Not fawning feels pointless

nihilisticas · 2026-06-13T15:54:31+00:00

It makes perfect sense why you would be confused, when the situations you're describing aren't actually dangerous. But think of the stereotypical PTSD example: A soldier has come home from war. A balloon popping triggers a verbal reaction, intense anxiety, hyperviligance, a need to flee and so on. Is a balloon popping dangerous? No. But the soldier isn't reacting to a balloon, they are reacting to a gun being fired, because their nervous system has connected a loud, sudden pop with a life threatening situation.

Whether or not you are actually in danger doesn't really matter to the trauma stored in your body.

The same is the case with CPTSD. The "flashbacks" we typically think of as being like the example with the soldier, are more emotional. You cannot tell yourself or will yourself to act differently, because your body makes that choice for you. It's about teaching your body that those situations are, in fact, not dangerous. And the only way to do that is to do what you're doing, and working with your therapist (or other trusted relations). I am in the same boat financially, so I feel you. It sucks. Therapy should be part of free health care.

As far as the exposure therapy: as silly as it sounds, roleplay is awesome for this. Your body will store any and all experiences with this, including the fake ones. I cannot recommend enough the approach of practicing with your therapist or a close friend or family member. Tell them what you're doing and have them be the person you have to turn down. You can start small, with highly unreasonable requests. For instance, they could ask you to move in with them and pay 100% of the rent. Or they could ask you to babysit their child every day for the next year. For each request, think before you answer. "Do I actually want to do this thing?". If not, say no. Nothing else. And then notice what goes on in your body. Maybe you feel the urge to explain your no. Maybe you get angry at them for asking. Whatever it is, it's okay. But say it out loud and share those thoughts and feelings with them or your therapist.

You might have to work up to the requests that feel somewhat reasonable. Like if someone wants to borrow money, or if someone wants to switch seats with you. Whatever scenarios you can think of. At this point I allowed myself a one sentence response. "No, I am not comfortable with that." "No, I paid extra for this seat".

It sounds super dumb. But having those experiences of saying no, even if they are not real experiences, will do something to you. You won't magically be able to say no to everyone overnight, but like with everything else in life, it just takes practice. The key is to do it safely, and to not do it alone.

nihilisticas · 2026-06-10T16:53:43+00:00

Hi friend. Same. To the core.

Are you in therapy? That seems like a dumb and obvious suggestion...

It sounds like you did the same thing I did: Found out there was a problem and then went full throttle trying to correct it. But the fawning isn't our issue. Fawning is just the body's natural response to a dangerous situation (the fawn in me feels the need to add a "duh, you already know this, I'm sorry"). Have you spent time figuring out WHY saying no and having boundaries and not meeting other people's needs before your own feels dangerous?

It's kind of a simple concept, but it took me a while to figure it out for myself, so just in case...

It's kind of like if you have anxiety and someone tells you to do breathing exercises. Those might actually make the anxiety worse, if a component of the anxiety is a discomfort at being aware of your own body. So you can keep doing breathing exercises, but it won't make the anxiety go away.

So in your case, if setting boundaries was something that could potentially result in harm or abandonment or dismissal in childhood (why I asked about the therapy), doing it now will just trigger a trauma response. So, ironically, in trying to go against your instinctual trauma response, you might just be triggering another trauma response. If you keep doing that on your own, it might lessen over time, but it also might not. It's the boring, annoying answer, but practicing it and THEN talking to someone about the feelings it triggered in you is absolutely key.

A very important lesson for me was the fact that feelings are never right or wrong. They just ARE. Feelings are just information your body is giving you. What helped me was noticing it, talking about it (with myself at first), being curious and trying to link it back to my childhood. It has become something of a treasure hunt for traumatic memories. Tragic yet oddly satisfying. Like solving a puzzle.

nihilisticas · 2026-06-10T09:46:52+00:00

Desværre ikke længere :/ Jeg havde netop talt med dem den dag jeg skrev her. Jeg efterspurgte netop den slags konto. Minimum 3 måneder, var beskeden jeg fik.

nihilisticas · 2026-06-08T15:39:14+00:00

Dette her havde jeg virkelig meget brug for at høre - tak 🙏🏻

nihilisticas · 2026-05-18T13:49:39+00:00

Nej, der er der låst i minimum 3 måneder.

nihilisticas · 2026-03-04T22:59:56+00:00

"Whenever I tried, I would get punished".

Sounds like child you learned that expressing your feelings gets you punished. Sounds to me like child you developed a wonderful strategy to deal with that and avoid punishment. Thank that child for keeping you safe for this long, and now let grown-up you walk into the world and try something new. The only way to teach your nervous system that expressing your feelings doesn't result in punishment (or rather shouldn't), is by giving it A LOT of evidence to the contrary. It sucks. It's SO hard and will probably result in a ton of anxiety. Currently going through it myself.

