r/CPTSD

Honestly, I’m so tired of being here. I’m only in my early 20s and have been struggling since I was 14yo. No matter how hard I try and how many experiences I force myself to have - it never stops being hard.

Going to work everyday and trying to connect/act normal with people, trying to somehow be authentic and feel safe with them, always failing. I spend so much energy just trying to act and live like a normal human and at this point it just feels like prison.

There’s no joy to be had when u fundamentally feel empty and alone and unable to just feel normal. Leaving the house is never easy; I have to do so much just to act normal and just feel like I don’t even belong to myself most of the time as I’m living for managing the eyes of other.

The world is wicked and awful and I hate it here, I have no idea what to do anymore, I really don’t. How do people do it seriously ?

Abuser say your attacking them they rage or hit you they are the victim yoh they really think your being disrespectful they take well intended phrase out of your mouth they rage or possibly get violent it’s like how dare you speak how I don’t want you too or when I want you too.

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've been bullied throughout my entire childhood cos I've always been different. When I was a teen, I started to dress alt which obviously didn't help my case.

I am now 31, and still dress alt. I am also visibly queer. I often get harassed in the streets, or in the hallways at schools where I come do my talks. (I do volunteer work at schools, to have a conversation about respect and anti-discrimination with an extra focus on LGBT rights.)

Even though I know that, especially in said schools, nothing will happen to me, I still get highly triggered when random teens laugh, make weird noises, or shout at me when I pass by.

Being bullied hugely traumatized me, so I get to some extend why my nervous system reacts the way it reacts... But it's still highly frustrating and costs a lot of energy.

I can make the mental distinction between random teens being teens versus the actual threat of some aggressive homophobe in the streets, where it does make sense for me nervous system to tell me to gtfo... But my nervous system responds the same either way.

Anyone who recognizes this, and how do you cope?

NSFW for passive SI, non graphic talk about attempt

Yes I know about freeze and burnout and all that, de-personalization and de-realization. All these things and patterns. For the past weeks I've just been completely gone. It started when I noticed that I do not share any experience with any of my friends or acquaintances so I just stopped caring about it? I've isolated myself now for 3 weeks, get up in the morning WFH then sleep in the afternoon, because of the total exhaustion (burnout yay), stay awake until 1 am doom scrolling and on the next day rinse and repeat.

But I don't care anymore, yes I could pay for therapy without relying on the public healthcare, yes I could talk to friends about it but I don't care anymore. Every resource, every experience I read about this just points to deal with it or here is how you learn to deal with it. I am dealing with it by avoiding it. I've wanted to off myself pretty consistently for 10 years and attempted 4 years ago. Pre teen and teenage me also had suicidal thoughts. It's a constant thing in my life. At this point I'm researching how assisted suicide works with mental health issues in my country.

I'm just not here anymore. I thought about drinking alcohol or smoking cannabis as coping but even that thought is more like meh I don't care about it.
The only thing bothering me right now is the exhaustion and my fucked up sleeping, but other than that.

my boyfriend and i were playing games and he was lagging pretty bad. he got frustrated and huffy and puffy and it freaked the hell out of me. he wasn't upset with me at all, but hearing the tone change and the sighing made me uncomfortable

has anyone else experienced this?

I'm going to be honest. I can't fucking take it anymore, the autstic burnout +the CPTSD.

Nope I'm not one of those smart autistic. Just normal, can't work autistic. I don't want to get into my struggle with work, not like people will believe me anyways. Shit most non autstic people, know genuinely fuck all about how autism works. Yet they'll yap it up and make me feel lesser. Like I don't already feel like shit.

I try and I try and I try. I try really fucking hard, to the point I didn't have access to therapy and through pure self help, I don't qualify for a BPD diagnose anymore. Why?! Because my BPD was hurting my partner. This shows I fucking try, it's so so hard to fix an issue like that.

But of course the disabilty always comes to fuck me. I can't work my way out of this. I can't just suddenly be able to function under this economic system.

I'm tired of trying, the last autistic burnout I had from working , ruined me. I'm in skill regression and I can't do half the shit I was able to do before. I get panic attacks at the thought of getting another job again. I'm really not built for this shit. But of course the world has made it clear no one gives a shit.

No one wants to give me their tax dollars for me to live. It doesn't matter how much love and care I spread into the world because it will always be the same. I can't work so I'm less deserving of living.

