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No contact with any of my family and my baby brother just wrote me out of the blue to say his girlfriend is having a baby. This will be my first niece or nephew and the emotions are hitting me hard. I've always wanted to be an aunt and I lost that opportunity when I went no contact. Now that it's really happening the loss isn't theoretical anymore and I'm feeling it hard. But my reasons for going no contact with my family haven't changed. Feeling very sad today. And guilty and all kinds of things.

I am really trying to cut back on TV watching because I find that it's pouring lots of fuel on my disassociation-prone fire. It got to the point where I was spending days at a time glued to shows I didn't even care about, drifting in and out of sleep and ignoring the outside world entirely and feeling generally helpless and hopeless.

I have switched to reading lots more books. However, I worry that I'm just disassociating in a more socially acceptable way. I find myself getting very absorbed in what I'm reading to the point that I will neglect other life responsibilities until I finish a book, and then feel very empty and depressed when the book is over. It almost feels like grief or despair.

So I guess I want to know, is my great love of reading something I also need to distance myself from while I work on my issues with disassociation? And are there other relaxing activities I can turn to in the evenings that will allow me to still be in my body? I've tried various fiber arts (crochet, embroidery) but they hurt my eyes and my carpal tunnel syndrome.

I have a best friend of many years who I consider to be my chosen family. We both have CPTSD from childhood abuse and do not have contact with our FOO's. Our relationship has been one of mutual support and empowerment and we are both in therapy and working on our trauma.

Over the past couple of years, however, my friend has developed a debilitating disability. She is in constant pain and is unable to work or complete daily tasks. The medication she is on clouds her brain and makes it hard to do even the things that don't require her body. Going through this process has been deeply triggering for her, as a person without a traditional safety net or support system having to navigate all the complexities of being newly disabled. She also feels as if, on top of having her childhood stolen from her, she is now having her adulthood stolen as well. It's a very dark time. I am doing my best to support, however it is also deeply triggering for me as well - feeling like it is once again up to me to ensure the safety and well-being of my loved one or something terrible will happen. I struggle even to care for myself most days due to my CPTSD. And my relationship with this friend is incredibly important to me, and I am so worried and frightened about what will come next and how we will be able to handle it. Meanwhile all the debts she racked up when she lost her ability to work have come calling, and she is being sued in court on top of everything else with no ability to afford a lawyer. She frequently expresses to me that she can't take it anymore and can't keep going like this. As a person who grew up with frequently suicidal parents, I am so so frightened. It feels like this situation has been going on forever and like it will never get better. I don't know how to get us the support we need, and I worry about how to walk the line of supporting this chosen family member and also caring for myself. I want to help her get to a place of stability, but I don't even know if it's possible. We talk about this and she expresses how she understands that I have to care for myself and she doesn't want this to become my life, but it's been hard finding consistent additional support. She seems to be doing everything she can do to improve her situation, but new things go wrong every day. I just don't know where to turn anymore and I wish one of us had a family to help us but we don't.

Had my first appointment with a nutritionist trained in intuitive eating today, due to lifelong cycles of starving and binge eating that have always been a fixture in my life from my first memories. For this first week she's asked me to just go about my life as I normally would and just take the time a few times each day to jot down where I'm at on the hunger/satiety scale and how I'm feeling physically/emotionally so that I can start to notice my own patterns and body cues. I am hopeful about what I will learn about myself and my body but I can already feel my CPTSD bearing down on me. I think it's going to be a very triggering week, having to "be in my body" enough to take note of these things. I am very much a disassociative type and have gotten to a point where I'm checked out most of the time and just going through the motions and focusing all my energy on my work to get through to the next day. Wondering if anyone else has experience in handling an eating disorder while they manage their CPTSD and might have tips on things I can do or things I should alert my nutritionist of so that I have the best chance of success possible?

