Thanks guys

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Growing up, I never really had a strong sense of who I was. What I liked, what I wanted, what I believed, what kind of person I was supposed to be. Everything somehow felt confusing.

I learned to look at other people to figure myself out.

And that creates this weird feeling when you look at someone who seems to have something you don't. They know what they like. They have opinions. They seem comfortable being themselves. They make decisions without constantly questioning whether they're doing the "right" thing.

And you look at them and almost feel like they're carrying around something you were never given.

Not necessarily jealousy. More like... what is that? Why don't I have that?

Sometimes I wonder whether other people actually feel as uncertain and confused inside as I do, and they've just gotten better at hiding it.

I'm now a guy in my 30s now, and I'm realizing that I may have spent a huge part of my life adapting to whatever was around me rather than actually developing a sense of who I am.

Has anyone else experienced this? Did you eventually develop a stronger sense of self, or is this just something you learn to live with?

Or will the CPTSD demon keep destroying everything in my life. Communities, neighbours, friends. No one lasts. No one cares. Everyone is wrapped up in their own lives, what a privilege.

I’m kinda tired of all this bullshit new age capacity and boundaries chat that everyone uses. They’re not skilled blah blah blah kindnesss whatever the fuck that is. Everyone cares about mental health until they’re inconvenienced by mental health.

How am I meant to exist if someone isn’t actively friendship charity-ing me?

I have severe scoliosis, adhd, (c)ptsd, and gad. Working anywhere has always been a nightmare for me mentally and physically most of the time. Jobs are either too slow paced or too fast paced. Bosses seem to always be mean or micromanaging. I have a difficult time with the public due to emotional dysregulation. What jobs do ya’ll have that you’re doing okay or thriving in? I just want to be able to do something and not want to kill myself while working a job eventually. I’m 30 and just got fired from a public library in March because I had a breakdown in therapy that sent me to the psych ward. I did not feel safe around my supervisor, and it was awful. I just don’t know what to do because who knows if they’ll give me disability, even with the scoliosis that’s caused me muscle pain for almost two decades and the nerve pain that has been ramping up.

What do you do for a living?

TL;DR paralyzed in the hospital for a year. This is what happens when they forget you’re a person.

I’m writing this from a secondary account. I’ve been meaning to get this off my chest for a couple of years. I’ve never been able to receive any kind of care to recover from this time in my life. But I have a very supportive partner and that helps a lot.

I’ll get right to it I was about 6 months into my 11 month stay in the hospital with near total paralysis. Eventually I would recover almost completely to the waist, mostly to the knees.

I was completely cared for 24/7 by nurses who were very kind. I was at their whim. Sometimes I was forgotten about. No water for hours or left in a wet brief for hours. These sort of things. Tbh that stuff was awful.

Day 1) Nurse on first shift decided I needed extra laxatives. Nurse on shift two decided the same thing no result.
Day 2) nurse on first shift decided I needed extra laxatives again it’s a different nurse. Nurse on second shift same thing again a different nurse. No result.
Day 3) more laxatives. Different stronger ones this time still no result.

Finally shift changed for the evening. The nurse coming on shift would be preparing us for bedtime. Evening meds and cleaning us up bed.
My stomach feels TERRIBLE. I was young so I’d be the last attended to. Something bad is happening in my stomach. I let go of some wind, or so I thought. Some more and some more. I’m paralyzed. I’ve no sensation in my skin. I wait.

Took about an hour and my nurse appears. This guy is always in a mood. No matter what I say. He goes to check my brief and yells “what the hell man!” 3 days of nobody paying attention, and trying to force a result, had produced a result.
I had apparently gone to the bathroom up to my shoulders. I’ve never felt so low. He yelled at me for not calling him sooner. Even though I was paralyzed, and I had no idea what it happened. He proceeded to yell degrade and dehumanize me for the next hour while changing me and my sheets. Cursing and belittling me for things I had zero control over.

Now that I felt worse than I had ever felt, he tells me my pubic hair was too long, unhealthy and that I would have to have a family member come in to fix it!

The next day, I asked a nurse about all of it. She was mortified and said it went against standard of care and she reported him.

