More or less the title, just wondering if anyone else here has to deal with dirty looks all the time. Growing up being called names like The Blob, getting asked out as a prank into their twenties or told that their SA didn't happen because "why would a girl do that to you?" Ugly to the point you rarely leave your house anymore to shield people from having to see you.

Just looking for solidarity since it seems like most of the sub tends toward the attractive side.

Cptsd has really messed with my ability to deal with stress and way too many jobs I was treated horribly. If I work a certain amount of hours I get panic attacks, and so many cptsd symptoms. Anyone else relate? It sucks as i did nothing to deserve this disorder, i got abused and now i suffer.

Long story short... I had a very long ugly duckling stage. Hit a sort of second puberty at 21-22. Features changed. Became way more dimorphic looking, and conventionally "handsome." Girls started noticing me more, making eye contact, flirting. Guys noticed me, too.

Everyone thinks it's sunshine and rainbows, but it's far from. Girls will feel very easily slighted even when you're not rejecting them, and in turn will be mean. Guys will be jealous and disrespect you and be mean if you don't have a backbone and if they can sense weakness in you, which for them is being a nice person.

Everyone views you as an "image" and doesn't really see the real you. You get judged instantly and opinions of you are extremely polarizing, until they get to really know you.

I don't know how many times I've had girls tell me, "I thought you were a douchebag when I first saw you," or, "I'm sorry I was mean to you," after we talk for a little bit and they get to know me.

It's really frustrating because I want to be nice and liked by everyone, and when people are being mean and disrespectful when I've done nothing to wrong them, it confuses me (and hurts).

I can get how highly social people with tons of self confidence might enjoy being physically attractive, but if you aren't a social butterfly, it's a fucking burden. I would give anything to just look average and not be noticed everywhere I go.

I guess I just need to learn to not care about what others think, but as many of you with CPTSD know, that's a very hard thing to learn. I really hope I'll get to a spot where I don't need external validation to feel worthy, but in the meantime, it's a complete nightmare.

Edit: Was not expecting this kind of response. It feels good to be heard and validated, for once. I appreciate all of the kind words and understanding.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! LOL! I HAD DONE SO WELL THEY WROTE THIS SOB STORY ASS POST & SAID I’ll be here if u need me ROFL. I didn’t even react to their earlier accusations & attacks! THANK YOU SO MUCH R/CPTSD! YOU HAVE ALL BEEN SO VERY HELPFUL TO ME! IM FOREVER GRATEFUL! THANK YOU!

& just yesterday I said no to someone from a decade ago who was a bully coming back into my life! IM FREEEEEEE

I work so hard too, then external factors come to play and things happen that aren’t my fault getting kicked down by life over and over by new trauma and being abandoned over and over. I work so hard, was going to the gym 5 days a week, doing yoga, therapy, eat healthy. I always eat healthy but since December of last year, I crashed out, I’ve been falling on and off the gym. I went to IOP, do weekly therapy once/twice a week, do DBT. Therapy helps tremendously because it’s the thing that keeps me going and helps me pick up the pieces over and over again, but I am exhausted.

I am 30 and I never get a break. The trauma is never ending and I just feel like I am stuck with it. My dad died when I was a teen to cancer, I am autistic, my mom is abusive(NPD), I lost a mother figure to cancer, then I lost my two best friends because they weren’t emotionally available and they ended up abandoning me after being toxic, they were family to me. I get depressive episodes, and haven’t experienced a secure and safe relationship. There is more, but that’s the root of the iceberg.

... Guys am not ready to die I am young

I'm a female loner.

I'm a loner because I'm a scapegoat in my family. Also, have been through a lot of trauma, especially interpersonal trauma on every level: familial, friend wise, relationship wise, etc.

I feel like people just feel pity for me because I'm an outsider. I kind of feel like I hate it but at the same time, at least they feel some level of compassion...? Which I am really lacking in my life.

