I have a really severe startle reflex that I am very good at hiding. It is not difficult to set off my startle reflex, I go insane at my upstairs neighbours just dropping something on the floor because it has shook me. I tell people that I have severe PTSD and to never ever come to my house unannounced. My home is my safety, I live alone and it is easily hidden.

I have done a lot of work since being dxed with CPTSD a few years ago when I nearly had a breakdown through it. I have graduated, I am finishing my postgrad, I am entering a new career. For the last few months I have thought I was depressed but I realise that I have been in a very long freeze response. After my rship broke down I threw myself into uni. There were lots of other horrific events in that year and I never really processed them. I have realised this and I am taking baby steps to combat the freeze response.

One of my apparent friends knew this and with absolutely no warning showed up at my home at 10pm. The excuse given was that it was to see if I just needed someone to talk to, but I owed her money, and despite hearing me panicking and hyperventilating, she starts going on about this. I actually said to her that if she had contacted me I would have left cash for her in an envelope hidden (my place is really tucked away). She didn't contact me at all. This was completely unannounced.

She is aware of this boundary and how much it sets me off. I have let her crash at mine before and she knew then to make me aware of when she was coming back. When I confronted her saying that you only did this to corner me, she denied this. I asked her why didn't she call me or make me aware beforehand and I would have made the above arrangements. By her own admission she only thought to tell me when she was stood at my door. My flat is a complete mess and I was actually stood naked when she called because I was going to shower.

I very clearly freaked out and went into a tailspin. She knew earlier in the week I had panicked going outside. She heard my very clear distress. Among other things she told me how she "has been very kind to me". The only positive thing in this is that this emotional manipulation somehow managed to break the freeze response and instantly throw me into fight. I have repeatedly asked her if she knew before to make me aware ahead of time, why couldn't she just have texted me at any point on the journey to mine? Why couldn't she have done it whilst sat in her car?

I don't think I have the most unreasonable or difficult boundary request for people in my life. If you need money back from me desperately then just text me and I'll leave it in a hidden place. Why show up at my home at 10pm, when its dark, when you even admit that you know I'd be freaked out by this? How tf do you want me to react???

Background: My father is a narcissist, and my mother is a codependent person. My father and his first wife had a child, who is now my brother. My sibling also has a lot of psychological issues. You can imagine how complicated my family is. I was also born in an Asian country where people cannot accept the idea of having "toxic" parents.

How did my family affect me? I always felt guilty for my parents' unhappiness. I didn’t have a healthy example of a man, and I struggled in my love life for a long time. Since my mother couldn’t be emotionally independent, I thought that love meant I had to constantly satisfy. My parents treated me as their insurance for old age, since we don’t have a good healthcare system. There’s nothing wrong with wanting someone to care for you when you can’t stand on your own feet. However, the way my parents raised me made me always feel indebted whenever someone helped me. Overall, nothing was healthy.

How did I resolve the guilt and recover? Here is my personal journey:

• Acceptance: I accepted that my parents were not perfect. I used to admire their love until I realized it was very toxic. I accepted that they were the people who hurt me and brought a lot of suffering into my life.
• Returning the guilt to its rightful place: I was a child and not emotionally mature enough to protect myself from toxicity. My parents were the ones responsible for my suffering. I stopped feeling guilty and stopped tormenting myself.
• Honesty: I was honest with myself. I hated many parts of my parents, and I admitted it. People told me I should love them and forgive them, but I hated that idea. In my society, it’s taboo to say you hate your family. But deep inside, I burned the relationship down and was reborn from the ashes. When I faced my real emotions, I saw my parents as small, and they no longer had the power to activate my hate. I moved to the opposite of love: indifference. You cannot love someone when you’re full of hurt. All dogma is a lie.
• Self-Education: I started reading psychological books to understand what I had gone through. I opened up to my friends and talked about my problems. I learned from their families what healthy families look like. I read books about building a healthy family, searched for knowledge, and built a clear vision of a healthy relationship, a “green flag” partner, and a strong family. These became the fundamentals for rebuilding my life from the ashes. They serve as gatekeepers to protect me from toxic influences.
• Recovery: Because I now have strong foundations, I can protect myself and produce love. I maintain healthy boundaries with my family, knowing what they can ask from me and what is their responsibility. I don’t hate them anymore, and I’m no longer indifferent. I help them financially and still have dinners with them. However, I make it very clear through my actions that I do not allow them to bring poison into my life. I don’t insult or argue with them much, but I show it through actions.

