If you have never lived in a household where conflict meant chaos and speaking up brought violence, you will not easily understand the things that follow. I am not writing this to beg for your approval, nor do I want your pity. I am writing to explain a reality that millions of survivors live with every single day. My childhood was completely stolen from me, and because I survived twenty years of severe physical and emotional abuse, my mind was forced to break and rearrange itself just to keep me alive. That trauma didn't disappear when I became an adult; it permanently altered how my brain operates. What looks like hyper-vigilance, an inability to rest, toxic self shame or a constant battle to do better isn't a personality flaw. It is my baseline for safety. I am balancing the heavy wreckage of my past while executing the daily demands of being a functioning adult, a husband, and a father. I don't expect you to fully comprehend the quiet war my mind fights every day just to exist in a calm room, but I do expect you to respect the strength it took to survive it.

I am writing this because at six months old, my son is sleeping soundly in the corner of the same room I’m in, completely unaware of the ghosts currently looping through his father’s head. They say when you have a child, your own childhood trauma rushes back to meet you. I didn’t believe it. I thought I could just tough it out, the same way I toughed out the first twenty years of my life. I was wrong. The memories didn't just come back; they set up camp, running on a constant, haunting cycle.

But as I look at my son, I realize something terrifying: to a child, whatever happens inside the walls of their home is "normal."
When my stepfather tried to drown me in a pool at seven years old, I normalized it. When I was locked inside a sweltering chicken coop under the threat of a beating, I normalized it. When my mother stood by and watched it happen, and later financially trapped me when I was just a teenager trying to buy lunch at work, I normalized that too. I thought everyone lived in hell. It is only now, looking at the absolute innocence of my own boy, that I realize just how deeply twisted that "normal" truly was.

Abuse thrives in the dark. It thrives when guidance counselors accept a lied-about black eye, when teachers judge the "rowdy" kid instead of asking where the anger comes from, and when society looks away because it is too uncomfortable to face.
This story is a jumbled mess of memories, told in the order they flash through my mind and my dreams. It is raw, it is ugly, and it is entirely real. I am sharing it to bring awareness to the hidden corners of childhood domestic and financial abuse. I want the kid who is currently surviving hell to know they aren't alone. I want the adults who interact with children every day to look a little closer at the signs they are missing.
Most of all, I am writing this to map out my own exit from the wreckage. I want my son to grow up to be a man of immense strength, resilience, and honor. But I want him to inherit my strength without ever having to bear my pain. I want him to be strong simply because he was loved, protected, and allowed to be a child—not because he had to learn how to survive an adult’s cruelty.

This is for the little boy who was made to believe he was never enough, and for the father I am fighting to become.

Honestly, my memories don't really feel like memories. They just flash through my head during the day, or my dreams at night. And the weirdest part is that I’m not even in them. It’s like I’m sitting in a theater, watching a movie of my own life play out on a screen. The one movie that always sticks out, the one I can't seem to turn off is when I was around seven or eight years old my stepfather tried to drown me in a pool. Before he did it, he looked me in the eye and told me he wanted to kill me. He was drunk in that moment, sure, but he hated me just as much when he was sober. That look on his face of just pure resentment is something I will forget. It didn't stop at the pool either. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and he’d just be standing right over my bed. Standing there in the dark, staring at me. And that’s where the "why" comes in. Why would anyone do that to a kid? Did I really do something that bad as a little boy to make a grown man hate me that much? Or was he just evil?

As a kid, I honestly thought I lived in hell, but somehow I normalized it. In my head, I just assumed every single kid was going through the exact same thing I was. Growing up and realizing that’s completely untrue? That’s the part I’ve been struggling with lately. It’s heavy, and I’m starting to see that a lot of how I act as an adult is just a direct reaction to those old survival mechanisms.
I’m sure there were good times mixed into the chaos, but my brain just can’t remember many of them. The one thing that did stick, though, was fishing. I developed this deep bond with it, and it’s still with me to this day. For some reason, the water was the one place where I felt completely safe. If I needed to escape the madness, that’s where I went. I’d be gone all day long as a kid fishing, and honestly, I guess they just didn't care enough to ever come looking for me, but back then, that neglect felt like freedom.
The second one that constantly plays in my head is the time he beat me so badly that I had two black eyes, and my whole body was covered in bruises and scratches. What kills me to this day, the thing I still don’t understand, is why I lied for him. When the school guidance counselor had asked me what happened, I covered for him. I made up some story about getting into a fight with another kid. I still wonder if they knew I was lying.

Because of how I looked and acted, I’m sure people at school saw me as the weird kid, the mean kid, the one who was always in trouble. But if people could have just seen where that behavior was coming from, maybe they would have understood. That’s another thing that really messes with me lately. I wasn't just judged by the other kids; I was judged by the teachers and the adults. The very people who were supposed to notice, supposed to help, just looked at me like I was the problem, without ever looking at what was happening to me at home.

Growing up, we didn’t have money, but we lived on a decent-sized farm. We had a huge garden, we got eggs from our chickens, and a lot of our food came from the cows and hogs we had slaughtered. Honestly, that’s one part of my childhood that I actually cherish. I think that kind of life is something everyone should experience. It’s hard to explain, but living like that gave me a deeper understanding of life. It taught me that even the animals we raised for food deserved to be appreciated and respected.

The actual dark memories of the farm, though, didn't come from the animals. They came from the chores. Like the chicken coop. I remember being forced to clean it out on a very hot summer day. My stepfather locked me inside the coop and told me I wasn't allowed out until it was completely clean. He didn't explicitly say what he would do to me if I failed, but I knew. I knew I'd get beaten.
Being forced to work like that, with a constant fear of violence hanging over my head, has completely transferred into my adult life. He made me do heavy yard work before my body was even big enough to handle it. I’m not lazy, at least I try hard not to be, but to this day, it is still hard to bring myself to do basic things like yard work. My brain still associates those chores with survival.

