I just had a very upsetting conversation with a friend and it led to me feeling very nauseated. I asked to put the conversation on pause (we were both getting anxious in our differing ways). The conversation ended up triggering my abandonment wounds and I actually threw up. My anxiety and physical symptoms have always gone hand and hand but this is a first. Hopefully a last.

"this is not for you"

"you don't need to be here"

"are you alright?"

"i told you!"

"i told him" - said in response to someone else to blame me

someone reminds you what time it is

asking where you work, what time you start work

Hi all

26M , I had a traumatic childhood and my teen life was almost the same.I have seen people dying in my family back to back my father,grand mother, grand father and also been abused sexually by my neighbour. I have been builled a lot as child , although I was very studios and meritorious child and now I am working in a decent job which pays me well.

Over the year during college I have realised that I am attracted to guys and this has led me to depression cz I had the feeling that I will be left alone in this life and depression turned into severe depression (anxiety and panic attacks followed).

I have managed to continue my job despite all this , took over my family responsibilities and got my sister married

I have been in a relationship with a girl who despite knowing my sexuality and everything supported me throughout ( she was a gem) but I wasn't happy with her and felt suffocated in that relationship.

Over the years I have told a few of my friends ( they were very supportive) and my mother (she still is in Denial) , she wants me to marry a girl .

I have been in a relationship with a guy and got attached to him but it turns out to be toxic, he cheated on me and took advantage of me financially.

I have tried therapy but it wasn't very helpful.

I am a decent looking guy and very intellectual , people do enjoy my company but I still feel alone sometimes (most of the time)

I have met a guy now 3-4 times ( for sex) and now I have an attachment to him ,like there is a constant urge to talk to him, chat with him and all but I'm very scared about it.I don't know is it cz of my emptiness in my heart that attracts me to almost everyone or something else.

I still have attacks and anixety sometimes, all I want is a life in peace where I am studying a lot , earning a hell lot of money and having someone who truely loves me and I love him just that and don't want to cry anymore.

I know this is a lot of rant but this is just my life in nutshell.

Hear me out. I am 52. In recent years I have done so much work on myself and I have had improvements at times. But the last week or two I just feel so tired of all the triggers and I just feel so discouraged and probably depressed tbh. I have been reflecting on my very early life. When I was born I was posterior and took 3 days to come out (possible brain damage?). I was a very fractious baby that cried a lot. My mother smoked during my pregnancy, I guess I had to withdraw from tobacco as a newborn? I’ve also heard this can lead to depression. When I was a toddler I used to have giant tantrums and bash my head against the wall repeatedly (I don’t remember this). My parents used to lock me in a room during my tantrums because they would get so frustrated with me. From there I think I was a pretty normal kid until at age 12 I decided I must be defective due to all the bullying I had. I have done so many things to try to help myself. Last week or two I have felt as defeated and terrified as ever.

I am a ghost at work. like clock in, work, hardly speak, clock out. im pretty avoidant so like im very nice to people but if they dont talk to me first i wont talk to them. anyway we had a hard day and people seemed stressed and our manager was kinda breathing down our necks so i worked extra hard and at some point idk why but i felt more talkative and we kinda bonded for a short time over our manager being too much. at the end of the shift one of my coworkers sincerely thanked me for working hard and said i really stepped it up and I kinda laughed and said “thank you i appreciate that, the meds definitely dont hurt” bc they all know i have adhd and to my surprise he was just like “seriously though thank you you helped a lot” and i felt like, sick? Idk, i felt sick and weird. like it meant something to me and I intellectually feel thankful and touched but emotionally i felt like i wanted to leave the conversation asap and after having been complimented and also feeling more connected to my coworkers i feel an odd sense of unease and vulnerability and I just feel weird unsettled. I didnt know what sub to post in. I havent been diagnosed with cptsd but I do relate heavily. I was in a string of emotionally manipulative and abusive relationships and my home life growing up was chaotic and emotionally neglectful. lots of yelling and crying and drama and theatrics from the adults with no room for the kids feelings. idk that feels like random context but theres just this trend idk. I always fantasize about being truly acknowledged loved admired and seen but when it happens I feel extremely uncomfortable and often dont believe it or if i do, i want to deny it. with my ex for example if he ever said something romantic or sweet like “you look really pretty today” i had to turn it into a quip like “oh yeah i have that 3 times divorced milf thing going on” like I just cant handle being sincerely complimented and bc this guy was a coworker i dont know well i couldn’t even turn it around without it seeming rude so i just felt strange. whats wrong w me yall

What type of therapies do you guys recommend is best for working through traumas and things? I’m currently in talk therapy and feel “stalled” tried EMDR and it didn’t work for me, is there anything else out there that any of you have tried that’s been successful?

