u/Temporary_Donut_61

Idk how relevent this is but it might be context: I have mom AND dad issues and have been diagnosed with cptsd for about 2 years now after a retriggering event and deep depressive freeze. Im on my way out of the pit. I still have alot of residual things in working on from this long depression, like some fear to leave my house, be perceived by others, etc. However I dont think this issue is from cptsd, I think its a me problem and a severe character flaw. I personally suspect I'm on the spectrum but I might just be fucked up by my parents idk.

I have this experience that continues to happen. I know that i'm the common denominator, and as such I spend alot of time ruminating on this issue and trying to figure out what to do to fix it. I crave kinship and friends and a feeling of Community but my attempts at having that and being that for others just keep failing.

• We meet

• We share interests

• We do things together and share some life experiences and stories, varying levels of vulnerability with each person; situational

• Notice red flags in behavior;varies based on person and circumstance. I start self depreciating a bit. For instance take compliments but minimize. Literally from last friend I tried to make:

"You really seem to have it all together"

"Thank you but I promise you I don't. I still struggle alot and just try to give my all each day" things like this.

I do this because my past trauma sees these compliments as comparisons and I feel like they often lead to jealous comments or judgment and resentment and so I try to make myself less threatening.

• Disregard red flags,telling myself its my cptsd and 'protector' in me on over drive. But my body keeps the score, I can't relax around this person anymore and my ears are on on alert around this person, involuntarily. Like a deer in the woods, looking for sudden movement.

• Friend starts making outright comparisons, example from last friend in a group of people i didn't know at a party at her home "*temporary donut hates crowded places, and i get that because crowds make me nervous too. Like I hate packed supermarkets but like... I still go".

Which felt oddly humiliating but is also true I guess. I do hate crowds and I WILL avoid the supermarket until off peak to make it better for myself. This is a very mild example but a real one and one instance is not enough. I mentally keep note until there are too many to ignore, and i feel like a pattern is established.

• These comments make me doubt the entire friendship and I start making mental notes of comments and gestures that register as odd or threatening. My replies get shorter or sharper to said friend and they sense that.

• In my mind, person no longer feels like a safe person for me and I get this gross feeling like I feel filthy and need a shower and my world won't feel right again until I get it. Or like I have a splinter I desperately need to get out and I'm in pain and worrying about infection until I remove it. Like just an overwhelming impulse to clean house of this person.

Basically they feel like a threat and I am not content just to ghost or cut out. I get the impulse to confront and try to resolve which usually backfires and I end up cutting them off.

I have had many friendships some lasting a few months, some lasting 10 or more years but they always end like this. Sometimes it takes longer and sometimes its fast but I know it's a me problem and my perception of people and the events because inadvertently I ALWAYS find a pattern.

This has happened to me my whole life. Initially I'd write it off as weird people, or just "not a match as friends" but I'm old enough and have experienced this cycle so many times. I don’t WANT this to happen but I don't know how to change it. Is it just part of who I am now? Does anyone else experience this or similar?

Of course coming from abuse makes it harder to recognize the patterns since abusers were normalized for us. Has anyone been bullied by adults as an adult? Either at work, school, your child's school, anywhere you couldnt simply disengage and had to continuously return to? I think that having CPTSD can sometimes make you a target even if they can't pinpoint what it is about you. My experience is that they do a few things to test your reactions and progressively get worse if you dont handle it the correct way.

If you were bullied do you ever randomly get a stomach ache and anxious feelings followed by thoughts of times you were bullied? Embarrassed by things they said or made up about you? How do you get out of the thought loop, just thinking over what they said and did? It really doesnt happen to me as often anymore but when it does I feel like I lose my coping skills. Mindfulness doesnt work when I'm like this because my thoughts just loop right back like a type writer.

I've been feeling humiliated and alone and ashamed for 3 days now on and off just stuck in a loop. Its agony. Its like all of the worst things people have ever said and done to me, play on a loop which causes my body to feel under attack. Which causes my mind to want to explain why my body feels that way and goes on and on.

What do you do to distract from that humiliated chest and stomach feeling? That self loathing and want to dissappear or be someone else feeling? And the anxiety?

I'm recovering from a long bout of self isolation, my cptsd from childhood was triggered after a long, drawn out, stressful situation. I was depressed and frozen/isolated for about 2 years. Thats some context for when I say, I'm hypervigilant and sensitive. I struggle to trust anyone besides my partner and now my therapist. I didn't(still don't) have any contact with any family and have long ago ghosted or ended all of my friendships.