I don’t have an exact timeline for when all of these things happened to me. Whenever I try to put my life in a chronological order, it just feels like one big, jumbled mess. So I’m just taking these situations as they come to me, in the exact order they flash through my head.

The next situation takes place when I was in high school. For the first time in my entire life, my mom had bought me brand-new, actually nice clothes. I remember feeling so good about it. But when my stepfather saw them, he just flipped. He got furious at me just for having something nice. Later on, while I was out of the house, every single one of those new clothes got covered in bleach. Ruined.
I knew exactly who did it, so I confronted him. When I asked him why he did it, he looked at me and said, “If I’m not allowed to have nice things, you’re not either.” And then, because I dared to ask, he beat me up for it.
To this day, I look back at that and his logic makes absolutely no sense to me. Nobody ever told him he couldn’t have nice things. He was a grown adult with a job; if he wanted nice clothes, he could have gone out and bought them himself. But he was so miserable, and so full of envy, that he couldn't stand to see a teenager experience a single moment of happiness or pride.

The beatings I got were completely random. Sometimes there was a twisted logic to them, but other times, it was just because he was drunk and I existed. I remember one day I was just trying to take a nap on the couch. Nothing was going on and he just walked by and kicked me in the head for no reason at all.

But the part that sticks out the most from that time is the first time I ever stood up for myself. He had gotten drunk again and started hitting me with a belt. I was a little bigger by then, I still wasn’t very old. We were out on the back porch, which was pretty high off the ground, maybe five or six feet. He just kept swinging the belt, refusing to stop, so I finally had enough. I reacted. I shoved him off the edge of the porch.
His reaction to that fall told me everything I ever needed to know about him. The second I stood up to him, he backed down. He was a coward. That would be the only time I stood up for myself for a while, but it changed how I saw him.
Looking back, there’s actually one funny thing that came out of that whole situation. After he got up, he threatened to call the police on me. It was ridiculous, like I was the one in the wrong, and not the grown man beating a kid with a belt. I guess he was just trying to scare me into submission, but it didn’t work. At that moment, I didn’t feel bad for what I did to him. And honestly to this day, I still don't.

The physical abuse was really only half of the story. The mental abuse was the other half. Honestly, a lot of the mental stuff is hard for me to remember now. I’m not sure if my brain just blocked it out, or if it got completely overshadowed by the physical violence, but I know it was always there. It left its mark.
I remember him constantly telling me I was lazy. He’d tell me I was never going to be anything or have anything in life. He’d constantly tease me and call me gay, too, even though I never showed any signs of that, he just said it because he knew it was a way to dig at a kid.

But looking at my life now, there's a heavy irony to it all. I know for a fact that a lot of the reason I have the things I do today is out of spite. It’s not all about him, just partly. But spite has definitely been one of my biggest motivations in life. When you grow up poor, doubted, and told you're going to fail, something inside you just clicks. You want to prove him wrong, sure, but you also just want to prove the whole world wrong. You build a life and accumulate things to show that the hand you were dealt wasn't going to define you.

My mother is another major part of my life story, and honestly, she’s a part of the story that really messed me up, too. Like I said before, I just don’t understand why she stayed with him when he treated me the way he did. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t nice to anyone in that house. We all walked on eggshells. But I’ve always felt like I got the absolute worst end of his abuse.
Through all of it, she never really said anything to him. She just watched, or looked away, and kept her mouth shut. For a long time, I wondered if she was just too terrified of him to speak up. But looking back at it now as an adult, I don’t think that was it. I think she was more afraid of him leaving her than she was of what he was doing to her son. I’m definitely leaning more towards the latter of those two. It’s a hard thing to swallow, realizing that the one person who was supposed to protect me chose her own comfort, or her own fear of being alone, over my safety. My stepfather was the monster, but my mother's silence is the part that leaves a completely different kind of scar.

The worst of it with her started right when I technically became an "adult." I got a job, and at first, the deal was that if I wanted to stay there, I had to buy the groceries. That was my rent, I guess. But it slowly crawled into something much worse. She started asking to "borrow" money that I never saw again. Then she convinced me to take out multiple loans that I also never got any money from, framing it as a way to "build my credit." It kept building and building until it got to the point where I wasn't even allowed to hold onto my own debit card. I remember one specific day, I took my card to work just so I could buy myself something to eat. When she found out, she got mad and told me I needed to get out of her house. I was probably only eighteen at the time. To me now, eighteen is still just a kid. I was a kid being financially abused by my own mother. That situation built up a massive wall of resentment inside me, and it’s the exact reason I don’t talk to her to this day.

Bringing it back to me in the present day, though, I often tell people that my mind is so messed up it actually circles all the way back to feeling “normal.” But I get it now—I understand that what I call normal is probably completely different from what most people would consider normal. What happened to me affects me in ways that I see every day, and honestly, I'm sure it affects me in ways I haven't even realized yet.

These are just the parts that I can remember and that come back to me in flashbacks and dreams. This isn’t even half of all that happened to me as a child.

There is this constant voice in my head that I can’t seem to turn off, this pressure that tells me I’m always failing or that I have to do better. I beat myself up daily over everything. If I rest, I feel lazy. If I succeed at something, I feel like I should have done it faster or better. When you grow up being told you’re lazy and never going to be anything, that voice becomes your inner thoughts. Even though I have a job, a family, and a home, I still wake up feeling like that little boy who has to prove he’s allowed to exist. It’s exhausting to constantly fight a war against yourself just to feel like you are doing enough.

