u/futurefishy98

I feel I really need to see a practitioner who's actually trauma informed. I've been in counselling for like 6 sessions so far, and while at first she seemed to be helpful and understanding, I had an experience today that rubbed me the wrong way.

I was explaining how my experiences of being bullied make trusting people difficult, and I'm still terrified of people talking about me behind my back or mocking/bullying me to my face. I've explained to her that this didn't only happen in school, but at university and at my first job (with coworkers who were all in their late 20s or older at the time) as well.

But she told me today, "I'm not minimising it, but that was a long time ago, you're an adult now." She basically told me to get over it.

Clearly I am not over it. Surely it is part of her job to help me get over it. Not just tell me "adults don't behave like that as much" when a) bullying has happened to me as an adult, and b) clearly, it's still affecting me.

She asked me what I could do if I was bullied again, and I said the only option I would feel I had was to leave whatever group/social setting it happened in. and never go back. She didn't give me any other options of what to do if/when this happens to me. I joined a queer craft group that's run by the only organised queer community group for adults in my town. I'm terrified of messing up socially or having someone there make fun of me or even dislike me, because I'd lose access to the one community space I have access to. I've explained this, and all she's suggested I do is join other groups (which in terms of groups for queer people, there aren't any).

I asked when I was triaged about getting help specifically for trauma, I did a PTSD screening test when I self-refered, but they wouldn't offer me anything. The triage nurse basically ignored me.

Has anyone been able to access trauma infored care on the NHS? I'd go private, but I don't have the money.

I (27, non-binary, any pronouns) have never dated anyone or so much as held hands with someone in a romantic context. I'm autistic and was bullied pretty relentlessly in school, so I missed out on exploring any of that stuff in my teens/early adulthood.

I feel too old to be completely inexperienced, and like there's no easy "entry point" to romance/sex. If I'd never learnt to swim as a child, I could go to a local pool and start in the shallow end, hire a teacher or just look up videos of people teaching swimming to learn how. But I can't do that here.

All the advice I seem to find is just like "put yourself out there" and "be yourself", but that's not useful because I don't know *how*. Making friends is already a struggle for me, but at least I know how to make small talk and have conversations with people. Even if I don't make friends with them, I can usually carry on a conversation with someone, while being reasonably sure I won't offend them or make them uncomfortable. I don't know how to do that with romance/sex. I don't even know how I'm supposed to tell another person might be interested/receptive. I've only ever been flirted with twice (once where the other person made a transphobic joke, possibly trying to determine if I had a dick or not; and the other was someone who approached me at work and started asking "why are you single?" and generally making me uncomfortable), so I don't have any real life examples to pull from for what flirting can/does look like.

I know I can't wait around expecting someone to flirt with *me*, but the idea of making the first move is petrifying.

I've tried dating apps, but everyone I see on there seems so much more experienced and like they know exactly what they want, and I *really* don't.

Bars/nightclubs aren't a good option either because I don't really drink/don't get drunk, being around drunk people makes me uncomfortable, and with being autistic, the loud music is both overstimulating and means I wouldn't be able to hear what anyone was saying anyway.

The one local meet up group for queer people is small, and focused around friendship and community building, and I'm new to the group. I don't want to test anything out there because I don't want to weird anyone out or make them uncomfortable, or lose the only community I have access to if something went wrong and I felt like I couldn't go back.

I've asked for advice in other places, but just get a lot of "just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks", which I find really unhelpful. Like I don't know how to make spaghetti, never mind how to throw it. I need some actual pointers and not just "get out there, champ".

I've found bog-standard CBT very unhelpful in the past, and had TfCBT recommended to me because of trauma from being bullied and undiagnosed autism. When I've tried to look into it, none of the information I found really explained how the two are different, other than TfCBT being "trauma informed".

Are the techniques/methodology meaningfully different, or is it just CBT with like. Some acknowledgement that trauma exists. (In which case, why isn't *all* CBT trauma informed?)

(27 non-binary, any pronouns, autistic)

When I try and fail at things I care about/have put a lot of effort into (making friends, dating, drawing, etc.) I feel a lot worse than if I just don't try.

