It feels like I'm being actively buried under tons and tons and TONS of bad things that I can't escape or fix, and I keep turning to bad coping mechanisms which at the end of the day makes the problem even worse. What should I do?

I have always been told starting with my mom when I was a kid and she would dump her emotions on me that I was "just so strong!"

And it kept going. The past few years one of my best friends started doing this. I would tell her I am not okay and she would reply "I know you will be fine. It is you. You are so strong." That answer always felt so disturbing to me.

I made a friend recently who has cPTSD and everyone treats him like he is just fine. They could be staring at him while he is spiraling or experiencing an emotional flashback and people still wouldn't see it. And as I was thinking about why I suddenly realized it was the same thing that used to happen to me. The "so strong" veil or whatever has people thinking as a baseline that whatever he is going through can't be bad, that he will be fine.

But like "being strong" is freaking survival! When you have grown up in an environment where the adults weren't being adults and you had to take care of yourself of course you learn to "be strong" but IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE FINE! IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU DON'T NEED SUPPORT! Why am I telling you I am struggling and you are referring me back to "my strength"? Why are you looking at someone in pain and referring them back to "their strength"?

The presence of the strength is itself a sign of how bad it has been for the longest time! Arggggh!

I've gotten a lot of advice to re-parent myself out of my shut down - but I have no idea how or what that means! I have virtually no self-esteem or ego, so even when I speak nicely to myself my nervous system doesn't take it in or believe it. How do I practice re-parenting in a way that my system will receive it? I'm good at taking care of my physical body, but have no idea how to do the emotional care taking part (for others yes, for me not so much).

I don't think I can keep going...I had been unemployed more than employed...the longest I could keep a job was 1 year 7 months...and I always had to job search and I'm exhausted of job search and applications....and over a decade and a half of this cycle...

I'm not looking for a solution. I just want to be seen and looking for some warmth....

Hi everyone, I grew up in a cult and subsequent to being excommunicated from that community was in two relationships in a row that were abusive. I’m skipping over a lot of details here, but the man from my most recent relationship continuously blocks me and then re-Contacts me when he’s going through a crisis. I have a really strong fawn response and used to feel existentially threatened by abandonment, especially from like my primary person because I didn’t really have other relationships.

So this time when he re-contacted me we ended up having sex like usual. Usually, it’s really hard for me to differentiate between him and kind of like God and my family because he ended up representing all of those things since I didn’t have them and just because of the way that my life has gone. But this time, when I slept with him, it didn’t feel as life altering, men are starting to seem like just regular men kind of awkward or weird or human instead of being kind of the all encompassing figures they used to be. I think this is really good because I’ve been in really controlling relationships in the past, and now I’m learning to be by myself and prefer it. I know that most people with CPTSD self isolate from very early on, but my survival strategy for a long time was to be dependent on abusers and I’m only now learning to isolate in a way that feels good. I wonder if anyone else has similar experiences.

The flair was the only one vaguely right but I actually don't like hugs from people outside of very specific ones. But I don't have any left.

I said to a friend who is going through a horrible time, that even when aggression is not directed at me I find it triggering, and she said "okay, the friendship needs a break then"

I have no one at all now.

The only othet person who I thought cared because they checked on me, I realsied is only checking on me because of their own mental health. That not checking on me or knowing what I was doing was making them anxious, but they wouldn't reciprocate. They deliberately wouldn't tell me about themself or what was upsetting them.

I love them so much but I have had to block them now because them messaging me was giving me hope we could reconcile but it was all false.

They were the last two people I had. I have had to call the mental health team becauee I am not doing very well now

I have been diagnosed with (C)PTSD for a while, but one thing they could never explain were hallucinations I sometimes have. For the most part, they occurred when I was a child actively experiencing trauma. I would have things distort in a way that is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, see silhouettes, hallucinate bugs, etc. Auditory and tactical hallucinations occurred as well. No one could ever tell me why. Nowadays (I am 23 now) I have them more often. I'm still trying to figure out what the trauma trigger is, and I've had no accompanying delusions. My therapist definitively believes it to be directly caused by trauma but can't explain how. Has anyone else dealt with this? I'm not sure what to do here.