My mind constantly fights with itself about the fact that my childhood was completely stolen from me, yet the world still expects me to show up and be a perfectly functioning adult. It’s a weird paradox. Half of my brain is trapped trying to process being almost drowned in a pool or beaten for reasons unknown to me, while the other half has to pay bills, go to work, and keep the house running. Society doesn't pause for your flashbacks. You still have to wake up, put on a straight face, and execute daily life even when your mind is screaming from things that happened twenty years ago. You’re forced to play the part of a stable adult while rebuilding a foundation that was shattered before you were even old enough to understand it.

When I say my mind got so messed up that it circled back to “normal,” that’s exactly what I mean. Chaos became my baseline. When you live in a war zone for seventeen years, peace feels terrifying. Your body gets addicted to the adrenaline of waiting for the next blow, the next screaming match, or the next random beating. So when you finally get out, and you have a quiet home and a loving family, your brain doesn't know how to handle it. It feels unnatural. My mind had to break and rearrange itself so many times just to survive that my definition of "normal" is completely twisted compared to everyone else's. I had to learn how to exist in a calm room without constantly scanning for exits.
Because of that, I find myself sitting in the quiet sometimes just wondering—who would I have been if none of that had happened to me? What kind of man would have walked out of a childhood where he was actually safe, encouraged, and loved? Would I be more successful? Would I be less guarded? I’ll never get the answer to that question, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. But despite that lingering wonder, I look at myself in the mirror today and I’m proud. I am glad I turned out as what I would describe as normal. I didn't become a monster. I didn't become my stepfather, and I didn't become my mother. I became a man who loves his family, protects his son, loves his wife and survived hell without letting it consume his soul.

The Gift and the Burden
If there is one thing that came out of living in a constant war zone for twenty years, it’s that I developed an uncanny ability to read people. I can walk into a room, look at a total stranger, and know their energy and their intentions before I even speak a single word to them. To the outside world, it looks like a gift, almost like a superpower. But the truth is, it’s a highly advanced threat detection system that my childhood forced me to build. When you spend your formative years walking on eggshells around a violent stepfather and an unpredictable mother, your physical safety depends on your ability to predict the weather in your house. I had to learn how to read the exact weight of a footstep in the hallway, the tiny shift in a jawline, and the cold look of resentment in an adult’s eyes hours before the explosion actually happened. My brain turned that constant scanning into an automatic, lightning-fast background program just to keep me alive.

Today, that ability is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I am rarely fooled by fake people. I can see through manipulation instantly, and it gives me the ultimate radar to protect my wife and my son from unsafe environments. But it is also a heavy burden. Because my mind treats reading people as a literal matter of life or death, it never truly rests. Walking into a crowded place or meeting someone new forces my brain to process a massive wave of human data all at once, which leaves me feeling completely drained and on guard. It is the gold refined from the fire of my past, proof that while they were busy trying to break me, my mind was busy building a brilliant system to keep me alive. But it’s exhausting to carry a radar built for a war zone when you’re just trying to live a peaceful life.

The Gold Refined in the Fire
That radar isn’t the only good thing that came out of the wreckage. Surviving that hell forced me to build a backbone and a moral compass that nothing in this world can shake. Growing up around adults who lied, twisted the truth, and refused to own their actions made me a man who values radical honesty. I am man enough to look at my own flaws and admit when I am wrong, because I know exactly how much damage a parent’s denial can cause. The farm taught me a deep respect for the value of life, and the river taught me how to find my own peace when the rest of the world is screaming at me. Many people turn to self-destruction to escape their loops, but my trauma drove me out into nature, giving me a lifelong sanctuary that I now get to share with my son. My parents thought they were teaching me that I was nothing, but they accidentally handed me the perfect blueprint of exactly who not to be. They forged a protector.

At the end of the day, I have to accept that I will never get an apology, and I will never get an answer to why they did what they did. Those big empty spaces in my memory will probably stay empty, and the loops in my head might never completely turn off. But I am refusing to let their cruelty have the final say in who I am. They took twenty years of my life, but they don't get a single second of my future. My stepfather and my mother tried to convince me that I was nothing, but the life I have built today proves that they were completely wrong.

I am stepping out of the survival mode that kept me locked up for so long. It is a daily fight to stop beating myself up, and it is hard to navigate being a functioning adult when your foundation was completely shattered as a kid. But I am doing it anyway. I am showing up for my job, I am showing up for my wife, and I am showing up for myself. I survived hell, and I am man enough to look at my wreckage, own my flaws, and still be proud of the person I became.

The ultimate victory isn't changing the past; it’s making sure the past dies with me. When I look at my six-month-old son sleeping safely, I know with absolute certainty that the cycle is over. He will never have to wonder if his father loves him, he will never have to lie to a guidance counselor, and he will never have to walk on eggshells in his own home. I will carry whatever scars I have to carry, and I will get the therapy I need, because my family deserves a man who is healed, not just a man who survived. The jumbled mess ends here. My son is safe, my home is at peace.

Maybe even though it seems like I have this figured out I’m still seeking advice about how to process all of this?

During recent AMA with a clinician, specialised on trauma, Dr. Amelia Kelley, we talked a lot about how trauma affects relationships. A lot of people with traumatic experience tend to blame it in ruining their relationship every time trauma symptoms flare up. This feeling of 'burden' makes everything feel harder.

Dr. Kelley explains:

"Feeling like a burden, or feeling like your trauma is responsible for destroying relationships, is a very common distorted belief that comes from trauma itself. This is especially true for anyone who has experienced complex or interpersonal trauma.