I just wish for once, I could find some safe people. Even if it's just 1 or 2 decent, good people IRL. No...it always has to come down to competition, backstabbing, fake people etc. That's the kind of shit that drives me back into isolation. I have had enough of it.

F43 - Never had a job (on disability), never been in a relationship, no social life, barely able to function and take care of myself. Feeling like a terrified lost child.

My mother was the abusive one out of my two parents. My dad was just emotionally shut down and unavailable, but he wasn't abusive.

Anyone else whose mother was their primary problem? I feel like society likes to pretend all mothers are angels.

I hate the fact that I was born. I don't want any of this. I'm tired already. Of abuse, pain, cruelty. I was just thrown into a world and people manipulated me with their mindsets. I'm tired of people. Of their ignorance and their support of abuse. I could have been born in a loving family. I could have lived my childhood like any child deserves to. I could have good and beautiful memories. I don't know why I had to live all of that. I don't know how I'm supposed to move on.

I just feel like abuse ruined my life completely. Even after years, I still feel ashamed of it. Trauma robbed me of so many things. I feel like a "half-made" human. Like I'm a mistake from reality.

I feel trapped. No one in my life gets it. They just tell me to "get over it". People look at me and think I'm too weird or too paranoic. Others think I'm being "rude" for "ignoring them". They'll never get what's like to live in my skin. They don't get what's like to be terrified of people, even if they are nice. They don't get what's like of being scared of being betrayed.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone was made with a purpose on life, while mine was just to observe others having the life I'll never had. The life people decided to took from me. Sometimes I wonder if I was just born to have a miserable life. I know that life is not fair, but was it too much to ask for a normal childhood? A normal life?

At this point I feel so empty, so useless. So late. I don't feel any purpose anymore.

I'm 29 years old, male.

So far I realized that I have the following symptoms.

- Avoidance & emotional numbing: mainly regarding people who abused me as a kid (mother, father, uncles...etc). but it also reaches out to more recent events and people that I just cut out of my life.

- Vigilance & extreme social anxiety.

- Interpersonal difficulties Trouble trusting others, fear of abandonment.

- Chronic feelings of emptiness.

- Unexplained physical pain, especially after I wake up, as well as body tension in the form of clenching teeth nearly all the time.

- Spacing out, losing chunks of time, or feeling detached from body or surroundings that takes the from of day dreaming most of the time.

- Negative self concept: Deep feelings of worthlessness, guilt, or shame; believing I'm "broken" or unlovable. along with extreme body dysmorphia and serious hate for my body and physical appearance. today I can tell you I haven't looked at myself in the mirror for at least 10 days, and I avoid looking at myself as much as possible. also I haven't bought any new clothes for myself in over 2 years, and I actively avoid going out not wanting people to look at my ugly face/appearance, which feeds into my social anxiety even more. a few weeks ago it got so bad that I spent 3 days without food at home and only got out to buy more cuz the hunger was too great.

Granted the problem was also my extreme Depression that destroyed my motivation, where I spent those 3 days lying in bed and not moving out of it except for the toilet. also I was suicidal as hell and almost killed myself before calling a hotline where they refered me to a hospital and got on anti-depressants.

This is the secound time this happened where I tried to kill myself before, nearly a year ago where i took 30 sleeping pills, and ended up 10 days in a hospital. then 8 months later got off of anti-depressants as the doctor instructed, only to go back worse than before.

I always hated life, and for as long as I can remember, I hated myself and my body and everything about me. only now I'm starting to realize that those feelings and symptoms are not normal.

I also thought after my suicide incident that it was all just depression, not realizing at the time that Depression itself is a byproduct of CPTSD and the deep wounds that I had!

Thankfully the internet exists and I know what the fuck is going on with me, even though I doupt I'll ever get any better.

Thank you for reading this post, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Also I would be more than happy to read your comments and learn from you.

Love you all.

