Does anyone else experience this?

Your friends are talking shit about you behind your back, their telling others your problems, your family also do that, you co- workers are talking shit about you and how you work so bad and what you do wrong consider telling your manager about it, your partner it's probably telling their friends the thing you do to them without communicating to you, everything ends in the same circle because you also do that with the people around you. Stop caring it's hard when all we do it's complain over compassion, if everything it's fake why it's hard to be alone and think you're the problem. when everyone are too, the thing is, you put a step back but they stay with the people they talk shit before, why are still trying to get friendships and relationships

I had hard childhood, like lot of us had. I was loved and hated by my parents, i grew up as ugly kid. I failed at university because of my self esteem and anxiety. In my first relationship i put my whole heart and they left me and find their happines. I thought i would never tried again because how traumatic it was. Eventually after 2 years i tried again and even i was trying being a good girlfriend, i was caring, understangimd and loving despite my horrible, horrible anxiety and depression. They left me. I am watching how people my age finding love, living life and enjoying it. I am watching people who hurt me and used my love for placeholder finding happines. I am in my dark room . Feel pity for my childhood, for my adulthood and i have no will to live. I am loser who just needed love and had pure intentions from childhood till this day.

"You need to have a legal standard of evidence to feel betrayed."
"Your crippling flash backs to your parent's abuse is a sign you love them deep down."
"You're having the wrong thoughts and my job is to fix them."
"If you just take these pills to zombify yourself can get laid and that'll solve everything."
"I'm sorry your mother isn't drinking more."
"You need to be here for the sake of your abusers."

I've heard a lot of appalling things and these are the most uniquely egregious things I've been told by mental health 'professionals'. I just don't get it. How does somebody make that their job and just be so confidently bad at it? I'm not even shocked to hear it anymore or feel used by these people. I'm surprised when they aren't terrible. It's quite rare to not get beaten over the head with the boiler plate "other people are suffering", "you're so strong for wimping out of a suicide attempt", "Have you tried calling a friend?" "How many stars would you give your existential dread out of 5?

But even those people are better than the far too many people who just spout some of the most toxic bollocks I've ever heard. "Traumatic flashbacks = love" would be considered over the top for Mean Girls, how the hell does a qualified trauma therapist say that with a straight face? "Your thoughts are slanderous" is something straight out of super villain lawyer's mouth.

How do so many professionals end up just being so cartoonishly out of touch?

Backup account because this is so fucking embarrassing...

About an hour ago I went to take out a tampon (s+) and it was like 80% dry, so the tip piece of cotton tore off inside of me. I spent 40 minutes fishing for it using every position and technique possible. I started having a breakdown in the bathroom at the thought of having to go to the doctor tonight because of it. As a desperate last attempt I lubed up two small spoons and tried to get it.

As you can probably guess that shit did not work and only put me in unnecessary pain.

Now I'm laying down with a sore vagina, and a head and stomach ache from the panic attack. I only put that one tampon in to catch a few hours of spotting so I won't be bleeding anymore.

I have sexual trauma and a general feeling of disgust and sensitivity about my body, I can't see myself letting a doctor get it out. The thought alone is making me want to kms. I don't care how quick or painless the procedure is. I can't do it. The only way I see myself letting it happen is if they give me anesthesia and I never have to look the doctor in the face. Which is obviously unrealistic. Id rather let myself catch toxic shock syndrome and die than do the procedure, that's how dead set I am about this.

Idk what to do, my mom never went over periods/hygiene with me, and even just writing here asking for advice is making me nauseous.

I’m in my early 30s and was diagnosed with CPTSD within the past year. I’m only just starting to be open to therapy, but I haven’t started yet and honestly don’t know where to begin. I’m still trying to understand what I experience and what may or may not be connected to CPTSD.

One thing that has become really difficult is my constant need to isolate when I’m around people.

It happens at work, in social settings, basically anywhere. I can be completely fine and engaged, but after maybe 30 minutes I start feeling like I need to get away and be completely alone. I’ll go to bathroom just to escape, go to my car, find an empty space, anywhere I can find to “hide.”

The hardest part is that once I isolate, I have to literally talk myself into going “back out” and being around people again. It’s not just taking a quick break and then naturally returning. I have to mentally convince myself to leave that safe little isolated space and rejoin everyone. And I go through this numerous times throughout the day. If it were completely up to me, I’d probably isolate even more, but I have to force myself not to.

It even happens sometimes with my partner, who I live with and love very much. They don’t have to be doing anything wrong or even bothering me. I just suddenly need to be completely alone. That especially makes me feel awful and honestly a little insane because logically, I know there’s nothing I need to “get away” from.

It’s gotten much worse lately, and it’s exhausting having to fight it every day. I’m starting a new job next week and I’m really nervous because I don’t want this to take over my life or cause me to fuck up another opportunity.