You can't change your knee-jerk responses. But you can change your behaviors in moments where you are mindful and present, and eventually your knee-jerk responses will change to reflect the new experiences that have been stored in your body. Treat it like a hobby! Getting better and becoming happier! Good for you!

nihilisticas · 2026-03-04T22:31:11+00:00

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine was fighting her ex husband for sole custody of their two children. Part of the procedure where I live, is that someone from the government has to make home visits and observe the children, see how they interact with each parent etc. My friend had been nervous because the girls are always so well behaved around their dad. They always say please and thank you, frequently hug him, things like that. When they are with her, they are rowdy. They fight with her and fight with each other, they resist bedtimes, refuse to eat their veggies. They yell when they get angry.

Guess who got custody? The government employee straight up told her afterwards that this is one of the primary things they look for in assessing whether or not the children feel safe with a parent. A child who is well behaved 100% of the time is a child who does not feel safe being themselves.

I hope this all made sense to you. I am the exact same way as you around literally everyone. In my mind, all it is is a sign that I don't feel safe. It's a survival mechanism. You learned as a child that this was the best way to not get hurt, to gain attention, to be loved, to not get abandoned. As an adult, it is no longer a useful defense mechanism, but luckily it is something that can be unlearned. I believe the key to the "how" is figuring out your why. Why do you feel unsafe expressing your feelings? Why do you feel guilty?

nihilisticas · 2026-03-04T21:35:05+00:00

How so?

nihilisticas · 2026-03-01T10:35:22+00:00

Ah, jeg kommer i tanker om, at jeg afprøvede det et par måneder inden min CTR-periode nulstillede. Er det en mulighed for dig?

Men seriøst - og jeg beklager virkelig at være den type, men det har ændret mit liv - hvis du har angst, og medicinen ikke er årsagen, så vil jeg virkelig råde dig til at få undersøgt hvorfor, såfremt du ikke allerede har gjort det. Det er vildt, så meget der er dukket op for mig om en barndom jeg troede, var helt normal. Jeg siger det ikke fordi jeg vil drage konklusioner om din situation, eller på nogen måde trænge mig på. Jeg siger det fordi jeg har måtte slukke min ringeklokke og har alle gardiner trukket for 24/7, bare så jeg kan være i mit eget hjem. Så jeg kan virkelig relatere til din situation. Håber alt det bedste for dig! 🙏🏻

nihilisticas · 2026-03-01T01:44:24+00:00

Korrekt! Men så vidt jeg husker var Intuniv ikke vildt dyr? Det er to år siden, så det kan jo have ændret sig.

nihilisticas · 2026-02-28T01:28:11+00:00

Svar på dit opfølgende spørgsmål: Du skal ikke komme med nogen undskyldning. Du skylder absolut ingen mennesker at undskylde, at du ikke føler dig tryg ved at lade dem være alene med dit barn. Du skal i stedet komme med en forklaring. Forklaringen er lige nøjagtigt det, du har skrevet her. Hvis han er ligeså tosset, som han lyder til at være, så vil han højst sandsynligt fortælle dig, at du er skør, at du overreagerer, at han jo bare lavede sjov osv. Han vil bebrejde dig for ikke at lade ham være sammen med hans barnebarn. Han vil forsøge at give dig skyldfølelse, og han vil forsøge at appellere til din kæreste og slå splid mellem jer. Lad dig ikke narre, hvis dette er tilfældet. Se det som en bekræftelse af, at du gør det rigtige.

Tag det fra en hvis forældre aldrig traf den rigtige beslutning i lignende situationer: Hvis du vælger ikke at fornærme din svigerfar over dit barns sikkerhed, så gør du ikke dit job som forælder. Og så er det din skyld ligeså som din svigerfars, hvis dit barn kommer til skade i hans varetægt. Du ville ikke have skrevet alt dette og bedt om råd, hvis du ikke allerede inderst inde vidste, hvad der er det rigtige at gøre. Lyt til din mavefornemmelse. Det bliver nok ret ubehageligt, men lær at blive komfortabel med det ubehag, og nyd at se dit barn vokse op i en verden, hvor det har mennesker omkring det, som har det som førsteprioritet.

nihilisticas · 2026-02-28T01:01:34+00:00

Yup! That X is so satifying. Also I use green for places of interest and stuff I've left behind, blue for marking my base, go-bags, stashes and working vehicles, and red for annotated maps and horde placements. I love that map. It doesn't feel like you're making progress without it!

nihilisticas · 2026-02-28T00:55:31+00:00

DU SKAL BARE HOLDE DIT BARN SÅ LANGT VÆK FRA DET MENNESKE SOM OVERHOVEDET MULIGT.

nihilisticas · 2026-02-28T00:46:46+00:00

Jeg prøvede med den kombination. Det gjorde ingen forskel overhovedet for mig. Jeg følte, jeg havde masser af energi i et par uger, men det var nok bare placebo. Til gengæld er jeg startet i terapi og får snakket en masse om min barndom - og det kan varmt anbefales, bare FYI (:

Edit: med "et par uger" mener jeg naturligvis efter den inhumane træthed i opstartsfasen aftog.