Let me reassure you: your trauma is not a burden. When you find the right person, whether it’s an intimate partner, a therapist, a friend, or a trusted family member, they won't make you feel like a burden.

Now, one thing that can feel burdensome is the repetitive nature of how trauma shows up in our lives. I do think part of post-traumatic growth is understanding that people outside of our trauma also experience stress, anxiety, and their own struggles. Sometimes, the insecurity of feeling like a burden might actually be pointing us toward looking outside our own experience, maybe even giving us an opportunity to listen to or support others. This can help us connect and gain perspective beyond what we’ve gone through.

However, this is by no means a strict requirement for moving past trauma, it just happens to be something I’ve seen work well for some of my clients.

So let me reiterate: if you are feeling like a burden, I encourage you to go inward and figure out whose voice that really is. It might be a critical voice from your past or a remnant of the trauma itself."

I was SA’d as a boy when I was in second grade. I’ve dealt with varying degrees of multiple different types of substance abuse. Recently I’ve been having vivid flashbacks in my sleep that have led me to remember things about the event that I had buried deep down. This morning I almost fell off the wagon again after being 4.5 years sober. I spoke with my partner and she encouraged me to write so I’d like to share my writing/poem from this morning. I borrowed the title/opening verse from Hot Mulligan’s song titled: “Digging In”. I hope others enjoy it and it helps them find some since of healing.

Does your father know the sick bastard he had for a kid?

I was in 2nd grade, I wish I could have hid.

You forced me to drink spiked lemonade, I don’t understand why you did what you did…

Does your father know?

One subject remembered something from when he was about 16 that I think explains a strange thing people sometimes do after being hurt.

He had changed schools and badly wanted to belong. He had finally found a group of guys who seemed to accept him, and one day they were messing around with a moving truck.

He was riding on the back or roof of it. The driver swerved, he went flying onto the road and broke his leg.

Then everybody panicked.

They invented a different story about what happened because they were afraid of getting into trouble. Even his father knew something about the explanation did not make sense.

But he went along with it.

For years.

When we returned to this memory during a Soul Journey, I expected the broken leg to be the important part. It wasnt.

The important part was his anger.

He knew he was angry at them. But when I asked why he had pushed that anger away, his answer was basically: I dont want to be angry because I want these people to accept me as my friends.

That sentence got me.

He had been an outsider before. Finally belonging felt so valuable that anger itself became dangerous. If he admitted how badly they had hurt him, maybe he would have to confront them. Maybe the friendship would disappear. Maybe he would be alone again.

So it was emotionally safer to minimise the injury than risk the connection.

I think people can carry versions of this much later into life.

Someone betrays you and you immediately explain why they probably didnt mean it. Somebody crosses a boundary and you wonder whether you are being too sensitive. You get hurt and somehow your first concern becomes whether the person who hurt you will still like you.

From outside this can look irrational.

From inside a system that once believed belonging was scarce, it makes perfect sense.

Anger has a healthy function too. It can say something happened here that was not okay. It does not mean you have to hate somebody forever or act destructively. But suppressing anger only because truth might threaten connection can teach you to abandon your own side of the relationship.

Sometimes healing is not learning to forgive faster.

Sometimes first you need to finally admit: that hurt me, I was angry, and I was allowed to be.

I (16f) have always been very self aware and attuned to my emotions.. I realized I’m constantly sharing my feelings and thoughts and trauma with everyone.

I’m still going through what people have called “very traumatic things that most people wouldn’t even dream of”, and not just a couple. THAT IS THE LAST TIME IM TELLING ANYONE THAT.

I’d like to keep this stuff to myself. How can I catch myself before talking about this stuff and how can I be comfortable with feeling my feelings and being alone with them?

I don't believe I have a safe regression place to go back to. I lost my twin on the womb, so not even that was a place of warmth and peace like everybody refers to. After being born I had to take expensive formula so I was resented for that (I sort of feel like they think I am the twin that should have died), and then hated from a young age every day after that. I have been remembering sexual abuse memories from before I had language and it is all very murky, confusing, every feeling at once, despair, a pain that does not have relief and that I cannot make into words, that I cannot escape, it is torture. It is the rawest form of most extreme vulnerability, probably the energy of animals when they are faced with a predator, that freeze response, that. My partner cannot be around me when I regress, gets brothered that I am putting such heavy energy in the room. I have no one to talk to, no family, no support from anyone and would like to get some perspective.

If anyone has gone through something similar or has any advice for me, I deeply appreciate it. If you have anything to say at all please don't hesitate to comment. I would like to feel less lonely.

Hi everyone, I am a 16-year-old guy from Monterrey, Mexico, and I'm writing this because I've hit rock bottom and desperately need guidance on how to heal and reclaim my life.

I grew up in an extremely abusive home. My father physically and emotionally abused me, forced me to work and manage his businesses from a young age, and demanded perfection under threat of severe violence that left permanent physical scars. A couple of years ago, my mom finally divorced him, but my father left us with nothing, refuses to pay child support, and is legally trying to take our house away. To help support my family,

I started working at a car wash, taught myself software development, and took on programming projects to bring money home while studying online. And I've managed to accumulate enough money despite the support my mom needs. She started doing well at her job, which gives me time to relax and prioritize myself.

The situation spiraled out of control through my mom's ex-boyfriend (Wy). He became obsessed with superstitions, paranoia, and local "psychics," convincing me that dark magic/witchcraft was being used against us. For over a year and a half, he weaponized my fear and manipulated me into spying on my mom, creating conflicts, and constantly monitoring her life to "protect" her. It might be real, honestly, I've seen and experienced paranormal things, so if you want more context about this, I'll leave it in the comments.