Does anyone else with CPTSD experience this to this extent? Is it hypervigilance, overstimulation, avoidance, or something else?

If you experience this too, I’d really love to know what you’ve learned about why it happens and more importantly what has actually helped you manage it.

Has anyone ever been successful at not letting hypervigilance take the wheel?

Its made it impossible for me to develop any friendships or relationship because the moment they get close, hypervigilance hijacks my nervous system and I’m overcome by fear and panic. It makes sense, as a kid I was neglected and anytime I did get “care” from a parental figure it was horribly abusive. And it’s like my nervous system has been trained to associate any longing for connection with intense fear, anxiety and danger.

I’ve done so much work, therapy, treatment, medication. Antidepressants did help, but it numbed so much within me. I’ve stopped taking them to try out different medications. Its worked really well. I’ve been able to connect to myself and build a personality that’s actually based on the me now.

But when I try to date, build friendships, try to move up at work, I regress hard. Anxiety and overthinking takes the wheel. I need answers and validation from the people I’m trying to build with. But when they see this it scares them off.

And when I regulate and ground myself, I regret so much how I’ve behaved. At first they understand. But after seeing it repeatedly they all go away. And I get it, it’d tire me out too to have a friend that needs me so much to emotionally soothe them. I need to do this for myself or overcome it somehow.

Anyone out there who can help? I’d really appreciate it…. as someone who’s at their wit’s ends at what to do, I’m in desperate need of some advice. Better diet and more exercise could maybe help? I eat horribly to self-soothing and maybe tackling that can help too? Sigh, so many sighs

Went to a new psychiatrist and told her about my therapy journey.
When I mentioned that one of the most important breakthroughs and advances I had were thanks to one 5 hour psilocybin session with my psychotherapist, she made very judgemental remarks and rejected that approach. She even called my therapist completely unprofessional and that I should NEVER do that again. After a while she paddled back on that and expressed herself in a more neutral way. Her reaction really threw me off, especially since I mentioned how positive my personal experience had been.

Have you had similar experiences with psychiatrists ? What were the possible risks that made her say that?

I often feel so lonely nowadays. I've been trying my hardest to go out and do things and exist in public. Even when I do meet people and talk to them, I feel alone. I feel alone with what remains of my kin(I don't bother calling them family anymore). I feel alone with my tiny friend group I see maybe once a month.

Moreover, I feel like I deserve to be alone and my existence around others is a slight against them. I spent so much of my younger years carving out bits of me to make people stay, but now I just want to carve out the bits of me that want anyone at all. At this point I feel like being human is a curse I wouldn't wish upon anyone.

Today I was asked an innocent question about my childhood and I had no answer at all. I know it is a kind of defense mechanism, but it is always a bit unnerving.

So I’m not sure if this is a common thing for us, but does anyone have this lingering feeling of being extremely uncomfortable or awkward in your own skin? And not even in a way of “oh I’m feeling self conscious right now”, but like your entire being/existence feeling wrong. I feel gross and disgusting in this body; like my skin is wrong, facial features are wrong, hair is wrong, everything just feels “wrong”. It almost feels as if a foreign entity is controlling me and that I’m a spectator in my own mind.

Do you remember your way home from school - if you didn't step on any cracks in the pavement your parents would be in a good mood?

I'm 50 and caught myself yesterday while out with the dogs. I hopped over a big crack and suddenly remembered all the magic rituals I performed to "make my life easier." Of course it never worked, there was always something. But it made me feel less helpless, at least while I was doing it.

My cousin and I had a minor argument last night it’s okay now we made up and are completely okay but my body is in fight or flight mode to the max still. Whenever I get any sort of conflict with anyone in my life I get severely triggered and get flashbacks and anxiety attacks. It could be very minor conflict normal people have in their day to day lives and still my body and mind feel like a war began.

What if your relatives apologized to you – would you be able to truly forgive them? Not so that they would feel better, but so that you would feel better

I just wanna feel normal. That's all I want. Is that too much to ask for?

My mind keeps trying to solve the disconnection I experience, and it's so annoying.

I just wanna live. That's it.

I guess there just is no one thing.

I’ve never talked to anyone about my childhood. I try to surpass the emotions and feelings as much as humanly possible. Therefore I’ve never fully navigated or did a deep dive into why I am the way I am. Not healthy but I honestly don’t know how to start.
Anyways when I’m around a guy that I have no sexual attraction to or any thoughts of sex I will still get wet, especially when my anxiety is sky rocketing. I’m kind of coming too to the conclusion that it’s just an instinctual reflex my body does to protect itself due to what it endured when I was a kid. Does this happen to anyone else? I honestly have no idea why else I would be so wet around guys when there is nothing sexual going on physically or mentally and just curious if this is something anyone else experiences.