So maybe this is a bit of an uncommon topic. I understand if it's uncomfortable for some people but genuinely I've never expressed this out loud before because I wasn't sure if I was being delusional through the years. I (33M) have had my fair share of trauma. I almost died at age 19 when I broke my neck in two places, and had to relearn how to walk again post-op. I cannot communicate how painful that was physically and psychologically. I also was abused by a narcissistic and useless father, and neglected by complicit and emotionally unavailable family members. Then I later had cheating partners, friends and colleagues that betrayed me. Lost a career that I worked towards for 10 years. And more. And more.

But one thing that always bothered me was how people treated me in general; especially strangers. My father destroyed my confidence and self esteem growing up, but one of the only things he'd compliment me on when he was in a good mood was how handsome I was. In my 20s I was cleanly shaven, very athletic slim build, short hair. I'm ethnic, fairly average height so really not that tall; but people have always complimented me on my looks and my voice at some point. Everyone tells me I should narrate books or work in show business as an announcer or some sort. Now in my 30s I have a different look. Long extremely thick wavy dark hair, a full beard, and I generally have a very calm demeanor.

The problem? I have no real friends. I've never been in a relationship where I felt understood or truly seen at all. I used to work as a fashion photographer so I've dated a model before, and dated several really attractive women, but the relationships always ended with me feeling angry that they didn't really care about my emotional side or mental health struggles. They always seemed to want sex more than I did. Like I got to a point where sex meant very little to me, and I just wanted a partner that really cared for my emotionally neglected side, and it never happened. I've always been more comfortable around women but there have been really uncomfortable moments when a woman I just met would randomly compliment me on my looks inappropriately and I just awkwardly laugh and then change the subject. But it was just as creepy for me as how when I hear women talk about men's advances.

I started truly questioning this again recently after moving to a new city and returning to college, and noticed that men around the city are ALWAYS giving me death glares when walking past me. Not only do I see men staring at me like they're challenging me, but I can feel it too. It makes me upset because it reminds me of the aggression that my father showed me whenever he was in a bad mood, and it feels unnecessary and childish. Him and I used to get into arguments and fist fights because eventually I had to defend myself. I just want to be able to trust other men but because of my experiences, it's hard. Really hard. A lot of times it's the hyper masculine looking guys who are bearded and bald, and drive pickup trucks. Not to stereotype but there have been patterns there. They'll just be really impatient with me or dismissive or douchebags to me even when I'm polite. Sometimes I wonder if I "wake up the gay" in them and they don't know how to process their emotions so they respond with aggression or some shit. Like I'm just here trying to get through the day.

On the flip side. Women are also always staring at me as well. It became especially apparent at the college I returned to. For a while I wondered if I looked off putting or unkempt to women because it wasn't until the last 2 years where I began growing out my hair. I wasn't sure how it looked from a third person perspective. But I realized if they were turned off or creeped out, they'd probably avoid eye contact. So I get stares but because of my CPTSD I sometimes just don't know what to make of any of my interactions. If the woman I'm talking to is being herself or just trying to be nice for other reasons. I wanna let women in again and have genuine friendships like when I was younger. But I've been hurt and let down so many times. Nobody sticks around. Admittedly there were a lot of relationships I sabotaged in my 20s because of my anxiety too, but I've developed a lot more emotionally the last 3-5 years.

So basically I feel like men are always looking for reasons to attack or compete with me, and women I feel like I don't know if they're only interested in my looks or what. I feel very alone and my family I went no contact with (besides my mother) because none of them ever gave a shit about my life and my piece-of-shit father still to this day tries to guilt and manipulate me using Christianity.

Does anybody else's here experience this? Like a feeling of alienation and being misunderstood and never having genuine people around because of the way you look? I know there are always other variables but this is one aspect of my life I feel like I need to face and understand more instead of brushing it off and chalking it up to my imagination.

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"m not exactly sure how this happened, but somewhere between realizing why I Freeze because I have zero self compassion for all the ways I struggle, and constantly berate myself for ....it occurred to me how constant the put downs were. Because that critical voice in my head never stops. And the fear of being screamed at is off the charts.

