u/Serious-Pound8175

One of the best definitions I’ve read of CPTSD is this:

‘CPTSD (complex trauma disorder) is a psychological disorder that can develop in response to prolonged repeated experience of interpersonal trauma in a context in which the individual has little or no chance of escape. It is a learned set of responses, and a failure to complete numerous important developmental tasks. It is environmentally, not genetically caused. Unlike most of the diagnoses it is confused with, it is neither inborn nor characterological, nor DNA based - it is a disorder caused by lack of nurture.’

- Stephanie Foo, What my Bones Know

The difference when those conditions begin in childhood, especially when they are relentless and inescapable, is that there is often no ‘before’. No pre-trauma identity to return to. No solid sense of self formed outside of survival.

If most of your developmental years were spent adapting, masking, appeasing, hypervigilant, or trying to survive emotionally unsafe environments, then figuring out who you are underneath all of that becomes hard in a very particular way.

And for some of us, healing also means confronting entirely separate but intertwined realities - family lies, ruptured identities, and having to rebuild a sense of self while grieving the foundations we stood on. That kind of disorientation cuts deep because it reaches into identity itself.

Stephanie Foo also wrote:

‘I am the trauma you bury away. I am the lie you hold under your tongue, the thing you bury, vanish, erase, the thing you can almost always pretend is forgotten as long as you don’t touch it.

I will not pretend like nothing happened - like I can be killed off and resurrected without consequence.

My eyes held everything that had happened.

The thing you left doesn’t forget.’

At the end of the day, most of us are just trying to heal.

A diagnosis is not a competition, nor a hierarchy of suffering. Its only real purpose is understanding - understanding ourselves, helping others understand us, and hopefully accessing therapy and support that is actually targeted and effective.

Someone else’s diagnosis should not threaten your recovery. Trauma is not validated by comparison. Needing your pain to be ‘more severe’ than another’s to feel legitimate has nothing to do with healing and everything to do with ego and unresolved hurt.

None of us heal by minimising each other.

We heal through honesty, accountability, self awareness, compassion, and finally feeling safe enough to become people beyond what happened to us.

I think loneliness is often powerlessness pointed outwards. Searching for that externalised entity to complete us, as if to find an external answer to an internal fracture.

Not every painful feeling is evidence of an unmet need from others. Sometimes the deeper issue is disconnection from our own identity, agency, meaning or sense of self.

It’s often said that we find ‘it’ when we are no longer looking. But perhaps it’s when we finally feel comfortable to be exactly who we are - because we now know who we are, what we value, and what we are no longer willing to compromise in order to have the life we are actively creating.

I want to unzip my body
right here,
right now
in front of you,
in front of the jury,
in front of every person who ever asked:
"Are you sure it happened?"
"Why didn’t you say something sooner?"
"Do you have any proof?"
No.
I don’t have proof.
I have a body that remembers every inch of those hands.
I have skin that flinches
when the air shifts just right.
I have a ribcage that tightens
like it still knows the weight of silence.
If you want proof
let me unzip my body.
Let me peel back the flesh,
reveal the places they touched
before I even had words
for what they were stealing.
Let me show you the ache
that lodged itself between my legs
before I knew how to say stop.
I will show you the truth
screaming in my nervous system,
the courtroom carved
into every tendon,
every tremor.
Don’t ask for tidy stories.
Don’t ask for police reports
from a time I couldn’t spell my own name.
Ask my hips why they lock up in the dark.
Ask my stomach why it turns
when I hear footsteps behind me
Or change jingling in a pocket.
Ask my body.
It kept the minutes
when no one else would.
This isn’t about believing me anymore.
It’s about believing in justice
justice that doesn’t wait for a perfect victim
or a timestamped photo.
It’s about holding children
like sacred fire
too precious to risk,
too human to doubt,
too valuable to silence.
If I unzip my body,
let it spill every unspoken truth
then zip it back up
with steel thread and fire
it’s not to prove myself.
It’s not for your belief.
It’s for the ones still silent.
For the ones still hoping someone will listen.
For the justice we still haven’t seen.
For the children
who should never have to unzip theirs
just to be protected.

- Cheryl Bawtinheimer

In November 2025 Cheryl’s poem was read aloud in the Victorian Parlimentary hearing into Cults and Fringe Groups by another cult survivor.

For every cult survivor, I believe you.

Don’t ask us for police reports and tidy stories. We tried.

I’ve slowly reshaped my life with a different rule… it’s not perfect but it’s a hell of a lot better than it used to be. 

I’m no longer holding onto people, patterns, or places out of familiarity, habit or attachment.  And I’m not gonna lie… the biggest part of that growth didn’t happen after the storm had passed – it happened while I was still inside it. It happened in the moments I started noticing… the lies, the inconsistencies, the excuses.. and eventually the choices I kept making too.

I guess awareness is nothing if I keep abandoning myself to maintain connections that repeatedly ask me to tolerate harm. 

Now, if something supports where I’m headed, it stays. If it keeps pulling me back or asking me to shape-shift to keep it, I let it go.