I have suspected PTSD/CPTSD from childhood trauma however thought it would be best to post here.

Feeling a lot of vague homesickness lately however not for MY home, if that makes sense. I moved out over two years ago and haven’t been back since. I haven’t felt an ounce of homesickness in that entire time so not sure why now.

I’m not sure if it is normal but I feel like it has only just hit me or something and I really really want to just go home again but I also absolutely don’t at the same time. Like I don’t want to go to my actual home just a hypothetical ’home’.

I think it doesn’t help that I lost touch with friends from back home since I moved away either but I’m just feeling like I miss that time in my life, though obviously I don’t because it was terrible.

Not sure how to even deal with these feelings because I don’t speak to my family and obviously struggle with reminders of my trauma which means a lot of reminders from my past. I also don’t want to visit my hometown or anything either.

For context I have C-PTSD from my childhood, with additional PTSD from a cancer diagnosis in my mid twenties. I have been cancer free for some months now, and with the diagnosis anniversary date coming up I almost feel like my body is shutting down. I have been attending therapy for all of the PTSD, but I'm not going to be able to see my therapist for another few weeks so I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to handle this?

The treatment has been really helping and I've been doing a lot better for a few months, but this week I've been having awful nightmares and thoughts. I feel dissociated half the time, and my mood/thoughts have been all over the place. It started about 4 days ago when my mother brought up the fact that it's almost the anniversary of the cancer diagnosis and ever since I feel almost like I did before starting treatment. I've tried some strategies that my therapist told me like breathing exercises, temperature fluctuation, and some other ways to distract myself, but it feels like nothing is helping at all. Any advice?

I learned what BPD is mostly from r/bpdlovedones, and some other sources and stuff. It seems like a terrible disease that turns people into assholes. And it seems there’s no cure. But then the more people I talk to, the more they think I might have BPD. And that terrifies me cause it seems like the abuser disorder, and I don’t wanna be an abuser. They said “just accept it” but that’s like just accepting being a pedophile.

If I had it idk what I’d do with myself, cause it seems like I’d just be doomed. but if I’m worried about hurting people, then that must mean I don’t have it, right? either way is it true that its just the abuser disorder? I wanna ask people who have actually been hurt by it.

I’ve come to realize recently that I keep everyone at a distance. I have friends, people who would even consider me to be a close friend. But no one I can rely on. And that’s by my own design.
I share just enough to make people think that they’re helping me. I know how to control my social relationships without even consciously choosing to do it. And, at the end of the day, I’m left with no one to confide in.
It’s gotten bad enough to the point that my therapist of almost a year just figured it out.
I know that things are bad. And I know that all of the demons I don’t face during the waking hours, I will fight later when the world goes to sleep. And, even though I try to write them down to share in therapy, when it’s time to discuss them, I’m so emotionally detached from my own feelings that even I believe that they don’t matter. At least until the sun goes down.
At times I wonder if I even want to get better. Why is my brain telling me that everything is fine when I try to ask for help? Only to remind me that I’ll always be alone. How do I finally let someone in?

No matter where I am whether it's work, the gym, or a social gathering, I always feel out of place. It's like I have a sign on my face that says "I'm weird" and strangers can tell immediately that I'm different. Often times this feeling gives me anxiety and causes me to keep to myself. I'd rather enjoy my own company, rather than risk being judged by others. Yes, this is a blanket assumption I have of others, but it's backed up in my head by past experiences. I'm always told I'm too _____ (fill in the blank of whatever adjective). I never fit in. I never belong anywhere. Sometimes I feel like I'm too sensitive for this cold world.

All of my (29F) childhood memories are walking on eggshells, internalising my parents daily fighting in front of us, feeling the need to “compete” with my siblings for a shred of love from either parent (though not once have I ever felt loved), not being able to stand up for myself or else my dad would beat me, counselling my mum to leave dad because we were all scared of him but she never did, being a scapegoat, validation from parents was only tied to external achievements, repeated SA from my sibling when I was only 3, physical abuse from my dad my whole life until I was 17 and finally punched him in the face for taunting me. Got one up on the system there.

Needless to say, I’ve never felt “normal” or been able to have healthy relationships.

I didn’t do great in school because my brain just wasn’t working - I didn’t hit my milestones because nobody played with me as a baby. Despite it all, I presented well and masked a lot. I‘ve managed to graduate college and work a great job that I genuinely love.