The phrase "at least you can say you tried your best" doesn't make any sense to me, because if I tried my best and still failed, that means my best wasn't good enough. At least if I don't try I can say I didn't try, and that's why it didn't work out. Not trying saves my feelings.

The thing is, I *know* this frame of mind is ruining my life and stopping me from trying things and learning, but I feel so awful when I fail at things it sends me into really severe depressive episodes, or at least end up crying for hours. When I didn't get the grades for my first choice university I sobbed almost non-stop for days (in retrospect I'm glad I went to the university I did go to, but at the time I was devastated). When I tried to make small talk in college and it went badly I couldn't concentrate on classes for the rest of the day and barely slept for a week. When I made a concerted effort at uni to make friends and then got bullied by the people I thought I was getting along with, I had a depressive episode so bad I had to repeat the year. When I had to do a job fair at the job centre the only mini-interview I did went so badly I sat down in the corner and cried until my job coach came over and let me look for jobs on the online system for the rest of the job fair. Trying really hard with a drawing only for it to look terrible has made me so frustrated and upset in the past that I broke a pen and hit myself in the head with my hands. I get incredibly frustrated and upset with myself if I fail at games too, especially if I've really tried and still failed, not just made a stupid mistake (with games, I feel less bad if I at least feel like I've learnt something by failing, which often isn't the case in real life. you can't simply try the same "challenge" over and over again in identical circumstances irl).

I don't know how to deal with this because I *know* it isn't helpful, I *know* failing at these things doesn't make me less worthy as a person, but feeling like I've failed just hurts too much and has me reeling for days, if not depressed for weeks (depending on how big the failure is).

a lot of us really struggle with friendships and relationships, but so much advice that's available is just so vague as to be completely unhelpful. advice like "there's no 'right' way to socialise or make friends" or "just be yourself" or "you just have to put yourself out there"

not naming names because i don't think its this person's fault, its a larger problem, but there's this fairly popular (in tumblr terms) sex educator who got an ask from an autistic person (not me, though I could have wrote it tbh) about "not knowing how to express interest/attraction to others". not knowing how to flirt, basically. and the answer from this person who's normally quite helpful said (paraphrased) "there's no right way to do it, you just have figure it out by trail and error"

and that;s just really unhelpful! the "just vibe it out" genre of advice, especially when you know the person asking is autistic, just feels like you might as well not have bothered. if i could "just vibe it out" i wouldn't be asking!

I saw an autistic person online the other day asking about how to read body language and non-verbal cues, what specific things they should look out for to know if someone they're talking to is bored, or interested, or annoyed etc. and the advice they got back was "you just naturally pick it up"... well not if you're autistic! the person asking was an adult, if they haven't picked it up by now they aren't going to!

it's not even just that most of the advice out there is for neurotypicals (though I imagine this vague advice is unhelpful for them too, I don't know why you'd be asking the question if "just, like, figure it out, man" is enough for you) its that even when autistic people state that we're autistic, that we need tips and advice because this doesn't come naturally, we get the same vague, unhelpful platitudes in response

Its commonly said that CBT doesn't work for autistic people and I think a big reason why is CBT therapists not grasping that we often don't have "social anxiety", we have a history of repeated traumatic social rejections.

I've had the experience of a therapist essentially calling me a liar when I explained that I was worried people would treat me negatively in social interactions, because of how people treated me in social interactions *all the time*. And he only believed me when I got given homework to "evidence gather" by starting conversations with people, and I got bullied *while doing that*. I broke down sobbing in therapy over it and he didn't know what to say to me other than "Its clear this really upset you." like. yeah. no shit.

Its like therapists don't understand that to the extent a lot of us fear social interactions, its because of how other people have actually treated us. Not because we invented something in our own heads to be worried about, or some nebulous fear of "being embarrassed". I'm not worried about being embarrassed, I'm worried that *other people* will treat me worse or try to hurt me if I say something wrong, *because that has happened countless times before*.

I'm okay at talking to people and make an effort to do small talk as well as ask questions of other people (like if they brought up a hobby or something I try to ask them about it), but despite all that I never seem to get to being friends with anyone or any closer than aquaintances.

