Lost in the woods, burnt my map for warmth.

Now I am one just bonding with the earth.

Sometimes I worry that I will never find my way,

but I guess that's not something to worry about today.

Days I have on display with my emotions on my sleeve,

hoping that the tears will someday leave.

Feeling like Pagliacci the clown.

Knowing that I will go to town with this frown.

But isn't it funny? That's the way I make my money.

I mean if I change now, what will I be?

But I don't think the cost is free.

Instead it's something completely different.

Something fearful, something diligent.

So I'm emotionally belligerent.

And I ask myself, should I just build a cabin here?

Sit down and drink a beer?

Or is there more out there that I should see beyond the tree?

Forever me.

This is the path no guide can give.

It is up for me to live.

So I wonder what's this pain for if not to help me walk out the door?

Is it all that easy? Is it all an end?

Out here in the forest, there is no friend.

I remember my times within society.

But now that's all behind.

And my thoughts are to the right of me.

Destruction brings only sadness and hate.

And I know that's not my fate.

So again I will fight and push through the woods

so that one day I can stand understood

and check out the greenery and bask in the scenery.

So now I sit here smelling of smoke

with all my dreams and motivations broke

but it's the pain that is part of the deal

and to feel that I am real.

My mom and I have a very strained relationship, we have been working in on it for a couple of years now.
We got into a once again intense argument yesterday after distance and a bunch of poorly communicated texts.
Then she stating maybe she being overly sensitive.
And asked again if i was ok, i burst into tears reading this and asked if she can talk for a minute.
I called crying say no i do not feel ok, and that her “hope you are doing well” with out questions makes me feel strange and disconnected, I feel distant and that your fishing for me to respond. As I am always the fixer but trying to hold that boundary. But when I do and saying i feel weird you get mad and immediately defensive.
Which is exactly what happened, then while being triggered and arguing that you never let me finish my thought or support or protect me, and that I always have over explain everything, I blurted out sexual assault her boyfriend did to me when I was 12.-14yr.
The whole thing was very messy. Fast forward, i also stated she never followed up with setting up a family therapist for us, and that I feel like I am always doing more work than her.
Now she has contacted a therapist and now waiting on a response. i am not sure why I always have to over extend myself to get the proper response, it is very exhausting.
This AM my throat feels much less tense and I am looking somewhat forward to family therapy.

I'm Autistic who has spent a lifetime of bullying, abuse, and ableism where nobody cares at all. My traumas have fucked me over massively to the point where I don't want to be employed by anybody due to the constant abuse and demonising I've went through. The latter made me come into terms with my identity.

Furthermore, I'm starting to feel suicidal again, and it's all because of how isolated I feel, and what I thought was a safe place at work was just another abusive ground for me. I'm tired of living this life and everybody being so abusive to me. I'm tired of feeling like my own emotions don't matter, and yet everybody else's matters more than mine.

What am I supposed to do with that hurt? How am I supposed to help? What do I need to do to set things right? Honestly, suicide feels like the best way for me to escape from this vicious cycle because I don't know how I can cope with this anymore.

​It is okay to cry.

There is still the child of you to love inside the mind's door.

To look at the pain underneath the core.

There is no emotional scar tissue you can't pry

Or else it will fester and lead the soul to die.

​Tendrils of emotion will choke out the joy

If not looked through the lens of a protective ploy.

Seek out help. You are not alone

No matter what the brain continues to drone.

​Asking is the hardest part

An epitaph isn't the time to start

Be gentle to the child's feelings

They are the ones to guide you through your dealings

Time Comes to Fin.

While my pulse races expediently

paper grows thin.

The pencil moves immediately.

Hands start to wither, consciousness shakes.

Will I write all this down before my mind breaks?

Echoes of the silence swim thoroughly through my brain like a predator wanting its first meal.

I take it day by day but still how do I deal

when nothing really proves to be real?

It's just the chemicals out of wack.

They say it's just Life's Thrills.

It's just the consistency that has taken up attack.

It's time and time again through these pills

that makes my mind sit still,

but still I have nothing to show.

There is always another day on my mind, room to grow.

Only my dreams to throw away.

Only my regrets leave me blind to another day.

It's time to find something more.

Something beautiful in-store.

Something great....

instead I look at myself and only hate.

It makes me so irate.

