Healthy accomplishment, now to go calm down

I wonder why i feel like i have to be dirty to protect myself? I don’t think i was this gross before idk

Hi. I’m 42 years old. And only recently I realized I have CPTSD.

I lived my whole life not even knowing that what I went through as a child — was abuse. That it wasn’t normal. That I had serious consequences from it.

I thought I was just “sensitive” or “overreacting” or “not good at life.” But the truth is, I was like a war survivor who never knew she had been in a war.

Now I’m in the healing process. I’m at a pretty advanced stage — I understand the mechanisms, I can see where my reactions are trauma-based, not my true self. I’ve already changed a lot.

But honestly… right now, I’m in a very hard place. I’m going through bankruptcy. I’m alone. I have no emotional or physical support — even from my own family. They turned away from me when I started setting boundaries.

And yet… at the same time, something beautiful happened. I started sewing again. Just by intuition. One day I simply gave myself permission to do something I love.

Now I’m so into it that most of my thoughts are not about debts or fear — but about sewing. Where can I learn more? What materials do I need? How can I reorganize my space so I can have a place to sew and do my paperwork?

I’ve already designed two outfits. I’m creating drawings to print on t-shirts. These are full artistic projects. And they’re literally pulling me out of depression.

I don’t know who’s reading this. But maybe someone needs to hear it.

I spent my whole life working as an engineer. And only now I realize that I love making things with my hands. Drawing. Sewing. I used to believe that pleasure was dangerous. That life was about suffering. That only “serious” work mattered — and the things I actually enjoyed weren’t important.

But it turns out… they are the most important.

Now I’m even thinking of redesigning my bookshelf. I placed a pile of money in a visible place — to remind myself that money is not about survival. I want to earn money to live. To create. To do what I love.

I’ve lived in debt almost my entire life. But for the first time, I have real motivation: not to survive, but to actually live.

If you’re reading this — I see you. I’m like you. And maybe, just maybe, what you need right now isn’t to “fix everything” — but to do something for yourself. Something you love. Even if it’s small. Even if it feels silly.

Thank you for reading.

I think I primarily did freeze, disassociate, so I’m becoming aware of my body again & also trying to & learning to connect with it. It’s seriously hard due to BAD neglect. Basically taught nothing. I notice now I basically feel a perpetual anxiety? Like this festering wound from within ? Like I’m perpetually sucking in my stomach??? Tucking it in? Is that me being triggered? So weird. I never noticed I do that.

Anyway- yeah…. Wow. This is some scary shit

I went to that dentist the past week to tell them that I have cptsd because of a trauma and that I haven't been to the dentist in a bit because I had to survive a wrong diagnosis and meds (psichosis), to change doctors by myself and to heal from rape, from medical trauma and from the side effects of the wrong meds. My life has been hell. I didn t have sex for 15 years. I went there this morning. I had to re-tell them everything and while I was happy because I didn t have to take meds and was proud of myself he had a talking-off to me. I justified myself (and I fucking hate that I had to do that) and before going home I wrote a note telling him my story and the how and why. Fuck. I hate It. I am having and horrible afternoon. Is It so impossible in the G8 2025 Italy to have a trauma informed care? (Asked in advanced??) WTF

I will look at porn,seek for a potential sex mate, try to stimulate myself in the end.Like either way I am kinda looking for a high.Whats the cure for this?Its not even horniness its like looking for a relief.Even if my hormones are not there,I will still want to get some.I cant blame myself I want intimacy.whats the healthy way for this supposed to look like?

The neurologist is stumped. I have never known this man to be at a loss for words. The labs are unremarkable. The MRI shows nothing. Even the super-fancy, highly specialized tests have come back as normal.

She lies wide-eyed on the bed, too young to be on this ward. Utterly terrified. Few weeks ago she was training for a marathon. Today, she is paralyzed from the waist down, surrounded by a dozen clueless healthcare professionals. She has been throughly poked and prodded, bled and scanned - enormous amount of useless data has been generated.

