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Hi.

It's been about a year since I last engaged with the forum, for a variety of reasons. Objective data would suggest that my mental health has gotten worse since then. I started reading some of my old posts, and after I got over the cringe factor of how open I used to be, I thought it might be helpful for me to revisit the forums. I keep trying to figure out why I am having difficulties disproportionate to my circumstances, and one answer I keep getting internally is that I already "figured it out" but refuse to accept the reasons. It's hard to say what the truth is. Certainly I cannot go back and retrieve a comprehensive, unbiased dataset for analysis. Another option is to trust in my feelings, which sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't.

As I recall, I somewhat intentionally stopped processing because I was going to be out of school, and the prospect of having no distractions was daunting. I have since begun a high calibre academic program, a positive step that will prepare me for a career aligned with my values, but also presents the opposite problem (i.e. little time for processing). I still find myself drawn to the process of sorting out my mind, and I know that this work is important for my wellbeing, career, and loved ones. Yet I seem unable to make meaningful progress, caught between remembering when I could admit to trauma and distancing myself from the word now.

I spend an appreciable amount of time engaged in coping strategies that I logically know to be unhelpful and yet continue to indulge. For example, I think to myself that I do not have good enough reasons to feel the way I do. Sometimes I can trick myself into not having the feelings I think I have. It usually catches up with me in the form of symptoms. These symptoms prompt me to attribute some fault to myself or my behaviour for bringing them on in the first place, which is a bit of a funny paradox if you think about it. How can it be my fault I "feel bad" if I deny feeling bad in the first place?

It's all rather silly and I keep thinking that if I could just figure out what's going on with me, I would be able to chart a path forward. And yet, I know that if that were the case, it would have happened by now. Instead I continue to sort of feed my symptoms as a way of proving to myself that I meet some arbitrary standard of experiencing unpleasantness, which is rather irresponsible of me and I should probably try seek out some other forms of validation 

Apologies for the vague description. Hard to validate that.

Another complicating factor is that I (and others) have increasingly suspected that I am on the spectrum, which would perhaps explain why I have difficulty rationalizing contradictory symptoms (ex. some forms of self-care come naturally to me whereas others are a challenge; having both self-compassionate and self-deprecating thoughts) and feel I must present both sides to avoid "lying". I also suspect neurodivergence could help explain why the events I recall as being "traumatic" lack a certain "wow" factor; I genuinely mean this as a statement of fact regarding my lower threshold for being affected and not as a negative comment on the neurodivergent community (you're all super valid).

I think my intention in posting is to cultivate some motivation to be on my own side again. Sometimes I wonder, if feelings don't impact functioning, how significant can they be? I know better, but I continue to choose not to talk about certain things (even though I have supportive people in my life) which allows me to continue getting away with not trying. I do have a therapist, though, which has been helpful.

I am aware it might sound like I'm fishing. Please don't feel pressured to respond or to respond in a certain way. Anyone who replies to me may have to deal with my inability to reciprocate.


All the best,
Ownside

I've decided to restart my journal for a number of reasons.

For a while now I've been wondering about the purpose of sharing. How would it help me to have other people know how I'm feeling? I seem to be bottling up and then posting a lot at once, not always in rational terms, and ending up with a cringe/vulnerability hangover. Which discourages me from posting again, and then things build up.

Recently I've experienced some feelings of belonging in a peer group. It helped me realize that if you want to belong somewhere, you have to show up. I tend to isolate. And when I do meet someone and like them, I will hang out with them a bit and then distance myself to test their interest. It's how I build trust, but it peters out a lot of friendships before they even really get going. I think I do this with the forum too. Despite all the support I've been getting I have ambiguous feelings about my sense of belonging and I think part of that has to do with my patchy engagement.

I've also been doing some songwriting and this theme of wanting to share keeps coming up. Despite my surface values that say it's more considerate to limit emotional reveal, I think there's a part of me that really does want to be seen. I've talked to people in real life who tell me about themselves and their past in depth, and it's not a burden to listen. I feel honoured to be invited into their world. I've begun imagining that someone might someday feel similarly about me.

Some activism feelings have also been coming up for me. Particularly when I see things happening to my sister that remind me of my trauma. It might not be trauma yet for her, but I know where that road leads over the years. At this point I don't yet feel like I can influence the situation significantly. But it is a mission for me. I also think about someday leveraging my experience to help others, maybe through art or work.

For all these reasons -- cringing over my previous journal, wanting to feel more integrated on the site, satisfying the part that does want to share, and healing for someone other than myself -- I'm making a commitment. I would like to post here in the journal at least once a week. It can be about anything. That's the trust part. I'm not pushing myself to share things before I'm ready. I'm pushing myself to show up. I've seen myself make habits and it's amazing how something peripheral can become a part of you through repeated exposure. I think that could happen with this.

I hope I'm ready for this because I'm a bit terrified of being seen but at the same time tired of hiding so much.

It's the middle of the night where I am. I'm thinking again how its been a while since I've been to T. It plays out like a conversation, where I try to explain myself in a way that makes sense -- a lot of my thoughts trend that way. And for context, I was seeing a T at my university but when I graduated I decided to try this organization that offers free services for youth, including drop-in counselling sessions.

That was working for me for a while. And while my FOO knows I go to therapy, I've been a bit more secretive about it lately because, well, I'm no longer discussing "just" anxiety. So I've been calling them "appointments". I have them on the computer. And I guess referring to them that way made them indistinguishable from the other appointments I have on the computer, meetings with people for school and such.

