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I'm just sitting here, not doing what I needed to do today because something about getting ready triggered me into a massive flashback AGAIN. (second time in three days)

I'm so so angry. All I can do is sit very still and stare at the wall and remember to breathe, I'm so angry. Idk if I'm angry at myself, or at the situation but it's unbearable and I have no idea what to do! I don't even want to fix it. I've spent my adult life learning how to do basic things and I still can't pass for clean, normal and put-together sometimes.  I've only started passing a little in the past year. I still can't even just simply get ready in the morning sometimes. It's just an unending spiral of trying to make myself normal and never being even basic amounts of acceptable so where am I supposed to keep getting the drive to learn and do better?

If it were just my parents not teaching me things then I should be able to fix it by learning to do hygiene and grooming. But precious little comes naturally and I mess up all the time. I just feel like I can't fit in with the world and I have no place out there.

On some level I understand that having messy hair I don't know how to deal with and having flashbacks are two different things? I guess people have bad hair days all the time and don't feel anything like the way I'm feeling right now. It's not the messy hair it's the being set up for failure and the rejection and the trying so very hard and never being good enough. It's the dissociative episodes making it worse. It's the public shame.

But she's a friend?

Like, she's kind of being an * but I have no reason to believe that she wouldn't try to change her behavior if asked. She's repetitively shown she can change harmful behaviors and grow as a person so I guess this isn't different?

And I guess she's shown a capacity to be empathetic of me, even if I'm upset at her?

But the only confrontation I know is having a screaming match or pleading, humiliatingly, to be treated like a person. And I think the screaming match is because the people in my past either did not care when they hurt me, or were too deep in their own coping mechanisms to acknowledge it. Why calmly tell someone you've been hurt when they don't care or won't acknowledge it? What purpose does it serve? It's not really a problem to them unless you make it a problem. (via a screaming match)

Every fiber of my being wants to make this a screaming match and feels like she's not going to be able to hear me because she's too stuck in her own mindset. But idk if evidence supports that belief. I don't want to scream at my friend? How do I handle that? What do I do with all of this anger?

I'm trying to learn how to value and protect "who I am on the inside" but honestly I just kind of don't feel like I'm worth protecting?

I've always been in harm's way. A large part of my life is feeling and processing big negative things and having nightmarish mental health symptoms. Mind as well try to protect a sewer rat from germs, you know? I live here. I don't really understand what I'm trying to preserve.

Every time I try to use a sewing machine I have a breakdown.

I'm sitting here with the remnants of my latest sewing disaster. And honestly, it's not that bad. Idk what went wrong, but maybe I'll figure it out? I fixed the part that was messed up and no major harm was done so I can totally try again! But it feels like the end of the world. I feel ....completely shut down? Like all of this was for nothing and I need to quit? It's definitely some kind of emotional flashback, I know this feeling. I have this weird urge to hide in a childhood bedroom and dissociate with my toys.

I have a lot of repressed memory, so I'm not exactly sure what this stems from yet. But maybe when I was little and didn't know how to do something correctly, I didn't have any help to fix it? I remember the sting of having so much excitement and passion and energy invested in something and just have it not work. And that's it. I just don't get to do that thing. I didn't know why it didn't work. Probably because I "messed up" right, I just do everything wrong.

As a teen I was really creative but I was never able to finish things. I would get so passionate and want to do creative projects so badly. I would always hit some dead end where I was trying really hard but everything was coming out wrong. Probably because I didn't know how to do the thing I wanted to do, but didn't realize I needed direction. I wouldn't know how to fix it, or what I was doing wrong. Everyone else around me seemed to work hard and do things just fine? And I would just kind of withdraw and clock out.

Kids get direction like that from parents, right? I guess if I was a parent and I saw my kid that upset, I would want them to talk to me so I could help. And if I saw my kid was very interested in something, I would want to encourage them and make sure they had the tools they needed to explore their interests. I feel like there's something buried deeper in those memories that I can't quite reach right now, but at the very least I probably shouldn't have faced those problems alone. I can't imagine thinking about my young cousins struggling like that, it's really disturbing to fathom.

I've had a few very light little instances of disapproval in the past two days. It was nothing that wasn't understandable. A few people were misinformed. But still, I keep thinking about it without trying.

I remind myself that they're good, well-meaning people with different mindsets, different lives. No one was unkind. We were coming from different backgrounds and had a misunderstanding, that happens. And I believe this when I say it to myself!