I recently started trying to make new friends and met someone i really liked and we shared a lot in common. I thought we were getting along well and got lots of green flags from her. There were some doubtful thoughts that I ignored assuming it was trauma tinting my experience. A recent event she invited me to changed my entire perspective. She was a completely different person towards me.

The people I was meeting all seemed to know a little too much about me, when I knew little about them. There were allusions to private conversations she and I had amongst these people. At one point I walked back from the restroom to her back being to me as she was telling these people my age in a mocking tone. Her friend made a gesture that I was behind and she tried to shift what she said into a story about my birthday. She was almost an entirely new person in front of these other people. Creating distance, avoiding. It threw me off completely.

Being that this is a new friendship I'm unsure of how to proceed and I doubt my own logic since I've been ill so long and don't have normal relationships with others. I always wanted a close, sister like friendship. I never had a sister.

My partner says to let it go, not address it and not give it any power. He says if I feel less pissed/dont care anymore in 6 months and want to move on and be her friend, then I can reach out and there won't be any bad blood.

My therapist says address the conflict with her and allow her the space to explain. She says use I statements. Dont be accusatory. See if we can grow together from it.

I personally don't feel the relationship is mature enough (still new) to handle my confronting her with the issue head on and expecting her to be accountable. And that's the minimum that i'd need to consider maintaining the friendship.

Without that (even hard to trust with her accepting accountability) I don't feel like I want to be her friend or that she's a safe person for me anymore and telling her exactly how I feel seems like a satisfying way to end the connection.

But then I'm back where I started, no friends and an even more intense distrust of others and even less desire to get to know anyone new or let them in at all.

I'm ping ponging here and going in loops. What would you do?

I've gotten a diagnosis of CPTSD. Im been struggling with severe burnout and mental health erosion for years now. I'm considering seeking out a Neuropsychological evaluation to get a better understanding of what exactly is going on and rule out other suspected issues like Autism. I'm hoping to uncover a clearer reason for why I'm suffering and hopefully a clearer road map for getting better.

I'm in the USA and have already seen how even a psych prescription can affect how seriously you are taken by a medical doctor. I need reassurance or to atleast understand clearly, especially in the present political climate.

Can the results of this neuropsych be used against me legally or medically? Will it follow me forever if it is found i have a disability or personality disorder? Would I get to choose if I share the results with other medical practitioners? Will it affect my ability to secure health insurance or life insurance in the future? As a parent could results of it risk my standing as a capable parent? Please share any insights that you may have i'd greatly appreciate it.

​

I recently escaped a long, extended period of deep freeze with depression and some paranoid feelings that everyone hated me and only had bad things to say about me. My struggles and perceptions combined to make me isolate myself and literally close my world and reduce my life to only things I HAD to do to survive and function with no energy or desire for anything else. I made alot of effort and changed some pretty big things in my life in order to fight for a better quality of life and reduce daily stress. My childhood was like 40% neglect and 60% abuse. There was not alot of nurturing.

I just wanted to get out of a deep cptsd freeze/ burnout that I could feel was eroding my physical and mental health.

But i'm struggling hard to come to terms with what feels like a huge regression in social skills after my prolonged self isolation and depression.

I feel like I worked so hard to get out of the rut but the road is still uphill and i'm already out of energy. I literally mean it when I say I have no friends, no family and not much support. I feel like everyone says community is the solution for so much but my social skills are so bad. No one that meets me understands me and I dont have the skills to overcome basic interpersonal frictions that come along with normal human relationships.

I rememeber as a child I used to know SOMETHING was wrong in my home. I realized other kids didnt live like I did. I used to have occasional friends (that were also kind of mean to me but I was just happy to be there) adopt me sort of. So picture a 3 way friendship where youre always the less liked friend but they always still look for you because you make them feel better about themselves.

So theyd adopt me and sort of call me to come to their house before school, id wait for them to get ready, see their household interactions, walk to school with them, Id watch interpersonal dynamics in school and mirror those. Sometimes after school we'd go to one kids house or the other. Id watch their family dynamics, id watch their routines, and basically I learned to be a human through modeling behaviors I saw in others. Their routines gave me the stability that my family and household couldnt. It showed me ways to create a healthier habits to create a life for myself. The same thing for work environments, friendly coworkers helped me to build up a professional mask and presence just from letting me into their work social circle and i'd just model behavior. I realize some of this can be from cptsd but some of it could also be some form of neurodivergence.