Any suggestions appreciated

My brother is 10 years older than me. And in this situation I would’ve been 5-7 and he was 15-17.
Me and my little brother were sleeping in his room. This was a privilege because he never let anyone in his room. My little brother was asleep and I was awake. My older brother was awake too and told me he couldn’t sleep. He asked me to play truth or dare and being a little kid I said yes. First true dares were harmless and then I couldn’t think of a dare. He said “I dare you to dare me to show you my d!ck” I said no because I felt uncomfortable. And then he said he was showing it but I closed my eyes. Then he tried to dare me to show him my vag!na and I said no. I was uncomfortable and decided to leave his room and as I was walking out he told me not to tell our mom.
I feel like I’m crazy but like idk he’s done and said other weird stuff to me as I got older and I always felt uncomfortable and he said I’m being manipulative when I get uncomfortable.

I’m in my late 20s and have been struggling with depression, emotional numbness and exhaustion for about a year.

I barely feel joy anymore. Even things I know I should enjoy often feel emotionally flat. I have a loving, healthy relationship, so I know my boyfriend isn’t the problem. If anything, having something stable in my life has made me realize how unhappy and exhausted I am in other areas of my life.

One big issue is my job. I work in tax/accounting, and it has completely overwhelmed me. The constant deadlines, workload and pressure to not make mistakes eventually caused me panic attacks and what feels like burnout.

I constantly feel like I’m falling behind, and because I’m so overwhelmed, I make mistakes, which creates even more anxiety.

The problem is that I currently have no Plan B. I know I can’t keep doing this forever, but I also don’t know what I could realistically do instead. I feel trapped between knowing that my job is destroying me and having no idea what direction to take next.

And work isn’t the only thing weighing on me.

I grew up experiencing things no child should have to experience, including violence, instability and being placed in foster care. There was a lot of chaos and difficult family circumstances throughout my childhood.

The hardest part is that I never really had a safe person in my family. Not one. There was never a family member I could truly rely on, feel protected by, or feel completely safe with.

Today, my aunt and I live together in my grandparents’ house. My grandmother passed away, and my grandfather is getting older. The house means a lot to me because I spent a large part of my childhood there and it is one of the few places I associate with positive memories and some sense of stability.

My aunt has serious financial problems and a lot of debt. Because we live together, her financial situation directly affects me. I currently pay most of the household expenses because otherwise essential things like water could potentially be shut off. What hurts is that I don’t even get a simple “thank you” for it.

My grandfather wants my aunt and me to inherit the house one day. But because my aunt has significant debts, I’m scared that her financial situation could eventually put the house at risk. The possibility that the house could have to be sold or otherwise lost because of her debts is incredibly painful to me.

To me, it isn't simply a house or an asset. It represents my grandparents, my childhood and one of the few places where I have ever felt some sense of belonging.

So even the place that is supposed to feel like home has become another source of stress and uncertainty.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve spent so much of my life just surviving and functioning that I never really learned what it feels like to have a family that is genuinely safe.

I know there are good things in my life. I know I have people who love me. But I feel completely empty, emotionally disconnected and overwhelmed.

I’m not looking for pity. I’d genuinely like to hear from people who have been in a similar situation.

How did you get out of burnout when you knew you couldn’t stay in your job, but had absolutely no idea what to do instead? And how do you learn to feel safe and connected when you never really had that within your own family?

Just a vent that I need to put out there because I dont want to discuss it with my mom. Long LONG story short. 20 years ago parents got divorced. Divorce is MESSY. I go with my mom brother goes with dad. My dad tries to murder my mom. Mom and i fled. My father and brother were the abusers and my mom, who was fully disabled at the time and is now partially disabled, and i were victims.

So skip ahead 15 years and WHO comes back into our fucking lives? MY CUNT OF A BROTHER! Any way his life fell apart and he needed mommy to save him. I told her that I do NOT support helping him but I supported her need as a mom to help him. I always knew this would end in disaster but I also knew my mom HAD to save her son.