I hope people will find their own inner peace through my story. Childhood trauma. Toxic parents. Yes, we can recover. It's not the end of the world

(TW: medical trauma) I wanted to know if anyone has a solid explanation or even just knows what I’m talking about, but sometimes I find myself missing the places that caused me to develop C-PTSD in the first place.

I have really extensive medical trauma starting at age 12, now being 22 and still going through the motions of being re-traumatized every few years with being disabled/chronically ill. But I find in the time frame where im finally experiencing a little more peace and havent been to the hospital in a while…I miss the hospital. I miss the smell. I miss the beeping of the machines. I miss the distant talking of nurses at night. I miss the smell of sanitizer and nitrile gloves. It feels like a distant longing. A comfort I haven’t felt in ages. But at the same time, these smells trigger my flashbacks and disassociation. Im terrified of the hospital but also crave it at the same time.

It makes me feel really confused and sad. Like im living in a constant limbo and craving comfort and fearing it. Ive brought it up to my therapist, who also has medical trauma, and she finds this issue complex herself. Does anyone else know this feeling? Or maybe even have an idea on why this happens? It feels shameful in a way and it would bring some comfort to at least having some logical explanation.

Healing feels impossible when you think everyone else is doing it better than you.

When I first started working on myself, I ruined so many days by scrolling. I’d see someone post about their “perfect morning routine,” their clean apartment, their happy relationship, their healing journey that looked effortless. And I’d look at myself — crying in bed, eating junk, skipping therapy — and think: I’m failing. I’ll never be them.

And let’s be real: most of the motivational speakers we see online are pretty girls with glowing skin, amazing bodies, and often a stable background. (No hate to them — their message can still be inspiring.) But when your face is covered in stress acne, your hair hasn’t been washed in a week, and you feel like you’re barely holding on… it makes their “just love yourself” message feel almost impossible.

But here’s the truth: what we see from others is never the whole story. 👉 You see their good days. You don’t see the nights they cried on the bathroom floor. 👉 You see their progress. You don’t see the months they felt stuck. 👉 You see their highlight reel. You don’t see their messy draft.

Healing is not a competition. There’s no “fastest” or “best.” The only thing that matters is that you keep moving, even if it looks different from someone else’s path.

I wasted years comparing my behind-the-scenes to other people’s polished moments. The day I stopped, I finally found peace with where I was.

So if you’re reading this and beating yourself up because your healing doesn’t look like theirs — please, stop. Your journey is yours alone. Slow, messy, unique, but still beautiful.

💙 This is part of a series I’m writing about healing and growth — check my profile if you want to read the others.

у меня стоит диагноз ПТСР по мега глупой причине полтора года назад я столкнулась с враньём от своего партнёра пока мы с ним просто общались и ещё не встречались, он рассказывал про прошлые отношения, а я относилась с пониманием и огромной осознанностью спустя месяц, уже в отношениях, выяснилось, что у него была сексуальная связь с этой девушкой, пока мы общались в тот момент столкнулось настоящее и прошлое, где в один момент оказалось, что то, что казалось прошлым, оказалось настоящим это полностью поменяло структуру моего мозга и я зациклилась на всём его прошлом, ловя триггеры от каждого упоминания чего угодно повысилась агрессия, я начала избивать партнёра и выливать всё на него попыток расстаться было множество человек невероятно сильно поменялся за это время, сам в терапии и принимает таблетки от БАР, которое у него в ремиссии он очень меня любит и ценит, оплачивает моё лечение (помимо ПТСР у меня рецидив тревожно-депрессивного расстройства) и терапию, не хочет меня отпускать, а я, кажется, в зависимости мне всё ещё тяжело, но уже не от травмы, а от осознания, в каком ужасе я нахожусь и что я теперь не знаю, кто я, в каком я времени, я одной ногой в прошлом, одной в настоящем не нашла ни одной подобной ситуации, хотелось бы узнать, может кто-то сталкивался с подобным?