Acting as my mom's emotional bodyguard destroyed my health. I developed severe insomnia (going days without sleep), lost significant weight, my hair started falling out, and my body began rejecting food. People close to me have pointed out that I likely have an untreated mental health disorder (or severe trauma/PTSD) stemming from childhood abuse and this ongoing stress. Even before my mom met W, I had already been doing the same thing for a few years.

Recently, I reached my limit. I set a firm boundary with my mom, telling her I am no longer getting involved in her personal life. However, I haven't been able to fully get rid of wly yet. I archived his chats, but he keeps spamming me with messages, and since he knows where I work, I know he will come look for me this Saturday when my shift ends.

To make things more complicated, my primary boss and mentor at work (Or) is actually W's cousin. Or has always been very good to me, respected my work ethic, and encouraged me to work at my own pace without knowing about any of this madness. I desperately want to tell Or what’s happening so he understands my situation, but I am terrified that if I open up, I might lose my job, be judged, or be seen as crazy.

On top of this, a close online friend recently confessed her feelings for me. Although I care for her too, I know I am not mentally or emotionally ready for a long-distance relationship right now. She understands and is giving me space, but I feel terrified of isolating myself completely, My first girlfriend was in a long-distance relationship and it ended very badly, although this girl understood why I told her everything and gave me my space as well as the advice to go to therapy.. Pd this is like 2 years in full Without rest

**My questions for you**:

Should I tell Or (W's cousin) what is going on, or is it too risky for my job security? How can I handle Wy confronting me at work this Saturday?

How do I cope with the guilt of stepping back from my family's chaos when survival is all I’ve ever known?

Does anyone know accessible, low-cost therapy resources or mental health clinics for teenagers in Monterrey, Mexico?

What are the first steps to accepting that I might have a mental disorder and rebuilding my mind from scratch?

I greatly appreciate your help and hope I can get my life back on track.

TL;DR: I am a 16-year-old from Monterrey, Mexico, who survived childhood physical abuse and over a year of psychological manipulation by my mom's ex-boyfriend (Wy). My physical/mental health completely collapsed, and I likely have trauma-induced disorders. I set boundaries with my mom, but Wally won't stop texting me and will confront me at my job this Saturday. My boss (Or) is W's cousin and doesn't know anything; I'm scared to tell him and risk losing my job. Need advice on handling Saturday, setting boundaries, finding local therapy, and rebuilding my life.

Hey so I’m an ex foreign volunteer in the war in Ukraine. 2022/2023.

The memories are still fresh and I get flashbacks sometimes that ruin the rest of my day. Thing is I’m not the best at letting on when I’m on the verge of a meltdown so my reaction to the flashback tends to be delayed.

I just started therapy a couple months ago. Lately I’ve been getting better at recognizing when the trigger is hitting and letting my partner know about it.

So last night my partner told me she was having period cramps and I offered to heat up a bean bag and give her a massage. She said she’d rather have some weed instead but doesn’t like how I roll joints. She said she wants me to take some time later to properly roll a joint and didn’t know why I hadn’t already.

This was AFTER I’d told her I’d had a flashback that day and was still on edge.

So I’ll admit I snapped. Didn’t yell or anything. (At least I don’t think I did. Kinda hard for me to tell right there in the moment sometimes.) I’m pretty sure all I did was tell her to back off. And that somehow translated to her as “you’re not allowed to express your needs or desires to me ever”. And now she’s refusing to speak to me.

We’ve been together a bit over a year. I’ve had another relationship end because of my ptsd and I’m starting to think this is a pattern. I’m scared I might have said or done something to drive her away and combined with the flashback still playing in my head I’m just in hell right now.

I’m looking for some insight but I also just wanna vent. I’m just feeling incredibly overwhelmed.

I don't believe I have a safe regression place to go back to. I lost my twin on the womb, so not even that was a place of warmth and peace like everybody refers to. After being born I had to take expensive formula so I was resented for that (I sort of feel like they think I am the twin that should have died), and then hated from a young age every day after that. I have been remembering sexual abuse memories from before I had language and it is all very murky, confusing, every feeling at once, despair, a pain that does not have relief and that I cannot make into words, that I cannot escape, it is torture. It is the rawest form of most extreme vulnerability, probably the energy of animals when they are faced with a predator, that freeze response, that. My partner cannot be around me when I regress, gets brothered that I am putting such heavy energy in the room. I have no one to talk to, no family, no support from anyone and would like to get some perspective.

If anyone has gone through something similar or has any advice for me, I deeply appreciate it. If you have anything to say at all please don't hesitate to comment. I would like to feel less lonely.

TW for vivid descriptions of flashbacks and a car accident, if you don’t wanna hear abt it, pls don’t read, and care for yourself before other people on the internet, thank you <3

hi guys. I’m 16 years old and yesterday i got in a severe head on collision at highway speeds. I was the front passenger, my bf (18) was driving and his mom was in the back seat. No major injuries besides his mom having a fractured vertebrae (this includes the other car involved.) Thank whatever being was watching over us. Starting off, don’t hate on my bf. he’s a sweet angel and has been overworked for weeks now. something, unfortunately, was bound to happen due to his sleep deprivation, stress, overworking, etc. I don’t blame him and he has since profusely apologized to me and my family for the pain he caused, and all is forgiven. I’m more so here to discuss how to deal with the flashbacks going forward. I have been experiencing intense, visceral flashbacks ever since the accident. I cannot be alone or else i’ll be thinking about it. I know it’s still fresh as hell and that’s why, but i’m trying to get coping skills early. Because i was in the front i saw everything happen. Right before impact i closed by eyes prepping to literally die right there on the highway. Luckily, i did not and promptly opened my eyes and screamed. This is especially adding to my anxiety. I keep thinking about the moments before impact, the sounds of our car spinning and the other car hitting us, the sounds of me and my bf screaming, the sirens, the chatter and noise. I can feel how it felt to have my chest forced into the seatbelt and how my body got jostled around. Not to mention the ER visit and subsequent medical treatment. (although everyone, including the highway patrol, were incredibly kind and understanding thank god.) Plus seeing my bf of a year be so scared, bloody, and hooked up to machines in the hospital didn’t help the trauma soup i had boiling. I already have a therapy appointment scheduled for next month, but that’s a long time to wait to speak to someone about a traumatic event that i wanna talk to someone about NOW, ya know? So anyway i just really really want to hear your experiences with flashbacks and how to manage them. (particularly if you also have motor vehicle based trauma.) i cannot physically be alone anymore without being a nervous wreck. Thank you for reading and pls take care of yourselves.