It doesn't matter that I'm the kind of person who would give a homeless person the fucking shirt off of her back. It doesn't matter because in the end people above me will always look down on me and think I'm not deserving to live.

So whatever, everyone wins!! No more burden on your tax dollars! I mean what other choice was there? I go homeless, I burn out again which was traumatizing as shit, or I go on disability. Which btw isn't even an option cause they don't think my level of autism is disabling enough....funny

Nobody believes me....no one besides other autistic people who are also in the same spot. I have searched for hours for resources for me...nothing. No one wants to help me, because it's clear they think I'm fucking unless. It's shown everywhere, in everyone's faces. If I can't work, I don't deserve to live. I can't work.

So in the morning, whenever I leave my bfs house and go home. I'm going to drive somewhere quiet and overdose. I'm sorry I know there's a lot of people on this subreddit I do care for. But I think it's goodbye for real this time, I'm sure this is the right choice. No one, who knows me can rightfully say I didn't try. I love you guys, this is the only place I've ever felt safe to talk about my trauma in full. I fucking love you guys.

The extreme emotions. Nothing makes it go away. Never. No amount of talking or “regulation” or any coping mechanism “fixes” the feeling. Like if I feel extremely hopeless and full of rage, all people can do is say “oh the feeling is not reality, it’s just a feeling”. Ok and? That doesn’t change anything? I still feel extremely hopeless or unfathomably angry and no amount of sugarcoating or distracting myself from the feeling changes the unbearableness of it in the moment or my awareness of the fact that the feelings still exist and will still pop up again and it will inevitably still feel unbearable and incredibly heavy and I’ll feel so helpless. This very cycle and the awareness of there being no solution and me trying everything but all of it just reinforcing my belief that there is no solution (like when someone tells me- “you just need to regulate.” ) All of it just makes me more hopeless. The more I try to fix it or find ways to feel better, the more I realise that there is no such thing and the more indescribably, unfathomably
hopeless I feel, stuck in a never ending loop that never gets better. And the more pointless everything feels.

Yet, here I am, hoping against hope that someone finally says something that feels like it breaks this loop and doesn’t just reinforce my belief and hit me with a wave of helplessness. So if you have a differing perspective or just anything you think will help, hit me with it

The 5-4-3-2-1 method makes me so angry and stressed for some reason. My senses are already so overwhelmed.

When I'm having an emotional flashback, I'm fucking IN IT. Trying to use this as a coping skill feels like the stress in my brain boils over even more.

Does anyone else feel this way? I also struggle with things like deep breathing, calming music, etc. Like all methods of relaxation do not work

I had AI help me put this together via audio to condense it because i couldn't bring myself to write it all out myself (sorry for any weird structural errors).

I'm hoping for insight and empathy. I’m grieving, confused, and traumatized after losing the only therapist I ever trusted after a single mistake. Please, if you have any experience, help make sense of this.

My History:

• I have a non-verbal learning disability (NVLD), PTSD, Bipolar Type 2, etc. I often miss social cues and need boundaries spelled out - but I can fake it really well for a while.
• In therapy, I’m always working on boundaries and social skills because of this, mainly to help with building relationships.
• My past includes severe betrayal trauma: multiple therapists have referred me out for high complexity reasons, and I had a boundary-violating relationship years ago with another therapist that left deep wounds and she got in big trouble.
• I'm especially sensitive to abandonment and have lost several friends to death and other mental health issues.

Amy Gave Me Hope:

• I met "Amy" (not her real name) in July 2025, pre-licensed (MSW), and I quickly became one of her first clients.
• For seven months, she helped me rebuild after the betrayal that cost me my job and best friend. My mother, who’s seen me struggle for years, said, "Amy is the only therapist who’s really helped you."
• My psychiatrist Jessica, who’s been in my corner for five years, wrote directly to Amy that under Amy’s care, I was, "The best she's ever seen me in 5 years."
• Amy taught me life skills, helped me approach and interact with women (a huge step for me with NVLD), and even told me "You look very approachable" which really helped give me courage to do things I had never done before.
• Even guided me through my first ever experience with solo travel, which changed my life. I went to Barcelona and could never have done so well if Amy hadn't instructed me on how to navigate, buy a plane ticket, go through security, etc.
• In session, there was real connection—she’d even appropriately share about her own setbacks (like being fired after someone lied about her too years ago), which helped me trust her more.