Like there's two people I'm I guess "friendly aquaintances" with at work. We sit together in the break room and talk, but the two of them seem way closer than either of them are to me. They've exchanged phone numbers at some point and haven't with me etc. Neither of them are rude to me or deliberately leaving me out of things, but they seem way closer with each other. And this is how all of the social settings I'm in go. Everyone else there will be closer with each other than they are to me, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm trying to do everything "right" socially (except making eye contact, that's the one thing I'm really bad at, though I do try to look at their face when people are talking so it doesn't look like I'm not paying attention).

The two most recent times I thought I was getting close to people, I accidently overheard them talking about me behind my back and mocking me/my behaviour. It was really hurtful both times, and it was almost worse than being outright bullied in school because it felt like a betrayal, since I thought everything was fine.

Its just really difficult to want friends and do my best to make them and still end up feeling like there's this big thick aquarium glass between me and other people. Sometimes it feels like the people who I talk to at work are just humouring me or trying to be nice.

[the exercise where you imagine your own funeral/retirement party/80th birthday and consider what you think people would say, and what you'd like people to say to "clarify your values" or whatever]

while conceptually the retirement/birthday party version is a bit better, both are awful. i ended up sobbing uncontrollably. i don't feel like it "clarified by values" or gave me any insight into what i want my life to be like, it made me want to die. or just stop existing so i wouldn't have to have a funeral. all it did was make me feel even worse about how hard i find making friends. how little time i have left to make friends and get a partner and have kids and do something meaningful so my life isn't a complete waste, and how completely impossible all of that feels because even when i'm doing my best to socialise correctly people find me unlikeable and disgusting. it made me want to curl up in the foetal position and never get up again.

whoever came up with this exercise is probably responsible for a lot of deaths.

any therapies i look into don't make any sense with how emotions feel to me. CBT insists negative thoughts precede emotions, when that's not how it feels for me at all. I've had multiple arguments (i'm not trying to continue the argument, just using it as an example) with people in r/CBT because people insisted I must be wrong about what my thoughts were in the moment, or that i wasn't trying hard enough to do CBT "properly"

ACT presents it as if emotions never prevent you from doing things. but they do! i can't just "accept" an emotion and then do whatever I wanted to do anyway, fear physically prevents me from speaking or moving sometimes. i injured myself ice skating specifically because my fear of falling over and hurting myself made my whole body tense up and i couldn't move the way i wanted to/needed to to keep my balance. if i get so upset i start crying and shaking, that prevents me from doing things! it isn't something i can just "accept" and then continue to do what i want to do, emotions are physical sensations and often prevent me from being able to think clearly.

all mindfulness/relaxation techniques assume that you can go right back to the activity after a few minutes of deep breathing or whatever, and you'll remain calmer for a while, when that doesn't happen for me! if i get really frustrated while drawing because I can't do it well, a) my level of frustration goes from 0 to 100 really quickly, I can't "intervene" when I'm only a little bit frustrated because it happens almost instantly, and b) if i stop to try and relax myself, the second i get back to drawing i'm just as frustrated again.

It all just makes me feel inept and incapable and broken because the things that are "supposed" to work don't work for me, and then when I try and ask for help, I get told I'm "not trying hard enough" or "don't want to get better" when I try to explain how it feels for me and why it didn't work. so i feel stuck, and I'm trying my best to use techniques that are supposed to help, and when i feel more stuck because it doesn't work, i get called a liar for trying to ask for help.

struggling with imaginary exposure and behavioural activation because while I understand that the worst case scenario is survivable (because my "worst case" for imaginary exposure is just the worst case that's happened to me before), "survivable" doesn't mean "harmless".

if the idea is supposed to be that imaginary exposure makes real exposure feel more managable, it doesn't work because i've never doubted that the "worst case" is survivable. yeah, getting socially rejected and bullied won't literally kill me. i know that because its already happened to me. but it made me traumatised and depressed and anxious, and when it happened to me *again* all it did was make me more traumatised and depressed and anxious. just because something won't literally kill me doesn't mean it won't make me considerably more unwell than i am currently. i don't have any more resources to rely on than the last time it happened. i don't have any better coping skills. and part of the problem is I can't access any more resources or coping skills because i would need to make friends to have that. and thats precisely the thing i'm terrified of and incapable of doing.

(not currently in therapy because I've been on a waiting list for over a year, and am just trying to do what i can on my own in the meantime)