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Does anyone have experience with AIT? Or know where to go to actually receive it? I can't find a trained therapist in my area and I was wondering if there were any online options. I don't even know if online would be as effective as in-person but I've been listening to a podcast and multiple professionals on there have raved about it. Hope everyone is well, thank you.

Thank you both for taking the time to reply in such depth! I really appreciate it. Toxic Shame is one of the ones sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, and I've heard good things about IFS. I'm a huge fan of Heidi Priebe. Her videos have helped immensely because I feel like she's able to describe my fears and emotions and internal experience relatively accurately, especially her video on scapegoating. I haven't heard of EFT but will read up on it. Thank you for the info!

I was officially Dx with CPTSD a few months ago and it made so much sense. I felt validated having a name to describe my chaotic brain, thoughts and behaviors. But I feel like there's SO MUCH I need to do in order to heal. I have over a dozen self-help books on various but related topics sitting in my bedroom waiting to be read. Right now I'm working through Pete Walkers surviving to thriving and Kristen Neff's self-compassion.  I want to read all these books, I want to work on mindfulness and mediation, but I also want to work through Kristen Neff's workbook that accompanies the first one, I want to continue EMDR therapy, I want to journal (about my day, past traumas, prompts, etc), but what about inner child work? Parts work? Pete Walker talks about the importance of grief work about our lost childhoods, but better to do it after practicing mindfulness (I think that's what he was getting at). But I really want to learn how to set and enforce boundaries to make my day to day life more bearable. I'm so overwhelmed! I feel like I need a personal trainer for healing, which I suppose is what a therapist is, but EMDR so far hasn't been what I expected. It's not bad per se, just not what I thought.

Does anyone have any ideas on where to start? What has worked best for them? What practices or work has seen the most success in healing? I want to heal but I feel paralyzed.

I appreciate the replies everyone, thank you.

I've had this friend since college. We met when we were 18 and partied A LOT together. I had a huge binge drinking problem (sober from booze since 2016!) and was "that person" at every single gathering. Toxic female friendships are a glaring pattern in my life starting with my mother, but I won't go there in this post. I don't believe this friend to be a narcissist, but she has a lot of strong tendencies leaning that way. I'm a classic people-pleaser and freeze/fawner type, and she has exploited that to her full advantage.

Almost 20 years ago, she cyberbullied me with a pretty awful post on social media. She posted something about me that is flat out false, and she never mentioned me by name, but we all knew who she was talking about. She rallied the troops behind her, everyone believing something about me that was never true, and I never said a word about it (something I am deeply, deeply ashamed about). I numbed myself to the situation (I have a history of severe bullying as a kid) with booze and carried on with life. We have not spoken about it to this day.

About 14 years ago I went through a divorce from my abusive ex. From the moment my ex and I began dating, she was jealous. She's even admitted that she's a jealous person. In the beginning, my ex love bombed me, and I was so in love the red flags didn't even register. She and my ex developed an inappropriate friendship. I genuinely believe nothing ever happened between them physically (I actually trust my intuition on this one), but they ALWAYS danced around that boundary that was waaaay too uncomfortable for me. Their friendship was 100% inappropriate. But my ex would accuse me of being jealous, yay gaslighting! He'd throw things at me like "Oh so now I can't have female friends?" "You do know she's married right?" Chuckling, talking down to me like I was a complete idiot. If I attempted to bring up their friendship with her she'd accuse me of being a bad friend, how dare I.

When my ex and I got divorced, she played both sides of the fence, She claimed to love me as a friend and acknowledged how awful of a husband he was, but she didn't end her friendship with him. She said "You can't tell me who I can and cannot be friends with." The thing is, I never tried to. I just needed my ex out of my life, and if she was going to keep him in her life, he was still in my life in some way. And my ex knew this too. He * loved it. He loved the control. During our divorce, those two resparked their friendship and she was more of a listening ear to him than me.

Basically, I NEED to end this friendship. I'm terrified. She will screen shot and share any message I send her. If I explain its because of the two main issues that I wrote above, she will be "disappointed" in me that I didn't tell her these things at the time. She will immediately talk * about me to all our mutual friends (but tbh, the mutual friends we have were also not good friends to me either, so whatever). But she's so triggering for me. I feel like I'm so easily manipulated into believing that everything is my fault, and she KNOWS it. She uses it against me. I just need her out of my life. I know this sounds juvenile, but I'm scared of her. She can be both your best ally, and your worst enemy. But I need my dignity back.

Has anyone else ended long-term friendships over indiscretions from over a decade ago? Please any advice. Maybe this is no big deal for other people, but I need support. Thanks for reading.

Thank you everyone 

I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2022. I had burst fracture in my L5 (horrible pain, do not recommend) due to a plasma cytoma, which then led to the mm diagnosis. I had a lumbar fusion surgery and am on treatment for mm indefinitely. I'm forever grateful for modern medicine that's allowing me to continue to live my life. Looking at the risk factors for multiple myeloma though, I meet zero of them. Nada. Zilch. I often wonder if my childhood played a role in my diagnosis. Whenever something feels too validating, my instinct is not trust it. But my instincts are all out of whack anyway, and here I can look at the facts. The facts are that I have MDD, GAD, CPTSD, and now cancer. I don't have a ton of memories from childhood, especially single digit years, but I get really sad when I think about younger me, and what younger me suffered. I had absolutely no one. No one. Between my moms constant but unpredictable rages, my dads severe alcoholism, the bullying at school and betrayal by influential people/relationships, and being the family scapegoat, I had no one. I was EVERYONE's punching bag. Thanks for reading.

Hey I'm in my early 40s and just learned about this site. I have a lot of childhood trauma that's been tough to work through. I grew up with extremely emotionally immature parents and experienced severe bullying throughout my formative years. My dad is a severe but functional alcoholic and my mother coped with it by constant screaming at her children. There was no adult I could turn to with anything. I've also been a part of a lot exploitative relationships in adulthood because of my childhood and the shame I feel from those relationships is debilitating. I had a therapist one time tell me I have a "trauma brain." I'm slowly working my way through Pete Walkers CPTSD book and Kristen Neff's Self-compassion. I've also started EMDR therapy but that's been a pretty slow process too but I'm gonna stick with it and trust that it works.

One of the hardest things about my mental health issues is that I feel so isolated. Forming authentic relationships as an adult is hard enough, and with my interpersonal trauma, it sometimes feels impossible. I've been guilty of trauma dumping in the past and I'm trying to be more aware of it now. So I'm really glad this resource exists and there are others here who can relate. Thanks for reading.