Recent posts
#1
Recovery Journals / Re: Marcine’s journaling forwa...
Last post by Marcine - Today at 02:38:25 AMWell, the task of defining success on my own terms is harder than I initially imagined, and I had already figured it would be tough...
I'm not giving up... even though it sure seems like I was safer making myself as tiny and as frozen as possible where I was plunked in the minefield.
Now I'm choosing to actually get out of the minefield, which means moving and risking and admitting out loud that I want to get out of the dangerous unexploded ordnance zone... that I never deserved to be there to begin with... and that even in the face of danger I want freedom...
Step by step, breath by breath, there's a safe path through here somewhere. I can find it. I can. Yes? Yes.
I'm not giving up... even though it sure seems like I was safer making myself as tiny and as frozen as possible where I was plunked in the minefield.
Now I'm choosing to actually get out of the minefield, which means moving and risking and admitting out loud that I want to get out of the dangerous unexploded ordnance zone... that I never deserved to be there to begin with... and that even in the face of danger I want freedom...
Step by step, breath by breath, there's a safe path through here somewhere. I can find it. I can. Yes? Yes.
#2
General Discussion / Re: CPTSD from childhood abuse...
Last post by Blueberry - December 15, 2025, 11:37:23 PMQuote from: Kizzie on December 15, 2025, 05:45:23 PMRelational therapy is a psychotherapy approach focusing on how relationships, both past and present, deeply influence emotional well-being, aiming to build healthier, more satisfying connections by exploring relational patterns, fostering vulnerability, and using the therapeutic relationship itself as a tool for healing wounds and developing trust, boundaries, and deeper self-understanding. It's helpful for anxiety, insecurity, trauma, or relationship distress, teaching individuals to recognize unhealthy patterns and form more fulfilling bonds with themselves and others.
I would add to that - try and make sure you get a trauma-informed or better yet trauma-trained therapist in relational therapy! I've been in a lot of relational therapy and when therapists were not trauma-trained especially like 20 years ago, they and I would invariably get stuck at some point and some would blame me for "not wanting to get better" or say I was "therapy resistant". Neither were true, it's just that my case was too complex, too difficult for them.
I do a lot of imagination work and inner child work. Basically, my best therapists have tried out various approaches and then mixed-and-matched with me, so don't necessarily stick with one type all the time. Or they can improvise and adapt if necessary. Or sometimes a type of therapy can help for a while and then I need something else. For a long time, EFT (emotional freedom tapping) was very helpful. My trauma T of the time learnt it for me, practised it with me till I could do it on my own.
On the forum, I find these kinds of threads useful https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=49.0 choose any that appeal to you from the sticky-ied topics. If none appeal, ignore.
I've been very much helped by this forum. I write a lot and read a lot, it's a safe space for me. I get a lot of validation here, especially when I'm struggling and not noticing that I'm moving forwards or not noticing I do need a break.
Freeze is one of my big reactions too. If you dissociate a lot, you might be on the OSDD-DID spectrum, i.e. have some form of dissociative disorder, which a number of us on here have. See https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=15563.msg136240#msg136240 or https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16874.msg154836#msg154836 (here Janina Fisher's book about Healing Fragmented Selves is mentioned, a number of people on here have been helped with that and one day I may get round to it too) and https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16374.0 - a general discussion thread of OSDD etc. If I've linked too many threads, and it's overwhelming, just ignore! It's not always the right time for any particular information.
And of course, welcome to the forum noraw
#4
Sexual Abuse / Re: Self-abandonment since CSA
Last post by TheBigBlue - December 15, 2025, 11:13:12 PMI see you.
What you shared is devastating, and I want to say this clearly: you were a child who should have been protected, and you weren't. The way you learned to survive - holding everything together, being useful, keeping others okay - makes sense in the face of that level of abandonment. None of it means you were ever less than human. It means you were hurt and left alone with it.
You exist. You matter - not because you earned it by being kind or useful, but because you exist. You are allowed to be human, even when you are not holding anyone else together.
Thank you for trusting this space with something so raw. You are being witnessed.