But I had a subtle bad feelings about the system:

• Amy once told me her supervisors called "cluster B" clients "the crazy ones." I wasn’t offended; I got her nuance. She suspected me of having BPD traits.
• But my psychiatrist said that's an extremely unprofessional way for supervisors to talk to their clinicians, proof of a judgmental, risk-averse clinic culture.
• One session in particular I could sense she was EXTREMELY anxious and I couldn't tell why - but it concerned me. Because of this, I once asked Amy directly, "Do you think your supervisors are just waiting to get rid of me?" She assured me they weren’t, which calmed me, but I still always felt on edge after that.
• After I came home from Spain I gave Amy a Thank You card that said, "Some people make your day better, some people make your life better, thanks for being someone who does both." And she said, "That's so sweet! I'm gonna keep it right here." I made sure to just give a card and NOT a gift because gifts are a grey zone. It was also very easy to make her laugh (but not jokes I make with friends) and she seemed like the gold standard for therapists. I really liked that she would sit right next to me occasionally also to help explain things better.
• I took every measure possible to make her feel safe and comfortable because I always fear coming across as scary.

Where it all fell apart:

• One weekend, a string of triggers hit, my unemployment checks were 4 months late, I also experienced severe "skin hunger" which is basically psychosomatic pain from a lack of affectionate (the pain turned out to be partially from a vitamin deficiency confirmed via a blood test). This caused an intense mood swing and I was also very anxious about having trouble finding work.
• I sent Amy an intense email (NOT suicidal, but very distressed), and a similar message via the patient portal mentioning the skin hunger.
• And, due to my NVLD and poor understanding of boundaries on digital platforms, I also sent her a message on LinkedIn asking for help, not realizing LinkedIn was considered social media/off-limits in the therapy world. I thought it was more/less like Psychology Today

If anyone had ever told me, "LinkedIn isn’t okay," I would NEVER have done it again. The whole reason I was in therapy was to learn these boundaries.

The Emergency Session & Discharge:

• Amy saw me quickly after the messages. She sat down right next to me—close physically, arms crossed, eyes averted, clearly heartbroken and (I think) on the verge of tears. She said I'm discharging you and I lost it and said "Please don't do this."
• During that session, she almost seemed like she was reading from a script and said "we can make some phone calls to IOPs" I was really confused and told her how those are useless for people with my specific one-on-one problem solving needs.
• She told me specifically "I know you've been referred out a lot so I'm not doing that to you. Do an IOP and we can revisit this later" I initially refused but after I got home reconsidered if it meant seeing her again.
• I went through IOP (which I found useless but did anyway, just to be able to possibly see her again).

Suddenly, everything changed:

• I got a cold, impersonal discharge letter—full of words like "emotional dysregulation",  "multiple boundary violations," "treatment non-compliant"
• On the clinic's internal notes (visible to other therapists via the portal), Amy described my strengths: "kindness, humor, willingness to change, engagement in treatment."
• The discharge and the internal portal completely contradicted each other and how Amy treated me in real life.

Felicia, the Clinic Director, Steps In:

• I received a call from Felicia, the director, who told me: "You will never see Amy again because Amy already told you you were crossing boundaries in her office."
• When I asked, "What boundaries are you talking about?" she said, "I don’t have to tell you that information."
• When I pushed back, saying "Amy told me that if I did IOP, I could possibly come back," Felicia replied, "You shouldn’t be doing an IOP to see your therapist again. You should do IOP because YOU want to do it." - Like, okay Socrates.
• The call was robotic—flat, cold, no emotion—even when I told Felicia, "Can you see how traumatic this is for someone like me?" she said, "Yes," but without any humanity. It felt gaslighting and bizarre.

Trying to Find Repair:

• Six weeks after this discharge and after the director's bizarre call, I emailed Amy directly asking:
  • Would she consider seeing me for remote sessions on her private practice platform (on Headway)? I also apologized if I crossed any boundaries and that it's a struggle to see the obvious sometimes. I also let her know that I had finally secured my unemployment backpay and a new job and completed the IOP at her request.
  • Would she be open to collaborating with my psychiatrist to set up written boundary rules or contracts so nothing like this could happen again?
• My psychiatrist supported this outreach plan.
• Again, all I wanted was to learn and repair, not to bother or disrespect anyone. In my eyes, I was extremely professional.

