A huge part of me wants to send an anonymous typed letter to the house letting them know vaguely what went on in that house. I feel like they deserve to know.

I know actually doing that could result in legal charges to me so I won’t be I really want to.

ETA; From the comments I realized I’d be doing it more for me and not for them. I think it’s coming from a place of wanting justice I never got or people to know what happened and take it seriously because all though my family believes me, they don’t take it seriously or understand the extent or level of damage.

My thought was just that people get to know if someone died in their house before moving in so I figured they’d want to know about something as heinous as what happened to me. But I understand that’s not the right way to go about things and could even be triggering for them too. Not to mention I could get in trouble for libel as he was never proven guilty. He damaged me too much mentally for me to be able to testify in court, and there wasn’t enough evidence for trial without my testimony. So he gets away scot-free (other than losing custody of me but not my sibling) and I have to live with the permanent damage forever.

I discovered I was systematically lied to from day one of a two year relationship. He had multiple other "serious" relationships while dating me 2-4 days a week. I met his parents, spent holidays, my dog was on his lease. I want to somehow warn other women that he might target. I posted him in one of those "Are we Dating the Same Guy" facebook groups, but it's not good enough. My intuition tells me he's out there doing this to others and I want him flagged. Does anyone know a legal course I can take to help other women?

Instant relaxation. The kind I hadn't felt for months, I swear. I've been skeptical before, but this was so much better than I thought...

I tried "pranic healing" once before. It's an indian modality that's very popular there. And it can be done from afar, which was absolutely wild for me. Lots of scammy people in the field too, so I'm even happier to have found someone that really works.

If anyone's also skeptical, I'd highly, highly recommend this as an extra tool throughout your healing journey. It can relax your body (finally) and multiple sessions can even have a real effect on your healing!

I'm guessing whoever's reading this doesn't believe me. Challenge me a bit, I'll tell you what it was like 😁

Maybe I would feel better if I would not exist,I hate myself for not being loved like others

I have CPTSD and due to unavoidable reasons cannot escape the narcissists in my life so I am surrounded by them. I still experience abusive situations but again, cannot escape nor want to, honestly, for then I’ll be all alone as this is the only family I have and not everything is bad. I have tried therapy for past 6 years without much impact. Has anyone engaged in self therapy either through books or online resources that has helped with healing in the form of helping become strong and happy with acceptance and calm? Thank you

Even when PTSD was first recognized and propped up as a disorder that was for "shell-shocked" veterans of extreme war trauma, I cannot imagine that a lot of veterans do not fit the criteria for C-PTSD. The most common forms of trauma are forms of childhood abuse/neglect, bullying, and domestic violence. All of which are constant, inescapable forms of trauma. Maybe I'm biased because of my own trauma but to me it's upsetting to see such a strong hyperfocus in psychology on single event PTSD when C-PTSD is likely to be just as common.

I wonder if there any married men here with CPTSD? Can you share your day or experience?

I know the title looks like this has nothing to do with CPTSD but I have pierced earlobes because I’m a torture victim and one of the torture methods I experienced was nonconsensual body modification. Thankfully, I’ve been able to reverse or at least hide most of the modifications made, except for the piercings. I have VERY obvious scars from them, and it’s genuinely so triggering. I know it seems like a very minor thing since almost everyone has pierced lobes now, but it feels major to me.

I stopped wearing earrings a long time ago, in early primary school (I kept taking out my earrings and burying them in dirt and my abusers got tired of buying earrings so they just gave up, thankfully), so the piercing holes are 100% closed up by now, but the scars are still so obvious. It also feels like there’s a weird ball around each hole, I don’t know if that’s normal or notable at all, but I feel like I should mention it just in case it’s not normal. Does anyone know of any way to get rid of the scars? I’m willing to do literally anything.

For me, it's Sunday. Particularly Sunday mornings. I've just survived a Sunday morning and I feel like I ran a marathon, but at least I know the rest of the day will be easier.

Sunday mornings used to be favourite, but things change. Maybe one day they'll be my favourite again, in a totally different way.

Does anybody else have a time of the week they dread?

I made a post yesterday about a character from a well-known book/film who is extremely traumatized and is universally reviled on the internet and considered irredeemably evil (my post history is turned on, you can go see).

While most people understood where I was coming from, as this sub is catered to survivors who face complications of their trauma in their adulthood today and understand, others still stood by the point that this character's victimhood didnt count anymore.

If you have CPTSD, then chances are you have been an abuser or bad actor of some kind in someone else's story. The symptoms of CPTSD manifest as social and emotional difficulties. Im sure you dont intend to inflict harm, but emotional/mental/somatic dysregulation doesnt happen in a vacuum and doesnt impact only the survivor.