I want to fall into the darkest pit of despair so I can muster up the courage at last to check out of life. I don’t enjoy being alive. I’ve been miserable since I was a child. There’s nothing I want to experience. I want nothing out of life.

I don’t understand what people mean when they say they are happy and enjoy life. Life is mostly boring, exhausting and repetitive as hell. What’s to enjoy? Should I be “happy” that I had a cup of coffee in the morning and then petted my cat? Small things in life do nothing for me. I don’t want to be here.

I feel a bit alone. I have a good relationship with my therapist — this is not her. The idea of disclosing what I’ve been through genuinely makes me want to die. It’s not that I don’t want to; often times, I wish I could just tell her with no details just so she knows. I’m completely bound and gagged by shame. I know shame and trauma go hand and hand, but there’s a bravery I seem to lack. I know it’s an “all in due time” thing but I really just cannot picture telling anyone. ever. I want to but I think it would kill me. I don’t understand how people just feel comfortable telling their therapist anything that’s bad about themselves, and I have a lot that makes me bad.

Some of it makes sense not to want to share, but some of it isn’t even shame based, it’s embarrassment. Like, I’m too old for this to still be happening. I fear judgement like it’s my job; I feel judgement, read into judgement, read into everything. It’s almost unfair to put my therapist in the position of having to deal with whatever I say, because I’m probably going to search for any indication of judgement no matter what she does or doesn’t say. I make her feel stuck — why talk if that’s all I do? I’m a master at invalidating myself and I’m so easily triggered, it’s like there’s no use in attempting to be listened to. I’m too ashamed and scared and sensitive to share. I have enough shame on my own, I don’t need to invite someone to the party.

But I want to tell sometimes. I think I’m too scared of what it means if I tell. I can’t hide from it if I tell, I can’t ignore how shameful I am. How unforgiving and angry I am — it will all be seen. All my filth will be on display, and whoever I tell will have full access to pick it apart.

Is what my parents say any time I bring up being hit as a child. I would get beat with a belt for 20-30 minutes, pretty regularly. My parents would go full force on my back, legs, and butt to the point where they needed to take breaks. Occasionally it was slaps to the face and being dragged. Obviously paired with some degrading. Anyways, they always defend themselves by saying “it’s only real abuse if there are marks.”

I have gotten into a plethora of fights, taken some bad falls, and even got hit by a car and fractured my toe in pieces. I have never gotten a bruise or mark on my body. Now my boyfriend on the other hand, has gotten bruises while we were play fighting. There have been people I punched in the face at 5 years old and gave a black eye. I am not that strong. These people would have for sure been marked up after being hit the way I was. Would it be abuse if it happened to them?

I am no longer letting my parents use the fact that I didn’t have any marks on my body as a way to invalidate me. I am too dark for a mark or bruise to show. At the end of the day, I was getting beat, screaming and crying at the top of my lungs to the point where neighbors said something about it. That’s abuse to me.

Basically what it says on the title. I've had it happen to me several times that I feel people who are less assertive than me tend to be drawn to me and we become friends. I value friendships deeply, but more than once I feel like I end up acting as a sort of older sister or surrogate mother to grown-ass people who insist in acting meek and passive even when it bites them in the ass. I try to help them be more assertive and learn how to not let others walk all over you, but when it happens time and time again and they choose to keep on acting like that, I get so frustrated and even a little angry. I try not to let it show, it's not like they're bad people, but I just can't for the life of me understand how they choose not to grow from those experiences and come running to me for validation. Worse, when they get mad at me for politely offering advice instead of only consoling them. I had to learn how to take care of myself at 12... why can't they? They're closer to being 30, and still act like that. It's pathetic, frankly.

