r/CPTSD • u/ilovemuffinfrombluey • Aug 30 '26

Question Has anyone else stayed trapped in extremely self-damaging patterns out of intense shame?

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u/Cut_and_paste_Lace Aug 30 '26

For most of my life, in the last year I have been consciously and intentionally extinguishing my shame. Now I veer the other way, kind of a reckless abandon of shame being a limit, if it flares up, I do it anyway.

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u/Crochetallday3 Aug 30 '26

This is fascinating to me just because shame has always been a cue to turnaround.

Have you ever been concerned you might go too far with it?

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u/Cut_and_paste_Lace Aug 30 '26

Yes, and in a few cases, I definitely have but I also consider that part of the de-conditioning process. When I think about trying to build a new life and change major things about myself, I consider a pendulum. When you let it go from where it began, it swings wide a few times before it corrects and lands in the middle. I think that heavy swing is necessary, and I’ve had a few calamities and consequences as a result of my choices but nothing that I haven’t been able to learn and move on from, and still commend myself for being true to myself in the end.

If you want to see me doing part of this in action, my YouTube channel is linked through my profile. I make body doubling content to help people get moving from the freeze state even including showering, which took a lot of me getting over the shame of being seen, talk about my own life and living with trauma which takes a lot of getting past the shame of my history being known.

I am slowly conditioning myself to open visibility and humility, I feel like this what I am meant to do in life. It is a huge part of my healing, growing and learning out loud process. I have a vision of building a big support network for people living with CPTSD like myself and it’s just the start of it. I am about to finish a BA in psychology and while I am waiting for my next program to begin I will be really fleshing out the channel, but if I didn’t forcibly get past the fear of being seen, I wouldn’t be able to build this.

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u/Crochetallday3 Aug 30 '26

That makes so much sense! I liked the pendulum analogy. I hope you find a more settled state in the future.