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The Buddy Project sounds like such a good initiative. I'm bummed there's currently no pairing up happening & no timeline for when there will be. I need that kind of peer support really badly right now and I wish I could show up to offer some to someone else too.

@owl25 Thanks for sharing all this! It helps to know other people struggle with this too, toxic shame tends to make it feel like every issue is uniquely my own & my fault but when stepping back & with some reassurance, it becomes clear that they aren't. Good luck with therapy & great to hear you have been able to notice some progress!

(I was really in distress when I started this thread but I'm back to feeling stable fwiw.)

@buddy9832 Thank you for the support! I'm sorry you're struggling with similar issues and I wish you good luck, working through things with your wife and also, importantly, with yourself.

Is my ability to bond with people permanently damaged because of trauma? Am I always going to be alone? I really wonder. I've always been more or less isolated because of social anxiety and avoidance interfering with my ability to socialize. I tend to be needy and overshare in some contexts, because of craving intimacy, too, even if it's kind of contradictory with being avoidant. I've been trying to improve on my social skills for years, and telling myself it's worth it to keep trying to connect with people, even though it's hard, and it hurts when it doesn't work, and it feels like it's something that's permanently not for me sometimes. I'm 26 and I still barely have any friends. I'm scared that as I get older, my ability to meet and connect with people is really not going to improve at all, because who's ever going to appreciate and respect someone like me -- with trouble holding a job and not much hobbies or excitement about anything because of depression? I don't think I'm alone because I'm hurtful. I take a lot of pride in not replicating the toxic behavior I was surrounded in through my family, like being manipulative or making hurtful jokes and things like that, but my way to relate to people is still not quite right. Like, I have a few friends but I feel like all my relations are asymmetrical, like others matter more to me than I do to them, always, and it scares me. I don't know if I'm unable to appreciate the proximity in the friendships I do have, or I'm genuinely a side character in the life of everyone who matters to me, it's hard to tell. I feel like I'm one step removed from being abandoned by everyone who matters to me, pretty much all the time.
I'm not in contact with my biological family. I feel like I haven't really had a family at all; any kind of parent figure to really show me safe and caring love, and give me guidance and reassurance. I wish I could have someone like that in my life. I really want a chosen family. I wish there was some kind of dating website analogue for that; messed up person looking for parent figure or sibling-like friend, anyone interested? But there isn't.
Can someone reassure me that it's not just me with these issues? That it can get better, that people like us get to bond with people and love and feel loved, too? That isolation and abandonment are things we can escape if we keep trying and believing it's worth it to reach out?

It's not just you. The pandemic is really hard on mental health -- the isolation, the uncertainty, the anxiety of it all are a lot to take in. It has really worsened my symptoms these last few months. But it will pass and we will make it through this period.

I feel you. We need supportive friendships to get better and having formative experiences of people as dangerous really messes with our ability to trust people and feel included. It's a logical outcome of being hurt, in a way that messes with our perception of ourselves, of other people, of how to interact with people. I struggle with isolation similarly and I know how hopeless it gets. I want to say like... we can overcome this isolation and it's worth it to keep reaching out to people, I hope that's true at least, but sometimes I'm not so sure.
Hang in there. For what it's worth, you're not alone in feeling terribly alone.

Thanks for the welcome, links and kind words!

I started reading Pete Walker's book and some of the content resonates, some less... I have a small list of books about CPTSD queued and I hope they'll provide some insights that can help me along the way. I want to find ways to invest myself in my recovery that aren't therapy, because even assuming I *can* find a therapist who's a good fit, it'll be a long time before I do, probably.

Anyway... onwards!

Hi everyone.

I am not totally sure if I have CPTSD. I have had my share of adverse experiences growing up. My mother was neglectful, my father was mostly absent and often manipulative when he was present and I lived with a relative who was violent with our living space in a deliberate way to make me feel unsafe, for a while. I have stopped being in contact with my family at 19, after wanting to burn bridges with them for a long time. Growing up in poverty and not really being parented by anyone, with no guidance or support, and love that only took the form of token "i love you"s here and there, caused the bulk of the chronic stress that might make a CPTSD label apply to me. Some bullying when I was a child and an unstable housing situation as a teenager also didn't help.

I have thought of my mental health problems as: (social/generalized) anxiety, depression, avoidant personality disorder. I have gotten some of these conditions diagnosed. I have been in therapy on and off, three times. Right now it has been years since I last went to therapy. The last time I gave up on it because of an incident where the therapist was trying to convince me I was being irrational about being afraid of ending up homeless... while I was going through being kicked out of where I lived, which was housing for youth at risk of homelessness. It was not the first time therapy was hurtful and invalidating and at that point I decided it would be the last.

Distance from my family has allowed me to heal to some extent, but I still have a long way to go. I am still dealing with isolation that is the outcome of having had severe social anxiety for a long time, and I still struggle to form and maintain friendships up to this day. I had an especially bad episode of worsening symptoms recently and I want to renew my commitment to recover and take care of myself. I think peer support can help me with that and I hope I can provide some for others too. (I am looking into therapy too, with a lot of reluctance...)

I don't know if CPTSD is a totally accurate label for me. I keep thinking to myself that I don't have enough or the right kind of trauma for this to make sense. But I have lived with chronic, inescapable stress for a solid decade as a child/teen, and that was really damaging to my mental health. And I think it still has an impact on me.

So... yup. That's it for now.