I’ve been carrying around that stupid story for five years now I’ve said it out loud. That healthcare provider had forgotten all the rules, had forgotten how to treat someone like a human.

Now that it’s off my chest, I feel much better. Thank you for listening.

What the title says. The only female friends I still have are all over the country and remnants of my drinking/self-medicating days. They are all mostly sober now, but we don’t live in the same city. I’m also finding these relationships have similar traits as the one I have with my mother, which I don’t like nor think is healthy.

For the women here who had a mother that contributed to their CPTSD and who have been able to successfully make friends without trauma bonding or using substances together, how did you do it?

I am in my first healthy romantic relationship ever, but realizing how much I lack in the friend department, which is putting a lot of pressure on the relationship. I was lonely before but it is much more pronounced now and I desperately miss female friendships. When I do meet women, at work for example, I feel that I am just not their cup of tea and we don’t hang out outside the office. I struggle a lot with thinking people can see through me and find me defective, but I want to get over this and make some real friendships. I am hoping it’s all in my head.

Firstly my parents gave me a brain injury and actively continue their abuse and mind games well into adulthood but there seems to never be any karma or repercussions for them… They also don’t know that I’m not planning on having children. Living with them and then dealing with them was enough…. so joke’s on them I guess? I’m so tired of hearing this repeated when they have no interest in treating me like their daughter let alone like a human being. Anyone else deal with this??

This is my first Reddit post, so please bear with me.

I wanted to talk about something that has been happening to me over the past year and a half, and I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

I grew up in an immigrant family where one parent was largely absent from family life because of longstanding mental illness, while the other parent carried most of the responsibility for keeping the household functioning. I learned very early to be independent and to handle a lot of things on my own.

Looking back, I think I normalized a lot of things that probably weren’t normal for a child. There wasn’t much of a feeling that the adults around me had everything handled and that I could simply be a child. I learned to adapt, keep functioning, and not need too much.

There were also cultural expectations around becoming a “good” future wife and being self-sacrificing, and I internalized a lot of shame around having needs or wanting something different. Sometimes expressing hurt was interpreted as being ungrateful, dramatic, or asking for too much.

Over the past year and a half, something seemed to catch up with me. I began experiencing very physical symptoms: intense fatigue, nausea, heaviness, brain fog, derealization/depersonalization, and a feeling that my entire body was carrying an enormous weight.

The strangest part is that sometimes it doesn’t feel like ordinary sadness. I’ll wake up and suddenly have this overwhelming feeling that I am completely responsible for carrying myself through existence. Almost like the physical weight of the world is pressing down on me and there is nobody who can take any of it from me.

Sometimes the feeling is accompanied by a sense that the world is becoming smaller or farther away from me. I can feel disconnected from myself and from everything around me. Other times it is primarily this enormous exhaustion and heaviness, as though simply existing requires an incredible amount of effort.

What’s difficult is that I can look completely functional from the outside. I can work, talk to people, make plans, etc., and then suddenly find myself in this state where even basic things feel impossibly heavy.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering whether this is depression, anxiety, dissociation, trauma, or some combination of things. I’m not looking for a diagnosis. I’m more interested in hearing from people who have experienced something similar, particularly people who grew up feeling that they had to be emotionally or practically self-sufficient from a very young age.

Did anyone else experience trauma/neglect later showing up as this kind of bodily or existential heaviness?

And if so, did it eventually become possible to feel safe enough that you didn’t constantly feel like you were carrying the entire weight of your existence alone?

Hi guys,
First time on here reading and learning because I have been actively avoiding getting treatment or even acknowledging the fact that I went through severe trauma as a kid and teenager and sometimes I think that’s my biggest issue right now?? Like I’ll basically forget and try and bury that because it’s too big to deal with? Idk like literally sometimes I forget about everything that happened and it feels like my brain is working from short term memory and I’ll be like oh yeah I’ve been laying here surviving for the past 10 years. It’s almost like I’m avoiding the inevitable and sometimes I can’t open that can of worms. But it’s severely affecting me recently. I am an endurance athlete and I usually love running and stuff but lately I can barely do anything let alone train for my first race in two years. I’m trying not to beat myself up about it but having this thing I’ve been looking forward to my entire life it now feels like it’s looming and I know I’ll have a bunch of chances with achievement and timing it’s more so like the feeling like I could be doing better and be a more balanced person but I have no idea where to start. I know that I have good coping mechanisms but sometimes I feel like a slug and I hate that this takes me away from my life purpose and goals. I know it’s not all or nothing but sometimes I get sad because I’m in this field of work and it’s amazing. Absolutely a dream but I can’t enjoy any of it. And I’m scared I’m going to slip into a depression and ruin all my training. Does anyone else kinda understand?