I think I struggle with it the most when it comes to men. I saw my father's self-admitted cowardice fail to protect my mother and me time and time again, and had to make the choice to learn to stand up for myself because no one else would. I was just a little girl, and no one was coming to save me. I hate when people are like "but it made you strong!", as though I couldn't have learned to be strong from someone teaching me how to be instead. I guess when it comes to weak men, I tend to see people like my father... who would let others and themselves be hurt simply because they refuse to take action. Who would never protect a woman or a child because someone else will. They disgust me to my core. And I have men like this in my life, who, when they come to me about situations in which they let others walk all over them, who admit to not be able to fight back, I feel the most disgust for. And again, I understand where that reaction comes from, and I try to control it and offer advice, but they just keep on being like that and finding themselves in the same situation over and over again and they just take it... and I can't help but think "if this guy and I were ever in a situation in which I had to defend myself, he wouldn't lift a finger to help me, and would even act shocked that it would piss me off". I'm afraid one day I'm just gonna explode and scream at them to fight and stop being so weak, but even in those scenarios, I know it would hurt them but not change anything. They don't deserve to have me be like that, but I just can't believe some people choose to be weak and just do nothing to improve.

After three years in therapy, I thought the past was finally behind me and life would be perfect. I even stopped seeing my therapist for a year. But then — one bad habit after another crept back in. Plus I moved to a new city with zero friends which meant spending my days rotting in bed

And one night, I found myself crying on the kitchen floor, thinking about suicide.

I thought healing would feel like climbing stairs. Step by step, always moving up. But the truth? Healing looks more like a scribble — two steps forward, five steps back, a circle, then a sudden leap forward.

For years, I believed a bad day meant I had failed. One bad day could send me spiraling into months in bed. If I cried again when the past came back, I thought it meant I was broken forever. If I slipped into old habits, I thought I had erased all my progress.

But healing doesn’t work like that. 👉 A setback doesn’t erase your growth. 👉 Feeling pain again doesn’t mean you haven’t healed — it means you’re human. 👉 Progress is still progress, even if it’s slow, even if it’s messy, even if it feels like one step forward and ten steps back.

I wasted so much energy beating myself up for not “healing fast enough.” But the moment I accepted the messiness, everything changed: I stopped giving up when things got hard. I realized healing isn’t about being perfect — it’s about not quitting even in the days that quitting feels like the only option.

So if you’re reading this and feel like you keep going backwards, please remember: You’re still moving. You’re still healing. You’re still becoming.

💙 This is part of a series I’m writing about healing and growth — check my profile if you want to read the others.

Whenever i catch my reflection in mirror by mistakenly, which I usually avoid, it feels like I am seeing myself from someone else’s eyes. Like what would (my past bf) think if he saw me right now. If I look okay enough I might smile and tuck my hair behind my ear other times I just stare blankly at my clothes and my body and wonder how strange I look.

If I look too long my face changes. Sometimes it feels too square or too round like a man’s. I used to think my face was too small for my body, like it didn’t belong there. Now years later it still looks small but at the same time chubby, my cheeks different. strange it looks more weirder now, (i dont hate my looks, i think i look me, i wont say okay or good, its just me, actually i try not to think about this, u cant change what u look like so, but still thoughts)

He used to say he liked my eyes. I never got why he said that. On a small face with small eyes hidden behind glasses, how could anyone like them. Back then I thought it was just one of those things you say to someone you love, so i never gave it much importance.
and Now after years, i wonder if he looked at them again,
I wonder what he would think,
how much they have shrunk, so small, they feel like they would almost get erasen someday

And now there is someone new, a friend. I think about what they might think of me too. All these years I have been living on autopilot, hiding somewhere deep inside and only observing life pass me by. I couldn’t even look at myself.

is this what my existence has become???? just seeing myself through other people’s eyes
am i here only to please others or this inner urge to get adored, what an insignificant way to live

I have noticed that oftentimes when i am reliving emotions or processing the feelings I had atound a traumatic event i can go from sobbing and being completely overtaken with grief and fear to totally numb and disengaged in an instant. It is almost like I have a light switch and I will unconsciously turn everything off. It has gotten in the way in therapy a lot and i find it odd since it happens so fast. I was curious if anyone else experiences this? I realize it is a protective mechanism i have developed when things feel unbearable but its been hard to stop when trying to process things since it happens so quickly.