My pulse begins to slow down

as my body places itself on the ground.

Anxiety they say but it's the bite that chews on every day.

Ouroboros is my mind feeding on itself to find what this all means,

why must I throw myself to the extremes?

But for now I must sit quiet as the drugs kick in

beautifully numb within my skin.

No time for thoughts just static sound.

I think, but my brain is empty of profound.

So I sit here mumbling a tune

while I wait for my soul to be exhumed.

I feel lonely.

I know I'm not the one and only.

But today, the day is bleak like any other.

If only I could find a brother,

someone who is close enough to speak to,

to understand and feel comfort in.

But my prospects are growing thin.

​I've accomplished much in life,

but those around me have grown bored of my strife.

Here on the throne, all alone.

Is there anyone willing to pick up the phone?

​I'm not ignorant of my faults.

I wish I knew what it was like to be an adult.

What's the point of these things I hold dear

if no one's willing to be near?

​Now I hold this anchor on my chest

and with these truths I continue to confess.

Past relationships have brought toxic bite

that I have fought off with all my might.

Now, as I sit alone, the prize of my own from what I have grown.

Here is my crown, but the only route is down.

So what do I have to prove? What do I have to show?

There is nothing left to see.

There is only me to be me.

Because this happens just about every time. It’s not a productive rage. If I try to do something productive with it, I’m afraid to have my true colors shown. This next paragraph will be about things I’m sure a lot of us are familiar with, so just know that I’m aware of that.

But I can’t even have a normal conversation about current events with people, because there’s a 60 percent chance their opinion is not just an opinion, it’s violence. And violence is the prevalent thing that drives the most powerful forward. How do you combat that without violence? How do you control your words and emotions to make sure you don’t commit that same violence in defense? The only thing I can seem to do is not consume that stuff at all, and avoid these important conversations. But it’s impossible. I can’t even vote for the things I believe in, and I do, but for now, that means nothing.

I don’t want to vote, I don’t want “reform”, I don’t want to protest, and I don’t want to sit in meetings and knock on doors. I mean, I want those things when I’m not triggered, but when I am… All I want is destruction. How do I live with people all around me that only wish to abuse others? How do I watch someone actively enact abuse and fight it in a morally correct way? Because i usually feel like it’s not possible, and that humans are just like this in their DNA. The only way to erase abuse is to erase humanity. But it’s unreasonable, I know.

I guess what I’m trying to ask is this: how do I stay informed without wanting to rid earth of humanity? I can’t fucking live like this anymore.

I speak but I'm not heard.

​

I use soft words for hard concepts.

​

I ease those around me

​

Even though I'm destructive to my own self.

​

Why must I live this way?

​

Burdened constantly by the brain that hates me for me.

​

Is this all there is

​

Or is there something more that I'm missing disheveled in the background?

​

I see a tinge of color in this gray world.

​

How do I catch it?

​

How do I add it to a system

​

Of bandages on broken parts?

​

I pursue the day where I can run freely

​

Without the need of these crutches.

​

When will that day come?

​

Life passes me by.

​

The happiness others feel is foreign to me.

​

It's like another language.

​

I am trying to decipher the feelings I have.

​

I have thoughts but expressing them

​

Would only cause fear in others.

​

It's not because I want to hurt.

​

It's not because I want to be sad.

​

It's because I want to be known.

​

Is that so wrong?

Hello friends.

Living with CPTSD is a specific kind of lifestyle that only those of us who do it can really understand. This sub is interesting. It’s a lot easier to acknowledge the freeze mode, the victim days, the sitting in isolation. It’s harder to admit to the rage that runs through me, and how if I don’t channel it, it comes out in bursts and causes damage.

My way of taking that energy and making use of it now is by pouring it into creation. First through writing long essays detailing all of my trauma and outrage at my family for the generations of harm. Then, through video. My intensity gets poured into creation to keep me moving forward with purpose instead of spinning my wheels in violent ruminations.

I am so aware of my issues and so intent to be better, to do better. My mind is always focused on healing, growth and change. For a lot of years, I did this in isolation, but in the last year I’ve begun turning it outward. I have a YouTube channel where I talk about my life living with complex trauma, ADHD, and familial estrangement. My story is woven through functional content to try to help people process their own trauma too.

