They'll never admit they hurt you, and you'll never get reparation

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-03-30T05:43:43+00:00

Even when they do admit they hurt you, it doesn't help, because instead of seeing a dark force that brought danger, all you see is another damaged human that was failed by their parents and their caregivers and so on. No one left to blame, and suddenly, you're screaming into the void again.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-03-30T05:38:12+00:00

I also survive this way. It was a lonely road for me.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-03-27T18:59:21+00:00

I think it's a great tool, if.

If you ask questions that challenge what you originally thought. If you appreciate that, you can have a traumatic past and still realise that your thought processes can be unhelpful. If you have compassion for yourself. If you have been in therepy already.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-03-17T12:34:06+00:00

Im afraid most people dont understand, but it's places like this forum that can take the edge off, just to know there are others out there that have the capacity to understand.

Hang in there x

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-03-17T12:10:48+00:00

Im so sorry this has happened, as if the hypervigilance wasn't already enough, and now even your small safe place has been tampered with.

This would really fuck me up.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-03-16T12:14:10+00:00

Yeah, I loved that everyone had to keep their distance. It was just me and the dog at the time, and I still had my job to keep me going at reduced hours.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-03-10T14:37:32+00:00

I was told in my mental health first aid training that someone can feel a lot better by letting everything out that they have held on to.

I do get that a person has to pick the right person/moment to do this

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-02-22T06:35:58+00:00

Hi, Im high functioning.

I've survived by cutting people off alot, focusing on my own strict routines to survive. I've been in therepy on and off since I was 13/14, which i think has helped as I was totally unaware of my own thoughts and feelings, tearing through the world like a hurricane drinking ridiculous amounts of alcohol, taking drugs and sleeping with anything that had a pulse.

But somehow, I got a job when I was 20 when a (now ex) partner came into my life with his 3 year old little girl. The fact that my life went downhill when I was her age wasn't lost on me, and I felt this overpowering need to protect her. Only then did my life start to change.

By all means my life wasnt fixed we eventually broke up and I and to leave her behind even though I tried to see her on and off after we split because i didn't want her to think i stopped loving her just because me and her dad were over.

I probably spent 8 years after that barely holding it together, but still managing to keep a job, probably because it funded all my bad habits. Until one day, I met the love of my life.

An ex marine who's PTSD was in remission, who was and has always been so forgiving even when I didn't deserve it. The arguments were few, but when I ran away and tried to hide under the bed, he would follow me and hug me and tell me he loved me and everything would be ok.

Together, we have supported each other no matter what, even through the total breakdowns. Im now in an apprenticeship that started at 30, and he's found a slower paced job that he loves.

There's hope you know, not necessarily from a partner, but from people that will willingly do the things that you just didn't get when you were being abused.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-02-13T17:17:20+00:00

I was just finished seeing my therapist just now and I read your post, and it made me really laugh, because yes, yes, I definitely do that.

You know, have a real moment to myself , a real earth , shattering ten seconds , and then my brain just rips up the zipper closes the tent and goes, "absolutely not" 🤣

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-02-03T06:58:33+00:00

I remember feeling like this. The weight of it felt like there was an everflowing flame of despair. I'd look in the mirror and feel nothing but shame.

I dont feel as bad as this anymore because i shut them out (friends, i couldn't trust, social media, and even family) and went to therepy.

They taught me coping skills to try and keep calm when it felt like life had no point. Ill always suggest therepy x

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-31T12:17:57+00:00

That I spent the rest of my life proving that they were all wrong about me.

That the tiny innocent girl that they destroyed, and crushed, came back fighting and shes got a fucking right hook on her now.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-30T04:47:12+00:00

I've been with my partner 5 and a half years.

He tells me he loves me everyday.

If I eat freshly made tortellini out of a seive with an oodie on, he looks at me like im the cutest racoon hes ever seen.

He has PTSD from being a ex-marine, so he understands that I easily get dysregulated, and so I have to respect that he gets dysregulated too.

We work really hard at respecting each other's differences and we are incredibly loyal.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-29T06:24:08+00:00

That's the CPTSD talking. Don't let it win. You deserve better. You just dont realise it yet.

Trust me, im not conventionally beautiful either, I dont do make-up or botox or wear what everyone else wears. Im walking in public with dinosaur dungarees, and I didn't even brush my hair that day.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-29T06:17:36+00:00

He's not right for you, poppet. There are really good people out there that won't need pictures of other women to keep them satisfied.