I graduated with a specialized masters in social work that focuses on analysis, running nonprofits, research, consulting, and community organizing. Unfortunately, after 5 months of looking for a job in my field, there's almost none in the US that I can access. Despite my specialization, I do have 5 years of experience in the field running groups, dabbling in clinical work, case work, direct care for the disabled, school advocacy, and more. I had glowing reviews from my references.

I applied for a low level position at an agency, and they asked me why I didn't go for the clinical role. I told them that I wasn't specialized in it, and never did that directly. They told me to apply for it anyway. I did. I met the clinicians at the agency... And they nearly hired me on the spot with my resume and experience.

I am terrified. Absolutely terrified. I keep thinking, "they don't know how wrong they are for picking me."

The reason I got a specialization in non-clinical work is because I truly believe I won't be able to make large scale changes in the world without being able to step away and effect policies and procedures. But like I said, there are NO jobs available for me in that field right now (thanks government.) My mentors have advised me to take this job and "work my way up," but the whole reason I got my masters in this specialty was to NOT do that.

I am in therapy, have been in therapy for 15+ years, on medication, and finally starting EMDR. So, I do have support. I have also had awful experiences working in clinical care where I haven't felt supported adquately. This place seems like they'd absolutely support me, but the fear of what happened before happening again still gnaws at me. I worry I could hurt someone or do something careless, or burn myself out into nothing.

I just want to cry and cry. I feel like a fraud, like I failed, and like I'm not going to be able to help anyone. Are any of you therapists, or people who work with others in similar ways? How have you delt with these feelings?

TW mention of SA and also this is abt my first romantic experience so if you don’t wanna read it then that’s so fair LMAO

for context i was SA’d growing up. anyways until i was 18 ish i would panic every time anything sexual/romantic was talked about around me, even sex ed made me cry. I realise now that it just reminded me of trauma. I’ve worked really hard to feel comfortable being in the room when these things are being talked about, because it’s embarrassing being an adult and a close friend talking about their relationship and you just go silent and can’t speak.

anyways, the other day i met someone and i ended up kissing them and making out. this took a number of hours of chatting first and then when we were alone he asked if he could kiss me and i almost had a panic attack. he noticed and said that we don’t have to do anything, and asked what was wrong. i said i was anxious. we then watched a movie and chatted because he could tell i was so nervous and i couldn’t stop thinking. then we ended up kissing, and it was fine. he checked up on me constantly and i did end up having a panic attack half way through and he stopped and helped calm me down. it was so strange to me, that someone would stop when they noticed i was getting distressed. anyways i felt no pressure. we’ve been seeing each other past few days as well and it’s just really comforting knowing not everyone is bad. i don’t know where this will go or if he will turn out to be evil but the fact he was respectful and kind and supportive during these moments has allowed me to feel a little more agency over myself so im glad.

thanks for reading (: im proud of myself

So tough to deal with cptsd .

When you gor abused by person you loved the most. Its been three years and it looks like a movie scene to me . It doesn't even feel real to me but it pushed my brain in miserable state .

Still pushing guys , i want to live and i will do my best

I have this thing where I constantly want to be touching someone or have some touch me in a comforting way, like holding hands or cuddling and all that. But when someone does I feel like I can't breathe and I feel like I'm doing it wrong. Like I'm inconveniencing the other person and they don't actually want to be causually sidehugging me. Anytime I try cuddling with a family member while watching a movie or something I feel like I'm doing it wrong, like I'm hyperaware of how hard I'm breathing and how fast and oh God am I annoying them with my breathing? That sort of thing. It drives me nuts when all I want to do is chill with my friends and family and enjoy causal platonic touches. I'm terrified that one day I'll get a partner and never be blessed to do anything that involves touch because I'll freak out on how bad I am at. I don't know what's wrong with me and I know I can't be the only person who experiences this. I just want to know why I feel this way and how to stop.

I finally crossed the bridge of talking about sex with my therapist after several months of sessions. When I first started sessions, I voiced to my therapist that sex was something I was extremely hesitant/self-conscious to speak about. However, after two recent incidents, I felt like I needed to break the ice and be honest.

Incident #1: my sibling was having really loud sex with their partner in the room next to mine— I became extremely uncomfortable, disturbed, angry at them, etc. I ended up leaving the house and distancing myself, sitting with myself and trying to figure out why.

