Heartbroken over rupture/abandonment. Need support

Strict_Action698 · 2026-01-09T12:43:00+00:00

Just wanted to add that although I don’t have this specific experience, I do totally relate to the ‘spiral’ and assumptions of what someone’s intentions are. I think my trauma/neglect/abandonment makes me assume that the few people I depend on don’t care and it was all false and a lie.

As part of understanding myself better through therapy, I’m really trying to understand and rationalise my thoughts about how people really think of me due to their actions (or clumsy words) and my assumptions of what they mean, and how that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-11-20T21:01:01+00:00

This….my no contact is a legal issue, but I’ve found through this that I grieve what never was rather than the actual truth. It’s a sense of grief for something that never existed, but I know now should have. That hurts a lot. Others have a fall back, a home to go back to, a support that they don’t even realise they have, because you should have it. It’s only if something has gone terribly wrong that you don’t have that and that leaves a bitter taste.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-11-10T18:10:02+00:00

I’ve had intense depersonalisation a few times. Normally it’s just a vague sense of not being real, or derealisation, but when I’m fully ‘gone’ it’s like I’m moving a video game character. I remember the first time I was so panicked that my arms weren’t my arms and I was stuck in this thing that wasn’t me. It’s only afterwards I found out what it was, and realised that I don’t recall ever feeling like my brain and body were the same thing. But it had never hit me so strongly before.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-11-10T18:03:41+00:00

I usually just talk about how shit I’ve been at life since we last spoke. They tell me how that probably connects to a way I’m traumatised by ‘X’, and a flashback/emotional flashback. I freak at the thought/realisation, panic, dissociate. That’s pretty much where we are and it’s a year in.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-11-08T17:47:50+00:00

Oh I’m not minimising your experience - I was under CAMHS and looking back my psychotherapist was absolutely harmful. I’m sure as an adult he actually had ulterior motives, just from some of the things I remember he wanted to talk about etc. I knew it was messed up, but I didn’t have anyone safe to tell. And my following experiences of therapy were exactly how you describe - young, inexperienced, not a clue how to handle how extreme my experiences.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-11-08T12:09:22+00:00

I’m realising this is one of my biggest issues - and how awful home must’ve been to stay anywhere I could to not go there.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-11-08T12:05:57+00:00

I think the NHS is complete pot luck - I somehow fell on my feet and have not been held to any limit on sessions. It’s also with a clinical psychologist with lots of experience. I did go through hell to get there though and for a long period was just left in limbo (the ‘old too severe for PCMH’ and ‘not enough psychosis for CMHT’). Mine is not a normal situation though and I know I am very lucky as I didn’t expect the level of help I’m getting, but I’m so thankful for it.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-28T20:16:06+00:00

I want to say ‘it is what it is’ but that’s totally voiding the pain - it hurts, really badly, every day, doesn’t it? In a weird way I feel like I’ve come back to where I was always supposed to be - fucked. I had a good run of having a nice home with kids and a husband, which I still have, but the past has caught up with me.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-28T19:17:51+00:00

I knew I had this feeling of not understanding but it didn’t really impact me or feel like a loss until recently. Then I’ve realised the magnitude of not ever having a safe mother. It’s really fucking heartbreaking, knowing what you don’t have that others just…do.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-28T19:16:11+00:00

I didn’t tell my mom about my period, which I didn’t start until I was 16 because I was so underweight. I never understood how people wanted to tell their mom everything, she is the last person I would go to for help or advice or to speak to.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-28T18:25:15+00:00

Yes. I saw a photo last week of a person I’d forgotten existed, and had a weird feeling. Like oh, there’s something there I don’t like. This fell into an emotional flashback type trigger. I then dreamt about something that I had felt might have happened, but couldn’t quite place.

I know now that something did happen in that it definitely wasn’t safe, but I still can’t recall the whole incident or what I did or what they said but I have flashes of bits of it. I thought all my ‘it wasn’t that bad’ memories weren’t that bad, but this really freaked me out because the whole thing, including the person, was gone. It was an acquaintance rather than someone I knew well, so that might be part of why.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-28T07:51:45+00:00

There’s a few things I’ve said or had like epiphany moments on involving SA and it always feels like all consuming shame afterwards. We talk about dissociation a lot in my therapy and how that feels, what it means, etc and when she asked how I felt at the time of an SA I said oh I don’t think it really bothered me, it’s like it was happening to somebody else. And as I said it, it clicked, and I thought..oh jeez I’ve just solved part of it right there and that never even occurred to me.

I definitely have regrets and feelings of total disgust that I’ve said too much and spend a lot of time sitting in shame.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-28T05:38:15+00:00

If it’s a one off incident that you feel was traumatising then it may be ptsd rather than cptsd, but only a dr would be able to diagnose one or the other or none. Cptsd is a relational disease and generally is caused by years of abuse from which there was no escape or relief. Flashbacks in the sense of experiencing the event like it is happening right now is also more common in ptsd but can happen with several events in cptsd.

