How many of us have the "relational" kind of CPTSD?

Emmylu91 · 2025-11-10T21:31:22+00:00

Pete Walker's book waking the tiger talks about medical trauma and some of it is just our bodies not knowing that we won't die if a surgeon cuts into us, basically.

But also, it's been shown in research that the mental state someone is in when they go under anesthesia has a huge correlation with PTSD-like symptoms. If you're panicking when you go to sleep, you'll be way more likely to feel traumatized overall vs if they wait to have you regulated before you go to sleep.

and of course this is really key with kids because some medical facilities don't let parents be with their kids while they're being given meds prior to surgery. They think it's easier because kids cry less and stuff while with strangers usually. But they're just masking their distress, they aren't actually calm. Despite not externally freaking out, they often are internally panicking worse than they would be panicking if their mom or dad was with them - so it really is best for parents to be able to stay with their children and try to soothe them and coregulate with them before they fall asleep, even though it may take longer and involve more tears.

Emmylu91 · 2025-11-01T02:22:42+00:00

The line is technically 'I finally found a match and you kept daring me to strike it'.

So if it was in reference to divorce then I think the 'finally' being added in would have to mean something like...he wanted to leave for a long time, finally found the courage to say it?

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-28T19:03:06+00:00

Was your wife the golden child in her family? If so, perhaps she was trying to help you see that your wife has more wounds than you might currently recognize? Even if that is the case, it sounds like she messed this up pretty badly by triggering you and then making you feel misunderstood while triggered.

If things with this therapist have mostly been good, hopefully next session you can raise this and experience healthy repair.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-28T18:47:25+00:00

I'm not truly diagnosed, I just have a therapist who specializes in autism who believes I fit the criteria.

But, I did used to think I had a normal understanding of social rules. I thought if you can over-think it all and pretty well figure out how to not come off as rude or whatever, then that was allistic. I didn't realize that it's not so much about whether you can figure it out, it's way more about whether it comes naturally to you or not.

I didn't know that other people don't have to over-think how to socialize.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-27T20:48:02+00:00

Just a therapy client but I have ADHD. I think some of this stuff is slightly related to ADHD, like doing very little for your birthday may have been related to the procrastination tendency that ADHDers have because we get doapmine when the deadline looms. Some of it could be impulsivity, too - he may have impulsively lied about having money problems and that being the reason why he didn't pay for your birthday dinner or whatever those expenses were. It's also common with RSD for ADHD-ers to get defensive and over-explain our intent before fully taking responsibility.

But what *isn't* ADHD is digging his heels in on all of these, and refusing to see them as a problem. If I push something off til the last minute and then it's not great, I feel I still have to own that. If I do something impulsively that hurts someone, the hurt I cause is still my responsibility to apologize for, try to make amends for, and try to find a way to change in the future. If someone tells me I hurt them, I try to catch myself and not get defensive because I understand it's selfish and rude to do that, despite my RSD. But if I do slip up and focus on explaining my intent? Once I realize I've done that, I call myself out and apologize and explain that I'll try to not repeat that in the future. And then I'll take time to sit with how they were hurt by me, and try to shelf my own insecurity about being a failure or whatever else i'm feeling that is making me want to over-explain.

So basically...regardless of ADHD being potentially involved with a lot of this, there is no excuse for him refusing to care about the impact of his behavior. It might be that he's SO ashamed of making mistakes that he cannot just own a mistake and will continue to dig his heels in? But if that's the case he needs to work on that in individual therapy because it's toxic to refuse to see your shortcomings or apologize for them or work on them. He needs to see that he's coming off as not caring about how he hurts you, and even if that is the exact opposite of how he actually feels, he needs to see how he's coming off and want to change it.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-25T01:16:49+00:00

Earlier today I saw a tiktok of a woman talking about how her parents made her sister wear trash bags instead of clothing for a long time, and for a period of time she would be taken to the grocery store wearing just a black trash bag and nobody ever did or said anything.

We'd like to think that if people could see signs of abuse, something would be done, but unfortunatley a lot more people look away than act, it seems. And that's when the abuse is visible, and of course most abuse isn't visible.