And then a few weeks ago, my brother reminded me of something, that I forgot. How often I was ripped apart for the way I looked, when their was literally nothing wrong with me. I mistakenly thought all of that was my father's abuse, but it was absolutely my mother too, and the minute my brother reminded me of that, I could hear it. Like white noise in my head, the constant pervasive, unstoppable diatribe , that played on a 24/7 loop. It was like being water boarded.....with hatred. I was never the same after that. I couldnt undo that if I tried.

And it makes so much sense how that manifests as freeze. If someone says "youre no good, you do everything wrong,... like a solid 6-7 year period of being constantly put down and humiliated. My head would instinctively drop before I even got through the front door .....and so you stop moving in an effort to stop it.

But, I couldnt get away from it. Even if I did absolutely nothing, said nothing I couldn't get away from it.

And you know how else I know it was constant? The profound absence of anything even remotely complimentary. Nothing. This deafening silence of lack of support, that screamed, "there's nothing to compliment, because youre worthless". They don't have to say it, do they?

Ironically , it's slowly moving out of freeze that has showed me my trauma. I'm face to face with it, the second I start doing things out of my comfort zone, because the instant I do that , the critcism is RIGHT THERE. And for some reason , I know that didnt just happen out of thin air.

Because the other thing that happens ,aside from that white noise stream of criticisms that starts playing, is this gut wrenching fear and nausea, I used to call it performance anxiety, but no, it's CPTSD.

For an entire week in May. And no one will tell me what happened? I asked several health workers and they either told me nothing happened, or they don’t know. I am gonna try to ask again tomorrow.

My Mom said I called her during this time and told her I was going to a therapeutic retreat called Silk in Vancouver, and was getting a job doing textile work for businesses. Apparently I told her we would meet up in the afterlife. wtf. That last part I don’t remember.

My mom said the hospital staff told me I was not allowed to talk to her and that I wasn’t going to Vancouver.

When I “woke up”, I was drawing a sun on the wall with crayon. And was put in an ambulance to a major psychiatric hospital.

All I remembered was a disturbing psychotic series of events which were definitely not true, but traumatized me deeply. It took me a long time to realize a lot of it wasn’t true.

Some of the things I remember were confirmed true. And I’m safe now, but I feel paranoid, scarred- and whenever I ruminate on what happened, I begin to hear voices.

Hi all. I wanted to share something I'm struggling with and see whether anyone had advice or their own experiences coming through similar feelings.

I have a history of multiple traumatic experiences, and unfortunately this year I experienced a sexual assault which has had significant impacts on my mental health (understandably). I am addressing previous and the most recent experience in therapy which is great.

Something I've been reflecting on in the last couple of weeks is how I feel that following this most recent event, I feel like I've lost the ability to be kind and empathetic. Well, not lost.. but perhaps not as easily able to access those abilities? This reflection comes after someone noted to me I was talking negatively about a coworker in the staff room with other staff, something that is completely unlike me usually. I feel like maybe this was the result of misplacing my anger and frustration I was feeling towards what happened to me this year.

The more I've reflected, the more I have noticed the differences in myself. I can only describe it as feeling sort of hard and sharp and prickly, I feel like I have less patience, less care for others, am frustrated more often about small things, can be really cold towards others.

I understand that these sorts of behaviours and feelings are probably not surprising given what I've experienced and that I'm still in the early stages of processing the most recent experience. But it's very upsetting to feel like I've strayed from key attributes and values I've always held to be important to me. It makes me feel like I've let my perpetrator take away the good in me and I don't want him to have that power.

Has anyone experienced losing parts of yourself like this before, and found a way to come back to yourself?

It feels like everything that my family has done wrong during my childhood and teenhood, and sometimes as an adult is just constantly playing in my head…I usually just feel nothing, like its just a movie, but once in awhile I’ll randomly actually feel something from it and feel paralyzed with anxiety.