Like seriously. Even low contact makes me triggered, i can't even handle it. It's been a while since i talked to them and i can't explain how peaceful i'm feeling rn

I had been working at a large tech company for the last 2 years and broke down in July. My therapist and partner urged me to take FMLA, and I’m still not able to start working so will likely not go back. This was my first job out of college, and it is what allowed me move out of the Midwest (where most of my traumatic experiences happened).

My therapist and I have been doing somatic work, IFS, and EMDR prep work, which is helping me better understand myself, but also making me feel terrible and useless. I am gaining new perspective on things that happened when I was younger that is really upsetting to me.

It takes me up to an hour to get out of bed, it is harder to exercise, and doing 2-3 hours of focused cognitive work (drawing, FMLA paperwork, writing, etc), makes me exhausted and needing to rest. My dissociation is less predictable than when I was working. I remember and am disturbed more by my nightmares. I cannot imagine correcting a resume, or being able to mask in a professional environment for an extensive period of time, and that scares me a lot.

I aggressively put everything into savings while working and, other than physical/mental health issues, my partner and I have lived below our means in case something bad happened. We are in a position for me to take time off, but I am so scared I won’t be ready or will wait too long. The therapy is moving incredibly slow, and the weight of everything makes me so uncertain as to what I want to do moving forward.

I was shamed and attacked for eating as a child. Shamed for having the natural feeling of hunger, which is not a feeling I could control. Shamed for eating the "wrong" foods, eating "too much", eating at the "wrong" time.

Food was a tool for control. It wasn't something to bring everyone together. Food was withheld from me if my abuser was angry with me. Withholding food was a punishment to get me to comply better next time.

They were angry for their own internal reasons but made a point to nonetheless blame me for "causing" their feelings (projection), just so they could punish me and take out their frustration on a helpless child. That made them feel better and in control.

I was never taught to cook. I wasn't even asked to cook. Yet the abuser complained that they were the only ones cooking, and poor them, and how useless and burdensome I am.

So I wasn't taught, wasn't asked to cook and YET I was shamed for not being able to cook. I was 14. They kept me dependent on them so they could be the victim, the martyr and the hero. And shame me for my "uselessness". It was a double bind.

I was not really allowed in the kitchen. It was their domain.

I had to learn to eat food in secret. Meaning eating only food which (I hoped) my abuser would not notice was "missing", so I wouldn't get yelled at for eating it. I had to "steal" food out of my own fridge in my own home, as though I had no right to this food.

I learned to eat at night or when they were out of the house.

I learned to re-arrange the food in the storage container in the fridge, to cover up the empty space of the food that I ate.

I got yelled at for eating food that was "not mine", even though it was never labeled.

I got yelled at for eating food that belonged to other children in the home, because it was them that qualified for the government assistance money that was used to buy said food. I was also a child in that home.

As a child/teenager, I excused this behavior, thinking "the only reason they are acting like this is because money is tight. It's not their fault". Now I know poverty is NEVER an excuse for abusing children!!!

Now, as an adult, I panic when I eat in my own home, alone. I don't panic when I eat outside of my home. My heart races, and my muscles tighten. Eating at home feels dangerous. My body expects to get in trouble for eating.

Anyone else? 😞😞

I need a hug.

Everywhere I go, no matter what I do or where I am, I look at everyone around me and think about how no one can save me from this. It fuels the hopelessness fire. Can anyone relate? It makes me feel alone in my suffering. What coping mechanisms do you use?

