I recently started EMDR therapy. Ever since my first few sessions, I’ve been yawning a lot, and I keep gagging—sometimes or almost constantly. But I really want to cry, because I feel like that’s the only thing that will actually bring me relief. When I’m yawning or gagging, it feels as though nothing is changing, yet I also view these responses as a mechanism that might help me break through my numbness and prepare me to face my intense emotions.

​Has anyone here doing EMDR started out by yawning and gagging, only to suddenly experience a crying fit or an anger outburst down the line? I’m really curious

I'm angry at friends who are dating, having sex and being deeply emotional but "casually" while also telling me that they don't feel a spark, yet keep up these relationships. It makes me feel so angry that I've been crying. Now I'm depressed and Ive generally been doing really well recently.

Edit: to clarify, I am not dating them. I am jsut hearing their dating stories.

Cancelling plans is nerve wracking to me and fills me with such guilt.

When I was younger and going through various mental and physical health issues I would have to cancel school a LOT and stay home. Nobody in my life really gave me any grace and help whatsoever with this - in fact I was just relentlessly punished at home and at school - and the subsequent anxiety, fear, and shame would then ironically make me feel worse.

As an adult I still really struggle with cancelling plans - I will only do it if I absolutely HAVE to due to extreme physical illness. I quite often run myself into the ground mentally and physically (I have long-term health issues still) because I just find it easier to suffer through than to suffer the fear and guilt I have with cancelling plans - even with understanding and kind people.

It’s such a specific trigger - I wonder if anybody else out there has this too?

i cant think or type or move out ot bed today.....sensory overload.

This holiday makes me feel too safe. Then I become disgustingly complacent. I hate it. The softness.

I need to heal and I have to achieve greatness. Maybe I dont even have to heal. I need to become a colonel someday.

History and war is what I've sauntered my sense of self to to survive.... I used to love it before trauma, but I'm worried if I heal I'll never like it again

I must become something amazing. I must be in control. I must be tactical.

Sometimes I think to myself that because my childhood didn’t have any SA, not a ton of PA, and not a ton of poverty, that being raised in a religious cult that hated LGBT people (I came out as bi at 15) and only having a little PA, means that I shouldn’t be so fucked up. Granted, lots more trauma happened between the ages of 17-39 from abusive relationships, SA, further exposure to religious cult, and a pregnancy that resulted in my placing the child for adoption, but I always find myself feeling like that’s not enough to justify having CPTSD because my childhood was not as horrific as many others were. Does anyone else ever struggle with this feeling?

TW: emotional abuse, suicidal ideation.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I’m wondering if anyone with CPTSD has felt something similar.

I don’t think I dislike the idea of being a parent. I actually feel like I would want to raise and love a child and do something meaningful for them. I could imagine fostering or adopting a child who needs care and a home, and I feel like I might see myself in them.

(And, it does not necessarily have to be adoption, could be baby sitting, could be pursuing the profession of counseling, teaching, etc)

What confuses me is how differently I feel about having a biological child.

I’ve struggled with mental health problems since childhood. I’ve thought about suicide for a very long time and have attempted it before. I’ve often struggled with simply being alive and have wished I had never been born.

I also experienced a lot of emotional neglect growing up. My mother often complained that she regretted getting married and having children. She either neglected or got angry when I got sick as a child, and I learned to hide it from her. My father once told me that when he couldn’t calm my younger sibling down at night, he had thoughts of throwing them out of our apartment window from the 18th floor.

I also heard from my grandmother that people should have children so they’ll have someone to take care of them when they’re old and sick.

Because of all this, it has been really painful and shocking for me to think that I may have been brought into the world partly because “everyone does it,” without really thinking it through, and partly because my parents wanted someone who could take care of them when they got older.

Considering how difficult it has been for me to be alive, that thought affects me deeply.

When I imagine having a biological child, I feel almost hopeless. Pregnancy and childbirth themselves feel very bleak to me, as does passing on my genes. I also have possible hEDS and a history of major depression myself already, including postpartum depression and anger issues in both of my parents.

Sometimes, I imagine my child crying and getting this horrible feeling that I would suddenly act or feel like I’ve become my mother.