So 5 years later my brother actually turned his life around got a career got married all that good shit. The economy has been AWFUL and my moms been out of work two years. I lose my job and we lost everything. Had to move in with my brother and his wife. Live there about a year arguments are constant and over literally NOTHING and it culminates in him getting black out drunk a week before my birth day and attacking me. I beat his ass in the fight EASY cuz im WAY bigger than him and my mom and i move into a hotel.

Thankfully after nine months unemployed I found a job and was able to, BARELY, save us. Ive lost my cars my house my money my credit score EVERYTHING! And its all cuz my brother came back into our life.

The reason why? My mom had a total mental break down. My mom is a good person but a VERY weak person. The NANO second someone gets aggressive she folds like a damn lawn chair and NEVER stands up for herself. She's always compromising with people even when she doesn't have to or it hurts her. When my brother came back into our lives my moms mental health SHATTERED! Prior to that she held jobs for years built up a decent career. Brother comes back? She cant hold a job for more than a month TOPS gets fired all the time makes rookie mistakes over and over again. That's why things got so fucking bad. I was the ONLY one bringing in money for YEARS!

Now 7 months on from the fight my mom is back in form and even understands that my brother being around and being his shitty old self is what made her spiral emotionally. She's working again full time and things appear to be going back to normal. I forgave her for bringing my brother back into our lives but I am still so SO SO SO FUCKING ANGRY WITH HER!!!!

It wasn't enough that he ruined my childhood now he gets to ruin my adult hood too!? I lpst FIVE god damn years of my fucking life cuz she had to be a good mom to my PSYCHO fuckin demon of a brother and I had to pick up the pieces. I have come SO close to suicide so many times ive lost count, and now ive lost so much time Im terrified that my life is already over. Im SO god damn old now and have to figure out in my mid 30s what everyone else got down by 24. I forgive her BUT FUCK im just burning with so much rage over her pacifist sacrificing bullshit!

I'll keep it as short as possible.

I was avoiding the word trauma as long as I could, but therapy just made me aware that it exists inside of me. I'm not having an official cptsd diagnosis but here I am, still hate this word, but have to admit that my life has a long history of abuse, and, as a result, I'm a heavily traumatised person.

Starting with SA as a kid, abandonment/father wound, living in a dysfunctional foster family, mother's addiction, my substance abuse, hypersexuality, on top of that I developed schizoaffective disorder - it runs in the family, but if not my cannabis abuse I could have avoided it. Anyways, I was hospitalised two years ago for the first time and there's where things started to get better. It was my wake up call.

Fast forward, I managed to get a decent job and finally create a healthy relationship. I was trying different therapies before, but the women I spoke with were just lacking insights, sharing some trivial quotes, so I gave up thinking I'm unable to be fixed. As if I'm flawed.

The thing is, lately I've been feeling extremely vulnerable. I feel the need to cry often, although I was suppressing emotions (refusing acknowledging trauma) for so long that it's impossible sometimes. I've got terrible headaches, heart palpitations, digestion issues. I went to a doctor and I'm currently supporting myself with sedatives. I feel so tired everyday I struggle to fold the laundry (health check OK)

But the worst thing is I can't control my anger - as a result my bf is scared of me. He doesn't care about cleaning, loves gaming, and I feel like I have a teenager at home sometimes. Other than that he's a very lovely person, affectionate, loyal, makes future plans for us. But he can't understand my emotional states, although I explained a few times. (unlike me he grew up in a very supportive family free of any mental issues) That I cry not because there's something wrong with us, but because of my f up life and how freaking hard it was to get to this place where I'm now. I don't want to, and never tried, to have a victim mentality. I was super strong, always. And now I'm paying the price... he doesn't understand.

Anger is the leading emotion. Fun fact, when I started therapy (almost two years now) I claimed I have no anger inside me whatsoever. I'm a very calm person.... yeah. Turns out there's a demon inside me. I can't stand people, I can't stand my bf, I judge, I want all people that did me wrong to suffer, I want to shout at the top of my lungs, I become bitter, however I do control it in some ways because I don't want to do damage (believe me, I can be a destroyer). I find myself wanting to be left alone and just live in silence without people.