I have such an extreme fear of conflict with others and of being vulnerable that sometimes I feel like the only solution is to completely remove myself from society. I'm in my late 20s now and it feels like it's only getting worse as I age and the list of ways I have been mistreated grows longer. I'm really struggling to imagine a future for myself in which I don't feel this way until I die, and that's a pretty hopeless picture. I've been in therapy and it helps with a lot of things but not yet with this. I wish I could just wake up tomorrow and be a different person but I know that I can't, and I don't want to live this way forever. How do I begin to deal with my complete lack of self-esteem and my extreme social fears?

Hello, I've been on this forum for a while now and have so much gratitude for the support that has been shown to me here. However, sometimes I struggle with the nature of a message board - that it can take a long time to hear back from folks, that I sometimes get lost in all the subcategories, and that sometimes it's hard to really have a full conversation on a topic before it fizzles out. I'm wondering if yall have tips on other places on the internet where I can be in more immediate dialogue with people about these topics.

I know there's the Exceptionally Difficult Day thread for emergency situations, but I wish there was a place I could just drop in when I'm online and immediately be in conversation with others going through similar things without it being an emergency. I've heard about big Facebook groups for trauma where you get feedback right away but I'd prefer to hold onto my anonymity. Does anyone know of places online where I can find community in real time? Or are there ways that I can better utilize this board and find real community here? Again, I am so grateful for those who have responded to my prior posts and been so welcoming - just hoping to have as many tools and resources on my side as I can get!

My driving focus since childhood has been finding stability in my life for the first time. I poured all the energy I never really even had into clawing my way out of poverty, while trying to undo the impact of my CPTSD on the go (not effective). Now I'm a few years into my dream position in my dream career and I'm realizing the career I chose is too much for me to take with my CPTSD. It allows me to live comfortably financially, but what is that worth when it drains me in so many ways? I'm perpetually emotionally exhausted. The workplace culture is toxic. I'm triggered and tired all the time. I use my limited energy each day to do my work and I have nothing left for any other part of my life. I'm trying to find a new job but everything that sounds interesting either seems like the same exhaustion trap or it pays not nearly enough to cover my bills. I'm really really feeling my lack of familial safety net right now, and it's crazy to think how easy it would be to go from being in this dream job to being homeless and penniless. I barely have any savings because I've been paying all my debts, I couldn't last more than maybe a month without an income. I don't feel confident that I'm gonna find a way out of this situation, and I know I can't continue living like I have been. I'm scared and I don't know what's gonna happen to me. Hoping I can find some shred of hope and motivation when I see my therapist this week, but also hoping that someone on this board might have been in a similar situation and could tell me about their experience.

I'm only in my late 20s but the self-isolating behavior I've always had has gotten worse and worse and worse. I go days and days without leaving my house or speaking to anyone. I ignore all my messages, calls, emails. When I hear the calls coming in or see the texts I feel an intense feeling I can only describe as "MAKE EVERYTHING STOP RIGHT NOW." I feel exhausted like I need rest but no amount of rest or alone time rejuvenates me. When I fight through the isolation and go out in the world or talk to a friend, I return feeling drained and wishing I hadn't overextended myself. I'm pouring from an empty cup day in, day out, with nothing to replenish me.

The worst part is that this behavior is also a trigger for me. My dad has lived in a basement his whole life and has never had a job. He just sleeps all the time. I'm terrified that what small life I am able to live will slip away soon and I'll be trapped in the same waking nightmare that my dad lives in every day. I want more in my life than this but I don't know how to get out of this feedback loop. I don't know how to access connection or joy. I'm in therapy and it helps with a lot of things, but I feel like I'm hitting a wall with this. I need help.

After five years of extremely turbulent no-contact with my mother (in which she refused to accept the boundary between us and did many violating and illegal things to force contact again), I have spent the last year quietly with no zany antics or crazy messages from her. Just now I found an email from her in my inbox that has left me feeling extremely mixed up.

She's sent me many messages in the past, ranging from begging and pleading to harassing and threatening to pretending nothing happened at all,  but this one is hitting me differently. Maybe it's because I haven't heard from her in a while and my guard is down. It feels like she's finally saying everything I always wished she would say. She said she finally is able to accept my boundary and she owned up to some things she has always denied in the past. The message isn't perfect but it's more progress than I've ever seen from her. I'm feeling very mixed up and partly inclined to respond, but my therapist is out on vacation and I don't want to do anything without processing with her first.