This didn’t come from one decisive moment; it came from honest reflection about what I was tolerating; what I was not changing. I used to try to fix things, to salvage friendships or relationships and situations that were clearly not putting in equal effort, care or honesty.

Over time I realised the pain kept repeating because it was tied to the choices I kept making.

Accountability for me looked like admitting that loyalty to what was familiar, and wanting to close out childhood trauma loops with a different ending was sabotaging my growth. It meant accepting that I was expecting a different outcome from people who repeatedly chose behaviours that prioritised their self-interest and self-preservation at the expense of everyone around them and at the expense of growth.  Not because they were misunderstood, but because those behaviours, and avoiding growth while giving continual lip-service to it, just to keep you hooked - were their habit.

Choosing peace sounds simple, but it takes discipline. It means refusing to allow space to people who bring constant chaos to my life. It means stopping the cycle of revisiting draining and destructive situations hoping they’ll change. It means releasing connections that no longer match the standard of where I want to go, or contribute to my healing and progress. - Even if guilt or history make them feel tolerable or ‘safer the devil you know’.

Many of us repeat cycles with new faces or meat suits because we confuse attachment with alignment. Yet, what truly belongs in our life shouldn’t demand that we silence our needs to keep it. Healthy relationships are not perfect, but they are reciprocal - in effort, respect, transparency and accountability. 

I can’t ask for a better life while staying loyal to habits, people, or patterns that pull me back. So now I aim to keep what aligns with who I’m becoming and release what disrupts my growth, clarity, direction, energy/spirit and peace - not out of cruelty, but out of preservation and love for the life I am still creating.  

Funnily enough the people I’ve known with the most dangerous rage - rage that challenges my every ability to stay present and in my body - mock my learned ability to remain present yet calm externally in a volatile situation. Bbecause they want me angry too, and I have realised my strength is in not acting out of character within a storm.

Of course I make mistakes, but I’ve worked really hard at this, and I acknowledge that I’ve hurt people along the way when I acted from my defences.

I read the quote ‘get curious, not furious’ and i often remind myself of this in a storm.

Curious about myself and the other… but mostly curious about my internal responses to what is going on outside. Learning to observe my thoughts without becoming them, particularly in moments that are most uncomfortable.

I’ve really only just realised that was what I’ve been learning to do all along

There’s a fine line between depersonalisation/dissociation and regulation/observation. For me the difference is n feeling everything, but choosing to not become it rather than numbing.

Sometimes there is wisdom in the decision to defer processing the storm until there is enough safety to survive feeling it all. That’s not absence of emotion or numbing, thats regulation.

I’ve been contemplating the recent ‘hate speech’ bill passed by both houses earlier this year. I’ve yet to finish reading and digesting it; but, in what representative democracy is it valid to legislate the expression of ’hatred’ towards the Prime Minister and how could that possibly be enforced? How can perception and intention be measured, how is frustration, dissatisfaction or criticism delineated from ‘hatred’ and how is that determined? Who determines that? For example, would it be considered hate speech to call the writer of this policy out for having a fragile male ego?

Why is the settled white Australian not awarded the same rights as other groups? Why is it that the Australian flag can be burned, but not any other? How can legislation be fair, reasonable and intended to unify when it is not applied to all - legislation such as this fuels division, not unity. It's as simple as that.

In all truth, I resonate deeply with the refugee experience; I arrived here in Australia in late 2002 having been raised in cloistered cult communes in Asia. I could have gone anywhere in the world, I had two siblings here (the only two people I knew), but at the end of the day – I came to Australia because I held an Australian passport, I was apparently a citizen of this country. To survive and set up my life in the easiest way with no external support of any kind, including financial, or employment opportunity elsewhere – there didn’t seem a choice.

Although Australia was invaded by British colonisers and assumed by Terra Nullis; we are all aware that the High Court of Australia recognised native title in the 1992 Mabo v Queensland (No. 2) decision. However, after more than 200 years of official colonisation, what does that mean for the settled Australian holder of a passport? What options were available for them to relocate – none. Nor was anyone granted the right to return to the UK, so essentially we are citizens of this country - in any other country we would be an considered an alien.

One and free, that would be great – but this ain’t it. For generations now, we have impressed upon our children the burden of shame and stigma for choices they did not make, in a political environment that can hardly be contemplated today outside a history lesson – this being an environment where invasion and colonisation was commonplace; and the international legal framework was primitive at best. I’m all for teaching our children about history and what we can learn from it; I’m also happy to teach our children to treat all humans with fairness and kindness – irrespective of race, gender, religion, background or label. Yet I cannot support a system that imposes shame and guilt on future generations for decisions they are not complicit to and actions they did not entertain. Nor do I think it’s fair to continue to fuel this divide through fiscal policy and legislation… perhaps productive support for for our First Nation people and elders in areas they see of benefit (youth support), promotion of community culture that is meaningful for them, and mental health supports. But so much of the ongoing 'management' of our First Nation population fosters division, entitlement (and therefore - resentment); and yet it is also controlling in other ways.