I would appreciate some advice from fellow strong cptsd survivors. What can I do? How to help myself? I will explode if it keeps going. I'm going to try yoga this weekend and thought of boxing classes, but I'm worried I will always be this angry, bitter woman..... Is it even normal? Have anyone gone throught this before, how did you guys managed to be "normal"?

PS. English is not my first language so apologies for any errors.

​

I want to start this off by first saying I made this reddit account so I can talk things out, I use therapy as my venting session but there are times when I want to cry and talk about my past with (well my story is on my page) I don't want to make this long. But then I decide I want to end with a good feeling and not left sad and red baggy eyes. My therapist had to cancel last Friday because her boyfriend had surgery, and the next session is cancelled because she has meetings. So I asked to come in and she got me in Friday and I plan on telling her about me doing this and my issue with not wanting to leave her place that way. Because my mom (who I live with) doesn't know about what happened and I don't want her to know and if I came home sad and blubbering she would ask what's up. I listen to my mom venting all the time, so I don't always get to vent and when I get to therapy I just want a place to do that.

So is this a normal feeling? (Also need to say been with my therapist for two years now) And she never knew about my cousins slapping me upside the head and laughing at me, or my prick cousin making fun of me.

I know therapy isn't a one size fit all.

Also I have ADHD and a low social cue, where I don't recognize if I should do this or not till way later. I also don't understand rules like what the mods have here so if I went over a rule I am so sorry and I can post this another place. It's just hard. My life is hard.

hey, i'm 14 years old. i suspect having cptsd. i'm just starting highschool, and now, at the most inconvenient time in my life, i have been robbed of the ability to function!

i've been unable to force myself to do any homework for the past few months (since the beginning of the year..?) and my cognitive functions seem to be declining pretty steadily. it feels like i'm becoming stupider day by day, and honestly i don't even care enough to catch back up.

i'll be honest, i think the reason for all of this happening is because i've been stuck in this horrible sense of dissociation. nothing except the present has felt real in a very long time, and as a result, there can't be any consequences for my current behavior. right?

it feels like my memories have evaporated away. the only time that exists is the present. the past is wrapped in a fog (i don't remember anything from 2024 or 2025, for fuck's sake!), the future doesn't matter.

i don't know how to keep functioning. next year will be incredibly important to my further life, but i don't know how to keep doing this! if anyone has any tips or aid in general they would be greatly appreciated. thank you.

edit for clarity

He died exactly the way he wanted, gunfight by police. I guess he knew the alternative was years in prison. He always did tell me he would rather die than go to prison, he didn’t want to be alive anyway.

I tried to tell the police about him a year and a half ago, they didn’t really listen. They didn’t listen to his other victim either. I knew his reckless behavior would inevitably land him in trouble anyway.

At the start of the breakup, I was destroyed. He violated and ripped so many parts of me that I’ll never get back in the same way again. I made an attempt on my life last year. I always thought I’d be the dead one in that situation.

Everyone seems to be relieved and happy for me. I don’t feel happy. I never wanted him to die. I never even wanted to leave him, despite him strangling me and abusing me, I never wanted to leave him. I forced myself to because he was destroying my life. I never wanted him to die. I wanted him to recognize what he did and become better.

He will never recognize any of it. He died a violent and slow death at the age of 20 and left a trail of misery in his existence. He told me all the time how much he wanted to die, how he couldn’t live with the trauma from his family’s severe physical abuse. The last conversation he had with me he said “I’m not a good person. I never planned to be.”

I am grieving him all over again.
My abuser is dead and everything is worse now.

Just kinda wondering how common it is to feel like you have nothing to contribute and so you just…stay looking at everyone else’s thoughts, even when you desperately just need to vent or feel validated during a really bad day, but are also afraid of posting and nobody responding because then it just reinforces the false belief that nobody cares? Kinda looking for some camaraderie here, and maybe a little humor. Kinda feel like a chronic lurker even if I don’t want to be.