But after all of these years of isolation and depression I feel like I lost all of these skills. Like i had a huge regression and I lost my how to be a human skills. I now actively have to think of things that were just part of my life before. I actively have to think about taking a shower, brushing my teeth, going out in the sunshine for mood, moving my body for health. I had all of this on autopilot-- a natural function of my day but now I have to actively think about every little thing to get anything done. Because it honestly feels like if I dont my body will revert to shutdown and ill be back in bed not moving for 2 years again.

And a big part of me feels like the reason bouncing back from this depression has been so hard is because I don't have anyone to pace myself with and build up momentum to keep going on this uphill battle. No friends or family or coworkers to sort of model 'living life'. I know how insane it sounds but I used to pace myself and learn normal and healthy human habits from watching normal and healthy humans living but I no longer have that closeness, intimacy or visibility with anyone. I dont have the friends to help myself how I used to and I feel like its pausing my progress. And I was never ingrained with the skills or framework from my parents so its like they don't exist in me. Even though I used to have them it felt borrowed via proximity.

I feel like this makes no sense to anyone but me and im just hoping someone gets this. I honestly would just be humiliated if I ever had to say this to anyone irl but I'm trying to build up confidence to tell this all to my therapist. Does this ring bells for anyone or am I a complete alien?

I posted this elsewhere but not really seeing many comments or likes although there are a dozen shares. Starting to gather that its just a me thing.

I recently escaped a period of deep freeze with depression and some paranoid feelings that everyone hated me and only had bad things to say about me. My struggles and perceptions combined to make me isolate myself and literally close my world and reduce my life to only things I HAD to do to survive and function with no energy or desire for anything else. I made alot of effort and changed some pretty big things in my life in order to fight for a better quality of life and reduce daily stress. My childhood was like 40% neglect and 60% abuse. There was not alot of nurturing.

I just wanted to get out of a deep cptsd freeze/ burnout that I could feel was eroding my physical and mental health.

But i'm struggling hard to come to terms with what feels like a huge regression in social skills after my prolonged self isolation and depression.

I feel like I worked so hard to get out of the rut but the road is still uphill and i'm already out of energy. I literally mean it when I say I have no friends, no family and not much support. I feel like everyone says community is the solution for so much but my social skills are so bad. No one that meets me understands me and I dont have the skills to overcome basic interpersonal frictions that come along with normal human relationships.

I rememeber as a child I used to know SOMETHING was wrong in my home. I realized other kids didnt live like I did. I used to have occasional friends (that were also kind of mean to me but I was just happy to be there) adopt me sort of. So picture a 3 way friendship where youre always the less liked friend but they always still look for you because you make them feel better about themselves.

So theyd adopt me and sort of call me to come to their house before school, id wait for them to get ready, see their household interactions, walk to school with them, Id watch interpersonal dynamics in school and mirror those. Sometimes after school we'd go to one kids house or the other. Id watch their family dynamics, id watch their routines, and basically I learned to be a human through modeling behaviors I saw in others. Their routines gave me the stability that my family and household couldnt. It showed me ways to create a healthier habits to create a life for myself. The same thing for work environments, friendly coworkers helped me to build up a professional mask and presence just from letting me into their work social circle and i'd just model behavior. I realize some of this can be from cptsd but some of it could also be some form of neurodivergence.

But after all of these years of isolation and depression I feel like I lost all of these skills. Like i had a huge regression and I lost my how to be a human skills. I now actively have to think of things that were just part of my life before. I actively have to think about taking a shower, brushing my teeth, going out in the sunshine for mood, moving my body for health. I had all of this on autopilot-- a natural function of my day but now I have to actively think about every little thing to get anything done. Because it honestly feels like if I dont my body will revert to shutdown and ill be back in bed not moving for 2 years again.

And a big part of me feels like the reason bouncing back from this depression has been so hard is because I don't have anyone to pace myself with and build up momentum to keep going on this uphill battle. No friends or family or coworkers to sort of model 'living life'. I know how insane it sounds but I used to pace myself and learn normal and healthy human habits from watching normal and healthy humans living but I no longer have that closeness, intimacy or visibility with anyone. I dont have the friends to help myself how I used to and I feel like its pausing my progress. And I was never ingrained with the skills or framework from my parents so its like they don't exist in me. Even though I used to have them it felt borrowed via proximity.