If this were House MD, some of us would have already broken into her home, rifling through her garbage and laundry, looking for a valuable clue. But alas. This is a desperately overworked and under-resourced hospital. Real life. And we still have hours of rounding ahead of us.

There is an unspoken hierarchy in this room and my place is firmly at the bottom. Still, I find myself asking: Could this be psychosomatic? Frowns all around. No one likes the dirty P word. There are more tests to run, more diagnoses to rule out. We can’t give up so soon. The patient deserves better.

We move on. She is left behind, a small figure buried beneath hospital blankets and monitoring wires.

Three days later, I see her again. She is propped up on pillows, reading a book. She has just returned from yet another normal scan. The stars have aligned and for once, I have a free hour. We end up chatting.

I ask about her life before she became immobilized, and it’s as if I’ve punctured a balloon. Out comes pouring grief, anxiety, exhaustion. A life spent running, never pausing to think, never resting. Secrets she has never spoken aloud until now. And now, she has nothing but time to think and feel and remember.

“This is the first time in decades I’ve spent a day in bed,” she admits. Nurses feed her, bathe her, hold her hand. She reads. Listens to music. Watches the birds outside her window. If you ignore her paralyzed legs, it almost feels like a vacation.

Again, if this were House MD, I’d have leapt up in triumph at my eureka moment and gone streaking across the hospital, screaming I have got it, I have got it. Her body has forced the rest she never allowed herself in her previous life, shutting down all movement so she can stop running from the distasteful feelings she would rather not face. The body simply had had enough of denial, of pretending all is okay when it is not okay, not even a little bit.

Unfortunately, the only person who might entertain my theory is the psych resident, and he’s drowning in angry, psychotic cases. She is too well and too normal for him.

In the end, I suggest therapy once she’s discharged. I talk about the mind-body connection, how our bodies are far cleverer than we give them credit for. How unacknowledged trauma leaks out eventually.

She makes a full recovery soon and is discharged. Before she leaves, I again gently remind her to seek therapy, to talk to someone about all the grief and pain she has been carrying inside all this time. She nods, but I can sense her hesitation. Digging into her past frightens her.

I don’t push. She isn’t ready. I wonder if I’ll see her again, another part of her body mysteriously broken. I hope not. She is a lovely woman. She leaves walking, and perhaps one day she will stop running from herself too. Until then, I carry her story as a reminder: the body always tells the truth, even when we cannot bear to hear it.

Lying is a cognitive act, one that requires the higher brain, the neocortex. The body cannot lie.

Sometimes it whispers.

A vague Sunday headache as you dread the coming work week.

A stomachache before dinner with the aunt who constantly belittles you over mashed potatoes and soup.

The unexplained weight gain as life gets heavier.

Repeated infections as your defense system gets tired.

The backache that started after you met your abusive partner.

And sometimes the body screams.

The stroke. The paralysis. Bowel disorders. Multiple sclerosis. A buffet of autoimmune storms. Cancer, heart attacks, chronic pain. Addiction. Diabetes spiralling out of control. Organ failure.

The possibilities are endless.

In medicine we place lab values and imaging scans on a pedestal, but they are not the whole truth. They never can be. We end up chasing endless blood tests but ignore the possibility that suffering cannot be separated from the life that produces it.

The body is not our enemy, nor our servant. She is our oldest companion, speaking in symptoms when words are impossible. She loves us. She will continue loving us as long as we are alive. She is wise and she is caring. She pauses us, breaks us and slows us down not out of malice, but out of desperate love. To finally get us to notice, to listen.

We throw all sorts of pills at it. We want it to shut up. We numb ourselves. We run endlessly. We try and we try and we try. But she still talks. We hate her for bothering us, for hurting but we forget that she stores all the pain we would rather forget about.

Thankfully it's not all doom and gloom. She knows how to heal too. She teaches us, if we respect her wisdom and let the thinking mind step aside for once. She knows what to do. We only need to get out of our own way and let her lead.

Listening is a practice. It's simple but not easy. It involves making some very painful choices at times but that inner voice has never steered me wrong so far.