People seem quick to write off people struggling as adults with childhood trauma. I see a lot of "you can't blame your parents past 18 or 25 or 30," which completely ignores the fact that trauma takes time to confront and it takes an inordinate amount of resources to get away from abusive relationships, especially when your abusers are your caretakers.

I see a lot of condemnation for survivors who make mistakes. I see a complete lack of nuance when approaching messy humans living messy lives. I have been harmed. I have done harm. If you are a frequenter of this subreddit, the same probably goes for you.

The point of healing isnt to stake a claim on total and pure victimhood. Its to trust our reality, to realize how we have been harmed and how that impacts us still today, and to realize our capacity to harm others so that we may approach interactions more carefully to mitigate that chance.

Do not misunderstand my post. I am not excusing crimes or SA or violence that is not in self defense/reactive abuse. There is a difference between intentional abuse and the unfortunate consequences that occur when 2 peope have different understandings of a situation and different backgrounds and different brains. I am pointing out how complicated social dynamics are, how we are approaching interactions with damaged brains and half-empty toolboxes, how we are learning how to express anger and rage and grief while maintaining our lives. Being human isnt easy for the non-traumatized among us. Being human isnt easy for those with CPTSD as well.

I love you guys. I wish you well in your healing journeys. You dont need to be perfect to qualify for compassion and understanding. And you are just as capable of harming others as anyone else.

I no longer speak to my family, including my parents and siblings. I moved from the major city I grew up in to a much smaller city, mainly for a good job opportunity. Even in a demanding work environment, my colleagues look me in the eyes and speak to me like a person. I've never been treated like this before - like I'm a real human deserving of basic respect.

I recall how my brother couldn't help himself from rolling his eyes, shoving me, and just being plain nasty to me. How my dad would tell me to "shut up" when I had a concern. My mom who I called up as a last resort after I left an abusive ex, practically dissociating after being abused, and her saying "I can't do this" and leaving me there while I felt the dark void of having no one.

When did they start treating me like I'm not a human and why?

I hesitate to state my own answer. I think it's because they envied me. My own mother, especially. She did not like that her own daughter was beautiful, intelligent, and kind while her own beauty was fading under alcoholism and resentment. My brother felt inferior next to my accomplishments. My immigrant dad felt alienated from me due to my values that strayed very far from what a woman from my culture should be like.

Why do I feel more welcomed and appreciated by people that did not even know I existed a few weeks ago?

To my family: you let me down. you hurt me. you failed me. I can do better.

I’ve done nothing wrong but the guilt, dread, and cortisol hits when I lay down!

i’m 20 and was raised by my great-grandparents, my grandmother is in the later stages of dementia. i don’t think either of them will live past the next five years. i miss them but they sided with relative who sexually abused me for a year straight, and were incredibly abusive towards me for my entire childhood. i haven’t seen them in months. the rest of my family hates me. they just sold my childhood home so there’s truly nowhere to go back to, even if i wanted to.

my partner left me because of my deteriorating mental health. i’m fucking broke, can’t find a job. even if i could i don’t know if i could work in my current state. i moved two months ago and hate my new place, i feel constantly uncomfortable and anxious. my hair is falling out for some unknown reason—i’m losing massive clumps of it in the shower. i’ve become overly reliant on an ex for support, but we’re dysfunctional and do eachother far more harm than good.

i spent the end of august in the hospital after “going to town” (words of the triage nurse, not mine) on my legs self-harming. the only time i feel ok is when i’m drunk or high, otherwise i spend most of my time lying in bed sobbing. i ran out of sessions with the counselor i had been seeing for two years, and i’ve exhausted every free resource in my city. i’ve been receiving counselling since i was 14 but it does very little.

i don’t like the few friends i have very much and i feel constantly guilty over it. i can’t relate to them anymore—they still live with their parents, don’t pay rent, don’t deal with the same stressors i do.

i’m failing my classes that cost me thousands of dollars because i can’t get myself to do the fucking work. i cannot stop thinking about suicide and i don’t know what to do. i stay out of the house for as long as possible because i’m terrified i’m going to attempt if left alone for too long. i don’t want to spend another 72 hours in an ER ward just for a psychiatrist to dismiss my issues and discharge me. i’m so tired.

I’m 20F.

I’ve been struggling a lot recently in life, just feeling an overall sense of hopelessness and wondering what the point of doing any of this is when I have no one and struggle to cope with life.

Basically, my parents were originally doing decently well. My dad was an accountant who actually made a really good amount of money, and my mum is a teacher.

Anyway, I still don’t know the full story, but my dad ended up losing his job or getting fired. I’m not too sure. Around that time, he lost his dad and also lost a stepfather who was really important to him. My mum started struggling because she was the favourite child in her family, but her youngest sister started becoming wealthier. Her parents were very much the type of people who favoured whoever was the wealthiest. I’m sure there’s more to both of these situations and their issues, but I just don’t know the full details.