But I still feel disproportionately hurt. I keep catching myself being a little more vigilant about if I've done anything else that would cause disapproval. The way I'm dressed, am I standing too close, do my actions seem irritated at all? I know I do this and it will go away soon. I just have to keep reinforcing to myself that everything is fine. But doesn't everyone feel that way about rejection/criticism? I know some people probably deal with it better, and some people have coping mechanisms/skills, but surely no one likes rejection? I thought this was pretty normal.

There are small little micro-confrontations in everyday situations, and I have no idea how to do them well. I always peace-keep, I stay quiet and I listen to other's perspectives even if I can see they're wrong or if I disagree. If they have viewpoints or behaviors that disregard me I always default on "well they don't know better, I will listen to where they're coming from and try to understand them first." I wait for the right time to say something in a way that people may be able to consider calmly, maybe because I understood them first I can explain my side in a way that's palatable. Maybe just baybe I can be diplomatic without stepping on toes and completely ruining our relationship.

This bites me in the rear every time though. The only people it ever works with are abusive, explosive people. And even then, bottling up my own thoughts makes me crazy! I just walk around secretly angry all the time! Thinking about what I want to say to them if I could, intrusively! I don't want to daydream telling-off scenarios, they interrupt my life.  I HAVE to start speaking my mind. But I have no idea how this works.

I can only assume step one is don't let it get to the point where you're seething with anger because I feel like if I tried to speak my mind now, I would just explode at worst or sound really passive aggressive at best and that would be super off putting. It's no one else's fault that I bottle things up. They're behavior/opinions can be naive or obtuse to my realities sometimes but I don't want to explode at them, I just want to have a voice. 

I can't say I fully understand it yet, but the opinion was something along the lines of like... people should want to grow together. And become more realized, better people? Together? Even through healing from trauma?

And then at the same time, that people's "broken-ness" is beautiful? That one gets me. That mind as well be in a different language. I typed that and I think the operating system of my brain encountered and error and crashed.

All my life, I was treated like my "negative" emotions were bad, and my suffering was my own fault, and my negativity was such a burden on others. (Especially others who "empathically and mercifully" endured me anyways, ugh)

The process of emotionally healing from childhood trauma is obviously very difficult. Worth it- but difficult. And it feels like the most true and obvious thing in the world to me that this journey is one that has to happen alone. I'm not pleasant to be around for this reason. I suffer, and it bothers people. Healing is hard and people don't like that.

Is this an empathy thing? Is it a specific kind of person who is effected by the suffering of others that I should be avoiding or having healthier boundaries around, maybe? Or am I mostly right and perhaps there are some rare people who are not bothered by people who are healing? Yesterday I was 3,000% sure that this was a fact of life, that people are just avoidant of suffering, so the fact that these opinions even exist at all is really throwing me for a loop. I don't know what to make of it and I am an emotional scrambled egg.

I'm starting to have a hunch?

The thought of getting rid of the inner critic is obviously freeing, but sometimes I have thoughts like "But how will I judge if my hair looks right (read: how will I know if I should be embarrassed or not) if I have no inner critic? I could look crazy and just..what? Love myself? Surely I can't just walk through life like that." and other such thoughts. My hunch is that maybe there is supposed to be some other inner compass there, and maybe the critic is overcompensating for the lack of that thing?

Like, I constantly feel I exist in a state of messiness and embarrassment that I have to judge in the mirror and then fix before going out. But what if instead of that, I had gotten the message that hygene and self-care is an act of love? Like an expression that someone wants you to be taken care of? What if my parents had done my hair as a kid as an expression that they cared and it was a positive activity? I think it would bother me if my hair looked bad and I would want to fix it as an act of self-love instead of having to judge everything against how embarrassing I am and how much I can't let people know.

So I'll never know if this is really the case, and I'm usually not one to guess. But it's the best suggestion of a word to get my point across, I think.

With my parents, who are both very manipulative, I'm learning to take solace in the fact that their abuse came from a place of shame they had for themselves, taken out on me. More specifically, in present day when I'm inundated with an inner critic the way I'm beginning to deal with it is to remember where the shame and critic came from.

But what about when an abuser doesn't seem to feel shame? What about when people just genuinely want to hurt you to make themselves feel better? And they're not sorry. And they don't think they've done anything wrong at all. I can still get caught in a downward spiral about like... the fact someone can harm me and genuinely think hurting me isn't wrong. Human worth. Human rights. The cruelty of it all. I'm not really sure how to dig myself out of this hole? I'm not sure if what I'm feeling is even shame. I can't put shame back where it came from if there is none. Is this a question of basic worth? Maybe I have to put a belief or way of thinking (i.e. lack of human worth) back where it belongs and firmly establish my own ideas of basic wroth? That sounds difficult.

