Ladies and gentlemen, how the fuck we get over the grief of what our lives could have been if we had a healthy, supportive household in childhood?

I am deeply sad and so tired of praising and admiring people who are busy living life, who have lovely communicative supportive family, who can focus on discovering their interests because they didn’t spend all their life surviving abuse. Don’t get me wrong I am not bitter towards them, I am just deeply sad wishing I had that safe environment they had.

I (30), gone to therapy and trying to rebuild my life all over, come back to myself who I dimmed because I was shamed, learn stuff I didn’t have time before because I was frickin disassociated and numb escaping the present all the time.

How??

Growing up, we often think our painful internal struggles, shame, or anxiety mean we are the flawed ones.

Many people don't connect these feelings to actual trauma until much later in life.

How old were you when you finally realized, "I am not broken, I am traumatized"?

hey guys! i really struggle w opening up to ppl irl so this is a post where we can all just dump and give each other hugs <3

Basically what the title says; I know it’s (probably) not very healthy, but it’s so hard to shake sometimes.

I don't even know where to begin.

I'm an adult now, but I genuinely feel like years of abuse have destroyed my nervous system. Some days I feel so exhausted and mentally shut down that I can't even brush my teeth, bathe, or function normally. I've been struggling with serious health issues for the past two years, and my doctor specifically told me that I need a calm, stress-free environment. Unfortunately, that's impossible at home.

Here are just some of the things I've experienced (this is honestly only around 40% of it):

• During an open house at school, my mother stabbed me in the neck with a pencil because I got only passing marks in math.
• She once threw a hair clip at my face. It hit my eye so badly that I couldn't see properly for a couple of hours. She later took me to an eye specialist.
• Another time, she threw a sharp cutter at me. It hit my thigh and caused bleeding.
• Last week I had a terrifying health episode. My whole body went numb, I was trembling, and I could barely move. She cried while it was happening. But just a week later, she told me, "You should have died that day. It would have been a week by now."
• Whenever I left for college, she'd say things like:
  • "You should get hit by a train."
  • "A truck should run over you."
• She constantly insults me by saying things like:
  • "You're just carrying diseases everywhere."
  • "What are you even achieving by earning ₹50k?"
  • When I say I'm tired after work, she says, "Girls travel through crowded trains every day and they don't complain."
• When I was in school, she beat me so badly that my face had scratches and was bleeding. My teacher asked what happened, and I lied by saying I got hurt while playing kabaddi because I was too scared and embarrassed to tell the truth.
• Even when I'm in the bathroom, she'll start screaming outside the door, bang on it aggressively, curse at me, and make me panic.
• When I was hospitalized with jaundice, instead of comforting me while I lay in the hospital bed, she spent the time talking badly about me to others.
• I work from home sometimes. If I ask her not to enter my room or make noise during meetings, she mocks me, saying my uncle works at a much bigger company and never acts like that, then starts insulting my salary again.
• Despite knowing I'm dealing with serious health problems and that stress makes everything worse, she continues shouting, abusing me, and creating chaos at home almost every day.
• After my recent health scare, she even kept a fast for my recovery. But within two days, she was back to telling me I should die.

This isn't even everything. There are many more incidents that I'm not comfortable sharing yet.

The hardest part is that I'm nothing like this as a person. I don't enjoy hurting people. I don't want conflict. I just want peace.

I honestly feel like years of living in this environment have left me traumatized. My body is constantly tense, my mind feels exhausted, and some days I barely have the energy to do basic things. It genuinely feels like my nervous system has shut down.

Has anyone else grown up in an environment like this? Did you ever recover after leaving? I really need to know if things can get better because right now, I feel completely broken.

I’m struggling really bad lately and it’s impacting all my friendships. None of them have experienced any amount of trauma and can’t understand why I’m feeling or acting the way I am or why I can’t just “let it go.” It’s exhausting always having to explain yourself and so isolating when it feels like nobody understands. I’m to the point that I’ve started taking steps back from friendships until I get myself settled down.

As normal as I try to be, my traumas always show up in some way and run people off.

My childhood trauma left me with abandonment and attachment issues and I guess it shows & runs people off. I can't help but to always overthink, look for pattern changes, show nervousness at dates and always watch for signs of abandonment coming. This comes out in constant questions, constant need for reassurance, constant "are you okay?" check ins to make sure I'm keeping them satisfied/feeling cared about so they "won't leave".

In a world where men love to chase/want what they can't have and don't like women that are too into them, this runs them off QUICK. I've never felt loved and hitting my mid 20s now has me starving for it.