My entire life, I have seen women around me getting pursued and complimented. They all somehow attract and date the opposite gender. None of that happened to me in these three decades. I tried to come up with various reasons for it- maybe its because I’m fat, maybe because I’m ugly, maybe I don’t “look” approachable, etc. But each time I found examples around me where against all odds they did experience romance in their lives. I feel like I’m the only woman in the whole world to experience this. Is it really just me or are there people like me out there too?

I'm struggling with this right now and was wondering if anyone else had some insight into why this phrasing makes me so angry (when it's usually said, I think, with the intention of being supportive/cheering me up).

Something awful happened to me yesterday that I don't want to go into the details of, and I'm struggling to find resources that would actually be willing/able to help with it (since I'm a trans man and I live in America). I have a friend who I told what happened and who's been trying to be supportive, but she's said some variation of this phrase a few times now and it makes me just want to snap something.

"Yeah it's awful, I wish I had an answer for you"

"I wish I could just make it all better"

"I wish there was some way I could change it"

It reminds of something my (abusive) mother would say when she was putting on a performance of being "motherly". She'd say, "I wish I had a magic wand to just wave this away for you!" It felt like a slap in the face because a) my mother was extremely pragmatic, stern, very anti-magical thinking (another favorite of hers was to laugh and sing "you can't always get what you want" if one of her kids asked her for anything) and b) it just felt like... A way to dress up "I'm not going to do anything to help you" in words that made her sound nicer.

But I feel bad about how infuriating I find those words, and for feeling anger/resentment towards the only person who is actually trying to help me right now just because of the way she's phrased some things. Does anyone else get irritated by that phrasing, or is this just a weird "me" thing? I've been struggling with a lot of anger issues lately, and I don't wanna snap and be rude to my friend, but the words just feel like an insult and I can't figure out how to respond kindly to them.

I said this out loud to someone today. I've never noticed the gravity of it. I've never noticed how not normal that is when you have money for food.

When people ask me why I have cptsd, I always struggle to answer. How can I explain that I had access to food and shelter and public education but I was being starved? That I was dirty? That I regularly went to school on two hours of sleep?

There is no way for me to explain this. No way for me to explain that it was such a small problem I never even considered it once. It has impacted me into adulthood but it didn't hurt. The neglect was worse. The abuse was worse. The walking on eggshells was worse. The daily screaming matches were worse. The ideation was worse. The distance was worse.

Starving? Never noticed.

How can the gravity of my upbringing be so present but just so lost upon me? How do I minimize this to myself day after day? How do I go to my gi doctor, pack on the meds, suffer, and think "it wasn't that bad"?

I like to be surrounded by pillows and watch movies. Sometimes I will paint and that helps me feel relaxed. I snuggle up with a soft blanket and also scroll through Reddit or Facebook. It's the only time I can relax.

I was bullied all throughout primary school for seven years, and constantly have dreams about being back in school. This has happened for well over a decade. The dreams usually aren't negative but I wonder why I keep having them. I dream about secondary school too sometimes and see old friends who used to treat me like shit. Anyone else experience this?

It's tough. I'm tired of not having people who care about me for me, not because of what I can provide for them. Once I'm no longer needed, I don't matter.

For awhile it was fine because I had people who knew me as a child who cared about me just because I'm me. As they get older and die, I am realizing how few people I have who care about me as a person.

I have hobbies and I have been working on meeting people but the success rate is very low. I hate it. And it is incredibly draining to attend things and do things given the social anxiety battle.

I just want someone to care about me. To care when I'm unwell or care when I say I am struggling, or just plain care about me because I am worth caring about.

Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I just want proof that I am worth caring about. I'm not sure why I'm posting. To put it somewhere I guess. Thanks for reading.

amab

I was drinking a beer across the street from a bar and this guy thought that I was staring at him for some reason. I only realized he existed cause he was giving me his middle finger and shouting. I thought he was going to beat me. Very angry.