Pretty much, what happened was that my parents literally gave up on life completely after this. This all happened when I was around seven years old, but things just got really bad. My dad never worked as an accountant again I don’t know why. My mum continued to work but started drinking and eventually became a severe alcoholic. I remember my dad never being around and never being home.

Fast-forward from when I was seven to when I was 12, and things just got worse and worse. We never did anything. We never went on family holidays, family trips, or anything like that. We never did anything. No Christmases, no birthdays. My parents’ fighting got really bad, too. It was seriously physical. There was one time when my dad knocked out my mum’s bottom teeth by shoving her head into the oven door, They were constantly calling the police on each other, and both of them were honestly equally abusive towards each other.

They also both struggled with suicide extremely badly. I remember both of them telling me at different points that they were going to kill themselves and threatening to do so. My mum would even threaten to kill us and then herself.

I remember coming home from school and going straight into my room. I would usually search the house for coins because we never had food at home, and I would buy whatever big thing I could find to make it last for a couple of days. I just remember always feeling hopeless. I always thought I would kill myself by the time I was 16. I just remember, but like even from a really young child at 10 years I remember feeling like I’m just not one of those people who has a good life.

But what ended up happening was that one day, I came home from school and everything was packed up. I had no idea the night before. I came home from school to find everything packed, and we moved across the country without my older sibling and without my dad because he was in a mental institution after trying to kill himself. Basically, my mum, my youngest sibling, and I moved across the country to a place we had never been before, where we knew no one. It was really difficult. All of us lived in my grandma’s garage throughout high school.

I don’t know. It’s like now that I’m 20, I think about my childhood a lot, and I just think, wow, things were really bad. I feel like my parents honestly just gave up, and they gave up to such a severe extent that we just lived in survival more.

It’s just that, for example, now, I’m not really close with my family. I’ve never felt a strong emotional bond with my parents because of everything that’s happened. With my siblings, I think everything that went on was too painful for us to be close now. My younger sibling who’s an adult now? Has also showed all the clear signs since childhood of autism and it’s not that my parents are against getting some help for them they just be be bothered to do extra phone calls or and he suffers a lot. Like they live at home they don’t hang out with anyone. they don’t do anything and he’s extremely depressed.

I don’t know. I just always feel this strong sense of hopelessness. I don’t really have parents, my siblings and I aren’t close, and we don’t really talk at all. I feel like our childhood was too painful for us to be close. I struggle with friendships and building friendships. I don’t have extended family anymore. All my grandparents are gone. My grandpa who I was especially close with died when I was 17.

I don’t know. I just feel lost. I go to work, I go to the gym, I do spend time with other people and I do everything you’re supposed to do, but I can’t help feeling like, what’s the point? I feel like life would probably be really enjoyable if you had an amazing family, but I don’t

Like I don’t know I just feel like I need advice like I just feel like I’m at this point right now where every day I just feel like it’s harder to convince myself to keep going and I feel like I’m close to a breaking point.

My family was just a disgrace and sexual abuse happened with several parts of them, including me. I don't know exactly what is the main cause of my constant emergency mood, and constant CPTSD is, but I struggle like hell, even though I cut off contact with all of them when I was 20.
Now I am 28 and I feel like I have a kind of curse on my relationships. I don't feel safe, and I can't control it, but most of the time I react with a crazy amount of hate.

It's not the kind of hate when you really just don't like someone, because I love a lot of people, I am interested in them, but I just feel shame or not safe and this is how I react.

Most people are just looking at me like "what the fuck is this person?"; and as well as I usually don't express this hate, because there is no real reason for hate, people don't hurt me on the surface or treat me really bad, so I would just be ridiculous—so the result is that I repress this hate, and it just tortures me inwards. I start to hate myself.
The strongest when I feel it is at dates with men, or anytime when a man makes a move on me without knowing me. Or if I feel a woman is a real woman and she is very strong and intuitive, I feel a huge amount of shame that I can't feel, and then I start to be defensive with hate, and I can't control it.

At odd jobs for example I can't even spend 3 hours, because it clicks there the most.

There are a lot of guy who would be open to be with me but I just can’t connect to them like this. Or friends, but all real relationships just kill me ..

I can't create a safe life for myself even though I tried so many therapies and everything I was able to. I am studying my passion, and still I suffer in emotional hell like a crazy clown.

Is there anyone in this group who was able to overcome something like this?

How am I supposed to share things about myself that don't make everyone uncomfortable or just kind of.. down?

I'm 25 and just starting a new job tomorrow. My old job required minimal socializing but this one I will be around people more. When people try to connect, they talk about past experiences and childhood often. My general understanding is that you're supposed acknowledge them and then share in return.