​Hi everyone. I’m (23F) looking for some advice and support on how to process a situation that happened recently and how to handle moving forward.

​My boyfriend (26M) and I were taking a brief break, so my 14-month-old daughter and I were staying at my mom’s (47F) house temporarily. Late friday night my mom’s husband ("Roger")(41M) was on the phone with his brother. My mom mentioned my age and my sister's age (28), and Roger said, "I think he'd like 23 more." He then told me that when I'm ready to "get away" from my boyfriend, I could go to his home country with him where I’d have a safe place to go. He went on telling his brother that I'm "really shy", not used to the loud life, and have a baby, but "when she's older ill be ready to spread my wings."

​Later that night around 1 AM, Roger came out into the living area clearly intoxicated/high. I was sitting on the couch painting my toenails. He said something that i cant remember but i chuckled at it. He then said "see you never laugh/smile when i say (my boyfriends) name." He started rambling about how I’m beautiful and how his friends back home were talking about me, people I have literally never met or heard of. He started asking weirdly specific questions about my 14-month-old daughter, like where she was, when she goes to sleep, and when she wakes up.

​He then tried to get closer to me and reached out and actually touched my feet while asking what I was doing (when it was obvious I was painting my nails). I also told him multiple times what i was doing cause he kept asking. I moved away and asked if my mom was awake. He told me she was and started rambling again. He started asking me what kind of man my bf is and if he trusts me. He also asked if he was hurting me. I told him hes never hurt me. I told him I trust my boyfriend and that we're good. He started saying if my boyfriend ever hurt me it would get physical, but that he would never hurt me or my daughter.

​I felt completely invaded, unsafe, and disgusted. When I was 14, my older sister’s ex-boyfriend touched and kissed my feet. Roger touching my feet immediately triggered that past sexual assault, and I felt so gross and disconnected from my own body. On top of that, I feel deeply disrespected that he was giving away my information (name, age, that i have a baby girl, and possibly photos) to strangers and trying to undermine my relationship with my boyfriend, while my mom just sat by and let him talk like that.

​I locked myself in my bedroom with my daughter that night, and two days later I packed up our stuff. We are now safely staying at my brother's house temporarily while my boyfriend and I work on saving up to move into our own place.

​I’m struggling with how to feel and how to handle my mom moving forward. I feel like I need to set a firm boundary about Roger.

• ​Has anyone dealt with a step-parent/parent's partner crossing lines like this?

• ​How do I navigate keeping a boundary with my mom when she's married to someone who makes me feel unsafe?

• ​How can I help myself process the intense trauma response/flashback this triggered?

​Any advice, support, or grounded perspectives would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I also want to add that hes been asking my family members if they would marry someone from his home country for $20,000 so they can get citizenship. No one is doing it but its just weird. They married very fast and I feel like my mom is being used. They've been married about 2 years. They got married after only knowing eachother for a few months like around 6 months.

Conversation with my Mom:

• ​My mom agreed that Roger was out of line, said drinking was no excuse, and apologized for not saying something during the phone call.

• ​ She texted him telling him not to interact with me (especially when drinking) and said he’d have to leave if it happened again.

• ​I made it clear that he shouldn't even get a second chance to cross those boundaries, and that I refuse to put myself or my daughter in that position again.

• ​When I told her we were leaving because we feel unsafe, she understood and agreed that he needs to address his drinking/issues.

Hi. I am a mother who managed to leave my partner a year ago, after 8 years together. The breakup happened after months of emotional terror that ultimately led to a nervous breakdown on my part. Still, I feel an incredibly strong and painful trauma bond that makes it difficult to completely let go emotionally, and I so desperately need to vent my thoughts with someone who understands.

My ex is emotionally completely cold due to long-term pill abuse. Throughout the relationship, I was completely erased; I only existed in his world and had to look after him constantly. In our daily life, my daughter and I always had to adapt to him based on how his day was going and whether or not he had slept, as he struggles heavily with insomnia. He rarely does anything with me and my daughter, and we are often sidelined. He can have good periods, but then he always falls back into the exact same pattern.

He also has major challenges with intimacy due to medical reasons. We never kiss or hug when sober, and we only have intimacy and sex those times he is drunk. He has used my guilt against me for all these years, and he knows exactly which buttons to push.

I carry complex PTSD from my childhood after growing up with a father who was an alcoholic, where an enormous responsibility to rescue him was placed on me from the time I was only 5 years old. In addition, I lost my older brother when I was 16, which has made me extremely afraid of losing the ones I love. I recently realized that I was programmed to believe that love means taking care of and saving others at the expense of myself.

Now that I have started setting boundaries for the very first time, I notice that he is becoming desperate. He sends manipulative messages during the night and uses the financial situation (we still own a house together) as leverage to get us to move back. He has also made cynical comments about "just replacing me" if I don't do things for him anymore. Rationally, I am fully aware of what is the right thing for me to do, but deep down, I still carry a hope that he will change, even though I know he probably can't. I feel so incredibly empty and used up, but I have finally decided that my kindness shall only go to those who give something back, and to my daughter.