I never wanted to lose my family but I needed to keep myself safe and process the trauma I experienced in childhood. I've done a lot of that work on my end, but there's no guarantee that my family will ever be any different. It might be that getting back involved would just drag me back into flashback central or maybe even new abuse. Just posting here to hear about the experiences of others, or maybe just commiseration.

I have these things I call my "depression tantrums." I call them that because usually when these fits of extreme depression happen they almost seem to be directed at a specific person in my life. They usually happen when I am interested in someone romantically and become increasingly close/vulnerable with them, and then they ultimately do not return my affections. I go through this phase of "Fine, I don't need the affections of someone who isn't enthusiastic about me" and then "Ugh I feel absolutely humiliated that I was vulnerable with this person who doesn't feel the same way about me" and then "God I am so incredibly alone and starved for love in this world and I think I'm going to die this way." It's not something I feel in control of, and by that I mean I am not actively feigning my depression in order manipulate, but when it's happening I find myself hoping the person I am interested in will notice my pain and suddenly love me they way I'd hoped and want to take care of me.

Like many on these boards, I was horribly neglected as a child - I feel like these tantrums are my inner child demanding to be cared for by the ones I love and feeling re-abandoned when the ones I love in adulthood don't love me back. Outside of these tantrums I am extremely self sufficient and somewhat distant with others - so I also feel like I have all these hopes and dreams of being cared for one day instead of having to always be strong and care for myself even before I was ready and when I start to like someone it's like a dam breaks and I just want them to be in the driver's seat of my life for a while while I pick up all my pieces. It's pretty humiliating and pathetic feeling to admit that I feel this way, or that I put these kinds of pressures and expectations on others, or that I'm being this subconsciously controlling toward people I want to love me, but just now is the first time I was ever able to articulate this cycle to myself and I felt the need to write it down and share it with people who might be able to help me make sense of it.

I had a breakthrough when talking with my friend last night. We are both C-PTSD diagnosed from childhood traumas and abusive FOO's. But while she's been able to throw herself into healing (personal affirmations in the mirror, meditation, yoga, mindfulness journal, social support, etc etc) I have been very much stuck in a rut and something in me has been unwilling to even try some of the techniques my therapist recommends and assures me are scientifically proven to help. My friend was helping me ask the "why" questions about my resistance and all of a sudden I said "because it's humiliating!!!"

The memories of being abused all my life and mocked and degraded by my bio parents makes my attempts to heal feel humiliating. It's like I'm admitting to everything they stole from me, and how badly I hurt. It's humiliating to admit that I feel unloved, unwanted, unvalued. It's humiliating to think of myself looking into my own eyes in the mirror and trying to love myself after what has happened to me. In my mind's eye, I imagine my parents seeing me make these attempts to love myself and laughing at me. But you know, so what? Why am I allowing the echo of their cruelty to stop me from even trying to feel whole? What's so humiliating about doing everything in my power to reverse the damage that I did not deserve? What's so humiliating about wanting to be loved? I'm going to try to work through this.

I must be at the denial stage of my grieving process over the neglect/abuse I experienced growing up with my FOO, because all of a sudden I can't stop wondering: is unconditional love even real? Am I really missing something that other people have or are we all just walking around feeling like we're missing this thing that doesn't actually exist? If it is real, is it really true that the only way to get that unconditional love in adulthood is from yourself? Can you even give it to yourself, is that enough?

This probably isn't healing for everyone, but I find it incredibly cathartic to read memoirs centered around childhood trauma. Hearing someone own their story and make sense of what has happened to them helps me to reflect on my own life and my own story in a way that creates meaning out of a lot of pain. I'm wondering - does anyone have recommendations on particularly moving/well-written childhood trauma memoirs? Most recently I read The Liars Club and really enjoyed it, and of course I read The Glass Castle years ago. I would appreciate any tips on what to read next! Thanks.