What you shared is devastating, and I want to say this clearly: you were a child who should have been protected, and you weren't. The way you learned to survive - holding everything together, being useful, keeping others okay - makes sense in the face of that level of abandonment. None of it means you were ever less than human. It means you were hurt and left alone with it.
You exist. You matter - not because you earned it by being kind or useful, but because you exist. You are allowed to be human, even when you are not holding anyone else together.
Thank you for trusting this space with something so raw. You are being witnessed.
#5
Sexual Abuse / Re: Self-abandonment since CSA
Last post by Blueberry - December 15, 2025, 10:59:35 PMQuote from: DD on December 15, 2025, 09:40:53 PMI experienced CSA at the hand of my uncle as a child. My parents knew my sister had the same fate some years before me but they kept taking me there. For that and for all the other traumatic things there is a theme that always a few people knew about it, but no one came to help.
I'm sorry DD, that sounds to me like SUCH a betrayal! Your parents knew of the danger and still didn't prevent it happening to you.
Yes, you are human, you matter, you exist. I want to add that you have rights - to exist and to be treated with respect.
#6
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: New here
Last post by Blueberry - December 15, 2025, 10:06:50 PMQuote from: NarcKiddo on December 13, 2025, 01:26:41 PMPete Walker's book "Complex CPTSD: from surviving to thriving"
I agree on this, but just to let you know Abitbroken that you can check Pete Walker's website because some of the book is there. In case you want to read around a bit before buying. You can also search his name here on our website, you'll find discussion.
Here's a thread discussing Pete Walker and emotional flashbacks, also often abbreviated on the forum to EF: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=2589.msg16300#msg16300 PLus other threads on EFs, Sticky-ied at the top: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=57.0
#7
Sexual Abuse / Self-abandonment since CSA
Last post by DD - December 15, 2025, 09:40:53 PMMy PTSD was recently triggered and that actually helped hit something home. And looking back over the last months there has been a theme of self-abandonment. It's in the songs I keep listening to on repeat. And this is actually quite hard to write about as it is so fresh a realization. All my life I've been the one to hold everything together even as I was taking an emotional beating. It's unfortunately a repeating pattern. I am the one keeping things together while I am in agony and no one sees the pain, even as a child.
I experienced CSA at the hand of my uncle as a child. My parents knew my sister had the same fate some years before me but they kept taking me there. For that and for all the other traumatic things there is a theme that always a few people knew about it, but no one came to help. So I grew up as the person who tries to save everyone because no one came to save me. They just watched me hurt, and get hurt as if it was nothing. As if it was meaningless, as if I was meaningless. So I grew up believing I was less than human. That I had to earn the right to exist and it had to be earned by being useful, kind and helpful to others. If everyone around me were fine, maybe it was ok if I existed just a little.
This led to a lifetime of people pleasing and enabling the abuse that ensued. Now I sit here having cried for some hours and just see the damage done. I don't have a question. What I am asking is to be kindly witnessed. That I exist. That I matter. That I'm allowed to be human.
I experienced CSA at the hand of my uncle as a child. My parents knew my sister had the same fate some years before me but they kept taking me there. For that and for all the other traumatic things there is a theme that always a few people knew about it, but no one came to help. So I grew up as the person who tries to save everyone because no one came to save me. They just watched me hurt, and get hurt as if it was nothing. As if it was meaningless, as if I was meaningless. So I grew up believing I was less than human. That I had to earn the right to exist and it had to be earned by being useful, kind and helpful to others. If everyone around me were fine, maybe it was ok if I existed just a little.
This led to a lifetime of people pleasing and enabling the abuse that ensued. Now I sit here having cried for some hours and just see the damage done. I don't have a question. What I am asking is to be kindly witnessed. That I exist. That I matter. That I'm allowed to be human.
#8
RE - Re-experiencing Trauma / Re: Re-traumatization activate...
Last post by DD - December 15, 2025, 09:25:30 PMThat is very ok
#9
RE - Re-experiencing Trauma / Re: Re-traumatization activate...
Last post by TheBigBlue - December 15, 2025, 08:51:59 PM
(if that's ok)
#10
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: New here
Last post by Hope67 - December 15, 2025, 07:48:10 PM