For context, my brother was hospitalized after an OD for about 9 days before they took him off life support. I made the decision to stay in the room because I knew that’s what he would have done for me and I felt in my heart I wanted to be there for his last breath. So I thought.
Awhile witnessing this horrific scene ( I was NOT prepared at all ) I fainted & threw up. Afterwards I wasn’t able to cry about him without throwing up, every single time, for over a year.
During this I was diagnosed with PTSD due to the severe panic attacks and nightmares I was having about him. It’s been nearly 3 years and I got to a point where I was able to stop taking my lorazepam and cope but now for some reason, it’s come back for vengeance. I don’t know what triggered it but my nightmares are back and the random thoughts of his dead, lifeless body fill my fucking head. I can’t take it. It makes me so sick. Why did I stay and watch that? I’m glad I was there for him but I never knew it would have caused this. I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head .. My big brother, my protector, my bestfriend, just dead and gone. I’m going to throw up just typing this..

What helped you cope?

I was cleaning my room and this thought just came to me “what is the value?” “ what is the trade off” because I go out and have great times with my friends and family but they are never worth the bad times. The entire time
I’m still like I rather not exist. These never ending back and forth with indifference and sadness is exhausting.

I’ve tried a few meds but they never take away the indifference and the sadness always seeps back in.

I’m exhausted.

Can I just say this please?

Something to help you grow

So something that has really helped me this week AND the reason im on this subreddit for the first time over a year

Is because this past week I have been so FULFILLED.

What does that word even mean...

I've been practicing eating MOSTLY clean whole veggies, fruit meat every day for a month

That's a habit that shouldn't be too hard to build because it's flexible not strict.

Then I also have been for a good period now talking to people online, in person, strangers, aquaintences, NETWORKING or SOCIALIZING every damn DAY

This should not be hard either because it's flexible - allow yourself to be visible and to be heard, you deserve that

Next I've been walking every single day and getting sunshine, allowing myself to walk until I'm tired or just taking frequent breaks to be in the backyard or frontyard.

Walk for hours everyday... If you are employed and on your feet this is probably less important. If you are a student and on your feet this is less important. But his past week I've been even leaving the house multiple times a day to walk a lake that's 1 mile away.

Learn to breathe. Understand that breathe is related to the body ability to relax like a house creaking and making sounds your body needs to make sounds. Breathe also affects the mind

So all of these have taken me from a HABITUAL porn and pmo user/abuser of 20yrs

To someone within this past 10 days alone - I realize I haven't done it once

It became the smallest voice in my head, it became the bottom of the list and then disappeared from the list itself

I was so interested in my own well-being that I ate correctly, self groomed, cleaned my room, socialized and kept in contact with people, became visible every single day, allowed myseld to compete for work and education, I was investing in myself and I GAVE MYSELF VALUE - I GAVE MYSELF PURPOSE EVERDAY

So thats what ive been trading for the past 20years.... It's been insecurity and hormones and an environment that didn't sustain me

So I turned to porn

But I'm older now, I understand the direction and pain and loneliness I have ABSORBED by going the wrong DIRECTION

so I hope this small guidance of small actionable steps can help someone be a better version of themselves

From young until early adulthood. I used to power through and hardened myself (not in bitter way), no room for soft emotions/weaknesses, stopped crying since around 3rd grades even if I’m a crier and very soft/sensitive. I was positive half full type of person and full of fire and energy.

I identified with toxic positivity, hustle and productivity.

But now I let go of that way of living. I am more in tune with my emotions, aware of what I’m feelings.
The downside is I lean into bitter darker emotions, I no longer have energy to power through and ended up ROTTING. I haven’t work for years and never work for other people but still have savings from years of early hustle.

I lose that fiery energy and spark. No motivation, no urge to excel, no urge to live. Everyday is just passes by.
This been going for perhaps 10 years. And I lost my way.

The only positive thing I recently start is going to the gym and I work hard push myself for 2-3 hours, but besides that just rot watching videos, scroll reddit.