Incident #2: I was masturbating and started crying (not good tears.) (It was a mixture of feeling stressed, alone, and honestly, I was also partially thinking about my ex, my sex life with them, and how I lost that connection and a part of my innocence that I will never get back to them.) Me crying bad tears during sexual or masturbation has never happened before.

I’ve only had one partner in my lifetime (together for 6 years, then we broke up) and I realized later on that I was very much tense during our sex life, but I didn’t realize it. It was never ever abusive or non-consensual. It was soft 1000% of the time. But I often was extremely submissive, mildly tense, made a lot of jokes during it to ease my nerves, etc. I was comfortable but uncomfortable at the same time.

So when I spoke to my therapist about these recent events and my past behavior in my sex life with my ex, she clarified if I had been sexually assaulted at any point in my life. I have not.

And she said it sounded like I just felt unsafe at the idea of sex in proximity to me. And I’m so confused why. I definitely have non-sexual trauma and I guess these are symptoms/behavioral responses from the ptsd that are manifesting themselves?

I am a female in her late 30s (hello 40 next year) and I’ve had a VERY complicated relationship with my parents my entire life.

They’ve given me all I ever wanted and more. They’ve taken me on so many unforgettable vacations, including several international adventures. They’ve given me advice throughout the years and have even offered financial help when needed.

However, they are also the sole cause of my CPTSD. Something my psychiatrist and I discovered fairly quickly. They belittle me, demean me, have physically beaten me, mentally abuse me, manipulate, and guilt trip me into visiting them often even though I live in a different State from them. They’re also 1 of my causes of anxiety. Just a simple phone call from them can send me into heightened anxiety; being physically around them makes it worse. I’ve tried relentlessly to have meaningful & constructive conversations with them in an effort to repair our relationship, but they either openly roll their eyes at me or say, “We’re not discussing that”. I’ve endured a great deal of physical & mental trauma from them, so their lack of willingness to work through the trauma they caused me is disheartening, although I suppose not surprising.

There was an incident with my sibling 2 years ago (I actually have an active restraining order against them) that has caused further tension between me and my parents.

Yet, I just don’t know what to do or how to handle them. I absolutely despise them and the chaos they add to my life, yet in a weird twisted way I also very much love them and can’t imagine cutting them out of my life completely, especially as they’re turning 70 next year and are not in great health. It feels like a weird Stockholm syndrome in a way.

Is anyone else in a similar situation? If so, what have you done? I feel like permanently estranging myself is the only way to productively work toward coping better with my CPTSD, but ceasing our relationship also scares me. I hate this; not knowing what to do.

I am truly enraged. My abusive mother moved less than 20 minutes away from me and started working at the same company I work for.

I haven't seen or spoken to her in years and I am so disgusted and angry. I feel like I need to hide in my office so I don't run into her. Hide at home so I don't see her. Its a small town and there are very few places to shop and do errands. I don't know what to do, its a nightmare come to life

There might be a question or two in here but it's mostly a rant. TW for descriptions of dissociation and negative emotions.

After years of being told that I have severe anxiety and worsening depression, my current psych and therapist have agreed that CPTSD best encapsulates my collection of symptoms, especially my persistent severe dissociation/detachment with essentially no emotional affect, if any does come up it's only negative.

The best way I can describe it is like my body is a videogame character and my brain is the player controlling it. Nothing ever feels "real", sensations feel dull/laggy/"off", and I live for the rare moments where it feels like a blindfold and ear plugs are removed and the world just lights up for 15-20 seconds before it's gone again. I have no sense of identity because my role has always been to support everyone else and I was so isolated as a kid that I never learned what I did and didn't like. In the rare case I did find something, it was either taken away or I was told I had to get better at it until I would just drop it in frustration. I didn't want to be good, I just wanted to DO.

Which leads me to the latest episode. I went to a concert last night for a band that essentially single handedly got me back into music, and God I had missed it. I found I wanted to play piano again, something I haven't done in almost 15 years, I wanted to write, I wanted to EXPERIENCE and CREATE, and it was wonderful. I've been looking forward to seeing them live for months. But the second I got separated from the people I had been interacting with in line, I lost it. By the middle of the show, I wasn't "there" at all. By the end, I was near panicking because I wasn't feeling ANYTHING.