I've been NC with my FOO for about six years now. In so many ways it has been the most freeing thing I have ever done for myself. In other ways it feels like a wound that will never close. My FOO is huge and I've always existed within the context of my many family members. Now, being a family unto myself leaves me feeling deeply deeply alone. I have chosen family and I love them and often they are enough, but they do not fill the wound.

Anyway, I am plagued by nightmares about my parents. Often in my nightmares I am being chased by them. Sometimes in my nightmares one of my parents commits suicide and I discover it and believe I am the cause. Sometimes it's just nightmares of flashbacks of abuse, or frightening memories. But then last night I had a nightmare where I was a teenager again, and my mom was being her usual verbally abusive self. But in the dream I start berating her, so much so that she is stunned into silence and begins to cry. In the dream it's coming out of my mouth like a flood and I just continue to verbally eviscerate her just to see her pain. Dream-me gets a deep satisfaction and a feeling like I am better than her and like I have won. I woke up feeling horrible, guilty, disgusting. It left me feeling like... like the only way I know how to seize my own power is through taking on the role of abuser and seeking my revenge. It left me with a lot to think about, but mostly it left me with a lot of pain and guilt and self-hatred.

My therapist talks to me a lot about techniques to reduce my nightmares - but I can't help but feeling like my dreams are trying to tell me something about myself or clue me into something I need to do or reflect on. Do others experience these types of dreams? Do you find them insightful, or are they just a symptom that needs managing? Are they useful at all?

I am the child
of a miserable man waiting to die
and an angry woman so desperate to live that
life just slipped through trembling hands,
I am the self-centered daughter
of eclipsing emotional black holes
born through starving,
I am chaos. I am a hungry void,
there is no end to what I am missing.

I don't need anything
or anyone, just this familiar state of wanting,
this inertia forever waiting
for life to start in spite of me,
what kind of child gets kidnapped,
just like that?
What kind of kidnapped child
gets returned?
I am unwanted baggage,
too old now to claim.

I am my own,
and most days I rebuke this gag gift,
don't you know?
You cannot nurture a life force
that was never there,
you cannot reach inside yourself
and find something never given,
not everyone is born
with all the tools inside of them.

This is the story I tell myself.
This is the legacy I lead,
but somewhere inside me
still lives a seed.

When I was a kid in the thick of my traumatization, I missed a lot of school due to "sickness." I would be sick to my stomach, often to the point of puking, and would feel so certain that I was going to die that I felt my only option was to hide under the covers in my bed and try to fall back asleep. I know now that the sickness I was suffering from was psychosomatic - brought on by the complete emotional overwhelm I was experiencing in my home circumstances. I had always been at the top of my class in school (I was thrilled to soak in any positive attention from teachers) so my mom let me stay home with this sickness whenever I wanted - which ended up being two or three times per week for YEARS until I finally graduated high school. I would only be able to bring myself to go to school if I felt that there would be significant consequences - like missing an important test that would affect my grade significantly. It's as if I was waiting for the last possible second to break out of my mental paralysis, fueled by fear that overhwelmed the toxic shame and anxiety that kept me from living my life - fear that finally helped me to move my body.

It's an exhausting cycle and it continues to this day. The stomach upset has gotten better, but I still lay in bed waiting for death to strike me when I can't seem to move my body and get to work. When I have deadlines, I am only able to start my work when I feel that any second more of waiting will spell certain doom. I know people call this "procrastination" but I think it really is just my toxic shame and crippling anxiety. I look back and I wish my mom had made me go to school - taught me how to face the anxieties in my life instead of isolating endlessly to avoid them. Or even more, I wish someone had recognized how much I was suffering, how badly I needed guidance in learning how to regulate my emotions and manage my stress.

Does anyone else experience this? How do you work with it? How do you get yourself out of bed? How do you break the cycle?

I have been teetering on the edge for a while. Tiny things set me off into spirals of self-hatred, like forgetting to put out the trash bin or failing to return a phone call. Today in therapy I started sobbing because I confessed to my therapist I told a work client I would call them back in 20 minutes TWO DAYS AGO. I told her about how it brought up every single deadline I've blown, ever single phone call I haven't answered, every single friendship I've failed to nurture because I was too busy trying to get out of bed. I told her how it made me want to give up. And then I started telling her how angry I am at myself for crying in therapy over a phone call and how it's so cliche and how I'm so sick of myself. My T pointed out that I'm being so hard on myself I'm not even giving myself permission to make space for my feelings in therapy.