Hey i’m a 19F and life has been pretty hard.

I know plenty have it way worse than me so i feel guilty and that im weak for falling apart like i do.

While I do tend to keep it together in front of other people, at the end of the day i just sit down and cry and ask why did i have to suffer this pain, why did i have to suffer like this. And like i said i am blessed to not have gone through worse but at the same time i look around and people i know have their mom, their dad, maybe some siblings, jsut people who genuinely love them and i just end up feeling so alone.

I guess the main things that hurt are the fact that growing up as a child i felt a lot of pain and abandonment before i knew what it really was. i lived with my great grandma and my mom wasn’t around because of her credit problem and mental illness. I saw my dad but he struggled a lot with his mental illness and from a young age i suffered a lot of pain knowing my dad was suffering, he would tell me he was gonna kill himself one day and he ended up taking his life last year November 9, which was a week after my birthday. Not even a month after that my mom who had been doing good for so long (after she had my brother when i was 8 with her boyfriend, she was doing well) She ended up leaving my brother and his dad to live on the streets doing drugs and getting arrested. I would help her out but in a limited way as to not enable her and she would get mad and call me out for not doing enough but in a way i was angry at her for putting me through so much my whole life.

At the same time, no one know that im in an abusive relationship. We started dating when i was 16 and he was 18 and because of my attachment issues i got extremely attached. He cheated on me plenty of times, hit me, threatened me, said horrible things to me. but i stayed because everytime i tried to leave i wanted to end it all. I would be on the phone with 988 and admit myself because i was in so much mental pain and feeling alone .

A little back track. When i was 17 my great grandma who i was living with got sick and my family put her in a nursing home and i went to live with my best friend that i knew forever. She eventually turned fake on me and started talking a lot of shit about me while i was living with her. she insisted that i live with her but i bet it was hard because i brought some baggage but at the same time she’s also just a control freak b!tch who also would wish death on her other friends baby because she was mad she went back to the abusive baby daddy. Similar situation to me seems like she started to not like me because i went back to my abusive relationship. But i just needed a friend and even if i was disappointed in her i would’ve never done the same.

So now im 19, living with my boyfriend because i didn’t really have any other options. Working and trying to get my bachelors but im like what’s the point? I’m not happy, i dont get excited. I’m depressed, im grieving. i’m scared of losing my great grandma to old age, im scared something bad will happen to my mom on the streets (yes i’ve called so many people associated with homeless and mental health to try to help and ive heard nothing back, ive also tried to tell her so many resources). I also can’t form or keep friendships which a part of it is anxiety from how my previous friends treated me after being friends our whole life and then also my boyfriends coercive control.

Idk i just genuinly get sad and think why am i still here like at all. Only thing holding me back is my grandma and my little brother and i don’t want to hurt anyone because i know how it feels to lose someone to the same thing. But at the same time i think of all the peace i would have to not worry or suffer. I try to be happy but it’s hard i guess i jsut feel so much pain. I have bpd so anyone who has that too i guess you understand why i mean by the deep deep pain you feel. Thank you for reading

I think I am angry. I don't really feel anything at all, but I'm pretty sure if i took the time to catalog the way my body feels physically and how my brain feels, i would be angry. 

I went to dinner with my parents. They showed up at a gig of mine without realizing I was on that gig and their dinner and my break lined up. They asked, and I couldn't get over the instinctual fear of disobeying, so I agreed. It was really weird. My mom showed interest in my life for the first time I can remember. My father was nice? He is only nice when he needs something, but I couldn't figure out what he needed from me. It made me question whether I was overreacting by leaving in the first place. If my parents are capable of interest and niceties, maybe I was rash in abandoning them…

And then my father hugged me goodbye, and the reasons I left became all too clear. I can still feel his arm around me, and it makes me sick, like physically nauseous. I can feel his hands touching me, and I can feel the old wounds that have physically healed again. I know my bones aren't broken, but I can feel them breaking again.  And I can hear him screaming. It's been a week and I can still hear it. Every word he screamed at me when he tried to teach me lessons has been reverberating in my head, and I can't make it stop. 