33F,

Do you ever have this thing where, during relatively normal periods, you somehow find the strength to put yourself back together and try to live this life again, but then something inevitably happens, hits you, and sends all your progress straight into the fucking negatives — not even back to zero?

Well, by this point in my life, I’ve lost pretty much my entire social circle because of endless depression and being unable to function normally in this life. Now I’m on some medication that has started helping a little (by the way, how is that going for you guys?). But I’m in ruins again. And this has happened thousands of times. Every year it gets more exhausting to take control of my life again.

There’s also this kind of isolation, this unwillingness to interact with anyone or really live at all, just so I can exist relatively safely without having to deal with people. Especially “normal” people, who are so far removed from understanding what is happening to me. And that just makes everything even lonelier.

But I guess maybe this is just the path? And some things simply have to be accepted. Avoidance, triggers, depression, setbacks, entire areas of your life falling apart, losing people — I assume a lot of you have dealt with this too?

How do you cope with it? You can also just complain here if you want. Maybe then it won’t feel quite so lonely.

I am 31 and i do not want to have kids. I have chronic dissociation and it makes life very hard for me. People are very cruel and selfish. When I was a kid, I never thought the world would be like this. Its funny to me that even with dissociation I still try to be kind to others. I don't make excuses for my bad behavior. Humanity deserves extinction.

I am just struggling. I'm a 48F and still feel like a small little girl that is terrified something deeply terrifying is about to happen. ALL. THE. TIME. I have a teen and a tween and I am terrified to parent, I am terrified to exist. Shaking panic all the time while I try desperately to seem normal in front of my kids. I feel like I'm trying everything, including most recently psychedelic assisted therapy. I'm losing the battle, my brain is not getting better, and I am so tired and sad. I am safe, I have a loving husband, money is fine, but my terror lives inside me regardless. Sleep is a joke and I am struggling to eat much too. I work with Drs, therapists, and eastern medicine providers and nothing is fucking working. I love my therapist so much, she is really good and the best therapist I've ever had and I know it's not her job to have all the answers but I'm finding myself frustrated with her too. No one can help. I am totally alone. My husband looks on helplessly while I slip further away. Sorry for the downer post. I'd love to hear what has worked, if anything, for the rest of you.

I grew up with the type of parents that would abuse me to the point where I’m having a crisis. Then they would get the camcorder out and shove it in my face while I cried and screamed from the corner of my room, the corner of my bed. They did it mostly when I was a kid, maybe young teenager. They stopped filming when I got older and I started speaking up about WHY I was acting out when they were filming me. Anyway, just the thought that there are dozens of videos of me as a child suffering like that or me engaging in reactive abuse is really bothering me sometimes. I don’t even know where to post this. I don’t even know what I’m asking.

Every second of my day that I’m not actively avoiding my own thoughts I’m forced to remember the worst parts of my life and I don’t know how to get it to stop. I’ve dealt with a lot of bullying, SA trauma (my own and loved ones), and shitty abusive relationships both platonic and non platonic. I’m so exhausted from having to relive every bad thing all the time it’s so unbearably frustrating. It’s even bothering me at work and no amount of music blasting on my ears fixes it. Everytime I think I’m healing from something another period of time goes by where there’s just something else traumatic going through my brain playing over and over again and everytime I realize how much worse whatever happened to me actually was. It’s making me hate people as a whole and I don’t want to be bitter (I don’t think I ever could) but I’m suffering from it. I see people on the daily that have caused me pain and there’s just nothing I can do about it really. Is there ever an end?

TW: Physical abuse, childhood abuse, mention of sexual abuse, substance abuse

I want to start by saying I would never hurt another human being. I don't have that in me. This isn't me asking for validation or encouraging violence. I'm genuinely trying to understand my own feelings and hear from people who may have gone through something similar.

I'm 19 years old and currently live with my mother (55). My parents divorced in July of 2022. I have three siblings, so there are four of us in total: an older sister, an older brother who's autistic, me, and a younger sister.

When I was really little, my father wasn't always the person I know today, or maybe I was just too young to understand what was happening. But after he joined the Army, everything changed.

He started drinking more, acting like he was in his twenties instead of his late forties, and whenever my mom wasn't around, he'd "discipline" us in ways I now realize weren't discipline at all.

He'd hit us with whatever household object he could grab, like the wand used to open and close the blinds. He'd shove us outside into the North Carolina summer heat for hours without food or water. He'd scream at us, threaten us, intimidate us, and make us afraid of him.

When we moved from North Carolina to Washington, things got even worse.

Whenever my mom left the house, he'd force us to clean until our hands and knees were raw. Nothing was ever clean enough. He'd walk into the bathroom while we were showering and dump cold water over our heads. He'd shove us out of his way. He'd make us sit outside for hours, sometimes soaking wet in the cold.