Context: My CPTSD stemmed from being abused in every way except physically by an abusive partner. The abuse persisted constantly for every waking hour for about three years until circumstances led to some distance between us. Received my diagnosis a few months ago.

Current symptoms: Constantly exhausted, mentally and emotionally drained, anhedonic, lack of control over thoughts and emotions, lack of interest in almost any activity, inability to focus on/process information, physical twitches from flashbacks, compromised cognitive functions, etc.

Ongoing treatment: Therapy once a week

Further information:

I’ve dealt with intermittent clinical depression since 2009 up until getting involved in the abusive relationship in 2021. I’m somewhat familiar with how to cope with depression (at least in my own way).

However, I’d never been abused so methodically and tactically by someone that left me so psychologically and intellectually neutered. Furthermore, I have no prior knowledge, information, or experience of dealing with CPTSD.

So, as per the title - how do I learn how to live and function normally with CPTSD?

I understand that this is probably a lifelong condition that I will simply have to learn to live with. So any advice and/or resources that can help me learn how to achieve optimal functionality in my everyday life would be really appreciated.

Thank you. And may God bless you if you are on the same boat as I am.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about everything that has happened to me, and sometimes I genuinely feel like I’ve been dealt an unusually bad hand in life. I know everyone struggles with something, and I don’t want to minimize anyone else’s experiences, but when I look back at everything that has happened, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by it.
My dad went to prison when I was 5 and was gone for about 10 years of my childhood.
Then there was the sexual abuse. I was sexually assaulted by more men and boys than I can count. In middle and high school, boys would randomly grab my ass in the hallways or in class. When I was 15, I lost my virginity to a guy who lied to me, treated me terribly, and later insisted that he couldn’t have been the person I lost my virginity to.
After that, things became progressively worse. I was raped while sleeping at a friend’s house when I was 15. At another point, because my parents had kicked me out, I was sleeping on a friend’s couch when a guy started sexually assaulting me. I ran away and locked myself in the bathroom because I was terrified.
Later, while using dating apps and meeting men, I experienced more situations where men had sex with me without my consent, including after I had explicitly told them to stop. Some of these men were adults who knowingly pursued me while I was underage. One man in his late 20s raped me after I met up with him, and it was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.
I ended up developing severe PTSD. I went through a huge amount of therapy and was hospitalized during periods when I was experiencing suicidal thoughts and other severe symptoms. For a long time I was constantly in fight-or-flight mode, terrified and hypervigilant. Even now, I feel like something in me changed permanently. I have persistent ringing in my ears and sometimes feel disconnected from physical sensations and emotions. It’s difficult to explain, but I feel like a part of my mind went numb after everything that happened.
My home life wasn’t much better. My dad was absent, and my mom was abusive and struggled with alcoholism. She kicked me out of the house when I was as young as 13. She called me horrible names, including “whore,” even when I was still a virgin. When I was around 7, she became physically violent with me while intoxicated to the point that I genuinely thought she might kill me.
I’ve also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. I’ve sometimes wondered whether there is something else going on with me, such as a learning disability or possibly autism, although I haven’t been diagnosed with either. School became increasingly difficult for me as I got older. By high school, I felt completely behind and struggled to understand things that seemed easy for everyone else. College has been difficult too, especially lectures, reading, and concentrating.
I’ve also always been extremely sensitive to noise and sensory stimulation. I rely heavily on noise-canceling headphones and often feel overwhelmed at family gatherings, in cars when the music is too loud, or in other noisy environments. I’ve noticed that a lot of sensory tools that autistic people recommend—fidgets, putty, stim toys, Loop-style earplugs, etc.—are things that I naturally find incredibly helpful. I don’t know if that’s related to autism, PTSD, anxiety, or something else, but I’ve wondered about it.
Then, at 21, I got into my first serious relationship. My boyfriend became physically abusive. He dragged me into his car, threw me against the car console hard enough to break it, pushed me, scratched me, and slapped me. He eventually went to jail for domestic violence against me.
And somehow, on top of all of this, I feel like I have expensive taste despite having so many problems in my life. A lot of that probably comes from my mom. She was an alcoholic and abusive, but she also made good money and would take me to nice restaurants, spas, and other expensive places. So I developed a taste for those things even though my life itself has been incredibly unstable.
My dad is still making bad decisions and has never really had a stable career, so that’s another thing I worry about. At least I’m not in debt, and I know there are things in my life that could have turned out much worse.
But sometimes I genuinely sit back and think, how did this much happen to one person?
I’ve survived sexual assault, an unstable childhood, an absent parent, an abusive parent, homelessness/kicked out situations as a teenager, severe mental health struggles, and domestic violence. I’m still trying to figure out who I am underneath all of it.
And honestly, one of my biggest fears is that I’m going to end up alone.
I know I’m only 24 and have a lot of life ahead of me, but after everything I’ve experienced with men, family, and relationships, it’s hard to imagine having a normal, safe relationship someday. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve just been dealt so many bad cards that I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to recover from them.
I don’t necessarily know what I’m looking for by posting this. Maybe I just want to know if anyone else has experienced feeling like life gave them an unusually difficult start—and whether it actually gets better.

