn’t normal, like I feel I have nothing positive to contribute when someone asks about me anymore it’s making me really sad

Like I do have hobbies but still even now I struggle enjoying things I used too and struggle to talk about things I loved

Does anyone else have this problem?

I hardly think it’s a victory but I let my grandma know/see how much I still hurt. I triggered this particular crying spell after reading fan fiction and couldn’t stop crying. I’ve never really told anyone how deeply I hate myself and to be very honest I think yesterday was the very moment where I genuinely felt how deep and hollow the hole in my heart is. I felt like there was a literal piece of me missing. I told her about how hard it is for me to have always been so overlooked in terms of being desired. I’ve never actually voiced how worthless I feel to anyone because they’ll disagree with me. I don’t want to hear people tell me they love me. I don’t invalidate but I just don’t. To me love is such a strong and intense emotion that I don’t feel for anyone really besides my grandma and a few other ppl in my life. Most immediate family are not tied to that feeling. I spoke of just how I need someone to be gentle with me and never really having it; instead always worried about everyone else. I know no one will see this but I had to put it somewhere

Does anyone struggle to know what to believe? I will be convinced that someone is doing stuff behind my back. I will see things that I take as evidence it’s happening. Then I snap. Then afterwards I wonder if I just imagined it all or read too deep into it.

No matter how far I get I don't know what to do. And when I figure it out and try to try I fail terribly.
The disabling nature of this disorder makes it really hard to figure out what to live for.
I only keep on going because I want to see what's in all the time I've already suffered through for me. I'm afraid of dying without having lived prior. But I'm stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Everything is too difficult and immediately rejected by my mind and body. I want to grow but I don't want it to be too rough. I need to hit that right spot or I won't. Go on. I hate this. I hate this status quo. This emptiness and unfamiliarity I've grown used to.

it feels like at some point something just clicked, I still feel intense bad emotions, but now the significance of it for me is reduced. I don't care what happens to my life anymore

the planet keeps spinning and i'm just one of 8 billion, nothing special, just goo in the skull

what's the point if i can't satisfy my needs, broken from birth and the sparks of hope always fade away

i’ve been in an iop for like 6 months, processing so much difficult stuff and working so hard on all sorts of skills so that i can make steps toward living a valued life with meaningful relationships… and yet, i try to go to a friend’s party where i don’t know a lot of people and my body literally freezes up mid-conversation and i have to leave the room and completely crash out with a panic attack and flashbacks. it’s like my brain and body are fighting against me when all i want is to move on and connect with people again. it’s so discouraging, i feel broken beyond repair sometimes

Sometimes I feel like I’m too emotionally sensitive for this world. I can get genuinely tearful just thinking about people working in small food businesses. Like a family-owned cafe or a tired-looking waiter and suddenly I’m all tears when I’m alone and can cry in peace lol.

I start imagining how they have to watch other people enjoy the food they serve, while they maybe don’t even have the time or money to eat it themselves. Maybe their boss doesn’t allow them to take a proper break. And I don’t know why, but something about that breaks my heart in a way I just can’t explain.

It probably sounds irrational and really stupid of me. But my brain always goes to the saddest version possible of their story, and I feel this dumb, quiet grief?..

Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/12s3ucl/comment/jgz92yg/?context=3

Update 2 years later:

Things are going really well now! Things got worse before they got better - shortly after I made the post I spent 5 days in a psychiatric hospital after repeated mental crises resulting in strong suicidal ideation and self harm (which I had rarely ever done).

The doctors changed my medication and after trying three different SSRIs they put me on Cymbalta/duloxetine, an SNRI. And over the coming months tweaked or added several more medications (lactimal/lamotragine, Lyrica/pregabalin and amisulpride). I can say the medications help so much and I now feel more normal than I ever have in my life.

I also did several months of EMDR therapy and it really helped me, especially with my emotional flashbacks. When I felt like I had got all I could from it I tried to find therapists that did somatic therapy or IFS but that didn't really work out.

I never ever though any medication would work for me and I'm still surprised lol. Highly recommend EMDR too.

Anyway that's my update :) It didn't get much attention at the time but it is good to look back on how far I have come although it feels like sheer luck. Good luck out there

I just buried my mum and my family keeps dragging me along to family events but treating me like a hazard. Yeah no shit I don't want anything to do with the culture that watched me and my mum get beaten and neglected to madness. I came here for my mum, I don't care about anything else. I can't wait to leave this sick culture that vilifies the hurt and champions appearances

I’ve been wondering if I’m just too broken for relationships. I’ve spent most of my life struggling to form connections—romantic, platonic, even familial. My family was dysfunctional from the start, and with friend things got harder around adolescence when everyone started pairing off. I’ve had friends off and on, but many male friends turned out to have ulterior motives or disappeared once they got partners who objected. Female friendships often faded when romantic relationships took priority. I’m always more attached than the other person. The few close connections I’ve had ended in betrayal.

I’ve been in therapy on and off since elementary school. I have CPTSD—abuse, abandonment, multiple traumas. It’s heavy, and I know it can be uncomfortable for others to sit with. I’ve worked hard because I used to be so angry, reactive, and constantly in a state of terror, always waiting for the next bad thing to happen. It didn’t feel good, and I didn’t want to live like that—or hurt anyone else. But I’m so tired of endlessly trying to fix myself, especially when I see people with harmful behavior still being chosen—by friends, by partners—while I remain alone.

I recently let go of some friendships that weren’t actually fulfilling, but now I’m even more isolated. I don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like. Love has never really been safe for me. The only time I felt it might’ve been was with my grandma, who died when I was 7. My parents hid her illness from me and sedated me after she passed because my mom couldn’t handle my emotions.

Now I’m stuck in this limbo—tired of being alone, but also tired of being hurt. I like who I am. I travel alone, take classes, enjoy my work and hobbies. I even like the way I look. But none of it feels good anymore without someone to share it with. Outside of work, I can go months without a real conversation. I wonder if my independence makes people assume I don’t need connection, but I do. I crave quality time. I just don’t know what else to try.

Does anyone else ever wake up just in a full blown panic attack l, but no panic just the physical symptomss? My bf slept over last night (happens all the time) and this morning I woke up like I was in the middle of an attack but no mental symptoms only the physical.

I can't seem to get my body out of the flight/fight mode. Got the edgy shakes, twitchy tight muscles going on. Had to get out of bed and get dressed just to fight back the edge of it, felt exposed and valuable

Fuck this feels like some bull shit

Better late than never I guess

cptsd sprinkled with moral ocd anyone?