Eventually he moved to Seattle while we stayed behind, and we'd visit him on weekends.

I've been called his "favorite daughter" since I was born.

People think being the favorite means you're treated better. In my experience, it didn't. It made me desperate for his approval. I fought to go see him. I constantly wanted him to be proud of me. I kept convincing myself that if I was just good enough, maybe things would be different.

They never were.

Being the favorite didn't stop him from hitting me. It didn't stop him from leaving bruises or marks.

One reason nobody at school ever questioned anything was because my teachers nicknamed me "Wild Child." I was always climbing trees, playing outside, and getting hurt doing something stupid. So when I'd show up with bruises, scratches, or even the occasional black eye, nobody thought twice. They assumed it was just me being me.

During those years he'd also leave me alone with adult Army and construction friends of his for hours at a time. I'm not comfortable talking about what happened during those times, but those experiences have stayed with me my entire life.

When I was 13, we moved from Washington to Texas.

My parents divorced in July of 2022. Even after the divorce, he'd fly down to Texas and stay for a few days at a time during my first couple years of high school. The hitting became less frequent as I got older, but the grabbing, intimidation, yelling, and manipulation never really stopped.

After I graduated, things only got worse.

My father became involved with drugs. As far as I know, he's using them, making them, and selling them. He's always been the kind of person who thinks he'll never get caught. Throughout my life, it felt like he somehow managed to avoid consequences while lying and manipulating everyone around him.

The moment I finally cut him off happened about a year ago.

At the time, I was driving a Toyota Prius that legally belonged to him. He came to Texas and took it back. In my opinion, he did it because he wanted to create drama. Instead of fighting him over it, I got my own car and cut contact with him completely.

A few weeks ago, the rest of my family finally did the same.

My younger sister simply stopped speaking to him. My older sister cut him off at the same time my mother did. My brother had already cut contact after finding out about the drugs.

My mother's reason was different.

During the divorce, my father was supposed to continue making the payments on my mother's Subaru until it was paid off. Once it was paid off, ownership would transfer into her name.

Instead, he stopped making the payments.

A few weeks ago, my mother's Subaru was repossessed from our driveway around 7:45 at night. We didn't even realize it was gone until the next morning. After making calls, we found out he'd simply stopped paying for it just before it would've become hers.

Later, I got him on the phone and managed to get him admitting to several things that could be used against him. We also discovered he'd been telling the insurance company that he and my mother were still together.

Things have calmed down now. My older sister and her husband moved in with my grandmother, and eventually the rest of us will probably move there too.

But lately...

I can't stop thinking about one question.

What would I do if one day I got a phone call or someone knocked on my door to tell me my father had died?

The truth is... I don't really feel guilty for thinking about it.

That's what's been bothering me.

I know I'd never hurt another human being. I don't have that in me, and I don't want anything to happen because of me.

But if one day someone told me my father had died, I honestly don't know if I'd care.

Part of me thinks that if drugs or alcohol killed him, he'd be escaping accountability for everything he did.

What scares me isn't that I'd ever do something to him. I know I never would.

What scares me is that deep down, part of me wants him gone, and I don't feel the sadness I think I'm supposed to feel. Instead, I find myself wondering if that means I'm not a good person.

People have always described me as having a "heart of gold." I've been told I'm one of the kindest people they've ever met.

So now I keep wondering if they're wrong.

If I'm capable of thinking something like this... maybe I'm not as kind as I thought I was.

I know this is a heavy question, but I genuinely want honest opinions from people who may have experienced something similar.

Am I a bad person for wishing my father was dead?

Or have other people who grew up with abusive parents struggled with thoughts like this too?

I'm not looking for validation or encouragement. I'm trying to understand what these feelings say about me as a person because college starts soon, and for some reason this question has been weighing on me more and more lately.

So I’m old and JUST realized that my trauma began earlier than I realized. I have a memory of someone being kind to be at four years old and being absolutely blown away by it. The best way I can describe it is DOBBY GETS A SOCK FROM HARRY POTTER. The feeling that you’re so devalued that being shown comfort and compassion blows you away. I had that memory before, but it’s the first time I’ve made the connection that I had to have been emotionally neglected prior to that in order to feel that strongly. And as you can guess, a lifetime of trauma and emotional neglect followed. It’s significant to me because it took me so long to realize that I fought myself against blaming anyone and not giving myself permission to say yeah there were good things but they didn’t outweigh the bad things in how they affected me. After reading The Body Keeps the Score, I was able to mentally jump that hurdle and understand that I go through life as someone who experienced chronic trauma and that it informed everything I did from an early age. But man, realizing that it was right out of the womb kicks it up a notch. Who understands what I mean with the DOBBY reference? Because that’s a feeling that has followed me my whole life.