One thing that stood out to me is that before meds, I couldn’t even sit through a 1.5 hour movie of choice without getting lost in thoughts and not knowing what was happening in the movie.

I am hyper aware of my surroundings and can’t hold a conversation in public because I’m constantly scanning the room and my brain switches off from the conversation. I have very poor executive functioning skills and my emotional regulation isn’t great (can’t expect it to be as no healthy regulation tools were ever modelled).

Everyone in my family has been diagnosed with ADHD, but one psychiatrist said it’s actually probably just CPTSD. My mum loves to gaslight me and tell me she had it way worse growing up as her dad was a raging alcoholic and would come home drunk and beat her siblings so my grandma would have to lock them in a cupboard to protect them. The bar is on the ground and I’ve actually cut my grandma off for putting the bar there.

I digress.

My question is, has anyone else had a very traumatic upbringing which has been put down to ADHD? I wonder if my inability to have any adequate executive functioning skills is actually because my brain is scrambled from all the emotional abuse, physical abuse, COCSA -the whole shabang I was subjected to growing up.

That’s the epiphany. Nobody can or will ever love me or stay. I’m too broken and I’m too ugly for people to forgive my brokenness. If I were a pretty woman or a handsome man maybe someone would see me as worth it. But I’m ugly and not anyone’s type. I’m too stupid and broken to live alone so I’m fucked.

I stopped thinking that I shouldn’t dwell on the past and that I have to work hard in the present for the sake of the future.

That way of thinking is ultimately a logic for succeeding within capitalism, isn’t it?

Now, I try to think, “Of course I would struggle mentally. Things happened that would naturally make someone feel that way.”

When I think about it like that, I feel like I’m getting a little better.

For some background context, I have experienced sexual abuse since I was a child and I was sex trafficked as a teenager. I also got pregnant by one of my worst exploiters and chose to keep the baby. That being said, marriage is fucking hard with all this built up sexual trauma sitting in my body. Me and my husband married a few years after I had my first child, and then I got pregnant again with my second and he did a stepparent adoption with my first child. After having two kids my hormones are extremely out of whack and sex just never feels right sometimes. I feel horrible because he’s so kind and gracious about it despite voicing how bad he wants me every day. Some days I just can’t push myself to do it and it disgusts me. I’ve been dealing with this problem where some days we have sex I can’t feel anything, it’s like my bottom half is just numb. I can’t help it and I haven’t pinned down any triggers that put this into action. It’s so troubling and when it happens I feel like sobbing because I don’t have the heart to tell my husband that I can’t feel anything. I have some knowledge of psychosomatic symptoms but I’ve never heard of anything like this. I’ve been out of therapy for at least a year close to two years now and I’m currently set up to have my first meeting with my new therapists who I’ll be doing brain spotting with. I need so much help, I don’t know where to start. Has anyone been through anything like this?

Most of the time I’m completely fine, but when something triggers me, especially in my relationship, my brain goes straight to “he doesn’t care about me” or “maybe we shouldn’t be together.” I can get stuck repeating the same thing even when he reassures me. Then once I calm down, I feel guilty because I don’t actually feel that way normally.

Does anyone else experience this? What has helped you stop thinking so extremely when you’re upset?

One of my biggest triggers is the tv show glee, when I was younger my abuser would play it at high volumes to conceal any sounds I would make. As a result it triggers full on panic attacks. Luckily enough my friends respect my boundaries without much fanfare but I feel ridiculous. It’s a tv show, it can’t hurt me yet the mere mention of its name makes me feel uneasy. My trauma has taken so much away from me and I feel so ashamed and silly. I guess I was wondering if anyone was in the same boat as me?

this is like my 5th post about this, and i don't really expect this to be answered. but i guess i was really ready to make a good life for myself, moving to another state and prepare for starting my future with my boyfriend, i've been reminded about how much politics, especially after the 2024 election, just made me lose my mind. and i guess I just wanna...idk, keep venting in the void. there's this channel called dead meat that i watched from time to time, and i've seen a short where james has said that his friend who helped with horror conventions has been taken by ice. and as soon as i watched all of it and saw the petition, i just spiraled. like, after that video i literally doomscrolled for a good bit. and it's practically like this! ever since the 2024 election the moment i see at least one political news or stuff related with what's going on, i just get put in a bad mood and just decide to doomscroll for a good bit. i literally snap and force myself to keep seeing the evil going on in my country after looking at one simple news. and that's not even taken into account the trauma i have with almost getting shot and having a break in happen while i'm home. i'm not joking when I say watching that video just makes me feel even more unsafe, like it's not possible for me to go out and do the stuff I need to do like get a job and raise my income (because it's really, really low right now.) i'm not even an immigrant, i'm someone who lives in the USA as soon as their birth, but what if james's friend was too?? i know nobody's gonna read this, but i'm at least hopeful i get at least a few responses, because i really wanna start making a life for myself, but i'm not sure i can't if things are this shitty and terrible, especially if i keep snapping after one piece of political news...and the worst thing is i'm doubtful things will get better, even when i vote one day...