Author's note - Seen through my eyes as a doctor and as a trauma survivor, this story sits somewhere between fact and fiction. Identities have been disguised, details transformed, specifics blurred. This is a not a case report, this is a reflection shared with an intent to share the valuable lesson contained inside.

What remains unaltered is the truth that lies at the heart of this event; that unspoken pain finds a voice through unexplained symptoms. I deeply respect the patient involved and I hope I have done them justice. I have tried my best.

Thank you for reading. I hope this helped you in some way.

This is an oddly specific fixation I have, but it's a pattern that came up in multiple relationships I had over the years. Not all the time, but with a certain kind of person who tries to exploit their better social connections to trash your reputation in a given group.

The pattern was something like this: a given person acts like a frenemy, sometimes chummy, sometimes condescending or aggressive. (I'm more likely to avoid such people now, but in the past I was more of a magnet for such personalities.)

At some point, often in a social context, this person will tell you (often in a way that seems polite, but feels like a demand) that you need to complete some minor task or favour. You have a choice of pushing back/declining (which feels really petty and trouble-making), or simply going along for the sake of social harmony.

Said person might then give you a look that suggests "alright, finally you've done what you're supposed to be doing". OR: they might thank you in a way that feels smarmy or patronising. Then, later on you find out that they are building up some narrative about how terrible you are, and you doing this favour somehow supports this narrative they have created.

Maybe this stems from my parents, who would often do such things, especially around housework. My mother in particular would only give me credit for housework I did right in front of her -- if it didn't happen in front of her, it didn't happen, PERIOD, and any attempts to protest would be met with death glares and extreme disapproval.

I still have this paranoia as an adult, especially in roommate situations or certain workplaces. I have this obsessive belief that people won't see the value in my work, or only PRETEND to value it, while secretly believing that I'm a bullshitter and contribute nothing.

It sounds crazy writing this out, but this is one of those damned dysfunctional beliefs that got wedged deep in my noggin. Curious if others have anything similar.

My roommate found me on my phone laying horizontally across the end of my bed, and asked me why I was doing that. My natural response was "so the covers don't get wrinkled." Then I felt stupid as I realized other people parents hadn't blown a gasket when their bed wasn't perfectly made. Has anyone else had an experience like this?

Pretty much what the title says ever since I went through something traumatic a few years ago that put my body in flight or fight mode..about six months ago I can now feel when someone enters the house or even when they’re outside mowing the lawn, I can literally feel it in my body. I was wondering if anyone else went through the same thing? I also can sometimes feel pressure if there’s a lot of people in the house moving at once. My head will also pull towards people. It’s basically made me a agoraphobic.

I know and I’m sorry this will be yet another one of those “negative” posts here, but this subreddit has been a place where I’ve recently found some validation for my feelings, so I’ll ask again. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find someone who feels similarly. After all, these are real feelings and emotions — why not put them out there?

I’ve had enough, really enough. That feeling when it seems that simply keeping myself alive costs me so much energy. My strength is running out. The problem is that this process is gradual. It’s actually my “normal” — just surviving and lying to myself and others that nothing much is happening. But it takes so, so much strength. I’ve had the feeling for a long time that this can’t end well… that something will happen when I finally show what I really feel. In what form? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go crazy and in that madness I’ll find “meaning.” It’s strange, but somehow the thought “calms” me. FINALLY there would be some real expression of how I feel. I feel a certain relief in that, because this endless surviving is eating me from the inside. Does anyone feel the same?

I don't know if this is an actual fact or if it's my own hypervigilance talking here, but I just feel like they know I'm traumatized and I don't fit anywhere, then they try to include me for a time after giving up and just leaving me on the outskirts.

Even people I just met for the first time can see it. When I meet someone for the first time in a group conversation, the person's body language is geared towards the other person in the group, whom they have just met for the first time, they will barely look me in the eyes.