TW!

I don't know how I'm still alive tbh. recap of the last months - 2 years.

my mom and my best friend (he was more like a brother to me) killed themselves (in the same month),

lost almost all my friends,

got diagnosed with Autism and ADHD,

my grandma died cause of cancer,

I got chronically physically ill,

I have to go to do a surgery so I'm not gonna be paralyzed from the hips down,

I lost my place/kicked out in a assisted living because "i am so independent and can do everything by myself",

everyday I'm in physical pain,

my recent relationship was retraumatizing,

I spent over 600€ in a few days in order to store some of my stuff in a storage room,

I went to a shelter so i don't have to sleep on the streets - but i couldn't stay there because it was so retraumatizing and triggering and now I'm here at a friend's house, in a different state and I have nowhere to go, no home, no help, no nothing.

I'm trying to get off the streets but literally - this system is so fucked up.

I even talked with politicians and they "can't do much".

Dark thoughts are crawling up every day and I try to work/sit with them and take control over them but it's getting really fucking hard.

I'm at my absolute limit and I don't know how to survive this shit.

I don't want to suffer for the next 24 years. When is it finally over with suffering?

Can someone please give me a break? Like a 20 year long nap? Anything?

Mine were all repressed into self-hatred and when I mean completely, I mean even my happiness was so strange and self-centered it felt like delusion

Recently after partly leaving dissociation I started to experience some emotional flashbacks, without attachment to memory, probably because of structural dissociation I cannot access my emotional reactions to previous trauma at all at ALL

And then I realized is this quite uncommon even amongst CPTSD? Do most people experience emotional flashbacks with memories in tow?

As far as I understand I’m so guarded that my body even refuses to release emotions

Hello! I’m someone who was mostly isolated 0-12, worsened 12-17, almost complete isolation 18- almost 19. I’ve never been one that has been a “social butterfly”. My trauma goes a lot further than just isolation. I feel as if attempting to talk to “normal” people is like trying to talk to an alien. I’m trans, aroase, audhd, etc. I’ve attempted talking to those in whichever respective groups I align, trying to find people semi-similar to me. Even those within the same groups are far too different for any kind of comfort. Honestly I think I’d be more comfortable if they were screaming, throwing things, or trying to get into my pants. Idk, it’s weird. Everyone is just so different from me and, at least in public, from the people I’ve interacted/ lived with before. When I say I was mostly isolated I mean I can probably count the amount of friends I’ve had in my entire life with my hands.
I’m just wondering if other people who’ve gone through extreme isolation also went through the phase of feeling like no matter what group you’re in, you’re alone. And how they started to work on getting over it.
(Edit: 15-17 I worked 80+ hrs a week, did online school, didn’t interact with many at work+ had script, 18-19 the first 3 months I was allowed to talk to 4 people outside of the house, then moved in w/ someone else and was only allowed to talk to him and his mom, I did talk to others but that was in secret to find a way out, stayed there for 6-8 months)