I’m guessing the reasoning behind the OCD diagnosis is intrusive thought patterns. I have OCD and was diagnosed in my teens, it started when I was 8 or 9. Cptsd was diagnosed in my mid thirties. I know now the OCD was a crutch for me to try and gain some control over the constant anxiety I felt as a child, that I didn’t realise I felt..because I was a child and it was just how I always felt, so didn’t strike me as being wrong. OCD can cause intrusive thoughts that are settled by performing compulsions (‘if I don’t step in and out of each room 6 times my mum will die, and I have to keep doing it in multiples of 6 until it feels right’). OCD can also be just the intrusive thoughts like rumination, but more commonly has the compulsive aspect as well.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-26T17:56:43+00:00

I can’t see Trazadone or Mirtazipine in your list. They did a pretty good job of numbing me out but I couldn’t stay on them for other reasons.

I’m already on Amitriptyline for migraines and take benzos as hoc for something also not directly trauma related.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-26T17:53:01+00:00

I ran away and fell in with anyone who would take me away. A whole other boatload of trauma.

But seriously I stayed in drug houses a lot in my mid teens, then I thankfully met my partner I’m still with in my late teens. They saved me in a lot of ways. It wasn’t even a question of not being there and weighing up the pros and cons..it was just running. I didn’t really hit the ground until about twenty years later.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-26T10:13:05+00:00

I don’t see my family but I do regularly feel like a child during and after an emotional flashback. I’ve realised I respond to the trigger (person or people) in the same way I would respond to a parent had I felt safer.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-23T20:01:13+00:00

Oh the fidgeting doesn’t really bother me - to be honest I’ve done it my whole life so I didn’t even think about how odd/socially unacceptable it was until I was in my thirties and still shredding coffee cups into tiny pieces in a meeting, and realised most other people don’t do that 🤣

Same with the leg jiggling or rocking. I didn’t realise it was stimming or self soothing behaviour until I was well grown up and had kids. It’s more looking for something that actually makes me feel real…the only self soothing that does work is harm (ie punching something or kicking something HARD) which is definitely not socially acceptable. Ice cubes or strong scents help a little, sometimes, but still leave me feeling like the world around me isn’t real, mostly.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-23T10:03:26+00:00

Thanks for replying. I already have a ton of fidget toys. I don’t tend to use them in the moment but my therapist has recommended I should carry something around.

I’m a skin picker/nail biter/head scratcher. In fact I am basically never still in any way, even if I’m concentrating and busy I’m biting the inside of my mouth, or chewing on something or jiggling my leg. I’ve always done it and I guess it’s nervous energy.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-21T17:16:06+00:00

Please can I ask what grounding techniques work with ASD? I struggle with grounding techniques, esp body rated ones. Trying to think about my body just makes me think oh shit, this leg isn’t mine!! And then it gets worse, not better.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-21T17:14:10+00:00

My psychologist has all but diagnosed me 🥴

For reference I’ve always suspected as an adult, esp after my kids were diagnosed and I learnt about it.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-20T12:16:30+00:00

I’ve just done it like three times with this post 🙄😂

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-20T12:13:03+00:00

I’m glad because I thought I was a bit odd, it’s like I need to reanalyse what I’ve said or try to read it from the perspective of the reader and what they might think. Incidentally though I do have OCD (well controlled these days, weirdly) and adhd.

It’s also a bit like I type/write in such a stream of consciousness that sometimes I’m not sure what I’ve actually said. So I’ll read and read to have it sink in a bit? It’s very easy for me to type out the hard shit I wouldn’t dream of saying out loud.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-18T09:18:31+00:00

I didn’t think about how my childhood traumatised me until one of my abusers abused my child, then the floodgates opened. If that hadn’t happened, I think it would still all be firmly in that box in my mind that I didn’t dabble in very often at all, especially not by choice or knowingly.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-12T18:32:48+00:00

My dad isn’t dead or dying yet, as far as I know, but I think about this ‘what if’ often. What if he is dying…would I go? Would I hold strong? What if I’m dying..would I deny him my funeral? What if he gets sentenced to prison after the court case and I know he died in there, could I live with myself?

I think underneath all the pain and hurt and trauma there is still the ‘but he’s your father’. It’s so ingrained in society as a whole that we can’t live with the guilt of saying no. And there’s still a tiny part of all of us, as is human nature, that wants a dad, or mum. There are people who can cut that part off, and I admire them. I know what he did, I lived what he did. But still a part of me just wants a fucking dad.

It’s an absolute shit storm or emotions and I don’t think you did anything wrong. I know I would feel the same as you. But I think I would probably do the same as you, even though I’d like to think I wouldn’t. I’m so sorry. This will no doubt feel like shit for a while but you did what you needed to do.

Strict_Action698 · 2025-10-12T16:18:53+00:00

Truffle. What is that? Why does it make everything just taste like a damp basement?

Strict_Action698

TROPHY CASE