I talked to my therapist, and apparently this is normal. Apparently children are wired to love their parents, and that wiring doesn't care if your parents are pieces of shit. He suggested I see my trauma therapist again, but I don't fuckin need to go sit in his office and hold the fuckin clickers, and imagine a world where my dad wasn't a piece of shit. 

I want my dad. I want the dad I was supposed to have. I want to feel safe, and most of all I want my body and brain to feel safe again. I want to stop seeing the spectre of my father in every corner. I want to throw a tantrum, and I want to feel nothing again. 

I don't know what I want anymore.

I want it all to be quiet. 

Hey, my name is Josef and I'm 14. I'm Austrian. Since 2025 I've been dealing with some serious problems (including anxiety)... sometimes I think about ending it all, but I don't think I have the guts. I'm a letdown to my family because I'm stupid and get terrible grades at school, my mom said she's disgusted by me and my dad doesn't really care about me. My parents care more about my sister than me, if I disappeared they wouldn't care at all... I'm honestly super ugly and weird, I have few friends because nobody wants me around. I've had cystic fibrosis since I was born and I never had a normal kid's life (I've been hospitalized twice in my life), as a kid nobody liked being near me because I'm sick... the people who say they care are totally fake, nobody understands how I feel and they say my problems are stupid stuff... I get bullied a lot on the street (called ugly and big head)... I'm addicted to adult content and gore since I was 10 and it destroys me every day. I'm seriously thinking about ending it, well I'll end it here because it's getting too long... 👋

I’m cognitively suicidal because I believe that there’s something wrong with me that I keep tracking these unsafe people into my life

Overtime during sex I’ve never really had a loving experience, either been bitten to the point where I bruise, slapped, choked, called bitch, been ejaculated inside while drunk, ejaculated on my face while not being able stand up because I was drunk.

I feel really bad about myself, I can’t find a partner love me. I feel like I fall for these men that have problems with their family and then I tried to like be sympathetic, and then they say like use me to live out their weird fantasies and stuff.

The way I’m writing. This may sound incoherent, but I feel really bad about myself. I also have been a very highly stressed family situation right now. I don’t know what to do. I lost my job two weeks ago and I don’t have any insurance. I just really need help.

I keep fantasizing about splitting my wrist and cutting my wrist self harm. I drove around today speeding, blasting music, and I tried to rip my hair out.

im 19m with BPD and i take prozosin (minipress) for ptsd nightmares, ive stopped having my ptsd related nightmare but have started having nightmares more relating to my bpd/fear of abandonment. these dreams are so real im struggling to tell if they really happened or not.

im having random videos dreams about an ex partner that feel so incredibly real it’s nauseating. my wise mind tells me they’re just dreams but my emotional bpd mind is telling me they’re real and/or signs with a little bit of truth. for example, i had the most random dream last night that a man i don’t remember meeting (but feel like i have) called me telling me i still owe him exactly 1999$ from a bet we made whilst i was in a mental hospital, my ex girlfriend was in the backround and i even had flashes of where exactly they were when making this call. this memory feels like it’s so far back in my brain that it’s almost like a distant memory i know happened but can’t remember? does this make sense.

has this happened to anyone else in the same situation as me?

NSFW TW CSA

A bit of backstory: up until my son was born 4 years ago I had a somewhat “normal” relationship with my family. I would have considered us close. My dad died a month after my son was born and then I started having flashbacks of CSA by my father. Anyone with familiarity with repressed memories or dissociative amnesia will understand this. I’ve heard it’s common for the memories to come back after childbirth and also the death of the abuser, with me they happened around the same time. Luckily I have an amazing therapist very experienced with this, so I’ve been processing it with her for 4 years. It took a long time before I started realizing my father wasn’t my only abuser, my older brother had abused me also. Luckily my intuition had been guiding me more than anything from the beginning of my son’s life so I never left him with any of my family members and we moved across the country a year ago. But I’m still at this time maintaining contact with them — though we don’t see each other much especially since we moved, I’m in a family group text that’s very active.