They walked around and looked into all of my windows first like a creep. They were talking to my neighbors and I didn't know?? They showed up when they knew I was injured and having an adverse reaction to the meds for the injury, impacting my judgement and ability to take care of myself. They know they're not welcome here.

Ugh. Like, I don't need to go on about it. I'm sure all of your creep-o-meters are going off as badly as mine.  It's just that they were so squirrely. In the past I was so conditioned to feel like I was just being crazy when I noticed these things, but I haven't seen this in a year since I went low contact. The way they were speaking was strange for them, they sounded so weirdly desperate. Not groveling desperate, but "I'm desperate, it's unbearable, so I'm here to forward my wants over your needs and safety" That sort of thing. That "I'm going to use you to make myself feel better whether you like it or not" thing.

It's been a while since I've been on the other end of that and I'm a little shaken and dissociated tbh. I have more of an inner compass now, and in my gut I feel like maybe I need to affirm my innate value and humanity to myself and assure myself that I'm not here to be used by any * who prefers to hurt people instead of help themselves. It's hard to push away the humanity of it all though. They've told me before to my face that they prefer treating people this way and have no intention to stop, and that they understand they have a problem but they just don't feel bad about it and don't want to change. They get offended at me when I suggest they need to fix it, as if I'm an unaccepting monster. It's so easy to get sucked into those memories. I hope I can use these feelings of anger and lack of safety to double down and care for myself even more. Protect and value myself even more.

With my parents.
I've been carrying around their insecurities and incompetance thinking they were my own inalienable traits for SO LONG.

I'm still not all the way there, but I think I can see the forest for the trees. I think I can see the confidence in my anger. I feel like Sisyphus rolling a bolder uphill but I think I'm starting to see that the things I've been so ashamed of and thought of as shortcomings came from them and how utterly incompetent and neglectful they were at raising a child- and also life in general. All I've ever done in life is try to fix these problems without the right tools. I put in so much effort and so many tears without any real direction, as a child, and they couldn't even address their own mistakes? I'm not the incompetent one.

I can't say it and mean it all the time yet, but when I'm given half a chance I seem to be pretty hard-working. I seem to try harder than others before giving up, and have a bit of resilience when things are difficult. I, as a person, even in my coping mechanisms, exhibit traits that don't line up with all this shame and blame. I'm definitely not the one who messed up a whole dang kid and then blamed the kid and guiltily hid away the evidence.

I know this post kind of sounds like a downer, I'm feeling some sadness and anger for myself, but I'm also feeling more tenacious and confident then I have in a while. Hopeful, I guess, that all these negative parts of myself that feel branded into my personality might scrub off after all. After all this time. It's bitter-sweet. I wonder who I am underneath all of that.

I feel like I've always suppressed an overwhelming hopelessness in order to survive. I've reached a point where it's hard to suppress anymore. And lately I feel I just don't want to fix it? I know that sounds bad. But I just kind of want to feel my own feeling, I think. I don't want to do self-help, I just want to experience it. Be seen. Talk about it but like...for comradery and empathy's sake but not to be "fixed". I'm not sure if I've ever let myself do that before. I don't have a lot of faith in myself lately, I hope it's not wrong to want to just sit with this overpowering hopelessness. But it's what I feel I should do, in my gut. Just sit with it like it's a friend. Let it be known, let it be normal. Maybe it's human, to feel this way.

I think when I feel lost like this, I default on wanting direction from others. (Which is an unhealthy habit of mine. I have a talent for finding untrustworthy people in that regard.) So trusting my gut when it tells me, basically, "Just wallow in depression I guess" is hard. Idk if allowing myself to feel hopeless = wallowing in depression, though. It feels a little different than that maybe. Almost a refreshing different.

I can't fathom walking through life like that, it feels so unsafe. To just let yourself be yourself, and to like yourself and be comfortable and worthy and happy more often. The world doesn't seem like the kind of place one can safely do that. Do people like... just feel that way? Or do they put on a sort of mental armor as they deal with life outside their "comfort zone" and only be vulnerable when they're safe?

Because I feel like protecting the most vulnerable parts of you is a part of taking care of yourself too? Like a kind of self-worth? A "I am worthy of being protected/shielded" kind of self worth? Idk I'm very confused. I know there's some flaw in my thinking or some part of the situation I don't understand yet.