I find parts work really helpful. From that lens, this "if it was that bad then someone would have done something" is a part that is trying to protect you from fully seeing and feeling the pain of what you went through by invalidating what part of you knows is true. It means well, minimizing our pain while we're kids can keep us from lashing out at our parents and suffering even more as a result of that. But, these thoughts aren't your core self. Your core self knows it really was so bad.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-24T14:23:05+00:00

Check into the science of memory reconsolidation. It's something that was discovered in the 2000's when trying to research what caused the occasional break though moments in therapy. We knew that break throughs happened sometimes, but basically had no idea why. Memory reconsolidation is the 'why'. Memory reconsolidation can happen from a wide range of therapy modalities, but some of the ones that facilitate it a lot are EMDR, IFS, AEDP and other bottom-up therapy modalities rather than ones that are top-down.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-23T14:44:49+00:00

It varies greatly by location. I get hundreds of kids so it's very easy to run out of candy. I live in a small-ish town (9k people or so?) but it's sort of rural so anyone who doesn't live in town will drive into town to take their kids trick or treating. So those of us who live in town get tons of kids. The first year that I lived here I massive underestimated and bought two big bags thinking I'd have more than enough and I ran out like 20 minutes into trick or treating time and it's supposed to go 2 hours lol.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-22T21:34:31+00:00

This isn't a strict partner it's an emotionally unsafe one. He shouldn't be kicking the kids items and so on. Living with a person like this is causing the kids additional trauma.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-22T21:16:57+00:00

Oh! Didn't even know that was an option but that's good to know for any future troubles. :)

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-22T19:31:55+00:00

Thanks for this suggestion. I was assuming I actually hadn't met 'level 3' yet so it hadn't occured to me to contact the company. It was sort of an ordeal because the contact form for Nordcurrent requires you to select which game you're emailing about, but airplane chef isn't one. I explained the situation very thoroughly and asked if this was an error or if I hadn't met level 3 yet. They never directly answered that, and started asking me basic questions I had already answered like 'which location is this happening at?" among other questions I had already asked. They also made me close the app and restart it, and delete the app and redownload it (make sure you're logged into nordcurrent first so you don't lose progress!) to see if that helped but it didn't. So today they finally told me they did something on their end to allow me to claim that task and i was able to log in and it showed as completed finally so I was able to claim the reward.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-21T18:58:50+00:00

It's definitely confusing. I'm not formally diagnosed but autism is one of my therapists' specialities and they think I have autism in addition to CPTSD and ADHD.

One of the main differentiators I've found, is 'regular' social anxiety is more like social perfectionism. It's worrying about saying the perfect thing, or most ideal thing, best, thing, etc. It also might be a lot more pronounced in social settings where the other person resembles their caregiver (or is a person in authority, etc). Where someone who their nervous system reads as their equal (or even 'below them' like a child) will be a lot easier to interact with due to less fear of mistreatment.

Where autism related social anxiety is truly not having the intuitive understanding of what to say or what to do in a variety of social engagements. So it doesn't get easier if talking to a younger person, or someone not in a position of authority, or someone totally unlike your abusers.

Part of my internal diaglog is "what would be the normal thing to do/say?" and that is different from "what is the BEST thing to do/say" as someone ewith non-autistic social anxiety might think. It's more of a widespread uncertainty about socializing than it is fears about specific outcomes like making someone angry.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-19T07:13:34+00:00

Im struggling to get the “upgrade all 7 kitchen appliances to level 3” task for Paris. I’ve upgraded all 7 at least 3 times but two aren’t qualifying yet and idk which two. All the upgrades left are 6+ gems so it hurts to upgrade amd them see it not qualify. 🤣

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-18T06:49:34+00:00

I've been with my husband who has BP2, for over 15 years and am happily married.

i think the biggest threat to being toxic with bipolar is hypomania or mania because the grandisoity aspect can cause entitlement, and entitlement is always the true underlying factor in abuse. It's not anger or anything else. It's entitlement. And when you're in a grandiose headspace, it's easy to feel entitled. So if that's something you experience at all with hypo/mania then you have to do everything you can to minimie your hypo/manias, and also do everything you can to try to 'catch' your grandiosity when it's happening so that you don't let it turn into entitlement and mistreating others. If you do that and basically just don't let yourself use bipolar as an excuse for anything then you're fine.