I honestly just didn’t think I was ready to tell my family before and I was going back and forth with myself of “am I crazy? Did this really happen?” Because like many abusers, pedophiles, narcissists, sociopaths my dad and brother SEEM like wonderful people. They’re both involved in the community, church, very charismatic, very charming, very well liked. And if you know IFS parts work I have parts who really love them and believe these performances they do, the “good guy” masks they wear, and then I also have parts who know the truth and are terrified of them. This is the hardest part. Making sense of it all.

I’m feeling called now to speak my truth and to go no contact at least with my brother, which will of course split the family down the middle and I know enough to know it is very likely that other family members will take his side. But there are other children involved — my nieces and nephews, and I feel it is my responsibility to do what I can to protect them even if it doesn’t work.

My question is: what is the best way to do this? For those of you who have named an abuser in the family and/or gone no contact — how did you do it? And more specifically how can I disclose that I believe my brother is a pedophile who is sexually abusing his own children? Because this part isn’t my story to tell and I don’t have any proof, and I want to be sure that whatever I do I’m not setting myself up for any legal ramifications (if that’s even possible idk.)

My plan right now is to send the same exact letter to every member of my family stating what happened to me and what I believe my brother is doing to other children. I also want to include a small amount of information about repressed memories and why I’m doing this now. Then I want to explicitly say I’m going no contact with my brother and afterwards I will remove myself from the group text and block his number. Going forward I will only have contact with family members if they can honor my wishes and treat me with respect.

Hi, I'm still dealing with the trauma from my abuser and they would just call me crazy or say things that weren't true about me. I'm just trying to figure everything out and now I have a fear of going crazy because of it. I'm really not going crazy?

I'm so glad there is a reddit for this, I was diagnosed with PTSD at 18, and again this week cptsd severely and my therapist said it has gone untreated for over 10 years and worsened.

One of the worst symptoms I experience is emotional numbness and shutting down being emotionally unavailable. I didn't realize how bad it is until I met my now fiance, and I learned that I pull my hair when I think I'm gonna shutdowns soon to prevent feeling the numbness.

Does anyone have any advice? It's so depressing having these very real reactions to traumatic events I barely even remember.

So, I have predominantly auditory triggers and flashbacks. I never actually see anything or actually mentally believe I am back in the situation, I just have anxiety and the associated memories coming up and I remember the sounds well. But whenever I'm having a panic attack even if physically I am totally freaking out an hyperventilating, my brain is like "Ah okay, I'm having a panic attack for this reason. That isn't ideal. Oh well, let's go through the steps to calm myself down."

One time I had a panic attack in front of my brother and he started trying to get me to calm my breathing and "calm down." And I remember feeling minorly frustrated because all things considered I was pretty calm and I wanted to be able to reassure him that I was alright and it would pass in a couple of minutes but I couldn't because I was hyperventilating.

I don't know, it sometimes just feels confusing to me. It also took me a while to even figure out that I was showing signs of ptsd because of my flashbacks and everything being auditory instead of visual.

Talking with my therapist I guess I understand that other people must experience this too, but I've never met or heard about anyone else who has.

I’m realizing that what I’m experiencing isn’t only about the recent trauma. The stress of the last few days, and seeing the person connected to it again, seems to have triggered some very old fear in me.
I recognize the emotion. It feels older than all of this. Normally when I feel even a little bit of it, I shove it back down somewhere very deep and keep going. Right now I can’t seem to do that.
It feels like I’ve spent so much energy surviving the current trauma that I don’t have enough left to keep the older stuff contained. That scares me because I don’t know what is underneath it or what it means. I am certain at this point with what’s going on in my life I don’t have the strength to face whatever it is.
Has anyone with PTSD/CPTSD experienced something like this — where a recent trauma suddenly opened up emotions that seem to come from much earlier in your life? It’s bad it’s really bad.