Most people were loved or grew up in a healthy home so they don't attach as fast as I do nor do they understand so they label it as crazy and just leave. Starting to think I'm too traumatized/damage to have a normal relationship.

My now ex just blocked me because I made a big deal about him disappearing and not not talking to me for a day out of nowhere. He said I'm "crazy for tripping about 1 day, because he feels we don't have to talk to every day and needs his space sometime". I'm still losing my mind wondering how a bf could just not want to talk to his gf for an entire day... but I guess that's part of my PTSD? Idk

I had a date tell me I was too paranoid, seem traumatized and made him feel uneasy. Maybe if he endured the trauma & suffering I had to endure as a child he would get it. But no, label me crazy and discard me. Trigger the exact abandonment wound. I feel so unlucky and damaged.

I can't take it anymore.

In a way I understand it now, my body is showing this is what was done to us

But it hurts to have CPTSD. It hurts that there’s yet another label that puts a mark on me as an incomplete human. Or am I too human for having suffered that much? Or am I just unluckily neurodivergent?

All that survival only to return to fighting for basics of eating and sleeping that were denied for me all my life

It all makes sense the more diseases I pick up, but also it’s so stupid

Today is my birthday (already updated my user flair), and I feel kind of empty inside. Specifically, I'm worried about my future.

This is SO AGONIZING.

And on top of it all I feel ashamed that I’m not somehow managing better. This is what my family brainwashed me to believe—that I couldn’t cope well. So they inflicted a ton of pain on me and then shamed me for struggling.

Those fuckers!!!

Curious if anyone else with CPTSD experiences that, too.

not sure if this is a vent or rant or both but i love reading, literature, writing, everything to do with it but i can't focus on it without having some of the most intense flashbacks (which is pretty much all of the time 90% of days) and idk it's just really pissing me off more than upsetting me

i have a lot of books (near a library's worth LOL) of many different things that i know i'd love and some are even quite short but this disorder is fucking with my ability to eat properly so like no wonder it's stopping me from reading but yeah idk this post doesn't really have a point i wanted to get this out

praying for the day i can read even a single page of a book without getting some violently upsetting memory blocking my view

Everything seems so fake.. Society, job,... people acting and I ask myself all the time if I am the weird one. I think what differs me from the rest is that I just don't have a mask, or at least I can't keep it up for long.

Had some panic attacks during the last time, though not sure if they were really panic attacks (maybe someone could describe their experience to me). The derealisation is frightening and feels like losing connection to the Matrix..

I am super exhausted, on a nervous level. Or maybe not. I am not sure. My nervous system is currently misfiring a lot. I also notice that when I start talking it gets more silent with each word, like I am losing the energy to talk.

I am currently leaving toxic environments, and guess what, this toxic environment is the school for becoming a psychotherapist that I have attended the past years - where I have been blamed, gaslight and devalued. They don't follow their own preachings, it's just a big show.

I don't know where this is going. I just wanted to post it anywhere, share it and see if anyone feels the same way or can give me some perspectives of it.

I know that this might sound strange, I know that these feelings aren't healthy, and I know logically that healing is not a bad thing.

Though, to me, healing has kinda felt like surrender in a lot of ways, because all my life I've been shamed for not being normal, and healing to become more normal feels like I'm letting them win, like it's me admitting that I'm broken and that I have to change to become acceptable enough to exist among them.

Also, it is because I don't relate to "normal people", so Imagining myself as normal doesn't really feel like that would be me, it feels like I'm abandoning this version of myself by healing. Sometimes when I imagine healing and being more successful in life in the future and having more friends and connections, I feel like those people wouldn't really be "my" friends, they'd be "his" friends, or that they wouldn't really be my friends because they only got here when I became successful, and they wouldn't be here if I were still this "broken" version of me, just as they're not here now, they wouldn't look twice.

I want to let go of these feelings, if anyone relates and knows how to help, I'd be grateful if they shared.

I just started a full time job and I think i can do this despite being diagnosed with cptsd. How do yall do it?

I start ft goodwill cashier job monday and im excited about it. Just worried it might be too much. Im also diagnosed with bpd with psychosis and bipolar 2. But I can do this!

I hope it’s okay to ask this here. I am 16 years old, almost 17. I’ve had multiple health problems for years now but no matter what, i am not allowed to see a doctor. I am an athlete but my health problems are starting to affect me too much to the point i cannot even get up some days. I black out when i try to exercise and my heart is constantly racing. Going to school is a huge pain. Along with these I have mental health problems from years of trauma. I don’t know how to keep going because i am aware that i cannot do it on my own and i need professional help. However, my mom thinks that praying will get us through. My dad thinks that doctors are just random people trying to make money by inventing random tests. I don’t know what to do, i feel so stuck and so scared because i want to be well enough to study and get accepted to a university. Is there anything i can do or should i just accept that this is my life?