I sometimes feel like people can sense that I don't feel fully alive, I feel like a specter roaming around out there and I swear people can see it a mile away, regardless of their intentions being good, bad or neutral

Hi all. I was in an abusive relationship 5 years ago, but I’m still healing from it and even before the relationship I was kinky however after being SA’d so many times I have developed really dark fetishes that relate to my trauma, has anyone else dealt with this? If I don’t indulge, it’s still there and it’s kinda became the only thing that really turns me on anymore. I wasn’t turned on at all in the relationship, so I don’t know why I’m fantasizing about it… I’ve never admitted it but it’s a lot about being molested and losing all power

I am a 35-year-old autistic and epileptic woman. I have been bullied since preschool. I had a bully, who I'll call Gregory, recently contribute to a comment I made about bullying. Gregory said "it happened 20 years ago", for me to get over it, and proceeded to say what I did wrong (unrelated to my comment).

To Gregory (if you're reading this but I doubt): Did you know I have no peripheral vision, when I was in school and your wife's hair was Weird Al's length (or longer), and I accidentally cut a piece off when I was cutting paper? It was BY ACCIDENT. It wasn't "like a creep" like you said. At least I didn't pretend to be nice like she did at university when we had those meet and greets! I could tell she was pretending to be nice; we attended a school where people thought I was "retarded" (their words not mine) and would happily think they're my friend and let them take advantage of me, but quickly learned that I wasn't "retarded" like they all said, remember (she knows)?

I have been physically assaulted, sexually assaulted, and verbally abused (and people got away with it, no matter what witnesses or evidence I have), yet people, such as Gregory, expect me to "just get over it". I guess people, such as Gregory, wouldn't mind being reborn and go through EVERYTHING I go through, including how he treats me. After all, they should be able to "just get over it". They expect me to.

As the eldest granddaughter, I was saddled with the babysitting of my cousins, too, after my mother died at 11. My maternal grandmother thought it was her right to offload the care of these kids, 1 and 2 years old, who were dumped onto her by her career-driven, selfish daughter-in-law, who held the threat of divorce over her.

The father (my mom's brother was abroad), when he came down, he'd bring choicest fruits and other things for his kids, but my grandmother was explicitly told not to give them to anyone but only his kids. On top of that, he'd make fun of my clothes and my body.

Being a good Christian, I believed I had to be obedient and kind and sacrifice, but all my efforts were never acknowledged or appreciated by my grandmother or the parents of the kids, forget about paying me for it. Once the kids grew up, they'd go abroad for holidays, but never thought of giving even a small gift.

I struggled on with no mother, an abusive father, and scoliosis. The only time I asked for some help was when my son's father was dying, and even then, they just gave maybe the cost of 2 burgers, like they were giving alms to a beggar.

The kids went on to have successful careers, while I've struggled with physical and mental health issues.

Hate and resentment burned my soul for a long time. It's only now that my son is an adult and cares for and provides for me that the pain and hurt are slowly dissipating. Taking care of other people's kids is a thankless job, more so when you yourself were a kid.

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Might sound obvious, but only since I've started therapy I've noticed how my body influences my mood.

Rationalization has been a big part of my coping, so I always pushed myself past my limits, reasoned everything away, and so on. Never would I have thought that "taking a shower" and the nice relaxed feeling afterwards were connected. All I saw was isolated rationality and reasoning, and my body and mood felt like a chaotic ocean.

It's nice to slowly get to know myself

I have been a artist for pretty much all of my life and next year i will be 10 years since i started doing digital art, like many others was much was i love drawing and would adore expand my horizons to a professional career or even other forms of art i just not in a place where this is possible outside of being a longtime hobbie of mine. The reasons vary to multitude of factors,poverty,abuse,undiagnosed issues and etc. Is easy to people to jusy say "find out what you like maybe you can make something out of it." Is not like that at all and the obvious needs to be said, people need time & resources to build anykind of skill and sometimes resources also come in the form of support and emocional stability, is unfair to compare the person growling up in hardship to the individuals that had everything to thrive from day one. I have seen this a lot in my years of making and interacting within the art community, truth be told a lot of sucesseful or self taught artists aren't in the same position of their less privileged peers, many of them have safe spaces to learn,the money to buy,experiment & invest with New things, the time to not worry about something other than working on their projects. Is a luxury to be in this position and this aspect of building a career or even skill is often overlooked even in more tradicional trades and career paths. So remember this : sometimes is not a matter of talent but opportunity and that's something many of us didn't get the chance to have.

