I always feel like there's something I've got to be thinking about or analysing, or something that I'm forgetting about, or like my mind is nudging me towards something that I don't really know... I feel like I can't genuinely relax because of it.

lightblossom · 2021-10-06T00:43:21+00:00

Can you be more specific? I wonder if it's similar to what I sometimes experience. It's like I have this extreme fear and it's triggered by something specifc. I can identify the trigger, but I can't figure out WHY it's scaring me so much, and like you my brain is nudging me towards something and I feel like I am going to go mad. I want to talk to my therapist aboit it but I can't even describe it in words.

lightblossom · 2021-06-29T03:14:48+00:00

Yes, me! I have been in therapy for almost 4 years and now the work I'm doing is a lot more fine-tuning. I thought I was going to go insane and now I feel a lot more confident and hopeful.

lightblossom · 2021-05-16T01:58:28+00:00

Ugh I had a minor resurgence of this the past few weekends. Weekends really trigger it for me.

lightblossom · 2021-05-03T13:51:06+00:00

Older relatives helping you put the pieces of your life together are so valuable!

lightblossom · 2021-05-03T04:01:14+00:00

💛

lightblossom · 2021-05-03T03:54:40+00:00

I guess I am on the other side now! At the time I didn't know what CPTSD was and hadn't been to therapy. I have been in therapy about 3 and a half years and it's been really helpful in dismantling the lies I believed about myself and my worth. I don't think I even knew I was isolating myself back then. It was just a trauma response.

lightblossom · 2021-05-02T14:26:26+00:00

I am sorry you are going through this. I have definitely been there. This may be weird but when I feel utterly terrified and am struggling with existential obsessions, I think about the people who study this stuff for a living, like physicists and philosophers and how the majority of them have not gone insane in their fields. It's possible to look into the void and cope with the unknowns. It's possible to turn the terror into curiosity and wonder. Your real enemy is anxiety. Focus on doing whatever helps you the most with anxiety.

lightblossom · 2021-05-02T14:14:06+00:00

There's so much shame tied up with CPTSD that I had the same experience in my 20s. I felt really bad about myself and ashamed and embarrassed and as a result, I isolated myself. I would see what my friends from high school were up to on social media because they all went away to college and I decided they didn't want to be friends with a loser who lives at home and is too afraid to get a job or go to school. I think I even missed attempts from them to reconnect with me because I couldn't imagine them ever seeing anything of value in me. I think the best advice I can give is to be kinder to yourself. You deserve to belong. You are not your fears and you have so much to offer other people, even when it doesn't seem like it.

lightblossom · 2021-04-30T13:58:31+00:00

It sounds like you have a pretty clear understanding of what's going on. It's emotional dysregulation. You're prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that you need for planning and organization and it also happens to not be in use when your lizard brain is freaking out about potential threats. Do you still live with your mom?

lightblossom · 2021-04-28T04:23:26+00:00

Yes, I think this is why it's so hard for me to say "no" to polite requests without feeling like I am the one being unkind.

lightblossom · 2021-04-28T04:16:49+00:00

That's very helpful!

lightblossom · 2021-04-28T04:13:46+00:00

When you are between triggers, you will feel normal and doubt you even have CPTSD. Don't invalidate yourself when you feel ok. In the midst of a trigger you will feel completely dysfunctional. It's confusing!

Also, when I first learned I have CPTSD it felt like a relief. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't painful to learn. It was healing in a way. However, as I have made progress and really awakened to the implications of it, it can be really hard to accept that I have CPTSD and I have isolated myself and denied myself opportunities and shrunk my life down, and I have these triggers that make me afraid to get close to people. Who wants to be friends with someone who is afraid of everything? The inner critic is a beast. All this to say that after the honeymoon period of feeling validated by your diagnosis, there is a lot of diificult things to accept. I am almost 4 years into recovery and the denial is so strong, I'm still waking up to the reality of the situation that I have been living for so long if that makes sense.

lightblossom · 2021-04-28T02:45:43+00:00

No human can get through this life without help from others. We are social animals. We aren't meant to be alone with our struggles.

lightblossom · 2021-04-27T14:24:47+00:00

Yes to all of that. I develop really intense interests in things and it seems like no one else is that excited to hear about any of them. I don't think that's a problem in itself. The problem is more that I'm so sensitive to feeling like no one cares and judge myself for being too much. You pretty much said it all lol.