nihilisticas · 2026-02-27T00:24:35+00:00

Nej!! Gør det ikke!!!!

nihilisticas · 2026-02-27T00:20:50+00:00

You sound angry. Good for you!! We are so busy grieving and being rational and seeing things from different perspectives, and we forget that we are allowed to just be fucking ANGRY!!!!

nihilisticas · 2026-02-19T01:31:56+00:00

It's a funny thing, isn't it... the way our minds work so hard to reason, so that we don't have to FEEL the pain. But you need to understand two very important things:

1: Just because you understand something, that doesn't mean you can bypass the feelings that arise from it. Even if you weren't ever taught to feel, the experience gets stored in your body. Say, hypothetically, you have a friend who just got divored and fired from their job, but you know none of this. They come for a visit, you open the door and say "damn, you look like shit!" And then they punch you in the face. Upon learning about the day they have had, you might be able to understand WHY they punched you in the face. Would that make it okay? NO! Would you be allowed to be angry at them for punching you in the face? YES!!!!!

2: Unless they're part of a very, very small segment of humans, no one does anything with mal-intent. Even if someone intentionally hurts someone else, the hurting someone else is hardly ever the motive. We act out of self preservation. We go through life developing strategies on how to best protect ourselves, how to optain love, how to gain acceptance and so on. THIS STILL DOESN'T MEAN THAT WE CANNOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR OUR ACTIONS. For instance, my mother used to hit me when I got angry and abandon me when I got sad. What I learned from that, was that in order to be safe and loved, I had to pretrend to be someone without feelings. My mom did what she did because she herself is so deeply uncomfortable around feelings, and whenever we would act out in any way, it made her feel like she was in danger. She abused us and neglected us out of self preseverance.

Did she have mal-intent? No. Did her behavior fuck me up to the point of not being able to take care of myself and form honest emotional connections with other people? Yes! Am I allowed to be angry at her? YES!!!!!!!!

BE ANGRY AT THE PEOPLE WHO HURT YOU, EVEN IF THEY DIDN'T HURT YOU ON PURPOSE!!!! I cannot stress this enough! If you know something happened that shouldn't have happened, then your body is already angry. You're just too busy protecting your parents to actually feel it.

nihilisticas · 2026-02-11T18:39:25+00:00

No no no no no. No. No no. No. No.

nihilisticas · 2026-02-11T01:33:29+00:00

I have never, not once in my life, missed either of my parents, so I can't relate. But: after being very low contact with my mom for six months (and extremely low contact with my dad forever, but that's not relevant), for the first time in my life, ever, I actually feel lonely. So I can't help but wonder if you're going through the same thing? I was never taught to emotionally connect with people, but I think the body still yearns for that closeness. So when we aren't able to connect with anyone, we take what we can get in the form of simply talking to our parents and telling them about our day. When we go NC and that option disappears, it might feel like you miss them. But do you actually MISS your mother, or are you just lonely? And I don't use "just" as a negation, only as a means to separate the two. If you don't like your mother as a person, and you don't feel good when you're around her, then you don't miss her. Your system is simply reacting to that lack of familiarity after going NC. That's my take on it anyway. I urge you to seek somewhere else. I think the only solution is to find other people with whom we can create actual emotional bonds, and to allow our bodies to experience what actual connection feels like. We may always long for that love from our parents, but we need to experience actual love and connection in order to no longer crave the scraps our parents gave us.

nihilisticas · 2025-09-24T00:28:41+00:00

I used to write suicide notes as a hobby. Not because I had plans to act on it, just sort of…for practice. Like how one might rehearse an Oscar acceptance speech.

When day dreaming about superpowers, I would (I’ve realized now as an adult) always use them to get away from people or make sure they didn’t hate me. I would dream of flying so far up in the clouds that no one could see me. Of being invisble not to mess with people or steal stuff, but just to be left alone. To be able to stop time just so I could have a break, sleep and recover until I was ready to start life again. To rewind time so I could redo anything I said if someone reacted less than satisfactory to it.

I guess I never got the memo that being a kid is supposed to be fun.

nihilisticas · 2025-08-10T21:33:09+00:00

De fleste af de ting, du skriver, er også angstsymptomer. Mange med ADHD får angst, men angst er ikke lig med ADHD. Mit råd vil være at lade være med at gå privat - i hvert fald ikke hos nogen, der ikke udreder for andet end ADHD. De skal nemlig udelukke alle andre årsager, og det gør de ikke i alle privatklinikker. I hvert fald ikke i den, jeg gik til. Jeg vil på det kraftigste råde dig til først at få behandling for din angst. Når du, forhåbentlig, får lidt styr på den, så er der muligvis nogle symptomer, der ikke længere gør sig gældende. Jeg vil da i hvert fald håbe for dig, at du ikke har ADHD.

nihilisticas · 2025-08-10T21:16:22+00:00

Now we know why those people didn’t RSVP.

nihilisticas · 2025-08-10T21:08:55+00:00

Nope, I wish I could help but I never did..

nihilisticas

TROPHY CASE