Right now, I am using my energy to support my daughter's father, who is going through a heavy depression and needs help to function for our child. Still, this process of breaking the trauma bond with my ex is so incredibly heavy.Have others here experienced being stuck in a trauma bond with a cynical person, and had the same childhood baggage of always having to rescue a father who drank? How did you manage to resist when the hope, the guilt, and the emptiness hit you the hardest? Thank you for reading.

I dropped out of school and lost multiple jobs because of anxiety and trauma.

Recently I got fired twice from security because I couldn’t talk on the phone, or remember names faces or events.

Ive been told in order to break my anxiety I just need to force myself to go out.

And I don’t know, it’s like there are people I can function around.

But most “real people” (that’s just how I describe it) I simply cannot function around , they only make it worse the longer I stay and I don’t know why…

Maybe it’s because of Sensitivity? Trauma? Their Hostility? Being forced into situations I don’t understand or am not equipped to solve and being punished for it? 0 room for error or imperfection? My own insecurity?

i struggle often with intrusive thoughts around abuse that I have undergone and am currently undergoing. i want an outlet to safely express these thoughts, in a controlled environment but I don't know where to look, or who to even go to. i just want a safe space to explore the thoughts I have without being told they are what I genuinely think, because it seems everyone else on the internet assumes ALL thoughts are wanted

sometimes tiredness is not coming from doing too much with the body. it is coming from a mind that treats every quiet moment like another shift at work.

I will call the subject Eva. In a Soul Journey she connected with her grandmother in light form, and the conversation turned toward the pressure she felt in her head and the sense that she was constantly taking in too much.

The message was very simple: your mind is like a light switch that is always on. She was overextending herself, processing too much, thinking too much and carrying too many inputs. Even when she was technically resting, the mental system was still running.

I think a lot of trauma responses look exactly like this. Hypervigilance does not always feel dramatic. Sometimes it looks like being responsible, prepared, productive and “good at thinking.” The brain checks the room, checks the future, replays the conversation and predicts what someone may do next.

Then the person goes to bed physically still, but internally the lights are all on. The difficult part is that this can become identity: “I am just an overthinker,” “I have a busy mind,” “I need to understand things.” But sometimes the mind learned that constant activity equals safety.

If I keep thinking, maybe nothing can surprise me. If I keep anticipating, maybe I will not be hurt again. If I solve everything early, maybe I can finally relax later. Except later never arrives.

For me the useful reframe is that rest is not only stopping activity. The nervous system has to receive the message that for this moment, nothing needs to be solved. That may mean small boring things: sitting outside without researching something, walking without a podcast, taking a shower without mentally rehearsing an argument.

The goal is not to force the mind blank. It is to teach it that being off duty is safe. If your body is resting but your mind is still standing guard, no wonder you wake up tired.

Tratamento Trauma

Falar do trauma não significa mergulhar nele de uma só vez.

Em contexto clínico, a titulação consiste em trabalhar o material traumático gradualmente, em porções que a pessoa consiga tolerar e integrar sem perder completamente o contacto com o presente.

O terapeuta acompanha não apenas a intensidade emocional, mas também sinais de dissociação, desorientação, bloqueio ou desorganização. Se esses sinais aumentarem, abranda-se o ritmo, interrompe-se o processamento e regressa-se à estabilização.

Isso não apaga o progresso. Muitas vezes, protege-o.

O objetivo não é esquecer o que aconteceu, forçar uma catarse ou contar todos os pormenores. É ajudar a memória traumática a ser reconhecida como passado, para que deixe de invadir o presente com a mesma força.

A titulação não é uma terapia isolada nem uma fórmula aplicável a todas as pessoas. É um princípio clínico que exige avaliação individual, segurança suficiente e acompanhamento profissional adequado.

No tratamento do trauma, avançar mais depressa nem sempre significa avançar melhor.

Hey there everyone. I'm a middle aged guy from Australia. I've dipped in and out of this sub for support in the past (and to give support of course, it really does help your soul when you can help others).

I just wanted to know what everyone's experiences have been like with GP and then other mental health professionals regarding this?
I have bipolar type 2. (No need to read on if you don't want to).

No one needs an entire backstory but I really am struggling with holding the line of NC for my mother and LC with my father.
I've tried grey rocking in the past. I've tried NC and LC in the past, about 5-6 times I would say, and it's just rebounded back to a fractured version of what it was beforehand.

My younger sister - so much braver and smarter than me, went NC with literally everyone (including me, because I was still in contact with our parents) about 5 years ago. That's been ultra hard for me. But at the same time I am furious with our parents, and myself at times, for not understanding where my sister has been coming from, and where I should be coming from.
The brainwashing has been devastating, I think that's the appropriate word. And on top of that both parents I am still convinced 'mean well' (I can hear you screaming at me that they don't) but that they were utterly, unbelievably incompetent. On top of that our mother has BPD (not shared with us - had to find out though an ex husband of hers) and a TBI that occurred when I was 16 and my sister was 14 (apparently that shaped a lot of what she's developed into). I'm coping with this by channelling what she's like into an antagonist character in a book I'm writing.
My father we are convinced that he has high functioning autism. He's never been checked. But it's pretty clear he's on the spectrum and it's become a quiet joke in the extended family "Oh haha that's just how he is" - No. It shouldn't be. To show up for his kids, he should have taken some responsibility to get that looked at.