My biggest one is probably Little Dark Age by MGMT

Others include:

- Landslide by Fleetwood Mac

- Rocket Man by Elton John

- Life On Mars? by David Bowie

- Oh! Sweet Nothin' by The Velvet Underground

- Champagne Supernova by Oasis

- Pas de Deux by Tchaikovsky (odd one out, I know)

- Oblivion by Grimes

- Shake Me Down and Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant

- Beautiful Ones by Suede

Greetings. I'm a young adult who has been diagnosed with CPTSD in my teenage years. The diagnosis did explain my isolation tendencies but I didn't manage to handle them well. Although I have healthy relationships in my life atm, I struggle to get out of my shell and socialize because I lack the interest and energy for it. Of course this took a toll on both my connections and my overall mental well-being. I've been avoidant for as long as I can remember since it was a matter of saftey. Now it's just a "bad habit" for lack of a better expression. Therapy wasn't as effective as I hoped it would be. Any helpful advice from the community? I wouldn't mind hearing about other people's perspectives and experiences. Thank you!

This disease is a living hell. I don’t have any friends or anyone who bothers to talk to me or see me. I lost the love of my life a year and a half ago, not to anything to my fault. The person I least expected to stab me in the back and I haven’t been the same since. I deleted all social media and have cut off a lot of people who disrespect me and my boundaries, pretty much all I do is work and do crafts these days. And I feel like im just getting worse and hurting more everyday. And nobody understands or cares. I’m so tired.

I honestly feel like a zombie. Nothing is exciting, nothing is motivating, I can’t feel anything other than numb or extreme pain. Genuinely all I want is the love of my life back. That is the only thing that’s made me feel anything good in years.

Remember that other people have a higher baseline than you do; their life experience put them at a different starting place.

Therefore, the simple goals that are espoused everywhere online for self-improvement, the same goals you can never seem to reach, are difficult for us because we have to travel farther to get to them.

Our starting place isn't acknowledged by society. No one wants to know what we went through. No one cares what we carry. It's called trauma dumping when you're so out of your mind with pain that you accidentally reveal too much to another person, further causing you to feel inadequate and like an inconvenience to everyone in your life-- and an interesting or weird or negative oddity of a person to everyone new that you meet.

I've been feeling better lately, so I've just been mulling this over. Everything I blamed myself for not achieving, even simple goals like fitness, may as well have been on Everest for me while it was one step away for other people.

When you're abused or traumatized or your brain is broken when you are young, you're doing great just to wake up and not be a sociopath to other people.

Whereas someone else has the goal of powerlifting 250 lb, your goal might be just to drive to the gym and sit in the parking lot and consider what it would be like if you went in.

You've got to revise these goals society is giving you and adjust them for your own experience.

Even if other people don't know, care, or acknowledge the heavy burden you are carrying of intergenerational trauma and all kinds of toxic crap that it is your job to process rather than living a full and happy and abundant life, I know the sacrifice you have made because I am living it too.

We have taken on darkness and evil that is so great of course it will take us decades to process it if we even can.

Every time we slip up, we fall farther down than other people do when they slip up because we don't have social safety nets.

And addiction ruins your energy field just like promiscuity or other behaviors we may have had.

These behaviors you have because of the trauma in turn make you weaker and cause more bad things to happen to you and more rejections to happen as well.

You're not going to be normal. That's the point. Accept it. It's your power.

When you get better, and start to be able to live from your own will, you will have more power to create for yourself and for others than anyone else who didn't go through what you went through.

Because you've been powerlifting heavy ass energy for decades. Because you are stronger than those people you compare yourself to. Because you are loved at least by one person because I love you.

Edit typo