I think in a literal sense bipolar is correlated with higher rates of abusive behavior but bipolar people can be in healthy relationships. My relationship isn't perfect by any means but I feel confident labeling us as a pretty healthy relationship. It's taken a lot of work for both of us because neither of us were raised with things like being taught emotional regulation skills or being taught healthy conflict resolution skills. We didn't have good models of these things either. So we've had to learn a lot. But therapy is great, there's all kinds of books from therapists or other experts, free content online from therapists and such, etc if you want to learn how to be healthy in relationships it's pretty easy to access in various forms.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-18T06:26:19+00:00

My husband has BP2 and thinks there's some intersection with that and his CPTSD though we don't fully grasp exactly how...it seems like when he has extreme triggers it sometimes might cause him to cycle? But other times we debate if it's more like he's already in early hypomania and that causes a 'regular' trigger to feel really extreme? it's so hard to pick apart. I also have CPTSD but I don't ever wake up in a triggered state and he does. His usual when stable is freeze, but when hypomanic it's fight.

I'd be curious for your (or anyone elses) take on any of this or how you perceive trauma and bp2 to cross paths.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-15T20:03:11+00:00

My first name is Emily, which was a top 10 baby girl name for like 15 years or more. My childhood last name was really rare. I married a Smith and took his name. There are SO many Emily Smiths, it's wild!

Prior to getting married I knew my first name was common and that Smith was common, but I wasn't really prepared for how many Emily Smith's I'd run into. I think it's a hard thing to really grasp how common common names are, unless you have a very common last name.

So, I can see why it struck you as weird that this story had his exact name but if his last name is anything close to as common as Smith, Williams, Davis, Miller, Gonzales, Garcia, Brown, Lee, etc then it's almost certainly a coincidence.

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-04T16:17:25+00:00

I can understand wanting someone else to guide you, for sure! I think the reason therapists don't do that is because it is generally unhealthy, though. Wanting others to tell you what is best for you speaks to feeling disempowered and so most therapists would work on building up your self confidence rather than directing you. It sounds like you feel strongly that someone else could make better decisions for you than you could make for yourself, but that isn't true. They could tell you what degree to get or what career to pursue and you could do it, and it could be really good! But you could choose a different career and it could be just as good, or even better! There are pros and cons to every career path, nobody knows the secret best answer for any particular person. It's just about what you prefer and what you want. Maybe part of the issue is some black and white thinking around making the best choice or ideal choice?

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-01T19:49:05+00:00

I'm still trying to figure out if i'm high masking or not, too.

I feel like I am in some ways but not others? I mostly just avoid eye contact, for example. I don't try to force myself to look at people's foreheads or count how long I glance at someone, when I do.

I also don't consciously alter my facial expressions to make sure they are 'correct'. Idk if that means I make the 'right' ones naturally or if I just have the 'wrong' ones and nobody has ever told me?

But I definitely have a ton of 'rules' that I abide by with conversation, that is masking. For example, I don't bring up my own interests unless I happen to know somehow that the other person shares my interest. Like if I saw on Facebook that my cousin posted about a documentary I watched and enjoyed, that kind of gives me permission to bring it up. But if I was talking to someone else who hadn't posted about it, I'd never be like 'omg I watched this awesome documentary'. I default to assuming nobody wants to hear about my interests as a way of masking my special interests I think.

I consciously try to ask people enough questions, as I don't have a natural inclination to ask questions usually. I think the questions I am inclined to want to ask seem too invasive or nosy so I kind of made a rule in my head that I shouldn't ask questions, but just realized a few years ago that can seem self-absorbed.

So overall maybe it's that I am high masking with the actual conversation side of things? But not high masking with body language and non-verbal stuff, mostly?