I feel like this makes no sense to anyone but me and im just hoping someone gets this. I honestly would just be humiliated if I ever had to say this to anyone irl but I'm trying to build up confidence to tell this all to my therapist. Does this ring bells for anyone or am I a complete alien?

I'm wondering if this is just a me thing or if others experience it. Do you ever just have an inability to understand something no matter how many times it's explained? I have a humiliating secret that I honestly and embarrassed about and despite trying for years to fix it, I just never could.

If i think back i can remember struggling with math at around when they introduced times tables. I kid you not. I know this sounds ridiculous but I'm dead serious. I never felt like i understood them and they never really cared to explain until I got it. They moved on to other subjects. Since I never got the lesson then, it just compounded and compounded into this black hole in my learning. I'm not delayed or stunted in any other category of my academics but math is a pretty big one to just not 'get'. I never understood percentages and multiplying or dividing fractions And by the time algebra came around I was just like.. who the heck put numbers into math as if it wasn't already complicated enough? I was lost for years already at that point.

I went to remedial classes, different levels of tutoring back when I was in school, i just could never get it and almost feel like my mind shut the door on math and the possibility that I'll ever get it. I feel like i can understand easily how some adults never learn to read and harbor so much shame around it that they keep it a secret.

Now as an adult I can do some things easily, like simple fractions for cooking, like halving recipes. Little by little just picked up basic understanding of some percentages from going out to eat, out shopping.. just simple things like that and for the rest I always have a calculator in my pocket because of my phone.

It's this just a me thing?

My family created a rumor that I cheated on my partner. I'm wrecked. This is going to be a long one.

My mom has BPD and my whole life was a tailspin. It was hell. We were physically, psychologically and emotionally abused. Her choice of partner was explosive and abusive and further wrecked her mental health.

My life never really stopped spinning. There were years where I coped better and years that I coped worse. My childhood was spent seeing my family as potential saviors then slowly realizing how they too treated my mom poorly and could not be trusted. She would also affirm these things and tell me about how they'd treat her badly and I could see alot of it for myself but was always drawn because my mom wasn't a nice person to us either.

I went on this journey in my life in early adulthood of mending my family relationships and trying to strengthen ties as a now independent adult. This meant boundaries with the people who had hurt me but also building and learning people as my adult self as opposed to just 'child of my mother's. My relationship with mom quickly crumbled. She felt like i couldnt love her as herself and she resented that i expected her to change(how she interacted with me), with the straw that broke the camels back being my request to her:

"I love you but life is getting hard for me right now and my bandwidth is low. When you call me please ask me if I'm able to be your support in that moment, before you offload about every bad thing happening in your life and what you expect me to do about it. "

That boundary was apparently enough. She blew up and i closed up. My mom and I became estranged.

Now for my family I'd hoped that they'd embrace me. They knew her, knew me, knew a bit about how id grown up. There were alot of strange interactions with them. They'd call me and ask about my life. If share that i was depressed and having trouble and they'd say this like "and what about your partner, do they still love you?". These little comments would raise a little flag in my head like.. huh?.. why would a bit of depression make my partner not love me?

They'd give me advice against common sense. We were having an infant and had been spending so much money commuting and traveling and thought of buying a car and they advised us against it despite having one themselves. They'd be super friendly with my partner while cold to me and our child. They were outwardly very open to us as a couple but not to me as family. For that there was no connection or intimacy between us. They'd give me an unsettled feeling in my stomach just being around them. Like when you're isolated in a forest and hear an unknown sound. But I honestly don't know what's wrong with me.. I'm so pathetic and desperate that I ran through all of the red flags and just pushed forward. I invited them into our lives and tried to show up for them. My partner would tell me about things they said or did that were making him uncomfortable. An unmarried cousin with no normal contact with my partner messaged them out of the blue to try and meet them alone one day. They'd make other comments and gestures and partner would side eye me but would respect my choice to keep them around despite it all.