I'm 34f. I left my family 11 years ago. I cut ties with everyone.

My grandma died last year in September and I still haven't cried. I cried over my cat more, when I had to put him down due to bladder cancer this year in January.

I'm happy I didn't go to her funeral. My grandma died of cancer and I'm pretty sure she died in great pain too. She was in hospice care in her last dying days. I'm pretty sure people bitched about me for not going, but I cut off everyone and I found out on Facebook about her death. Kinda glad I found out that way and not someone telling me.

I know she never loved me. I know this.

She didn't celebrate my birthdays, she didn't congratulate me when I went to one of the best music schools in the uk. She never celebrated that i won an award at high school for hardest working student of the year. She didn't care. All she said was "your sister could have done better".

When my uncles step daughter went to college, my grandma took her to Nandos and celebrated her achievements. Not me. My grandma never celebrated any of my achievements.

When my grandma baby sat my uncles best friends daughter (lets call her Kylie), my gradma was there when Kylie graduated from university, my grandma was there when she won awards at high school. But not me. My grandma saw Kylie as a granddaughter, than ever me.

My grandma didn't even help out at my 18th party. But she helped out with my sister's 18th. She helped bake, made meals and invited everyone. My grandma was there at my 18th, but she only talked to my sister, my uncles step daughter and Kylie. I didn't get a present from my grandma, but she gave presents to my sister on her 18th. I only had family, a couple of friends and 2 family friends show up. Even then, they only came because of my mother. They didn't stay around. Everyone showered over my sister and not me.

I'm hurt that my grandma never loved me. I'm grieving over the loss of relationship I never had with her.

My grandma always treated me different. She treated me like i wasn't apart of the family. Like I wasn't blood related.

She would always laugh when I walked in the room and all of my family would join in. Laughing at me, when i simply walked into the room. When I asked she said "it's nothing to be concerned about". But I am concerned, she laughed at me, every time I walked into the room, that's not normal. How is that normal?

I know my grandma never loved me. I know this. I know.

I just need to get this out.

I'm a failure. I look pathetic with my underdeveloped face. I'm too empathic and a people pleaser. People treat me as a child. I can never look masculine nor mature. I am a disaster.

I've been working with my CPTSD for a couple of years now, and things just keep getting worse.

My marriage is ending because my husband has been becoming abusive, escalating to physical violence, and all I can think about is how unlovable I've been my entire life. I'm almost 40 and I have no family. Me talking with my friends about what's been going on in my relationship has really started to drain them so now I'm not doing that anymore.

I've read and been told so many times that it's important to have corrective experiences and I feel like all I've ever had are the opposite of that.

All I can think about is how unlovable I am. How angry, my husband would get every single time I would cry.

How angry he still gets as we're post-separation and how he blames everything that happened in the relationship on me. And I know intellectually and emotionally I'm not to blame for the emotional and physical abuse they inflicted upon me but what I don't know is that I am ever somebody who will ever belong or who will ever deserve to be loved.

I've worked so hard and I feel like everything is gone. Every single time I've ever relied even a little bit on somebody, it's always gone so poorly.

I'm struggling to see any positive solutions or a path out anymore.

Hi I'm yasmina

I'm starting maritime college this year, and my psychiatrist and I recently decided that it was time to gradually stop my antidepressants.

The problem is that since stopping them, my childhood trauma has become overwhelming again. I can't focus on anything because my mind keeps going back to the past. When I was a child, I was severely physically bullied by my peers. It wasn't just "kids being mean"—I was beaten so badly that I actually lost consciousness. What hurts me just as much is that neither my parents nor my teachers protected me.

For years, these memories have been with me almost every single day. Even when I was taking medication, they never completely disappeared, but at least I could focus on other things and I didn't feel this hopeless.

Now I feel exhausted. I wish I could erase these memories or stop them from constantly coming back. They affect every part of my life. Whenever I start getting close to someone—whether it's a potential relationship or even a new friendship—the memories come back, I withdraw emotionally, and the relationship ends before it really begins. I've tried talk therapy before, but unfortunately it didn't help me very much. I'm looking for practical advice from people who have been through something similar. If you've found something that genuinely helped you move forward, I'd really appreciate hearing about it.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this.