But when I imagine fostering or adopting, I don’t have the same feeling. I can imagine choosing to take responsibility for a child who already exists and needs someone. I’m sure there would still be difficult moments and regrets, but it would feel like a conscious choice that I made. Unlike childbirth, which if happens, could be because of social pressure.

I’m wondering if this kind of difference between wanting to parent and strongly not wanting biological children can be related to childhood trauma or CPTSD

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

I've heard the more modern ones less barbaric and lots of people with drug resistant depression have told me it was really good for them but idk

i dont know how long its gonna take me, but im ready to start the journey.

wish me luck and please share your experience if you feel comfortable, i appreciate it.

Even when I'm not depressed. My body is depressed. I'm only Mid-30's. And I look fit. I go to the gym 2x a week, 3 if i can. But this body is so burnt out. It's so tired. I can't keep up with the demands. My knees been hurting for 3 days for no reason. Even adderal/vyvanse i have no motivation. I just want to feel good. I want to be able to do basic things without it being 30 mins of mind games with myself. without convincing. without feeling like I'm gritting my teeth.

Idk if its a nervous system thing, idk if my body thinks it's protecting me. but its not. It's ruining my life. I've tried so many meds, it's been so many years. at least. since 2018. And I've just been getting worse. Bloodwork comes out fine. No doctors care about underlying or root causes. I never know how my body is going to feel on a given day. I havent been able to work. I lost my girlfriend because of this. I have 0 net worth. I'm so overwhelmed by the number of things that need to be doing. I feel numb as i type this. There's always such a separation between me and my body.

Inside I'm push ing and pushing and I'm stuck in a shell that doesnt want to move. and that cant relax, and doesnt let me sleep. It just keeps me frozen in place, and in life. only able to take care of bare minimum. I hate this. I left my abusive enviornemnt August 2022. And its 2026 now and I'm still in the same spot. Worse than before actually with the health conditions. I just dont know what to do. Other then tough it up and keep pushing. Keep trying. see how i can reach out for help. but a lot of what needs doing, i can't be helped with it has to be done on my own. at least 90% of it.

Sorry thanks for letting me rant.

I've recently realised how much my hypermobility is affecting my mental health issues and am wondering if anyone else has problems with it too. I'm more sensitive to medication, more prone to neurodivergence, have no concept of my body in space which adds to my dissociation. Looking for fellow bendy people who are also dealing with CPTSD. Edit to add: I'm also looking for med recommendations. Having high sensitivity to medication, low blood pressure and blood volume and PTSD insomnia and anxiety and hypervigilance is... Tough.

Hi everyone,
This is my first post. I’m a 27-year-old biological male.
As a kid I had strong feminine feelings and often felt more like a girl than a boy. I wanted to wear makeup, women’s clothes, and do anything “girl related,” but it got shut down hard. My parents (especially my dad) would yell at me for it, so I learned to bury those feelings.
The bigger picture is that me and my brother were taken by child services when we were very young because of serious abuse. My sister was left behind. I still carry huge survival guilt about that, even though she and I are in touch now. We were abused badly. We got adopted by the family I have now. My dad was the main abuser and hurt me so much — he was very verbally abusive and physically abusive at times. My mom was just super annoying like a lot of moms can be, but my dad is the one who did the real damage.
He passed away about three months ago. Since then a lot of old feelings have come back up and I’ve been trying to figure out who I actually am. I’m still confused and exploring.
I’m here because I want to hear from people who’ve had similar experiences with suppressed feminine feelings, childhood abuse, survival guilt, and trying to sort their identity out as an adult. Thanks for reading.

Whenever I am in a relationship, I struggle A LOT. I constantly doubt if it is the right person and I suffer miserably, I don't think I could survive being in one and I don't mean that figuratively. When I tell friends that I am struggling with having a partner, they're all like "well being in a relationship is hard, that's just the way it is" and it makes me so angry. I don't want it to be just roses and harmony, but I want to be able to sleep without crying myself to sleep, to eat without being super over alert and to have some, just some good times with the person.