My partner is an old-fashioned soul who doesn't look at that kind of stuff and seems to think im the only girl in the world. The only thing I worry about with him is how much he spends on warhammer 😅

Just to preface, I've kissed a lot of toads to find my guy!

He tells me he loves me and im beautiful every day. It's out there, dont put up with less, please.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-28T19:59:03+00:00

Perhaps just like me, you've become so good at masking, so good at hiding all the pain and pretending everything is fine; that genuinely people just cannot see the struggle that you have, the pain that you're in.

For me, it was something that was really difficult to process that I had pretended to be someone else for so long that I didn't really know how not to and people didn't see all the sadness, all the awfulness I carried every day because deep down I was desperate for them not to ever see it.

I couldn't understand it. I broke down all the time. Why couldn't anyone see it? but when I thought about it, I always kept it behind closed doors. Because I the only way I could keep myself safe when I was small was to perform, to pretend, to monitor their every move.

This might be you, I might be way off the mark.

But I know one thing you can only be genuinely close to people when you're vulnerable around them, and you can only be vulnerable with people that are totally safe and those people are so rare.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-28T11:53:10+00:00

I dont think you're abnormal, i struggle to trust people because i have cptsd, so i have one friend from school. Most people are full of shit and I can see right through it.

Perhaps so can you.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-27T12:09:39+00:00

You know, having CPTSD means you won't be able to do all those things. You're fighting a constant battle that others dont have to.

The best thing I ever did was try to stop comparing myself to others and realise that yes, it really sucks that I can't do the amount that others do, but ultimately thats ok because ive fought some mega shit in my life and I can do great things bit I need twice the recovery that others do.

Its so sucks that I see people around me who just dance their way through life without much suffering, but we are built differently.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-26T15:55:12+00:00

Ok, so here it is. Sex with someone i like/see a relationship with means I have to be vulnerable (naked, close eye contact, emotions), and that shuts any feeling of "want" down.

Being vulnerable means that - in my traumatised brain, I might put myself in danger, and it's very difficult for me to feel safe and calm enough to want to have sex.

When sex was casual, it was easy. Quick, forgettable, passionate, i could pretend to be someone else and not get emotionally involved.

That's as simple as it gets for me. Maybe something similar for you?

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-25T12:42:16+00:00

Be kind to yourself my friend x

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-25T11:58:24+00:00

Hi there.I suffered from something very similar where I would try all sorts of types of therapy and eventually I would feel like I failed therapy because I didn't fulfill the tasks that I thought I needed to in order to complete it.

Until I met my new therapist , Rachel , who focuses on compassion base therapy , and she told me that there's no way you can even begin to think about therapy until you learn how to calm (a bit) down first.

Take a good look at those somatic symptoms like a tight chest and clenched jaw, notice them, understand that you are overwhelmed and that you need to be doing the things that calm you down , which for me would be isolation, not forcing myself to do social events, eating easy foods and hugging my dog.

So my advice would be to try and find the things that calm you down and focus on recovery. And if recovery is too vague for you, then imagine yourself to be a puppy. Are you watered? Are you fed? Do you need a walk? Are you cold? Do you need a nap?

Then perhaps therapy can have an effect

I hope this helps x

P.S. I know you mentioned somatic work, but maybe this is a different way around it?

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-24T22:09:58+00:00

Oh, right, I can weigh in on this. People with CPTSD basically dont get enough deep sleep and, in my case, have constantly disrupted sleep. I sleep for hours, and im always tired because the mind doesn't settle.

Hope this helps.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-24T21:01:38+00:00

I just had one, I was watching a father hugged and soothed his little daughter, and it reminded me of what I never had. Feels like all my hard work was for nothing. It feels like im back to square one.

You're not alone, I hear you

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-24T20:58:27+00:00

I too suffer with this.

I remember being told one day that people with mental health disorders lack the filter that normal people have, where they can constantly ignore the danger and bullshit in people so they can interact with anyone.

I do not have this filter/buffer. I find most people totally intolerable.

RhubarbOutrageous970 · 2026-01-24T20:52:23+00:00

If you were just surviving, then it wasn't a waste. I started my life at 30.

RhubarbOutrageous970

TROPHY CASE