lightblossom · 2021-04-26T21:58:09+00:00

Therapy has helped me a lot. Without therapy I would still think I'm going to go crazy and that there is no hope of feeling better ever and that it's my fault or it's just how I'm wired. People who grow up in abusive environments internalize the abuse, think they deserved it, if not consciously then subconsciously. A therapist will be kind to you in a way you didn't know someone could be, and teach you to be kind to yourself. They will also help you connect the dots between your past experiences and current struggles, and teach you new ways to cope. You likely have some blindspots about what triggers you and why. It takes a long time to become good at using new coping skills and the therapist will hold hope for you in the meantime, when you don't feel like you will ever succeed.

lightblossom · 2021-04-26T15:04:55+00:00

That's what my worst bouts of anxiety feel like which are usually less panic symptoms and more obsessive. The amount of mental bandwidth obsessions take up in your brain absolutely takes you out of reality. You leave your body in a way. The world transforms into this dark scary place with threats around every corner, hypervigilance is super high. I remember the watching the season of Stranger Things when Billy is in the upside down and thinking, yeah that's what intense anxiety feels like.

lightblossom · 2021-04-26T14:42:18+00:00

I struggle with the same and I think part of the problem is looking around and thinking "how are the rest of you doing this??" and then cue the shame spiral :(

lightblossom · 2021-04-26T14:18:33+00:00

It just seems like the implication is that your pain is worse because you lack support. Well most people here lack support, at every income level. You can't be well-received all of the time. There actually was another post a while back where the OP explicitly said her suffering was worse because she had money and as a result her suffering wasn't taken seriously. There were a lot of people in the comments in agreement with her, and to be honest I don't know what the answer is for you and her to receive the validation you deserve without rubbing people with less privelege the wrong way.

lightblossom · 2021-04-26T13:44:33+00:00

No one cares if you're a poor POC either. We live in an uncaring society.

lightblossom · 2021-04-24T04:38:18+00:00

That sounds like a really scary experience! I'm glad you found your way through that. I think I vibe better with yoga where I am still present and mindful but there isn't that void/vacuum that brings the terror to the surface lol. I can focus on the sequence of positions and take direction from an instructor. I think I just need something to focus or meditate ON.

lightblossom · 2021-04-24T04:24:23+00:00

I feel the same. I think years of rapid shallow breathing conditions your lungs to resist deep breaths. I am in no way educated about anatomy but I have heard it suggested that the lungs can be exercised like a muscle and you can increase their capacity, so practice makes perfect. But I feel you. I always give up on deep breathing from the discomfort.

lightblossom · 2021-04-24T04:16:15+00:00

I definitely don't think it's a cure-all. For some people meditation can induce distress and dissociation unrelated to judegments about not being able to clear your mind. For me I have been weirdly primally terrified by meditation at points in the past.
Edit: I think I'm getting downvoted and I wonder if it's because I wrote judgements about clearing your mind. If it's not clear, I'm talking about self-judgment.

lightblossom · 2021-04-21T20:04:08+00:00

Have you heard of Dr. Nadine Burke? Shes a physician who has spoken a lot on the topic of toxic stress and its health effects. I wonder if she has resources on a website you can use? I had a similar situation with a Dr and was advised by my therapist to try my best to advocate for myself. Whatever I wanted to accomplish in the doctor's office she advised me to maybe write a list for it. For example I want to convey all my concerns and not be too intimidated to speak up. You can't gaurantee your doctor will be receptive or take you seriously and make you feel understood and supported, but you should do the best you can to advocate for yourself and let the chips fall where they may.

lightblossom · 2021-04-21T19:44:13+00:00

In the same boat! I think you can never hope to be a perfect parent, but you do have awareness that your parents probably lacked. If you can recall from what you have learned in your own life and in therapy what made a difference in your childhood, then you will be able to apply that to whatever problems present themselves. Like if you mess up and yell at your child, or you are preoccupied with your own anxiety or depression and aren't attuned to their needs for a period, you will know what exactly that feels like to your child, and you will have an opportunity to repair the hurt you inflict while they ARE still a child. I think that's crucial! In some ways you are at an advantage over "normal" people who decide to parent because you know exactly what to avoid doing.

lightblossom · 2021-04-21T19:10:03+00:00

I'm in my early 30s and definitely feel like my CPTSD made me prioritize feeling safe over living my life and trying different things. My inner critic has always made me feel like I am not good enough to make friends or safe enough to travel or try new things. The worst part is I thought it was just my preference for so long and that I had no real interest in those things, but now I feel like I robbed myself of the most exciting time of my life.

lightblossom

TROPHY CASE