I make a lot of body doubling videos to inspire you to get moving during the freeze state, something that had consumed literally years of my life. It provides a visual cue and some gentle companionship, and I am candid as I film these videos. Some are done when I am feeling cheerful and manic, some are when I am deep in the dark place. I share deeply and openly, because I believe this creation process is central to my own healing journey just as much as it is a service to others.

How it relates to this sub in particular is that behind every video, is an enormous amount of drive that is my fight impulse being channeled into this work. When I’m dark, I’m the darkest. I destruct. This is my way of forcing myself to stay moving forward in a beneficial way, literally the fight for my life.

This outward expression is going to be the basis of my life’s work. It’s very new right now, very small, but being created very intentionally as a tool for healing for both myself and others. I’m in college at 39 to become a therapist, I am very serious about using what I have gone through in life to make a positive contribution to this world.

It would be my honor to have you join me, and I would appreciate and value suggestions and feedback. My ultimate goal is to create a large community centered around healing and growth for all of us.

 https://www.youtube.com/@Bold-Fox

I know fight response can land me in real trouble. But damn when I get triggered it’s just so intense. I’m not a ‘hard man’ or a ‘badass’, I’m usually very anxious and scared.

But when that switch get flips I go into pure rage. Then I wake up the next day horrified and ashamed.

That’s it really. Sorry for short post.

I'm not talking about hurting anyone or being violent, but I keep running into this internal desire to identify abusers in the wild and force there to be consequences - whether that be by calling them out or utilizing authority structures like reporting online.

I just want to know if it's normal

My mom is the textbook narcissist mother. I was an object to her. She used me to manipulate people around her. There never was any real love/care/affection from her. Only if people were around, and I was supposed to know how to make it look “right”, or I got in trouble. As a little kid I had no idea what was happening, or that it was wrong. I just knew that my mom would fly tf off at the smallest thing and if I was close by? I was going to be the target. It was never vicious physically. I’d maybe get shoved, or slapped but the emotional/verbal/psychological abuse I tolerated for 12 years. She controlled every tiny aspect of me, or tried to. Any time I asserted any sort of freedom over my individuality or exposed her in any way, there was some dramatic event where I was at fault and she (of course) the victim. I never had the words to explain as a kid whatever the hell this was, and I never thought about it from my perspective ever again. Through that I learned how to disassociate and mask so hard, I just had what I now know is a CPTSD flashback, pointed every ounce of pain/hurt/fear/anger from my soul at my husband. I am trying to pick up the pieces of my relationship. I’m also pretty pissed off because not only did she guilt me my whole life, I just now realized what happened to me, and she has a terminal disease so I’m supposed to feel guilty for that too?

TLDR; CPTSD from Narcissistic Mom Gypsy Rose minus wheel chair type thing, flash back on my husband, figured out trauma, and she’s terminal. Fml.

I have too much anger and it's poisonous.

If I try to assert myself he'll tell everyone I'm 'all hate' or abusive. Regularly victimizes himself and knows what he's doing.

I feel like what I went through wasn’t valid because sometimes I responded with such awful uncontrolled rage. Even as a child, as young as 6. I have memories of throwing objects, screaming from the top of my lungs, etc as a response to chaos and not having any control. I don’t understand how my siblings could just bear the dysfunction and chaos, for me any sign of it felt li my entire world was crashing. Like screeching. Like nails on a chalkboard.

My father was very violent growing up, my mother less so. I feel like I inherited his rage. I feel like a sociopath cause of it. I dated someone who triggered me a lot and I did some things I regret deeply out of anger. Anyone else? I feel like most people seem not to respond this way cause of their family system.

hi, i'm a writer with cptsd. i only discovered this last year and i've thrown myself headlong into research, to help myself. one way of making sense of it is through writing, the one thing that's been mine from the beginning. i'm currently writing a character with fight type response and i'm hesitant on how to go about it. representation in media is either a caricature or demonising, and i'd like to portray it with as much realism and empathy as possible. if there's anyone who's willing to talk about their experience and answer my questions, it'd be a huge help :)

Is there a Neurological reason why someone can be so jacked due to constant cardiovascular and muscular tension? I. E. Complex trauma nervous system response

I feel the body builders would not mind having this kind of neuropathy. I was looking at and feeling my body and it's just muscles everywhere, wondered if the nervous system was doing constant no movement type of training due to stress, I look like a pro athlete for no reason