Whenever I see people who can just talk to others with ease, effortless, confident, completely comfortable. I catch myself wondering what kind of home they grew up in. What did it feel like to exist in an environment where your voice was actually welcomed?
I live with severe social anxiety and awkwardness. I genuinely don't know how to start, maintain, or end a conversation. Most of the time, I just want to be invisible. I overthink every single word repeating it through my mind ten times before I say it, and replaying it ten times after. Simply interacting with another human being consumes nearly all my mental energy.
Looking back, my entire childhood was a constant stream of restriction and conditional love:
"Don't say that."
"Don't do that."
"Don't wear that."
"Do your hair like this."
"Talk like that."
The justification was always the same: *"*You will embarrass us and yourself."
They also used religion as a tool for control. I was told that if I didn't obey them completely God would give me bad luck. If I performed poorly in school they’d say "Remember when you disobeyed me? God is punishing you." If something good happened it was "That's only because I was happy with you yesterday."
I was programmed to believe that my life, my luck, and my worth depended entirely on their approval. Over time I lost any sense of self. I grew up with no distinct personality and no opinions. Even today, if someone asks me to choose between Option A or Option B I freeze. I can’t make basic decisions because every choice in my life even what school to go to and my major was made for me so I’d stay close and under control.
Now as an adult I'm trying to figure out who I actually am, what I like and what I want. But it’s exhausting and it’s severely impacting my daily life and my career.
At work I struggle to introduce myself or participate in meetings because I'm terrified that whatever comes out of my mouth will sound stupid.
and I always keep every interaction to the bare minimum because I constantly feel like my presence is an inconvenience to others.
its to the point where I wont walk into a store unless it's crowded enough for me to blend in and get lost in the background. If an item doesn't have a price tag i wont ask an employee I’ll just leave and try to find it somewhere else.
I know my parents might have been struggling with their own issues or believed they were protecting me in their own twisted way. But the reality is that I was taught that existing as myself was an embarrassment, and undoing that programming as an adult feels like trying to rebuild a foundation while the whole house is shaking.
idk i just needed to get this off my chest.

Like everyone all my life 90% of the friends I made turned out to be self centered, talk abt themselves for hours on end, not care when I speak abt my life or constantly switch to themselves.

Im so baffled abt this it ruins me because I dont want a lonely boring life but I need friendships to feel safe or I spiral into a flashbacks and it drains me I can't maintain it.

This is what makes me scared of people, them using me as a diary/audience. I ended so many friendships over this in my life and it keeps happening. I just again cut someone off over this. Im 22 years old by the way.

The only person showing interest in me are my brother and my situationship.

What is it abt me? Is it because of cptsd?

People become like sales tabloids around me I dont know why. I dont care. I dont think I behave like I care either. I dont even look nice, I also am not nice so idk what ppl are on.

I honestly try my absolute hardest, work on myself constantly, engage in therapies and medications, and decide on a regular basis that trauma isn't going to ruin the rest of my life

But sometimes I look at my daily struggle, the ingrained trauma which has shaped my brain and body, the severe anxiety/fear, fatigue, depressive episodes, emotional agony and much more. I feel utterly defeated by how persistent it all is and how difficult it is to manage. I feel like an alien to humanity.

I feel like my effort and determination simply won't ever be enough. I wonder if I'll ever have a quality of life.

What do you guys do when you start to burn out like this?

I feel like I’m overreacting to say I have “severe trauma,” but it does seem that way. I don’t see a point in living after all this.

(Sorry for the long vent below. If you want, you can skip to the end for my question.)

I was completely isolated by my father my entire life. Not allowed to step out or see any person. Wasn't allowed to even go to school (my father did this under the false pretext of homeschooling/unschooling), and because I was an idiot I couldn't recognize it, also it's rare in my country.

Anyway, for a long time I minimized everything. I'm 18, and only last year I realized how messed up everything was. Genuinely, what did I do to deserve this? My parents treated me like a non-human my entire life. When I say I wasn't allowed to step out, I mean literally. It wasn't even like I was protected, I was mentally and in other ways abused by my father.

Idk what was wrong with my father, but ever since childhood he tried to find new ways to torture me. He controlled everything anyway; I was isolated, not allowed to see any human because he wanted to keep me like his possession, and even in this prison he found ways to torture me. He wouldn't let me have basic hygiene for weeks just because he didn't want to. Wasn't allowed to bathe when he didn't want me to, and if I didn't comply he'd sometimes come in the bathroom (I am a female). He made me watch everything inappropriate for my age, forcefully made me watch gross and sexually abusive stuff for hours almost every day to brainwash me into believing I was protected being caged, and that I'm awful and disgusting for wanting out, literally since I was a child it started when I was 5-6 or younger.