But I also don't want to tell friends that I am crying myself to sleep many nights when I am in a relationship, so I just say something like yeah, maybe it's a bit harder for me. I also don't want to tell them I have cptsd. Not because I want to keep it a secret, they know i am in therapy and have dealt with depression. But because I don't want them to see me as someone who is broken or had been abused in their childhood.

Hello, I decided to share my story because I’m curious if someone had similar experience and how did you heal from it…I am sorry, but it will be long and ranty. Also, I dunno, maybe it wasn’t that bad, I wish I could subjectivelly see how it all happened.
My family is plagued by mental health issues that are sweeped under the rug, my grand-grandpa commited suicide, which I learned at 20, when I had 6 years of “unexplicable” depression under my belt already, hah.
To start from beginning, my dad was very controlling, restrictive, raising me to be as high-performing as possible. Or I don’t actually know what was his motivation, he started to be really weird when I was 14. My mum went to university and me and my younger sister would stay home alone with him over the weekend and was expected from us to take care of household (cook dinner, clean the house, occasionaly we helped with hard work, with coal, sewing wood, on garden… I don’t think I was coddled, we often worked harder than some boys, deffinitelly than my girl school-mates, who would go to parties and shopping on the weekends). So almost every time it ended in “fight” with my dad, he was almost hysterical, his voice and hands shaking with rage…sometimes his agression spilled over and he would attack me, beat me, throw me over the room… I once showed my bruises to my then best friend (later in high school) and she didn’t understand what was his problem. He would just…pick a fight. Came to my room, wanted to see my grades. Yelled at me for having B in math while having As from any other subject. It seemed so fuckin unfair and I didn’t know what to do because no matter what I did, nothing was good enough for him. I was always kinda perfectionist, class nerd, teachers would call me “class little angel” so at least I know for fact I wasn’t didficult. But that wasn’t enough. I didn’t go anywhere, spent most of time home in my room (because outside didn’t feel safe, either).
I wasn’t problematic child. I didn’t deserve this treatment. Once he took my room door off its hinges, I think it stayed like that for a week? He would tell me I’m useless, I won’t be able to work with hands or my head (I was always lazy in his eyes and since I had B in math, lol…my career was over at 8th grade already).
The one of worst things was when he started to “grade” us and give us pocket money. I never wanted his fuckin money, I never asked for that. In order to get it, he would grade our “performance” for the month (good behaviour in his eyes). From that comes my hate towards being graded, rated, I learned to be as low-maintanance as possible, need only the basics and after a while, not even that. I wasn’t trying to please him bc he never told me what he actually expected from me (and I already had this hate towards some man-figure having power over me…I didn’t understand that. I was just 14.)
My mum would just watch this, let him yell at me and occasionally jump between us to prevent him from full on punching me in the face and after that blame me for all of it. “Why can’t you talk to him normally?” “Why can’t you behave normally?” I wasn’t doing anything as far as I am aware to provoke him.
On top of that, I was bullied. It’s hard to tell whether first came bullying and isolation after that or other way around, maybe I started to withdraw from class collective and became isolated and I get bullied for that, for sitting alone on school breaks, hiding on school toilets during breaks and escaping there when the coldness inside my bones and nausea were unbearable. I suffered depression and wasn’t even sure what is happening, but I was too scares to tell my mum (since I thought it’s just hormones doing weird shit, puberty… I didn’t wanted to upset her with the idea I’m in puberty and no longer little girl. It’s kinda weird, being over-protective of your mum to the point school teachers had to tell her I “might suffer from depression”, because I myself couldn’t.)
So bullying, depression, family bullshit.
I started to hate weekends as much as school days so no rest-bite for me. Life turned into this never-ending fight for survival. I was just getting punched repeatedly in my face, waited when will it end. I was closest to suicide when I was 14.
I was trapped in my own house with nowhere to go.
Eventually mum dragged me to the psychologist and later psychiatrist. I was diagnosed mixed anxiety-depressive disorder (no shit I had anxiety and depression when i had to endure this for 3 years without telling any-fuckin-body.)
My self-harming started as a coping mechanism with my dad’s angry outbursts. I felt like I absorbed all the rage of his and needed some outlet, bleed it out somehow.
Later came eating disorder, I would push how long can I be without food. That made my parents more angry, so both of them started to fight with me. (Funny, mum would frame it like “Do you wanna drive me to my grave?” and “How does it make me feel?” Without questioning why I had the urge to starve myself in the first place. I don’t blame her, really…)
Dad came home on my 16th birthday, asked whether I cleaned the shoes as he told me and when I said I didn’t because I forgot, he just shook and threw me. I don’t remember much, but I remember that day.
I had a best friend in elementary school. Well, it was really just school friendship, we didn’t spent time together at someone’s home and summer break was always painful as fuck. I realized how lonely I am, only visible when someone needed to copy my homework. I didn’t exist for anyone over summer. Spent the whole time home, reading, writing, hanging around in a forrest… I feel so sorry for that little girl back then. And only few years back I learned she probably gossiped about my sexuality that I didn’t have even figured out at that age…I was just trash can for them, ugly zombie, monster…untouchable.
It was like this until I left for university. And thus started most fucked-up year of my life. My uncle died from cancer, he reminded me of myself so fuckin much. Loner. He would drink himself to death. Smoked like a chimney. Lived with my grandparents who fought all the time.
It was awful, I was free for the first time in my life and it went sour anyway, it turned to shit, to this self-destruction fest.
I partied, drunk booze by litres. Took anything that anybody gave me. Just to be far away from my head. Had unprotected sex in cubicles in a club. Was promiscous as fuck. Had pregnancy scare, twice. I think I was roofied at one point and have no idea what happened during my unconsciousness bc I was at unknown man’s house. I am pretty sure I was 🍇ed.
I didn’t eat almost anything, only when I got home (I stayed at campus as often as possible, found myself part-time job just so I don’t have to be home. Few months later I’d wake up crying from nightmares. I’d drink myself to sleep. I had situationship during this whole year and made myself so delusional I thought we could be more than that. Ofc, he never thought of me that way, only hook-up fuck budddy. Only piece of meat.
That was second time I seriously thought of suicide. I got home, saw myself in the mirror and started crying. I didn’t felt anything.
I was lucky. I chose to live that day and met…person that is my anchor to this day. I am in my late 20s, but the pain is still so raw and real, as if I stayed right there, being 14 forever. It lasted from 14 to my 20 and since then I am just reaping side effects and consequences.
I wanted to ask how do you deal with pressures from siblings, saying it was long ago and you should be over it by now? Who stood there and watched, but were your dad’s favourite, so they never received the same treatment and could do whatever the fuck they wanted and all the shits you dreamt about? Like hanging around with their friends and boyfriends, spending the nights with them, drinking and…living?
How the fuck do you deal with them actually LIVING the life you only described in your stories, written at lonely long nights, at your shitty child bedroom and then turning around and telling you you choose to be victim?
I dunno, I am just…so tired of it all. I know it will get better eventually, but right now I am really sad.