They'd tell me my friends werent trustworthy. They'd progressively make odd comments about my marriage, my weight, my goals and dreams. Insinuating that my doomscrolling online could be a sign of looking for other partners(wtf???). They always seemed to be around more to monitor my life then to actively be part of it. I STILL ignored my instincts and tried to build. I just thought to myself that i was getting remnants of their hatred of my mom. That they were projection onto me the same things that they'd say about my mom. She was promiscuous, crazy, volatile, irrational. And i thought that i could love them and be open until they saw me for me, because I'm nothing like my mom. I'm none of those things. I was sure they'd see it. None of this was a big enough red flag to me especially if they still loved me and said the words I wanted to hear, but It seemed more and more that they were really just bent on drawing parallels with my mom and i. It was getting to me feeling unseen and I was starting to believe them. Throughout this all im in therapy and discussing all of this weekly in much more detail to my horrified therapist.

I slowly realized that mom maybe didn't break on her own. She likely wasn't just born with BPD... she grew up with these people and they likely had a hands in what broke her. So I slowly realized I had on rosy glasses and that because of my hopes I wasn't acknowledging the red flags in my family and how they were treating me. I fought so hard to deny the damage it was doing to me mentally and emotionally but eventually I realized I was in a toxic swamp and needed out. I blamed myself and struggled alot with the decision but finally went low contact until it all died. Some trailed on for a bit until they realized that I was not providing access or detail into my life and they sure were never sharing with me so it just faded away. No big bomb of a fight or anything.

I could never understand why they were this way to me. I still dont but now, a few years later I'm with a new therapist. Its come up that I don't speak to anyone in my family and I've been hesitant to open the topic because I know im the common denominator and I honestly still blame myself in my heart. Like I should have just made myself smaller or let things go. Just keep the peace.

This has caused me to ruminate about everything again and what I could have done differently. And somehow all of these years later after ruminating on conversations and exchanges that happened years ago, i've started to see things differently. The one family member I had kept in touch with, my sister, had been making off comments during this time as well but less often and I could never quite connect it to make any sense. She would say things like "you don't deserve your life". Stuff that completely would break my heart and come from nowhere. They could never explain.

There'd be periods where we didnt talk until i would just pretend to be over what they'd say just to save the relationship. She'd be convinced of infidelity on behalf of her wife. They'd fight pretty viciously and id offer sis a place to stay and she'd say things like "I can't go there, what if my issues cause a problem between you and your partner".

I just couldnt understand? How could your issues affect my marriage? They'd say other things in this vein and a the only family member id speak to after estrangement with the rest of the family. I couldn't connect the dots. I finally realized my family has been creating rumors that I'm just like my mom, promiscuous, unfaithful. That i have been cheating on my angel of a partner. They'd ask been saying this and applying their rumors while watching my live and my interacting with my partner like a soap opera. That's why they felt 'in my life but apart'. That's why they were stand offish and judgemental but still invite us to everything. That's why they'd call me and ask about my life never sharing about theirs. I stress this to you, readers.

I ABSOLUTELY NEVER cheated on my partner. They know me inside out and I have been with them almost longer then I've been without them. I love them and have been fully committed to them always and I still am.

I cant understand how or why they did it? What did it stem from? And even worse? Why do i feel guilty??? Almost like the truth doesn't even matter if people all treat you like they know better and treat you as such. How can I prove i never ever did that? How can i prove it didnt happen???

Why would they put that on me? Only now through therapy have I been able to connect all the dots. And it all happened years ago. But I've been walking up at night all of these years later thinking of it. I don't think anyone at all is going to read any of this but if you did I'm sorry. I know it sounds all very one sided and it really is because they would all make comments under cover and no one every directly confronted me and connected the dots for me on why.

I feel shame and guilt and embarrassment for something i didn't even do. What do I do to make this happen to me and make when the people closest to me hurt me? And how pathetic was I to stay despite knowing that they didn't feel like safe people? I feel ashamed of myself and I hate it because I didn't do it but I know there's nothing I can do to prove it. THEY WANT TO believe this. They never brought it to me, asked, or questioned. They wanted it to be fact and because of that the real facts don't matter. And i guess it gave a reason to be cruel/cold/distant/competitive and judgemental towards me? It almost feels like they had nothing so chose to make something up. To have something that makes them feel superior to me? Like that makes no sense to me. But why?? Why would humans related to you.. family.. do this for no gain? Why make up a story? Is there the driving force to split us up, isolate me? What is it that I did to cause this? I wish they would just tell me?

I honestly don't understand. It has to be something in me and I hate myself. Even my own family doesn't love me.