Then: Police and Permanent Ban—Followed by More Questions:

• After my respectful, boundary-focused email to Amy, I got a call from the police saying: "Amy wants you to leave her alone."
• Next, the regional director personally called to tell me I was permanently banned from the entire clinic—I can’t ever come back. He didn't just sound serious - he sounded gleeful. As if he was taking great joy in it.
• Two weeks after the police report, I noticed Amy had removed any reference to that clinic on her Facebook, but without changing privacy settings.
• This, plus her last session with me, makes me think she didn’t want this outcome. Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees it looks forced, not something she’d have chosen, very sketchy, over-the-top and inappropriate to do to someone so vulnerable who had been doing so well. This was totally out of character for her and makes me wonder if she was coerced.

The Aftermath:

• I lost Amy, then two weeks post police report, tragically lost another close friend to a freak drowning accident.
• I had a panic attack so severe I went to the ER, and since then I’ve been trying to survive on benzos and the support of my psychiatrist.
• A former out-of-pocket EMDR therapist I've seen sporadically since 2022 told me we can see each other in the near future to talk about what happened (and she just had her 3RD child 6 WEEKS ago AND sent me pictures of him which really warmed my heart). So I don't think Amy was truly afraid of me if Zoe feels this level of comfort with me and saw me at my worst years back.
• For what it’s worth, both Jessica, Zoe, AND my IOP DIRECTOR told me they would never have handled a single boundary mistake this way—their response would have been to set a limit, help me understand, and move forward, especially in a moment of deep pain with my NVLD. Another clinician said this seems "heavily influenced by a third party" and that it's the kind of thing that might make Amy want to leave the clinic.
• I still haven’t received my therapy records or treatment summary from the clinic even after requesting a month ago—it feels like stonewalling.

My questions:

• Does it really sound to you like Amy wanted to end things this way, or does this scream clinic policy/risk-aversion/lawyer panic forced her hand?
• Have you ever repaired or reconnected after a clinic/police/CYA ban? Is there any real hope? Not a restraining order. It was "just for documentation purposes only."
• What power would a therapist like Zoe have here? If “do no harm” matters, can a trusted therapist ever reach out to a former colleague (Amy) for a client’s sake, even after a system incident like this?
• Is the clinic’s refusal to send my records normal, or is it more evidence that something shady is happening?
• What should someone like me actually do after being abandoned for a single, understandable mistake?

IMPORTANT: This is a private equity clinic that had to settle with the state for $940,000 in 2023 for 'Billing fraud' and 'improperly supervising unlicensed clinicians.'

If you read all this, thank you. Everything I worked for has been ripped away over one error that I was in therapy to learn how to prevent. Please be gentle—this is some of the worst pain I’ve ever lived through.

Every now and then I will just be smacked in the face with how absurd cptsd is and I find it so funny, but it's the kind of funny where saying it to people would just kind of make them furrow their brow in concern. But maybe someone here will get it.

Lately I have been keeping my childhood doll around more often. I live alone with no pets so it's been good for me to have something to hug in times of trouble. I've had her since I was a month old and I've been getting a lot of comfort from the idea that she's been with me for my whole life. But just now, I was thinking about that, and then I thought, and I am not kidding: "what if she doesn't actually want to be here though :/"

The attachment trauma on me to be splitting on an inanimate doll. Like pleeasseee. This is so funny to me. I've also split on a video game character I was romancing and ASMR girlies mid-video. Just suddenly for no reason at all like "no... I think you intend me harm actually." It is always just a passing feeling like a stray neural pathway is firing by mistake but boy is it indicative. Can my amygdala please relax 😭

i don’t get shit out of telling people about my problems. It almost always just makes it worse or best case scenario very temporary relief. and in worst case scenario, I just spilled my guts to someone I liked UNTIL I saw their reaction to me spilling my guts. And last but not least that wave of shame where I wonder if they will gossip about me or if they view me any different.

