u/Affectionate_Cow5808

Every adult who has ever lived has had the experience of being a child. Even if (maybe, especially if) the adults responsible for looking after you fucked it up, or were non-existent, you still understand the parent/child dynamic (or lack of it) from the perspective that matters most—the child.

You don't need to be a parent to recognise what shitty parenting and neglect looks like

It’s a nervous system condition. Some of the worst symptoms are somatic.

I think labelling it more accurately would mean more non-traumatised people would understand us better.

It seems to me that the semantics reflect a tendency for Cartesian dualist thought, but it’s absurd to separate the body from the mind in most contexts and insidious in the context of health.

I suspect that how we perceive all mental health conditions will change in the future, and our descendants will look back at this time with a kind of knowing horror

Ever since I remembered my repressed trauma sleep has been ruined. It used to be something of a refuge but now almost every morning I wake up in hyperarousal. I don't remember all of my dreams but typically I'm not dreaming of the abuse directly; I just have generally stressful nightmares.

Do other people struggle with it this much?

I don't know how to cope with it. It makes me not want to sleep but I can't not sleep.

I don’t want to be bitter but it really just feels so unfair sometimes. I’m not a bad person, I’m not mean, I’m not selfish, I’m not even boring. And, yet, the reality is that I have almost nobody in my life. My cup is always almost empty—and it’s not for want of trying to fill it.

Nowadays, I can’t even be outside in the world without feeling somehow lesser because of how alone I feel by contrast. Observing people just being people with each other is a special kind of torment.

I hate that I feel this way. I don’t want to feel resentment. I don’t want to feel shame. Those people are doing nothing wrong and deserve companionship and love. I know very well, on an intellectual level, that these feelings aren’t representative of the truth; I challenge them when they arise; and yet they persist because my isolation persists.

They make me feel like some kind of otherworldly being, a fifth-dimensional demon that can’t fit in because they don’t actually belong. That this is not my realm. Every day I’m reminded of that.