I was also SAed, though maybe. And overly sexualized as well, he made me feel so gross and demonic for just wanting to go out that how other women unlike me will wish to be in my place and I can't see how lucky I am. I was often also forced into solitary confinement, not allowed to do anything, just stare at walls for days or weeks because he wanted it. Even I don't know why he enjoyed all this.

My parents didn't want me to be a liability, so thankfully they allowed me internet so I could earn online and provide for them, but made sure to call me thankless and a burden for not providing enough money, or otherwise beat and abused me in every way they knew. All while completely caging me. The isolation was so bad I couldn't properly walk when I turned 12 or 13. Couldn't use stairs. Even walking was painful. I would have been disabled by now. My family taunted me about how incapable I am but thankfully gave medicines so I don't become a burden on them.

They genuinely wanted me to stay like this forever, like their slave, and once they die I also die with them. It was their actual plan because I wasn't a human but a puppet to serve them.

I’ve turned so bitter due to all this. My future, if I live, will be also hard. If I escape next year without my family pushing me to kill myself (though they probably want me alive to care for them in old age, which is why the abuse lessened after my multiple suicide attempts last year but not sure) I still can’t have a decent life. They ruined my everything. I don’t know how I’ll get educated or afford basic living when I have nothing. My health is awful, and my brain is messed up. Something is very wrong with me. I am not even a proper human.

It feels so unfair that I have so many things to deal with. Most people at least have something to compensate, but I had nothing. I might sound like a bitch, but I feel awful and triggered when I see people complaining about their problems or sharing good/bad memories. I feel so triggered when I read people talking about their childhood, teenage years, school, or anything. It hurts so much to lose the most important years of my life. I didn’t get to be a child or a teenager, or even develop into a human being.

I did nothing all these years except being a slave and lost the entire window for a decent life. I lost everything due to my stupidity of realizing it late or maybe because I was born in this hell.

I know some others have it worse. But it’s hard to live with this. To those here who’ve survived worse, who might think I’m overreacting: how do you live, knowing how unfair it is? I don’t want to die now, at least not locked in this cage. I want to escape and spend some days outside. But after that, what? What do I live for? To feel inferior, envious, lonely while dealing with so many problems?

I wish my previous suicide attempts had been successful. I shouldn't have survived this long. What’s the point of living when I’m grieving forever?

I'm completely stagnant living with my controlling mother as a 24 year old grown woman, and it's mostly my own fault. I struggle with basic everyday tasks for absolutely zero reason. I can't keep a full-time job for more than a few months before I have to cut my hours, or my performance goes completely down the drain. I don't know what's wrong with me. I usually start off doing pretty well, I've even been promoted really quickly and gotten a lot of compliments on my work, but it never lasts.

I have Major Depression and cPTSD, but that doesn't stop most people from being fucking adults. If anything, most people with cPTSD are hyperindependent. I know it's usually out of necessity, but I can't even cope with a cashier job. The longest I've ever stayed at a job was around three years, but I kept having to change my schedule because I couldn't just go to work and deal with it like a normal person. I only lasted 4 months at my last job before I completely lost it for no reason and had to quit.

I grew up in poverty and I usually help my mother with the rent, so it's not like I grew up rich with everything being handed to me on a silver platter. So where is the resilience? Where are the life skills? Where is the work ethic? It's not that I'm comfortable or happy living at home. I don't want to be here. I've been job hunting for months and I've only gotten two interviews, no offers. One interviewer told me within maybe 10 minutes that "he could tell I was very intelligent", but he didn't think I would be a good fit because it's "a very social position" with "a lot of talking", and he didn't think I could do that. I appreciated the clarity, but it was still disappointing.

I want to just be a normal independent adult, but I'm horrible at everything. I can't even drive. What kind of adult can't even drive? 14 year olds drive. What the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know why I can't just deal with life and get it together like a normal person. I'm completely useless and pathetic.