i am always there for people in my life; I love providing emotional support because I GET IT. But rarely does someone have the capacity OR understanding (‘even if they do sincerely want to help) to comfort me. Essentially, no one can comfort me. It’s always me and my brain suffering together all alone. I crave connection so badly at the end of the day, not sympathy, and I don’t know why I cannot feel it when I’m in a bad place which is almost always. In fact it’s ruining my decent relationships because they don’t understand why I withdraw.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Some people can walk into a room and almost immediately feel that something is off, even before anyone says anything directly. It might be a fake smile, a sudden silence, a change in someone’s tone, or the feeling that one person in the room is quietly controlling the mood. From the outside, this can look like overthinking, being too sensitive, or reading too much into things, but I wonder if for some people it started as a survival response.If you grew up around unpredictable moods, emotional tension, or people whose anger could change the whole room, it makes sense that your nervous system would learn to notice things early. You learn who is upset before they admit it. You notice who everyone is adjusting around. You feel silence as information instead of just silence. And even when nothing bad happens, normal social situations can still leave you exhausted because your brain was scanning the whole time.I’m curious if anyone else relates to this. Did you learn to read rooms because it once felt safer to notice everything first?

Everything is so hard. People are so mean. Honestly it's getting harder to stop thinking about it.

It's so confusing and frustrating. I'm perpetually forgetting knowledge too and basically having to restart my life perpetually and start from 0 every day.

Also to save me from making another post I'm just going to include the other rant/vent I wanted to say-after basically being kicked out of everything and everywhere and after giving so much to so many people-I really regret it. I want all that time and money back. I know it's just a wish that will never come true but I could have used that time or that money really badly of late. At least I'm young-I'm turning 26 soon and a lot of people don't figure this out until way later in life and maybe never ever do. At least I can hopefully have some years of life without such negative experiences or company. I definitely will try not to do that again. So tired of wasting my time and effort and money on people who just don't deserve it. I've been burnt so many times. It's genuinely amazing I still try at all. I can be proud of that.

Unless I keep in mind that a person is scum and will be disrespectful, if I'm not confrontational I literally do not register disrespect until way later. A collegue told me some disgusting things that were worthy of a punch in the mouth, but I literally felt zero anger right there, I laughed it off. And now I can't sleep and I feel like a bitch.

It took me hours to register how insane that was. I feel so humiliated now. It wouldn't have been hard to defend from that, yet it just didn't register. I'm feeling such a deep shame

For background, I was abused my entire childhood by my mother and father. My mother was the worst. My father was a violent alcoholic that behaved inappropriately with me, but he was kind to me sometimes. I was deprived of opportunities for so long. I was so, so lonely and craved sex from a man by the time I was five years old.

Now, as an adult, I get very little happiness outside of men. I see multiple men right now. Some treat me better than others. Some hurt me, but I let it happen because the attention feels like the only thing that matters. I’m by myself right now. I’ve tried so hard to get hobbies. I have a passion for art, yet I can’t get myself to feel even the slightest interest. All I want is for a man to hold me and like me. As for myself, often I feel like a complete ghost. My entire self-worth is based in others. When I am alone, I feel an emptiness where I yearn to hurt myself.

I don’t want to feel like this. I’m worried I’m broken. I can’t go on longer. I’m young and maybe this “drifter, new guy all the time” thing works right now, but it won’t forever. I want to get a boyfriend and feel normal. I don’t want to want other men while I’m in a relationship and I don’t want my romantic life to be the only thing that matters to me.

I (30F) have some definite abandonment trauma from my adolescence. I've been trying to date for 3 years since separating from my abusive partner. The cycle is eerily similar each time...I meet a man who seems extremely interested in me, we get to know each other, we're intimate, I become attached, he withdraws, I obsess, and then I'm left with an unbearably painful emotional flashback, panic, depression, and suicidal ideation. I guess I'm going to swear off dating because it's not fair to my loved ones to knowingly seek out suicidality triggers... But I want a partner and (someday) kids. I feel hopeless.

Why do I even try? My body's been wired to enjoy my trauma. And so is my mind. I enjoy feeling the assault, the abuse, everything. That's how I've lived my entire life. Being filthy and disgusting and free-use. No matter what age I am, be it if I were a girl or a boy, nothing changes. I've even indulged into it. So many people have. I'm nothing more than someone's fantasy, someone's fun, someone's pleasure, someone's projection. Do any of you even see me as human? Am I that abnormal? God, I'm a monster. I'm someone who's even violated myself. I'm no victim or a survivor, I'm never getting out of here and my body's gonna be stuck like this. It's breaking down, it's damaged, it's tired of masking, it wants help, it needs to be held. I'm still gonna be stuck in this hell no matter what, I'd rather be gone early than to think of what could happen next. My body's actively killing itself anyway, I don't see the purpose in trying to fix it further.