I feel like there's an aspect to people I can't quite describe? Like a basic worth, a light, a worthiness? It's like a kind of love maybe even. A spark? Idk. I'm so dissociated from mine. When I even get a small inkling for it, it's so incredibly painful. I would almost rather be in a state of shame 24/7. But when I think about "Okay, but what if you were to connect to that feeling? Underneath that pain, it probably feels great. Then maybe you wouldn't have to hate yourself all the time?" it seems unrealistic, how could I possibly deal with the trials of life in such a vulnerable state?

I just hate myself so so so much. I'm overwhelmed by it.

A friend told me sometimes people perceive the state they go into when enduring trauma as a persona, and they hate that persona for being "weak enough" to be hurt or for "letting" the trauma happen. I still have so much hate. I just click into this mode, I feel like I look crazy and act meek and stupid. I hate my hair, I hate my face, I hate my shy posture and how my voice sounds so young and scared sometimes. There's too much hatred to feel it all. I'm so overwhelmed.

I remember feeling this way in the thick of trauma. I still have moments when I feel like all of that trauma was my fault. I ask myself why I let it happen. How could I have been so ...weak, I guess? Weak and embarrassing. I'm still weak and embarrassing. I don't know what my problem is.

TW for hopelessness about recovery. Also TW for suicide ideation - adjacent statements.

I realized I've been harboring a fear for a long time, about how some people seem to be able to face their demons (not that it's easy) and for others it's like you're asking them to drink the whole ocean. My brother is like that, it's like the sum of his experiences, trauma and coping mechanisms is so great he can barely process it. So much of his identity and ability to function- not just as a competent adult but as someone who has any small will to live- is tied up in those thoughts and behaviors and the ability to shut out his trauma.

Or like, my grandmother. She has a rare brain condition. She genuinely can't process emotional stuff sometimes. Or my mother? (Wow I've never written all this out, no wonder I have such a fear  ) My mother gets so completely overwhelmed and unable to process, she can barely handle seemingly small emotions of guilt. It REALLY messes up her life. It's hard to believe she wouldn't fix it if she could, with how extremely she's suffered.

No matter how far I've come, I'm terrified I'll hit a wall one day and find a trauma that's so dissociated, so blocked out, with such enigmatic emotional turmoil that I just won't be able to process it. I'll just have to live with it for the rest of my life. So much of me has become this person who can chart a course through any kind of trauma or hurt even if it's the most petrifying thing I've ever done. I don't know how I would deal with it if I put all these years of work into this just to get stuck and ...not be that person? Essentially.

I'm not sure what started it but just before Christmas I started having emotional flashbacks and more sensitive triggers that I don't understand, which is weird for me at this point. I feel in my gut that some big trauma memory from childhood is trying to re-surface but it's just so blocked. I feel so stuck. I'm having nightmares every night and I'm very scared and very tired. Nothing I usually do seems to put a dent in figuring it out and I think that's bringing these fears out of me.

I've used Pete Walker's 13 steps for managing flashbacks to help myself come out of emotional flashbacks before. But the first step is understanding that it's a flashback, it happened in the past, and that things are different and safe now.

With spiritual abuse, I was convinced that this was just... like the way the universe Is? Like, I was made to feel my abuse was part of how the dang fabric of reality is woven. I guess to people who are spiritual or religious, it's like your religion is The Actual Way Of Things, you know? So if it feels like the "unsafe" part is God or The Universe, it's kind of hard to convince myself that things are different and safe now when I'm in an EF because I am indeed still in the universe, you know? It's not gone? I can cut the people out of my life but the belief is still there when I'm flashing back. It's like being claustrophobic of existence itself.

How do you handle that? What do you tell yourself?

I'm frustrated to tears! I was doing so well!

I'm back in an old environment with family and it's like... I've made such great progress but here I am again back in the same routine. And I'm fighting it! I'm so confused. I don't know how all of my new tools and coping mechanisms work in this scenario.

I'm used to people who are manipulative in one way or another. I can deal with people who isolate, target all your healthy coping mechanisms and the general daily gears in your life that keep everything turning and functional and try to ruin it all and drag you down. I've been doing really great with building myself a strong little foundation in life for keeping myself stable and my feelings and well-being out of other people's grubby little hands, lol.

Right now I have to be around a family member who is less than healthy to be around but not because she's manipulative. She has developmental problems. She could step on your foot ten times, accidentally, and if you suggest maybe she could be more careful she will completely not understand. She didn't step on your foot to be mean. She's not wrong or bad. Why should she change anything if she's not wrong or bad? It was an accident, that's life, I should forgive her every time.