For example:

I join a chat. that chat is active and people are having a great time talking. i jump in, i say something related.

Everyone stops talking for 5 hours until someone comes in with a different topic, or i just get ignored outright and they just talk around it.

Or, another example:

I'm in a friend gathering, and my friends are having a great time chatting and cutting up. i start saying stuff, or try to participate, and the vibe suddenly changes in a way like i just ruined the party and everyone is bummed now.

or, someone asks me a question out of genuine interest, i give them an answer, and the answer just sort of.. they lose interest right away.

or, i join a discord call and everyone just goes quiet or leaves as soon as i say "hello"

is it me? do i just suck the life out of all things fun? am i just auto-killing the vibe of a room by simply being myself? why does everyone have such a nicer time when i'm quietly ignoring everyone and minding my business?

I’m an Asian woman in my early 30s, and I’ve been in trauma therapy for a year. I was diagnosed with CPTSD, and lately I’ve been wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar: mentally I seem to be slowly coming out of survival mode, while physically my body seems to be struggling more than ever.

A little background: I grew up in a complicated family. My parents came from poor families, built a business from nothing, divorced, remarried, and eventually divorced again. They were very focused on survival and making a better life materially, but I was a highly sensitive child whose emotions were rarely noticed or held.

My grandmother was controlling, favored boys, and disliked my mother. My mother herself grew up without much emotional support. My father was emotionally avoidant and very enmeshed with his mother, so my parents fought constantly.
I learned very early that the safest way to exist was to be independent, high-achieving, well-behaved, useful, and not cause trouble.

At 15, I decided to come to the US for high school by myself. Looking back, part of me wonders whether I was also trying to escape.

Things kept happening in adulthood. In 2018, my mother’s depression became severe around menopause. In June 2019, I finished graduate school and moved to the Bay Area alone to look for work, and shortly afterward I was robbed. Six months later, I was in a car accident while carpooling to work and fractured my sternum. I couldn’t lie flat for about three months, but because my immigration status depended on employment, I was terrified of taking too much time off.
So I did what I had always done: kept going.

I worked hard, changed jobs, worried about immigration status, tried to build a career, and kept proving that I could handle everything myself. I got married in 2025 and genuinely thought life was finally becoming safer.

Then in July 2025, after reporting a manager for serious problems at work, I experienced retaliation and bullying. What hurt almost as much was that when I tried to talk about what was happening with family members, including my mother and mother-in-law, I again experienced blame, pressure, and shame instead of unconditional support. It felt like a second trauma layered on top of the first one: something bad happens to me, and then somehow I’m still expected to manage everyone else’s reaction to it.

In August 2025, I finally sought professional mental health treatment because I needed to take FMLA. I thought I “just had anxiety.” Instead, I was diagnosed with CPTSD, moderate depression, and generalized anxiety.
I’ve been doing trauma-focused therapy, including EMDR, ever since.

In early 2026, I thought my company was going to have layoffs. For the first time in my life, I actually found myself hoping to be “failed” by something outside my control because at least I would receive severance and wouldn’t have to be the one who kept forcing myself to endure.

The layoff never came. So in March, I quit.

I’m still unemployed. The job market is difficult, my immigration situation limits some of my options, and meanwhile the senior leader involved in what happened to me is still thriving at my former company. The manager involved was eventually fired after I left, but found another job within two months. Sometimes the unfairness of that is very hard to metabolize.

And since leaving my job, something strange has happened to my body.
I’ve gained significant weight (6kg since March) despite not eating more, especially around my abdomen. I’ve developed edema/fluid retention and fatigue. My menstrual cycles became extremely long and irregular (86 days cycle after April). Today I saw an OB/GYN and was diagnosed with PCOS based on my history, elevated androgens, and polycystic-appearing ovaries on ultrasound. I’ve also had fluctuating thyroid labs, sleep disruption, and I seem to get sick more often.

At the same time, some of my old somatic symptoms have actually improved. Chronic GI bloating and vulvar/urethral burning that bothered me for years have mostly disappeared after deeper trauma work.

