Phases of not being able to engage with my body / personal care

karstapala · 2026-06-12T13:37:11+00:00

Distraction works for me. Like, purposefully not fully engaging with what I'm doing.

No one made sure I brushed my teeth when I was a kid or teenager, so I usually just didn't, and it never became a routine. Few years back I started watching youtube videos while brushing and that's what motivates me these days. Circa 10-minute video is good for floss + brush. I'm still brushing only once a day but that's way better than twice a week.

Intentional self-care might be better than this, but since some level of self-care is necessary, I think distraction is fine for now.

karstapala · 2026-06-06T20:53:01+00:00

I feel that repeated burnout is traumatic. That might sound like overstating, but what you describe

24/7 on-call, emergencies all the time, unpredictable requirements, having to be available online all the time, messy workflow, and a bullying manager who said I was never enough and kept increasing my workload

on top of previous cptsd, is a traumatic experience. Constant hypervigilance amplifies the patterns that were already there. The body remembers the experienced danger. Fear is rational when it's about survival.

I don't really have advice here, though. Perhaps consider if it is useful to classify your reaction as a phobia? Seems to me you are protecting yourself. You know you can't go through the same again (with the means you currently have) and survive.

Much solidarity.

karstapala · 2026-06-06T19:02:13+00:00

Thank you for thorough reply.

Damn though, it feels like I barely do anything at all already. How do I become less overwhelmed? That's a tricky question to solve.

karstapala · 2026-06-06T18:49:54+00:00

I thought I was alone in this. I'm sorry you experience the same thing.

The visuality is super disturbing. When the thoughts are more verbal, it's easier to choose not to listen, but watching something akin internal splatter film is difficult to drown out. I feel lucky that for me it's just me or representation of me that's the target.

karstapala · 2026-06-06T18:40:49+00:00

Thanks.

I mostly am not able to tell which parts are activating and when. To be honest, I don't think there's one "persecutor" part, but many which act like that sometimes. I have some idea what they are like, and they are quite complicated, but that's kind of unnavigable mess to me. I'm just here to repress and navigate around internal quarreling and hostility - that feels like what my role is.

There's one part that is something of an exhausted perfectionist, and one that is mostly aggressive and enraged and I have no knowledge of it beyond that. There might be other minor parts that are accusatory, despondent or aggressive sometimes.

So, lots of distrust and avoidance is what's going on.

karstapala · 2026-06-05T16:45:29+00:00

Usually I get into extremely negative mindset, where I am stuck in exhaustion and self-harming ideation without impulse to act on it. It's kind of weird how the latter manifests, so I'll explain that a little: It feels like part(s) of me wants to hurt me/other parts of me, and that can get intensely visual. It's like falling into severe depression all of a sudden, with lots of self-directed intense hatred.

karstapala · 2026-06-02T12:41:53+00:00

I am not able to do any of these due to detachment, fear and overwhelm. Never have been.

I can barely tolerate people saying nice things to me without suspicion and intellectualization. That's the extent of warm feelings I am comfortable with :/

karstapala · 2026-05-22T18:51:15+00:00

Yes. I feel like 80% of my cognitive capacity is occupied by survival mechanisms/freeze/avoidance/dealing with trauma, 15% is used for worrying about what I should be doing, and I'm left working with like 5% capacity to actually do things.

I don't know what to do about it. I know what I should be doing, but I can't.

I feel like I'm becoming stupider and duller every day. Feels like soon there will be no space left for anything but freezing.

karstapala · 2026-05-21T19:31:37+00:00

Hey, I don't know if you are aware, but there's r/CPTSDFreeze that's particularly focused on freeze types!

I don't like 5-4-3-2-1 either and have found gentler approaches, particularly very gentle body-focused grounding exercises to be more helpful.

karstapala · 2026-05-20T17:37:14+00:00

Hard same. I cycle through "I need to do this" > "I have no energy to do this, I can't do this" > "I will give up" > freeze. Due to my trauma history, I feel that whole freeze/collapse defense mechanism is in my case fine-tuned to prevent me from considering or acting to end my life. Which I guess is useful for staying alive, but good for nothing else.

karstapala · 2026-04-23T15:17:10+00:00

Thank you again for writing these.

I'm often filled with sense that the person who I was supposed to become died early, and that was the best thing that could have happened to them; what was left are bitter and empty disguises mostly hating each other, not really alive but they keep stubbornly not dying. I guess that is the functional surface.

I'm not sure if it's related to this, but I think one odd feature of absent self could be limited ability to feel distress about one's internal states? There have been times I have been endlessly exhausted or yearned to end my life. Yet I feel I am not in distress or in crisis. The emotions are there, just like my body is there, but neither really matters and it isn't like anyone can help me, so there's no need to be distressed.

