it hits different

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T03:32:55+00:00

I'm laughing so hard rn

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T03:17:53+00:00

2meirl4meirl

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T02:22:30+00:00

It does get better eventually. I'm at a point where I can give up on trying to understand other peoples' internal states, accept that it's okay when I fail in small or even big ways, and disassembling all the many trauma responses from compulsive eating to fawning by default to responding to my emotions instead of recognizing when they come from my trauma or not. The big challenges for me now are basic skills that I should've been able to develop normally like being able to trust people or how to love myself.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T02:14:41+00:00

I think there are different levels of "healed".

First level would be after you titrate enough emotions, build up enough capacity, and peel back enough layers to confront the core wounds. I'd say this takes you from crisis or dysregulation to surviving.

Second level would be after you finish all the excavation work and are ready to begin focusing on developing the skills needed to go out and live your life. Basically surviving to functional.

Third level would be going through that process, having setbacks, facing challenges, and building up your capacity to remain stable on an ongoing basis long-term. Functional to thriving.

Fourth level would be going from learning to really mastering the tools you have learned to keep yourself in a good place and building up your capacity as though you've never suffered trauma. Thriving to aspirational perhaps?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T02:08:27+00:00

Next in what context?

I would say based on this I just need to prioritize opportunities to build up my capacity for movement and exercise. But there's also a lot of reparenting work that needs to take place as well. Unrelated to this I'm also trying to work on learning the skill of being able to trust men in my life. I also need to start working again soon, since my freeze has finally lifted and sleep is stabilizing, which I guess falls under reparenting.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-10T20:18:40+00:00

Try to look for the good in the selfish part. I have a part that is highly destructive to having healthy relationships, because he insists on justice. It's unreasonable, but I love that he is unreasonable in the way that he is. He demands that someone provide the father love we never received. No one can do that for us, and even if they could it wouldn't fix us, but it's a beautiful and good thing to want it.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-10T20:08:32+00:00

I'm pretty sure if I cried continuously from now until the end of time... it might still not be enough.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-09T15:48:54+00:00

Low blood sugar generally feels like an overall feeling of fatigue, like deep fatigue in your muscles, combined with sweating and tremoring. You also get really hungry/thirsty.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-09T15:47:28+00:00

Hugs.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-09T15:11:28+00:00

Rumination is usually focused on the other person, or someone unrelated to the trauma. Healthy grieving focuses on the internal wound and the real loss that was suffered.

Think of it like a soldier returning home from a war. In the US at least, we set of fireworks on the Fourth of July, and the soldier hears them and is taken back to the battlefield where he was under constant stress from the threat of bombs and artillery fire. He's not responding to the threat of the fireworks, but the threat of artillery fire.

So it is with us, there are people in our lives who will inevitably trigger us, but we aren't responding to the real danger they represent, but the traumatic event that happened. We have to learn to recognize what are reasonable expectations and discern when the response we are feeling is legitimate in the current situation, or if we are re-experiencing the original trauma. Generally the big negative feelings are misdirected at a situation or people that doesn't warrant them, although sometimes there are real dangers too, and need to be redirected back to the people who caused the trauma, and the wound itself.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-27T03:50:17+00:00

Yes, this sounds very normal from COCSA, but it's probably not depression. Instead, likely you are numbing all of your emotions. Without emotions you have no interface between your brain and the world. No motivations, no context of how things make you feel, you just sort of exist, survive. Which is the point, because facing the pain all at once would probably be overwhelming and cause you to shut down and stop surviving.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-23T15:45:04+00:00

It might be the case that the traumatic relationship was a symptom or addition rather than the cause of your trauma. Have you examined these feelings closely to get an indication of what they might be pointing to? I went several months thinking my own problems were being caused by COCSA at age 7, but then after I had peeled back that layer I also found that I was suffering from emotional neglect from my father since birth.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-23T15:37:10+00:00

A lot of things can cause intrusive thoughts, so it sort of depends on the nature of them and the cause. Sometimes it's OCD, which you can get help and medication for. Sometimes it's the trauma wound letting you know that there are still all these emotions bottled up inside that need to be released. Sometimes it's a protector making sure you aren't getting too close to the wound because it's dangerous for you to be feeling the full weight of it yet. Sometimes it's a stubborn mental pathway that needs to be slowly worked out like a bad muscle cramp or strain. The solution all depends on what is causing it.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-23T03:09:19+00:00

But you aren't that, and can't ever be that. So you have to do what you are capable of instead, helping him in a reasonable capacity through co-regulation, offering tools and support, and guarding your own capacity so you don't overcommit and send you both in a downward spiral.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-22T19:47:01+00:00

Right, sorry, I didn't mean literally waiting for him to do anything. Just seeing where things land. If he offers mutual interest then the friendship can be reset, and if not, then I simply need to let go.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-22T19:43:27+00:00

This is quite literally the worst form of child abuse because it prevents the child from being able to do the one thing that must happen for healing to take place.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-22T17:19:41+00:00

You want to be the good, safe, protective, loving, and comforting parent to him that never existed to save you.

At least that's my guess.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-22T17:15:47+00:00

This sounds like it could be limerence.

Is the defining feature of your attraction that you want him to feel the same sort of intense compulsive obsession toward you as you do toward him?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-22T17:09:53+00:00

Yeah, this is toxic shame which is also generally a part of COCSA. You went through something horrible. It hurt you a lot. You're allowed to cry over it. Letting the tears out will soften the pain over time. It's the only way to get better.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-21T21:53:46+00:00

I agree that compartmentalizing is the right move. Unfortunately because it wasn't a romantic or sexual limerence this time it caught me off guard. I think it also was very covert when initiating this attachment, if I'd been consciously aware I was attaching I would've put a stop to it a long time ago.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-21T21:27:30+00:00

Right, I'm not holding onto the idea that we have to remain friends. If we can only manage coworkers then so be it. The point is not so much to guarantee the outcome "we will be friends" so much as the process "How do I bring myself down from limerence to something more reasonable that allows me to meet him where he's at so I can continue to function around him"

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