We're also getting into fights over boundaries about me owning my own stuff and like.... maybe ask me before touching/moving my things. Be nice/respectful with my things if you're handling them. Yes I get to treat them whatever way I want, they're mine. She told me a story the other day about how she liked a picture on someone else's key chain at the store so she just took their keys and started telling them how nice the picture was and was shocked and appalled when the person was upset with her for just grabbing their keys away all of a sudden. She was telling me how surprisingly rude the person was for speaking to her that way.

I don't know what to do! She genuinely doesn't understand when I get upset and then she gets upset and I feel awful. But also, she's not treating me with basic respect and humanity sometimes and when I get upset she gets more upset. Not to out-do me and not because she's angry but because she doesn't understand. She doesn't understand why I'm upset. (After treating me badly!) It's like a CPTSD nightmare. But it's that same old "I don't feel like I'm allowed to genuinely express my feelings when people treat me badly" song and dance for me! Also "I have to forgive this person eternally while they treat me badly because they can't help themselves" song and dance. Part of my emotional well-being and worth has gotten all tangled up in this somehow and I feel wounded. I need to understand what part of this situation is making me feel like she has control over my feelings/situation and untangle it and never give it a chance to tangle again. I don't really feel like I 100% understand it right now and I feel frustrated and hopeless! But I have to fix it.

I intend to do more research myself, but if there is anyone else who could commiserate with me or tell me if they feel the same way I do, I would appreciate that kind of feedback right now.

I'm still on the fence about whether my mother is a covert narcissist or just maybe codependent and manipulative. I had an a-ha moment a minute ago (I've been having lots of those lately) about how I always feel ...just bad around her. And also her parents. I don't feel that way around other people (outside of instances where I'm triggered, but at least I know I'm being triggered) but with family I feel like a harbinger of negativity and judgement. I feel shrill and hateful, because that's the way I seem to effect them. (and I'm pretty sure that's not completely normal, btw? Like maybe my sense of self could be a bit less ....effected by how people react to me? Thoughts?) I feel like I'm always having to express "Hey, please don't step on my foot!" to people who don't want to believe they do, ever, step on anyone's feet and how dare I think or say such an accusation?

But like, I don't know maybe I'm way off base or maybe I'm just angry, but it strikes me what a black and white situation that is, right? My mother is such a "Mother Theresa" mayter-y person. In her mind, she's a Good Person and a Mother. Totally selfless. When she does bad things, total accidents! She always has the best of intentions and probably also poots rainbows. (Selfless rainbows. For others. Probably children. ) She just kind of walks through life never seeing her own fault in anything, maybe feeling like a harbinger of ....jeez I don't know.. motherly kindness and selflessness? And I'm walking through life, at least when I'm around them, feeling like a harbinger of awful, mean antagonizing stuff.

Does this happen every time someone has this sort of ego thing? Could she maybe just suck my soul out through a bendy straw or something? I feel like that would be more efficient. I don't think she's on-purpose making me feel bad to make herself feel good but....actually I had a point but maybe I'm wrong and that does kind of seem to be what's going on here doesn't it? She doesn't want to feel bad, so she makes me feel bad. And then pretends to be "empathetic" or whatever to make herself feel good. She's totally making me feel bad to feel good isn't she?   

Like the title says.
I need to work through some criticism without feeling like I'm just cosmically somehow fundamentally bad. I'm having trouble focusing on the actual, change-able actions and mindsets I should examine without falling into a shame hole. I feel like there are so many shame responses and they're all different, I feel like I'm avoiding land mines.

Does anyone here have any advice?

Maybe this belongs in one of the six major symptoms categories? I wasn't sure.

I'm worried that all my motivation may actually be coming from my family. Not as in they're encouraging but maybe all of my drive is really just survival or anger or both? Anger is probably where most of my drive comes from.

Often, I'll be depressed and in a state of not really doing or caring about anything and the major force that gets me up and running again is that some catastrophic drama is happening in the family, and suddenly I have a fire lit under me to get away or continue whatever I'm working on because I feel like I want to prove I can be better. I've only ever half-heartedly been able to pull myself back up without interference, and even then I don't feel like I accomplish much. It's like I still mope around except I'm trying a little bit to have a lighter mood. Maybe instead of no motivation I have like 15% motivation.

I'm worried that if I can finally get away from everyone I'll just be a big, lazy, depressed mope all the time. Is this a thing for anyone else?