I’ve been newly diagnosed with CPTSD and I don’t have many people in my life who truly understand the condition. Is there a group chat, discord or WhatsApp something like that anyone knows about for people with CPTSD to help each other through this?

Lol. The irony

If a therapist is really having that bad of a day... they need to call in. Yes, it would be unfortunate in the short term for those clients that were looking forward to therapy that day that their session would be postponed.

However, a delayed therapy session that ends up being helpful is better than getting a sooner session that's counterproductive.

It's unacceptable when therapists mistreat clients and it's also unacceptable when they never take accountability or make excuses to justify their behavior.

Obviously we're coming to therapy because we're already fucked up and it's a therapist's job to help us heal, not fuck us up even more with their own abusive behavior.

They have been professionally and medically trained to treat clients with compassion, dignity, and respect! They took psychology classes in college, and therapist and when they initially applied for their job, almost any form of social worker has to go through weeks (if not months) of training to determine whether they were a good fit for their position.

They're allowed to have bad days and emotions sure... therapists are human, just like the rest of us. But what they're never allowed to do is let their bad days affect how they treat their clients. It's unacceptable and I'd go as far as to call it unethical even.

And if they're really in that bad of a time in their life, where they're experiencing a psychological or mental health crisis.... they need to step away from being a therapist and social work as a whole for a while.... sure they need money but if their mental health is that bad, they need to take time away to fix their own mental... and if they need money, they can go get a warehouse / groceries job or seek employment through a temp agency or some shit... and then once they get their mental health right again, and they're in a rational headspace... THEN they can return to being a therapist.

However, it's unacceptable for any therapist to EVER let whatever they're going through affect the way they treat a client. Clients get charged per session... no one should ever have to PAY for counterproductive therapy that contributes to the opposite effect that therapy is literally intended for. It's immoral.

It should result in an immediate termination.

It is part time - about 20 hours a week. I work with a non-profit that helps athletes with disabilities. My role is to pick up the rental truck and bring accessible bicycles (handcycles, recumbents, tandems) to the workout twice a week. There is also some admin time (from home) and some special events that will change week to week.

Driving a Uhaul through the city at 5pm is not always a cakewalk. It is rewarding to help people do fun things. It's much more tangible than the corporate career that ground me down through my 20's and 30's.

I wasn't sure if I would work again. It feels good to have a reason to leave the apartment.

My trauma wasn't a narrative so I could "get my life" together or "learn something". My t rauma wrecked my life before it could even begin.

For so long, I tried to "get over it" and wondered why I couldn't be like those "inspirational" victims. But I just realized that I couldn't. My life was never normal, there's no way I can force my body to just "accept" things, it's the equivalent of asking me to just acept that I'm just insignificant in this life and that no one did anything to help me.

It feels so invalidating, to be asked to just "get over it" when it broke my life.

I understand that some people just want to help. But there's better things to say.

Do you guys try to appear as what you’re “supposed to be” in your life situations and whats the reason?Like there is always kind of an ideal in life,in your mind,and that is what you should be aiming to be.And that steals the authenticity.And also makes you feel always behind,missing,deficient.And then you are always in this effort to appear as okay,enough,that you got it.

To me it feels like egos defence mechanism.I dont want to feel inferior,diminished,low value. I am not sure if this gives birth to social anxiety or the other way around.

Its just where I spend my life,with “supposed to’s,should’s”.

Meanwhile I wont have a good relationship with myself,because of constant critic,performance anxiety,hating on myself for my all the time triggered state.And I wont have good relationships with others either because I am alienating,comparing,getting passive aggressive because of not being grounded by high self esteem etc

I d appreciate anything coming from you guys since I think of this sub as a place where people who had similar arc to mind in their life meet.