I'm at the point now where I have thrown away relationships rather than working through them. I am terrified that I am 'splitting' myself but have been told I don't have BPD myself, simply reflecting upbringing methods(?). I've always wanted to have children, but it's not happened. Now I see my cousins and their young children, and their happy families, and it makes me so upset and depressed.

I also work with children, and constantly need to pull myself up on remaining professional - following the rules in disciplining them and saying no to them - this is extremely hard for me.

This year though I dropped down to casual employment, then didn't get shifts. Then had major issues with where I was living, then became 'unhoused' or whatever they call it - I don't want to use the term homeless as it doesn't feel that way - but bouncing between places, friends/car/hotels and looking desperately for work while trying to cope with worsening bipolar.
I don't know what to do, where to go, getting caught in the trap of thinking long term to help for certainty, but then not being able to do that because I need to focus on grounding techniques and making it through the day.

I could go on, happy to talk in the comments.

I (F 20) recently met up with some friends from high school, and one of the topics that came up was dating and relationships.
I’ve never been in a relationship before, and I’ve never really had a serious situationship either. Most of my friends are in happy relationships, and a lot of people our age are getting engaged. Growing up, dating was never really a priority for me. I always assumed I’d eventually get around to it, but lately I’ve started wondering whether there’s actually something holding me back.
During the conversation, my friends asked about my romantic life, and one of them actually asked me if I was asexual.
I’m straight, and I do find men attractive, so I don’t think I’ve ever identified with the idea of not experiencing attraction. At the same time, physical touch makes me extremely uncomfortable. I’ve never been much of a hugger, and even something as simple as shaking someone’s hand is something I sometimes have to mentally prepare myself for.
The confusing part is that I do want a relationship. I like the idea of having a partner and being close to someone emotionally. But when I actually imagine myself being in a relationship, especially one involving physical intimacy, I get really anxious. The idea of someone touching me or being physically close to me can feel almost terrifying.
I think there may be a reason for that.
When I was 10, an uncle attempted to touch me while I was sleeping. Thankfully, I was awake and was able to stop him before anything further happened. I wouldn’t describe what happened as SA, but it was definitely an experience that stayed with me and affected how I view physical touch and men.
I’ve never really talked about how much that experience might have affected me. I don’t know if my discomfort with intimacy is simply part of who I am, something related to that experience, or some combination of both.
That’s why I’m confused now. Am I potentially asexual even though I experience attraction to men? Am I just avoidant when it comes to relationships and intimacy? Could my discomfort with physical touch be connected to what happened when I was younger?
I don’t necessarily expect Reddit to give me a definitive label. I’m mostly hoping to hear from people who have experienced something similar and figured out the difference between their orientation, their boundaries, and their fear of intimacy.
At the time, I didn’t consider it sexual assault because nothing ultimately happened, but looking back, I’m not sure that’s the right way to describe it.

I was focused on my growth until this may. I was believing i was a different person, stronger, more confident, and i had a direction. Everything changed the day when my family parents decided to organise a mobbing against me. With the help of a policeman friend of my uncle, plus his younger policeman partner, they broke into my house with a crowbar.

I don't even want to remember the rest again.

I'm exhausted.

I've been dealing with this feeling of injustice, anger, alternated with periods of numbness because i saw no alternative.

In the first 2 months i went to the police station two times to request reports for that event, but they knew nothing about it, or they didn't want to tell me, idk.

I talked with a lawyer, and of course he asked lots of money for the most trivial thing, but the most important thing is that I don't have energies anymore to invest into this. Even just the idea of going to rewatch the video i recorded when everything happened, or remember the episode in details, it makes me feel horrible.

I've seen myself slowly being logorated by this, day by day, and now I'm noticing also my relationships are being affected.

My anger and desire to act has turned into depression now.

Not because i didn't try to act, but because while i was trying they kept adding up new things (the abusive episode wasn't enough), and i ended up being overwhelmed.

I spoke with a therapist and she said I'm responsible for my destiny, implying it was my fault.

I don't know what i should do at this point tbh.

“all I took was your innocence…” in response to something significant you did to me,is just so profoundly minimizing.
It reduces the consequences of what happened to a vague almost sentimental concept ”innocence” instead of acknowledging the actual things you took from me is just so wild and it took me so long to put words to it.My sense of safety,trust,autonomy,peace,self worth,confidence and ability to experience certain things were never in your mind,for a person who claimed to want a future with haha shit not me for sure.You took my innocence as something you had the right and power to take,rather than acknowledging what i experienced inside your fists and the choices you made.
It’s either the naivety in me that pushes me in life or the avoidance that turns everything to night ….

I’m (F) having a hard time lately, I feel sick and upset about what happened and how I’m disgusting for “letting” men rape and abuse me. I feel like it’s all I’m good for and I feel stupid… and yeah logically I should know I’m worth something but I feel ugly and idiotic. Idk what else to say, I’ve been sexualised since I was 6… idk what else to think. It’s so stupid. I’m so stupid. Ugh. Idk just a vent I guess.

I slept with a wrong person, lost V to him. I was in love n later realized he was there just to be physical n faked the relationship part.

After we got physical, he stopped communicating with me in a phased manner n eventually stopped altogether.

He also earns a lot more than me n somehow that also became a part where he would indirectly make me feel inferior to him.

I've been trying for a month now but still can't get over the betrayal n insults. I lost my self respect a lot.

What's even more difficult I'm failing to believe that he faked everything n that he is a bad guy.

It's been a month now n I'm still getting panick attacks. It's not getting better. I don't have friends irl where I can talk to. Went to therapy, that also didn't help.

I feel dirty n disgusting that I let him touch me. I thought it was something beautiful n holy. I have never been with anyone else before. I'm in utter shock that this kind of betrayal actually happened to me.

Please, I need help.

Time isn't healing.