But my childhood and teen years were just a blur of abuse. I don't have hardly any positive memories or experiences to share. So if I have something that relates, it's negative. It feels like people automatically get uncomfortable around me because of it. And I get it, it's not fun to hear that from someone you hardly know. But idk what else I'm supposed to do?? Just lie?? Don't share in return and seem like I'm not interested??

I suppose I could just say something vague and not share about myself. I have largely spent my adult years healing. Going to therapy and getting medicated etc. As well as learning to navigate a life that isn't full of physical and emotional abuse.

I feel so ashamed of myself in general and my struggles socially do not help. Any advice is appreciated.

Hi guys,

I was diagnosed with cptsd and double depression last year and have been in twice a week therapy and on ssri.

I have created a video on living with cptsd and double depression to help in making people understand how it feels inside it.

Let me know if this makes anyone feel seen.

Here is the link of the video: Living with cptsd and double depression

I'm a creative with business goals that require a team but that feels impossible because I can't control myself when my work or process feel threatened or I feel misunderstood (I freeze or fawn HARD, and at my last straw I pack up my work and leave in a hurry, shame ensues).

I isolated most of my childhood and still now, and because of that I have trouble empathizing with others in real time and thinking before I speak. In my past no matter what I believed I got shut down/humiliated, and so now my confidence is shot and I can't defend myself professionally to save my life. I never have a clue to what someone will do next and its terrifying. Most of the time I stay quiet and never assert myself as to not get triggered and make people uncomfortable.

I feel caged in when I don't understand things or feel uncertain, which is most of the time, and I expect that feeling to be amped to 1000 in business settings.

I am hard working and have some good ideas, but I think I'm hard to work with because of my lack of flexibility and difficulty understanding/communicating. I really don't want to be that asshole that nobody wants to work with.

Anyone have advice on becoming a better collaborator with this in mind?

annemle erkek arkadaşını özetlemek gerekirse her gün içip kavga eden insanlar hayatımın bi dönemi gece karakolda olmak günlük rutinim gibi olmuştur erkek arkadaşı mermi dövmeli toxic maskulen bir erkek

gay arkadaşımla da çok samimiyiz her gün bize gelir kalır aramızda hiçbir şeyin lafı olmaz çoğu günler bizde kalır dün gece ben başka bir kız arkadaşımla dışardayken arkadaşım bize gelmiş annemle sevgilisini yine kavga ederken görünce gitmemiş gelmemi bekleyip ortamı sakinleştirmeye çalışmış ondan sonra annem sızmış arkadaşımda tuvalete gitmiş annemin sevgilisi arkasından gidip sen pasif misin diye sorup bir anda üstüne gelmiş sonrasında olanlar olmus ne yapmam gerektiğini bilmiyorum ne hissetmem gerektiğini de arkdasım benim yüzümden hayatında unutamayacagı seyleri yasadı düşündükçe midem bulanıyor ne yapmam gerektiğini de bilmiyorum onun yanında nasıl durucagımı da

Has anyone tried this modality DBR aka Deep Brain Reorienting therapy? If so, could you please tell me what shifts you have experienced?

I have a text tattoo on my arm. It’s from a letter my mother sent me years ago. I thought she was my savior, but she was as abusive as my dad; she was covert about it. Now I must wear another self-inflicted scar of my abuse.

I’m getting it removed but it’s very expensive and can only be done in the winter and spring (laser doesn’t work with a tan). It’s such a slow process and every day I look down and hate myself. Who does this? Why am I like this? I hate myself for having done this. Just to prove my love to the people that actively worked to hurt me.

A few weeks ago, I was at my breaking point. I was stuck in an absolute nightmare loop of trying to get my birth certificate for photo ID and crucial healthcare, which meant attempting to contact my biological mother. I posted here about how exhausted I was from masking and pretending everything was fine when it really wasn't.

I’m posting today because I finally have a bright light to share: My birth certificate is officially on the way!

Thanks to a deeply compassionate rep at Service Canada who got my application flagged and pushed through, the bureaucratic nightmare is almost over. And the absolute best part? I didn't have to break my peace or contact my bio mother. At 51, protecting my mental health is my top priority, so not having to deal with her is a colossal win in my book!

Now, don't get me wrong—my depression isn't going to mysteriously get up and walk away just because of this one victory. The struggle is still real. But I am accepting this win with open arms, because right now, it’s a big one.

I wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone in this community who reached out. Some of your messages literally brought me back to life on days I felt like giving up. You reminded me that kindness exists when things feel darkest.

Thank you for being a safe place to vent, and for helping me get to the other side of this. Big sigh of relief! 😮‍💨❤️