On the drive home from my appointment all I could think about was how much I wanted to kill myself. The funny thing is that I really don't want to die. I really want to live long enough to get better and to experience all the joys of life more fully than I've ever been able to. And I realized it isn't me that wants to kill me, it's the little critic in my head who is always telling me how worthless I am, what a failure I am, what a waste of energy.

I came home and took a long nap, even though I'd only been awake for three hours and I was supposed to go to work after my appointment. Now I'm awake again and feeling hungover almost, drained and exhausted but more emotionally stable. I'm trying not to give up. I feel like there's a war going on inside of me. I don't allow myself any gentleness, any vulnerability, any safety because this voice inside my head says I'm not worth it. I hope I can figure out how to win this fight.

Does anyone else on this board have a highly stressful job with a lot of secondary trauma working with other trauma survivors? I do and I've really found myself struggling lately with this career path. I feel so driven to do this kind of work and make this kind of difference in people's lives - but sometimes I wonder why I don't just allow myself a job that makes me happy without piling on all the other stuff and reopening my old wounds? Why don't I just let myself heal without trying to help a bunch of other people at the same time? When I've worked clock-in-clock-out type jobs I just feel useless and pointless and like my life has no meaning. Is it better to feel useful and meaningful but also exhausted, re-traumatized, constantly stressed? I really love my job, but my world has become so so small to accommodate the extra emotional work that sometimes I feel like I'm choosing between having this job and having a life outside of it. I would love to hear how others have approached this.

Does anyone else get really disturbing intrusive thoughts about danger when they're stressed/overwhelmed? I think it's related to the hypervigilance I experience, but basically what happens is that I have these periods of days or weeks during triggering/stressful times in my life where my brain frantically communicates with me about every possible danger under the sun. If I'm outside or near a window in my house or office I think "Someone could shoot me in the head right now." Whenever I drive through intersections I brace myself for impact of a car accident even with no threat in sight, or when driving around curves I see images of myself continuing straight into the ditch. If I'm ironing or boiling water or chopping things with a knife I think of all the million ways I could trip or slip and seriously injure myself. When people walk near me I expect them to attack, when I'm in a crowd I expect there to be a catastrophe. I am able to remind myself when I have these thoughts that "right here right now I'm safe" but my brain can't seem to stop thinking "what if? what if?". Less disturbing but still concerning, in social situations I sometimes get those same intrusive thoughts except it's more like "What if you just slapped/kissed this person right now?"

I talked with a close friend about the thoughts recently and she had a sort of fear reaction like I'm going to harm her or something, which was kind of hurtful. It's not like voices telling me things or telling me to do things or even me having desires to do certain things, it's just my brain worrying about all the million wild things that could happen at any given time. I don't know. Anyone else know about this?

I spent the day yesterday with a close friend of mine, for the first time in quite a while. We got to reflecting on the history of our friendship and our lives over the past decade and I realized - my world has gotten really really small. As I've gotten older I've picked up more and more triggers, and I can't seem to lessen their effects. I've experienced a few additional major traumatic events in the past few years (major car accident, close family death, terrifying home invasion while I was home), and also have a highly stressful job that comes with a great deal of secondary trauma (social work field). I'm in therapy now with the correct diagnoses (finally) and digging through all this old and new stuff leaves me feeling so raw all the time. In the name of safety and self-care, my interactions with others outside of work the past couple years are at an all-time low because of how exhausted and fragile I feel. There are so many places I don't go or things I don't do because of the memories they are tied to. I barely see my close friends and I haven't dated in years. I used to think I was on an uphill climb to ultimate healing, but I look around me and my world is smaller than ever. I want things to change but don't feel that I have the capacity unless I want to be tearful and numb all the time from the emotional overwhelm. I'm not sure how to proceed. I guess I have some decisions to make.