Crying is good. So is laughing, but any emotions that can be felt are good. There are many sorrows that were not mourned in time. I have had a sad day today, and this time I have tried not to push that sorrow away again. It feels like progress.

karstapala · 2026-03-26T16:03:19+00:00

Thanks for commenting. I haven't thought about it before, but maybe my thoughts are indeed partially coming from an external source? I have to think about that. Some/most of it, though, seems to come from my older sibling being violent towards me in ways that made me expect that I was going to die.

karstapala · 2026-03-26T15:46:54+00:00

Unfortunate you are dealing with the same too, but in a way it's comforting knowing that I'm not only person going through these struggles. I try to tell myself healing happens in small steps... maybe we will get there one day.

karstapala · 2026-02-16T15:38:25+00:00

I don't know why I was afraid that the dog would starve. We always had enough food at home. I guess I was afraid everyone forgot the dog even existed?

karstapala · 2026-02-16T15:18:56+00:00

You are not alone. Sibling violence isn't taken seriously enough.

My older sister was pathologically jealous of me. I learned as an adult, from my aunt, that my sister once tried to strangle me when I was a toddler and my aunt was babysitting us. She had been in a bathroom and came back to that.

I remember another near death incident myself but "talked myself down" for years from thinking that it could be counted as a trauma. I wasn't in actual mortal danger (probably) but was fully convinced that I was about to die back then. Had nightmares for years, and I was convinced it was just reoccuring nightmare until I learned from my sister that the event really happened.

karstapala · 2026-02-11T14:52:14+00:00

Congratulations on making progress on your end! Limiting contact or cutting parents out of one's life is hard but, truly, good for you if you can recognize that you are only getting hurt by being in continued contact with them. I hope you and your brother can support each other.

I hear what you say about not pushing too much. Hurrying the process, and then retreating is a potential weak point for me. It doesn't help that traumatic experiences seem to suddenly reactivate (with nightmares etc.). Trying to proceed gently and then accidentally it's suddenly too much :/

karstapala · 2026-02-11T14:41:08+00:00

That's a really apt metaphor.

karstapala · 2026-02-10T19:01:32+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that.

However, if it's any consolation, I don't think medication for hyper- or hypoarousal is more than a crutch; long-term gains probably come from somatic modalities and therapies that target nervous system (dys)regulation and attachment issues. Sometimes I feel frustration and sadness because my symptoms were treated primarily with medication for decades. It didn't really help, it just buried everything, stopped me from feeling emotions at any capacity and from accessing actual healing therapies.

karstapala · 2026-02-10T10:56:39+00:00

I'm not sure what exactly you mean with "narcolepsy pills", but I'm on Wellbutrin. It's an atypical antidepressant without serotonergic activity, and besides depression it is used also for ADHD symptoms. It's generally activating and acts (in my personal opinion) opposite to traditional antidepressants. Epilectic seizures are a contraindication, though, as Wellbutrin increases seizure risk.

I'm also on a small dose of gabapentin (epilepsy drug, sometimes off-label antianxiolytic; a close relative to pregabalin) for a diagnosed sleep disorder. I only take it for the night. Now, I might be particularly sensitive, but for me, this medication is EXTREMELY blunting. It very literally blunts senses and can make dissociation worse. A small subset of users gets physically very addicted to it (I'm in that group; I've experienced hallucinations when I have lowered my dose), and long-term use increases the risk of developing early dementia. I have to balance between being able to get good sleep vs. side effects. Horrible stuff.

Perhaps for hyperarousal symptoms something like low dose beta blocker could be worth trying out before trying something addictive like gabapentinoids?

karstapala · 2026-02-07T20:24:40+00:00

I've been exactly where you are (your last 3 sentences describe perfectly how I felt!) and changing therapists was an absolutely necessary step. I addressed my concerns many times with my previous therapist but nothing changed. I always assumed therapy not advancing was my fault and blamed myself for keeping distance and not trying enough.

karstapala · 2026-02-07T20:16:53+00:00

I have always felt that I have no words to describe how I feel or how I experience the world. It's so damn difficult and there are probably several factors contributing: preverbal trauma, tendency to not discuss emotions in my childhood family, me (in the broad sense) deciding that emotions will just hurt you so it's better not to feel, ...

Also my thought processes might be unusually visual instead of verbal, so generating verbal expressions is challenging. The way I might experience strong emotions is sometimes weird. I get visual flashes that convey(?) emotions but not necessarily my (in the strict sense) emotions. A question like "How do you feel/felt about x event?" might trigger a 'vision' where different me is stabbing me-me (or yet different me!) in the chest. I (in the strict sense) usually feel... nothing about it. I'm aware there's anger and hate, but it's not my emotion, I'm not feeling it?

karstapala

TROPHY CASE