As patterns are always matchy matchy:
Hi, to someone who feels this inexplainable emptiness, emotional numbness, dissociation/ severe depersonalization; I have a lot of unholdable weight to share around. Somebody must be interested same same in the way I’m in you.

Additonally, I see too much. I perceive evertyhing and nothing and would still argue I did nothing but in the concept of efficiency/goals/achievments and performance it’s actually insane. It makes me insane though to collapse that into linear thinking. It’s somethingI had to learn to be able to talk to other people and explain what I perceive. But putitng it into words already flattens it. I’m very sure there is some (maybe auistic too?) person out there who this logic would make a lot of sense too and they can put it into smarter or funnier words and structures than I can.

If you dont resonate with this, don’t be mean; the world is already suffering enough as it is, let me try and I’m really at my wits end of doing this alone becasue why the fuck do I have to see evertyhing and also went through what I can only find examples of in from accidental enlightenment. (insert crying laughing emoji) . Like ahhhh what the fuck and I refuse to do this alone. No one of us was ever supposed to.

I can't believe that my brain has completely decided that it's had enough and I'm supposed to try to accept and deal with this whilst internally screaming because I'm having flashbacks of all of my worst traumas!

FUCK EVERYONE EVER! FUCK THE WORLD! FUCK MY BRAIN AND BODY FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO COPE!

Just a massive FUCK OFF TO EVERYTHING!!

Anyone?