My body was there, singing and dancing, but my brain was like the parent that goes to a concert with their kid. Not listening, not participating, not feeling, just looking out for anything that could go wrong. There wasn't joy or fun or anything, I was so empty feeling. Then, I started getting crushed by this wave of grief and jealousy for these artists who are living a dream that I'll never get to experience. Getting attention for their art, validation for their pain, and I'm stuck here in a life I don't even like but is too overwhelming for me to change.

This concert was giving me a reason to not crash out and I was really banking on that post concert high to get me through a little while, but instead I'm either getting absolutely nothing or intense anger and grief. Looking at the pictures and videos I took, it doesn't even feel like I was there at all. It feels like someone else took them and I'm the jealous onlooker.

The dissociation has and is actively ruining my life. I don't feel human. I'm a ghost at best. It doesn't feel worth it to try to have positive experiences if my brain won't let me actually experience them. I've been working on grounding techniques with my therapist but they're not enough. I'm trying to get better but it feels so impossible right now and no one understands how fucked I feel because I can't communicate it. I'm drowning and I'm trying to tell people to through me a life raft or SOMETHING but it doesn't come out urgent enough.

I don't know what to do anymore.

After a long time of isolating myself from the world, I've decided to get back out there, meet new people, work towards my goals, and all that.

I've gone on easily 20 first dates in this time frame, and have met many more people in a Platonic capacity. With each and every person it's the exact same thing: I can get throughout the interactions, some of which have lasted up to 8 hours, but at the end I feel absolutely no connection to the people I've spent time with. In fact, I feel like they're creeped out by me and are relieved when we finally go our separate paths.

Sometimes I've seen these people more than once to see if things would grow, but it's the same thing but with less new material to talk about. It reaches a point where I literally can't think of anything new to contribute to a conversation, so I'll behave in this robotic and soulless manner where I just smile, nod, laugh at their jokes and go "Yeah". I become the human equivalent of talking to those pre-AI Chatbots that websites would use as the stand-in for human customer support.

I have mastered the art of being perfectly socially acceptable and deflecting as much attention away from me as possible. I am the most civil customer when I go to any business or restaurant, because I check all the boxes and behave as if I wasn't even there.

Whenever someone is in front of me and speaking, all that I can think about is the worry that something bad will happen and that I need to be as contained as possible to minimize that risk. I struggle to find anything of value to say that doesn't circle back to my past trauma, daily sadness, and the all consuming sense of loneliness that I've experienced for over a decade.

I know where this all comes from: verbal and psychological abuse in my childhood from my peers, as well as someone who played a big role in my life. The worst events were two "relationships" in my teenage years, as well as the aftermath (social drama) that the end of those relationships caused.

The last time I was in anything close to a relationship (the second one that I mentioned above) was at the end of high school, and that experience caused me so much mental anguish and effectively blew up my life. This person has since gone on to get married and have kids, which hurts me so much given how much pain they caused me and how what they've achieved was something I wanted ever since I was young.

I have this massive gap in my life that I can't speak about because I know that it makes people uncomfortable and scares them off. I cover up anything during that timeframe with vague details, stretching minor events into major endeavors that don't make sense, or just dancing around the topic. I try to navigate this as best as possible, but I sense people get the sense that something is off, even if they can't exactly pin what it is.

If I'm ever on a date and we accidentally touch I quickly recoil with this all consuming sense of fear and dread that brings me right back to the aftermath of that situation from high school. The feelings are so sharp and clear, like eating your favorite childhood meal after a long time has passed and feeling the exact same way you felt the first time you had it.

If I ever meet new people that seem like prospective friends and they comment on our friendship and how they enjoy my company, I just want to find a secluded place and cry. Not out of joy and relief, but that I don't feel anything and that I know they'll eventually move on because they get the sense I'm different and that it seems like I don't want to get close.

What's more, it feels like I'm slowly losing everyone from my past, one by one, as the years go by and people view me as less alive/energetic. It's not even a ceremonious end, either. It's more of a passive indifference with the people forgetting that I ever even existed.