In Germany, as the outcome of the Reparations Agreement of 1952 (the Luxembourg Agreement) the average worker has, and as I understsnd, continues to contribute to a ‘repatriation tax’ paid to the State of Israel. At what point does history serve as a reflection so that we may learn what not to do, and at what point do we continue to require generations of today pay for the mistakes of their ancestors fiscally.

At what point do we consider ways in which (globally) the oppressed have become the oppressor, and why is it unacceptable to speak such truth - seemingly protected by hate speech legislation? At what point do we recognise the cognitive dissonance of teaching unity by promoting division?

Are we really one and free or are we fostering division masked as unity?

It’s always men who say they can’t trust their partner having male friends or male contacts - that’s projection, plain and simple. Men know how they themselves look at women regardless of whether they are single or not. It’s always the men who tell you ‘your male friends are only your friend because they want to fuck you.’
Interesting projection buddy, I hear more than you think, but thanks for letting me in on your mindset… and these men often have a rare male friend (and the crass way some of them speak about women, not even like an object or a toy… literally acting as though their ideal is blind submission ), yet their phone is riddled with female contacts - yes, you guessed it, most of whom (if it’s ever in their interest to be honest) they’ve fucked; but mostly fucked, then fucked over.

You see, I don’t gauge my male friends on whether or not they’d sleep with me… I gauge them on the basis of respect. So if they did want something more, would they respect my no? That is why I trust them as real friends. As I’ve said before, when I say friend, there is no silent ‘with benefits’ attached - and yes, I see how this could be confusing. To me, if there was a ‘with benefits’ in the past, the burden of proof and character becomes essential should your partner be wary of that friendship, and that requires respect to be shown regardless of current intention. That respect is most likely deleting that number and declining contact as an embodied boundary - and this goes for both men and women. It is not more or less the same for either gender, it is human. I am, quite frankly, over the double standard. If you do not expect it from yourself, it is a double standard, not a boundary.

So… not all men… but enough men that even men are wary because they know themselves?

And yes, women can and do lie and cheat etc. but that isn’t what this is about. No need for whataboutisms.

Women also don’t feel safe… and your ‘not all men’ ain’t gonna fix that. And if you are a man, women not feeling safe around men is going to impact you too.

As women keep saying - this one is on men to fix, it’s on men to heal. I don’t associate with women who treat other people poorly or move through relationships without integrity - not because I don’t value their humanness, but because I don’t value the behaviour. We do get to hold people accountable, even if only by dissociation.

Men are worried women will play in their face even with male friends they’ve been introduced to… because men play in our faces all the time. They mention these women in passing conversation - new names and that look to gauge your emotional response, to see if you believe them (do you guys not know we see all this and clock it? Do you seriously think women are fools?). Nah, we have a mental list of these names because it’ll come up again soon enough. That’s how we know the truth… but guys still think we swallowed their lie while we nod and look straight ahead - clocked and awaiting the fallout.

But if/when we question it, we are gaslighted, called crazy, and women have been taught their safety is in submission - so many have silenced that intuition, with the effect that we no longer trust ourselves… until the evidence is in front of us - what we knew all along. Then we find it incredibly hard to trust again because we lost trust in ourselves and others, and it’s harmed us repeatedly.

To be fair, women play these games too… I’ve seen it. However, it has been less common in more traditional dynamics (low key hate that the word traditional is used to express values like loyalty), and this is tied to centuries of entitlement and male privilege. Regardless of who does it, if it is outside the boundaries of your relationship, it is lying, it is cheating, and it is betrayal. I hope that provides clarity.

Nowadays women leave the first time, and you guys are all ‘she didn’t even give me a chance to explain…’ You’re right - we know how it will go. We trust ourselves, and at this stage we’d rather be wrong about if you did it, or why you did what you did, than harmed by lies, manipulation, and chaos wrapped in plausible deniability.

The reason many men would benefit from therapy is because, due to the systems in place, men have been raised to conflate dominance with protection, control with leadership, and emotional suppression with strength. Most of this learning is assimilated and inculcated through daily life as societal norms. Many men don’t know how to survive in a world where women don’t centre them - and in their defence, most weren’t raised to exist in that world.

Men also generally possess greater physical strength and higher levels of hormones associated with impulsivity and aggression than women , this is exactly why emotional regulation, accountability, and self-awareness matter so much. Strength is not the problem; the inability to take responsibility for one’s natural force is. Real strength is knowing how to regulate power, not impose it on others.

That, combined with poor impulse control and emotional regulation, is part of why men commit more violent acts across the board, not only toward women. Women being taught to be submissive is nowhere near as likely to result in violence that is not reactive.

Shame is one of the leading drivers of suicide.
Not weakness. Not attention seeking - SHAME.

The belief that you are too broken, too much, too difficult, too unwanted, or beyond repair can become unbearable when carried alone in silence.

People don’t just need advice, actually people need a whole lot less advice and a whole lot more presence. We need safety, compassion, accountability without humiliation, and spaces where we can be honest without fear of rejection or abandonment.

Sometimes one moment of genuine understanding can interrupt a lifetime of shame.

What would change if we responded to shame with curiosity, care, and connection instead of silence or judgment - both for ourselves and for others?