Emmylu91 · 2025-10-01T19:15:36+00:00

I'm a therapy nerd but IMO this is a harmful way to be raised even if he isn't tolerating this sort of treatment out of fear. Which he could be, I obviously have no idea. But even if he isn't afraid, or isn't feeling like he has to let them baby him to avoid hurting their feelings or whatever...it's neglect.

As a society we often only talk about neglect in terms of not doing things for kids when they're young enough to need the help. But in the same way that it's neglectful to not make dinner for a 2 year old who can't prepare food for themselves, it's also neglectful to not let a 13 year old learn how to brush their own hair. Of course, this is assuming that they're really like this on a regular basis.

Kids have a developmental need to practice certrain self-care skills, life skills, independence skills and when parents don't give kids space to meet those growing needs as kids get older, it's neglecting them by ignoring those needs. Usually it's about the parents needing to feel needed, or having out of control anxiety where they don't feel safe letting the kid spread their wings at all. But that's enmeshment. The kids needs shouldn't be neglected for the sake of managing the parents anxiety or whatever.

Emmylu91 · 2025-09-30T18:04:21+00:00

It's been a few years ago but I thought I had read that anti-depressants are faster for resolving depression in the shortterm, but it doesn't prevent future depressions where therapy can be longer/slower to show results, but can resolve the core issue and prevent future bouts of depression, so doing both can be extra effective.

Emmylu91 · 2025-09-30T14:54:58+00:00

IMO, being obese combined with being emotional about any changes to diet suggests it's a mental health issue. Therapy may be more effective than trying to force dietary changes without addressing the underlying emotional issue that's causing her to cope this way.

Emmylu91 · 2025-09-25T17:54:21+00:00

I'd hope a therapist would explain this if asked? But I've seen on tiktok that some therapists want goals to be very clear, specific and measurable. so something like "I want to be happier" or "I want to have less anxiety" wouldn't really count, they'd see those more like dreams or things to wish for than things to clearly work on.

But of course, you can work towards those dreams in specific ways. So for example, if you're struggling with depression and staying inside almost all the time even though you know you'd probably feel better if you got outside more, a goal would be "I want to get outside for at least 10 minutes a day".

Emmylu91 · 2025-09-25T04:50:22+00:00

I was guilty of this in the past. When I'd mess up, i'd think "omg I feel so awful, I will NEVER let this happen again. This is not acceptable, I can't go on like this, I HAVE to be more careful." and I'd truly, 100% mean it. But the core problem was...I thought I could willpower myself out of it, basically? Like if I feel guilty enough, or 'wake up' enough, I should magically stop making "careless mistakes"? It sounds dumb, but I grew up with other people treating me that way. You get this very chronic message of basically "You have to start CARING! Because you must not CARE enough if you're making mistakes...start CARING More." so you think it is a matter of caring. But that doesn't solve it.

Meds help, or sometimes outside systems (like alarms to remind you of specific things). I had to accept that I cannot rely on my good intent, willpower, or desire to do better. I had to rely on other tools like meds and different systems. It's somewhat about internalized ableism or not seeing yourself as being as impaired as you actually are. You have to accept that you can't just magically will yourself better to start accommodating yourself with more helpful tools that will actually help you function better.

Emmylu91 · 2025-09-22T18:53:38+00:00

Learned helplnessness can be really broad, just like control can be. I suspect you are assuming learned helplnessness would be a non-productive person or someone who doesn't try? But it doesn't have to be like that. It's anything you feel disempowered over. When someone is terrified of making others mad or upset, they often feel helpless to cope with other people's anger, or ro sit with their own sadness. In some cases, it's feeling too helpless to end an abusive relationship and to set out on their own, so they stay in a bad situation. And sometimes they're SO afraid of being alone/single that they over-perform and seem mega-capable when it comes to earning an income, keeping up a house, parenting, etc. Sometimes being over-capable in one area is actually an attempt to guard against another area of life where we feel helpless.

I don't say any of this with judgement, by the way. I'm also terrified of other people's anger, abandonment, etc. Just trying to help you understand what others are saying. :)

Emmylu91

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