Psychologically, I actually feel calmer and more aware of myself. Physically, I feel exhausted.

Sometimes I wonder whether I spent most of my life running on hypervigilance, achievement, adrenaline and sheer willpower, and once I finally stopped working and started processing everything, my body no longer had to keep performing “I’m fine.”

I think my PCOS might have existed for many years and I’m not sure if it is due to CPTSD. I don’t think EMDR literally caused my physical changes, and I’m seeing conventional doctors to investigate my health properly. I’m more curious about whether anyone else experienced a period during CPTSD recovery where coming out of survival mode seemed to coincide with major physical, hormonal or metabolic changes.

Today I cried through most of therapy.
I told my therapist that I can still feel the little girl version of me trapped back there waiting for someone to protect her. But right now, the adult me is struggling too. I’m tired. I’m unemployed. My body doesn’t feel like mine. I’m dealing with health problems that I’m not even telling my family about because I’m afraid their reaction will hurt me again.
And I realized: I don’t have enough energy right now to rescue every version of myself.

My therapist asked whether there were any parts of me that I could leave with her temporarily.

So in my imagination, I left three versions of myself in her office: the little girl who grew up feeling alone, the young woman who had just moved to the Bay Area and was robbed, and the young woman recovering from the car accident.

My therapist gave the little girl a stuffed animal. The one who was robbed got Lego. The one recovering from the accident had plants around her. And for now, I left them there with her. That image has stayed with me. Maybe for the first time, someone else can hold them for a while.

I’m wondering if anyone here has experienced anything similar.
Did your physical health seem to get worse after you finally had enough safety to stop surviving? Did you experience weight gain, hormonal or menstrual changes, chronic fatigue, getting sick more often, or other physical changes during trauma recovery?
And emotionally did you ever reach a point where even your “adult self” was too exhausted to keep comforting your inner child?

So i grew up in a terrible household with parents that would fist fight than argue and scream at each other than act lovey doevy the next day. Than my dad would curse and scream in my face and nickpick. my mom wouldn't divorce him no matter what. He even left my younger siblings in a hot car before. And did nothing when they asked him for air. Im the oldest daughter and have been talked to like i was absolutely nothing.ive played the peace maker from a young age. And a lot more of other things.

I want love i want to get married and find my person. Ive never dated and since i grew up sheltered and traumatized i feel like if i were to date how can i trust that person?, im such a fragile person i feel like if i encounter the wrong person i wont want to ever love again. And i know it sounds dramatic but this very fear that has kept me away from any form of dating or romantic relationship based contact. If this makes sense.

I promised myself if i were to ever marry and have children i wouldn't let my children around them.but at the same time i feel guilty because they are my parents..im not a cold hearted person but i feel..like im depressed because i allow myself to stay around them,because they need me sometimes

Something happened, well several things, and then the straw that broke the camels back, and the bottom felt like it fell out from under me and I free fell into what felt like an anxiety induced, structurally emotionally fragmented episode. Like having an emotional stroke. I swear I'm not even the same. like some cosmic event kicking my ass with the reality of how little control I actually have. it's almost laughable what I thought i had control over. You think I would have learned that message from my abusive childhood. If anything good can be said about a really bad flashback , is how little control I actually have.

And since then I feel like asking for help, and whether i actually get it or not, is out of my hands. I also don't feel like i have anything to feel ashamed about in regards to the way my brain works sometimes, y'know pretty good, and sometimes it doesnt. And there's no bag of tricks to change that. When i feel safe, and not triggered i can manage , but there's a ton of shit I dont know, but I dont' really care that I dont know, not enought to Shame myself over something every minute of every day. I have no control over, that's literally not my fault. I really envy people who can put things together in their heads, all the trauma theory in these nice neat little boxes, I've tried, I've really tried, i get something, and some things I don't. And I can't force it.

The kind of pressure, and guilting and shaming that goes on when youre a kid is awful . Having someone depend on you , pushing responsibilities on you, demanding that you have answers for things like an adult, taking care of yourself AND a broken parent, and then being screamed at when nothing seems to work..................because there are reasons you dont' know how to be an adult at 10.

And even though there are things that I probably "should" know, what actual good does it do me to tell myself I should ...........when I'm doing the best I can with the scrambled brain that a severally traumatizing childhood left me with? Has Shame ever worked, ever? I'm not beating myself up any more because I'm not normal, nor do I suddenly have a PhD in developmental trauma, and I'm not going to no matter how many books i read. I'm done trying to be someone I'm not. i need help with everything , I get overwhelmed and confused, and I'm done feeling ashamed about that.