There were a couple of little comments about these appointments. Like how one of them seemed "long" (and it was, they let you go on for over an hour if you need it). And then. The last one I went to. This would have been about a month ago now. I come up the stairs (I live in the basement) and we're all in the kitchen and my M says something like, "Why do you have to go to so many appointments all the time? It's annoying."

Now there are multiple ways to interpret that statement but the way I interpreted it was "It annoys me that you're going to so many appointments." They were counselling appointments! And she couldn't have known that because I didn't tell her, but good grief, that was not what I needed to hear.

So now... now, every time I go to book a session, my brain kicks into overdrive. Trying to calculate how I can do this without "annoying" her. Trying to figure out if I really "need" it right now, or if I can hold out. There's this CBT group that started shortly after that, that I had signed up for a while ago, and I thought maybe I could get by on that (because one appointment a week is annoying enough, right?) but it's more like a class than a therapy session. And while my M hasn't complained about it, I still have to navigate this fear when I think of adding more. It's sort of easier to just tell myself I'm fine. But I'm not fine.

I've just about got a session booked now. It's with my T from university (she also does private practice) and I haven't seen her since August so I've got a lot to catch her up on. I need someone familiar. And so I was explaining all this to her, in my head, and thinking, Wow. My M's annoyance has a lot of power over me. And I realized that many of the times I've been hurt, it's because she got annoyed and said something to me. And how much sense it would make for my body to develop such a high sensitivity to this emotion, in her, as sort of an early warning system. Appease, before things get worse! Avoid further trauma.

It sounds basic when I write it like that but what came over me emotionally was a sense of understanding and acceptance for my own sensitivity, a trait that's brought me a lot of shame over the years. My body is just trying to protect me. That's what I wanted to share.

[Warning for long post and brief mentions of bodily autonomy violation]

I'm new here and trying to reconcile the idea of having grown up with abuse. For the longest time my M and I were best friends. We spent all our time together. She'd sing me special songs, call me a dozen ridiculous but endearing nicknames, write special notes for my lunch. She was my cheerleader, my confidant, my person. So much so, that I never really had a best friend my own age for any significant period -- certainly I made friends here and there but nothing lasted. That was okay. I didn't need anybody else.

This has all slowly changed over the last 6 years or so. It was nothing sinister, just a series of circumstances that burned her out until I could no longer recognize the person who raised me. It's been a pretty big loss, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make up for the emotional support I used to get from her.

But.

The distance has given me a new perspective. The person I see now -- overburdened, irritated by everything -- has triggered things in me. A key piece of this has been the birth of my baby sister. It is like my inner child is walking around outside my body, frustrating our M with her needs, being snapped at, misunderstood, gaslit... and my nervous system just screams. I'll hear my sister fighting the coat M is trying to put on her, and M will tell her, "Quit being a wuss, it's just a coat," and all of sudden I'm hyperventilating and hugging myself. To most people it would be just a coat, but to me it's violation of bodily autonomy, it's belittling feelings, it's helplessness. And anywhere but here it would sound ridiculous because who doesn't have to force their toddler into a coat sometimes?

So I'm here, and I recognize that I have CPTSD symptoms. But when I read about the awful things others on this site have experienced, and I look at how I grew up, I wonder, "How can we have the same symptoms?" I remember feeling happy and safe most of the time. I also remember being snapped at, teased, dismissed, having my bodily autonomy violated, but it wasn't frequent. Mostly we were laughing at TV shows, singing in the car, chatting about our days over restaurant food, holding hands when we walked places. I remember her supporting my interests, respecting my privacy, letting me stick my hands up her coat sleeves when they were cold. Looking over when I was in the middle of doing something simple, like drawing or playing guitar, to catch her beaming at me.

There has to be a certain threshold for negative interaction that is healthy and acceptable and not traumatizing. I think that's how I rationalized the hurt. Things can't be perfect all the time, right? And it took so little to send me spiraling -- a small comment, a slight change in tone -- that I believed the way I felt was on me for being too sensitive. That I hadn't been through anything that bad, so I didn't have perspective. It's only recently I've realized these thought patterns are common to abuse survivors.

I want to talk about the confusion of a happy and abusive upbringing. Because I think that's what I experienced. And I think the kind of wound it produces differs from the wounds of growing up unloved and unsafe, a story more often told in the context of abuse. What happens when you grow up loved and afraid at the same time?

Hi all!

I'm a young adult on a years-long identity questioning tour (including sexuality, gender, neurodivergence, and mental illness) in which C-PTSD is my latest place of exploration. I decided to join OOTS after reading a few threads (particularly The Healing Porch) and noticing a strong emotional reaction come over me. It seemed like the people here would understand the parts of me that didn't make sense and that I didn't have to be alone anymore.

I have a hard time rationalizing my experiences as abuse or neglect per se (the harm was not intentional), but I've slowly been recognizing that I have trauma and that it arose in a relational context. I am hoping that's enough for me to be here. Everything I remember seems so small, but the Big T Little T Trauma thread has assured me that it still counts. I am learning how to validate myself.

My little sister has been my biggest inspiration. As a toddler, she understands what it's like to have big feelings and not be able to explain them. We're learning together, and I hope to be able to understand my trauma better so I can prevent the same things from happening to her.