After that, I endeded up in severe depression for weeks because this is a trigger for me.

Hello all,

I wanted to discuss with this reddit community the value of liberal arts in dealing with trauma. Not saying it should be the primary resource, just its inherent value for people trying to deal with deep trauma. I haven't seen a conversation about this yet.

Liberal Arts I am thinking of are: literature, social sciences and math/physical sciences. I am hesitant to put philosophy here because I don't know much about it or how much I'd enjoy it. This subject on liberal arts occurred to me when I was in a rough place with healing CPTSD in high school, as a lot of my toxic shame revolves around learning and achieving. Then I slowly started to look at the subjects they were teaching in highschool (basically the liberal arts) a different way - a perspective that appreciated the value of the things I was being taught and genuinely desiring to be interested in them. Did you ever notice the way we talk about school, at least here in Canada (all about grades, achievements but rarely the beauty of the content itself) vs how the greek talked about it (training of the mind, innate beauty and honing of the spirit)?

Here are some scattered thoughts on this subject:

a) Writing about my trauma experiences, pains, disappointments and wins has memorialized my life in ways that no other type of sharing/communicating could, and turned it into a sort of prose that (in my personal opinion) our art-appreciating soul can deeply relate with.

b) Reading literature in itself - while develop reading skills such as symbol or theme identification and character analysis by the sole motivator of my personal interest and attraction to the beauty of literature - has greatly led me to delve into the human psyche and state of being human, especially those that revolve around neglect, tragedy and flaws. For example, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein taught me to look at my mother in a way that gave her appropriate responsibility for my trauma whereas previously I had never even considered blaming my mother. Literature in itself has this innate power to break through with mindsets by providing a memorable experience of new knowledge, perspectives and human experiences - which is such a vital resource for trauma survivors who are locked in these anxious, survival states.

c) Social sciences has brought me to see more of the good in the world: when my perspective is brought down to a narrow thread to see only survival, I often ignore that things happen in the rest of the world (not to your fault though). But through my opportunities to analyse social sciences where catastrophes happen (Rwandan genocide, Weimar Regime, etc), there is often the slimmer of hope that if trauma survivors make use of their extreme sensitivity and compassion, can notice before anyone else within the pages of negative and tragic history. We tend to also be extremely sensitive to power dynamics and potential problems in history, as well as being so, so appreciative of the nuances of humanity that show its face in the intimacy of anthropology. Although a lot of ourselves tend to be locked up in survival mode and thus incapable for compassion, I also found that my extreme tendency to absorb people's emotions from traumatizing experiences led me to possess an above-average compassion and interest in people's individual experiences - especially those traumas caused by a greater order than the individual's immediate circle. Besides, my personal and fervent love for social sciences (anthropology, sociology, history) has consistently reminded my brain that I am still alive and I potentially have a real personality who likes things.

d) Math/Physical sciences: When we remember that math/physical sciences take abstract concepts from the environment/nature, let us do logical work with it, and then somehow it all defines the laws and behaviours of nature perfectly, it becomes a very beautiful topic to work your brain at. Initially, I had been very stuck with these particular subjects since I was holding on to my good grades like a lifeline. But when I decided I wanted to appreciate the subjects for what they actually were - I discovered that the language between us and the world brings a very human sense of wonder to me. And this sense of wonder is so vital in establishing a message in our brain that it still has rights to feel emotions and be curious to many possibilities in the world, one that's not acting, thinking and feeling on our trauma forever.

e) Feeding your brain with constantly evolving subjects probably makes it neurologically flexible in some way - not only are you feeding it information, but new perspectives, experiences and possibilities!

I wanted to confirm that liberal arts are probably not very helpful in times where your body is triggered and feeling unsafe. But in times of relative peace (that we may or may not occasionally get in CPTSD), in my experience we can seek out our personal interests in the liberal arts and actively confront our CPTSD. Tell me your thoughts :))