r/traumatoolbox

I’m a 22-year-old woman, and I’ve been through a lot since early childhood. I’ve experienced a significant amount of trauma, and I’ve been in therapy and journaling consistently for about five years.
I currently work in healthcare, which I genuinely enjoy, but I also recognize that the job can be stressful and sometimes trigger my anxiety and overthinking. I’m at a point in my life where I really want to take responsibility for my healing. My childhood experiences played a big role in shaping the way I respond to things now, but I’m an adult, and I want to learn healthier ways to cope and grow from what I went through.
One of the biggest things I struggle with is anxiety and overthinking, and sometimes when my anxiety gets really intense, I find myself dissociating. I absolutely hate that feeling and want to learn how to manage it instead of letting it control my life.
I’ve already done therapy and I’ve been journaling for years, so I’m looking for other things that have genuinely helped people heal from trauma and regulate their anxiety. I’m not really looking for the typical “try therapy” or “journal” advice because I’ve already done those things. I’m also not interested in antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication. I respect that medication works for many people, but personally, I want to explore more natural approaches first.
I’ve been looking into things like magnesium, L-theanine, herbs, supplements, breathwork, nervous-system regulation, exercise, etc. I used to take OLLY Goodbye Stress gummies, but I stopped because they made me break out and I didn’t like how emotionally dull they made me feel.
So for those of you who have experienced childhood trauma, anxiety, overthinking, or dissociation:
What has genuinely helped you heal and feel more grounded in everyday life?
I’m especially interested in things beyond therapy, journaling, and shadow work—whether that’s lifestyle changes, nervous-system techniques, supplements, hobbies, routines, or anything else that made a real difference for you.
I’m at a point where I really want to enjoy my life instead of constantly being in my head. Life is short, and I want to be able to live it fully without my past controlling my present. ❤️ ( Thank you for your responses❤️)

I was abused growing up in my household, and I'm starting to notice that I have toxic behaviors I learned from said abuse. I scream and say horrible things when I am upset, I have episodes where I feel so much rage that I don't know how to stop, and I have even gotten violent during said episodes. I also have bipolar and CPTSD, and am actively taking medication, but it doesn't seem to be helping. Growing up, I learned that the only way to express my anger was through violence, and as an adult it's extremely hard for me to change that. I feel so ashamed because I've been in therapy for almost a year now and I'm still like this. I am almost 20 years old and I am still stuck in the trauma of my past, and I find myself not taking accountability for my part in my strained relationships with my family.

Whenever I am sad or angry, I immediately blame things on my trauma and my family, and I don't acknowledge that it's my responsibility to heal and not become an abuser myself. I also act immaturely and refuse to be an adult about things, which isn't okay at all. I have hurt so many people I love because I don't know how to let go of what happened to me and I refuse to emotionally regulate when I am upset.

A recent example of my toxicity is that I got into a horrible fight with my mom a few days ago that resulted in violence, which was my fault. I was triggered because she mocked me and called me a victim, as well as told me that I was just like my father (both our abuser.) I have been called a victim by my father and my mother for many years of my life whenever I expressed how the trauma affected me, and it resulted in years of resentment and low self esteem. When my mother told me that, I lost it and couldn't control myself. All of the anger, pain, and resentment that had built up because of feeling like she didn't protect me back then just exploded and it was so much that the only way I responded was with violence.

My mom won't speak to me anymore and I am so ashamed of myself, because even though I was triggered I should have never reacted the way I did. Again, it's my responsibility to regulate myself and heal, and I failed to do that, which is exactly what my dad does too. I don't want to be like him but I fear I have picked up so many of his toxic behaviors and tactics that I have turned into him, and now instead of taking responsibility and changing, I justify my actions because of the pain I have experienced. I'm scared that it's too late for me to change and that I will end up losing everyone because of this. Maybe I shouldn't be coming to the internet for this, but I want honest advice because I need a wake up call.

If you have never lived in a household where conflict meant chaos and speaking up brought violence, you will not easily understand the things that follow. I am not writing this to beg for your approval, nor do I want your pity. I am writing to explain a reality that millions of survivors live with every single day. My childhood was completely stolen from me, and because I survived twenty years of severe physical and emotional abuse, my mind was forced to break and rearrange itself just to keep me alive. That trauma didn't disappear when I became an adult; it permanently altered how my brain operates. What looks like hyper-vigilance, an inability to rest, toxic self shame or a constant battle to do better isn't a personality flaw. It is my baseline for safety. I am balancing the heavy wreckage of my past while executing the daily demands of being a functioning adult, a husband, and a father. I don't expect you to fully comprehend the quiet war my mind fights every day just to exist in a calm room, but I do expect you to respect the strength it took to survive it.

I am writing this because at six months old, my son is sleeping soundly in the corner of the same room I’m in, completely unaware of the ghosts currently looping through his father’s head. They say when you have a child, your own childhood trauma rushes back to meet you. I didn’t believe it. I thought I could just tough it out, the same way I toughed out the first twenty years of my life. I was wrong. The memories didn't just come back; they set up camp, running on a constant, haunting cycle.

But as I look at my son, I realize something terrifying: to a child, whatever happens inside the walls of their home is "normal."
When my stepfather tried to drown me in a pool at seven years old, I normalized it. When I was locked inside a sweltering chicken coop under the threat of a beating, I normalized it. When my mother stood by and watched it happen, and later financially trapped me when I was just a teenager trying to buy lunch at work, I normalized that too. I thought everyone lived in hell. It is only now, looking at the absolute innocence of my own boy, that I realize just how deeply twisted that "normal" truly was.

Abuse thrives in the dark. It thrives when guidance counselors accept a lied-about black eye, when teachers judge the "rowdy" kid instead of asking where the anger comes from, and when society looks away because it is too uncomfortable to face.
This story is a jumbled mess of memories, told in the order they flash through my mind and my dreams. It is raw, it is ugly, and it is entirely real. I am sharing it to bring awareness to the hidden corners of childhood domestic and financial abuse. I want the kid who is currently surviving hell to know they aren't alone. I want the adults who interact with children every day to look a little closer at the signs they are missing.
Most of all, I am writing this to map out my own exit from the wreckage. I want my son to grow up to be a man of immense strength, resilience, and honor. But I want him to inherit my strength without ever having to bear my pain. I want him to be strong simply because he was loved, protected, and allowed to be a child—not because he had to learn how to survive an adult’s cruelty.

This is for the little boy who was made to believe he was never enough, and for the father I am fighting to become.

Honestly, my memories don't really feel like memories. They just flash through my head during the day, or my dreams at night. And the weirdest part is that I’m not even in them. It’s like I’m sitting in a theater, watching a movie of my own life play out on a screen. The one movie that always sticks out, the one I can't seem to turn off is when I was around seven or eight years old my stepfather tried to drown me in a pool. Before he did it, he looked me in the eye and told me he wanted to kill me. He was drunk in that moment, sure, but he hated me just as much when he was sober. That look on his face of just pure resentment is something I will forget. It didn't stop at the pool either. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and he’d just be standing right over my bed. Standing there in the dark, staring at me. And that’s where the "why" comes in. Why would anyone do that to a kid? Did I really do something that bad as a little boy to make a grown man hate me that much? Or was he just evil?

As a kid, I honestly thought I lived in hell, but somehow I normalized it. In my head, I just assumed every single kid was going through the exact same thing I was. Growing up and realizing that’s completely untrue? That’s the part I’ve been struggling with lately. It’s heavy, and I’m starting to see that a lot of how I act as an adult is just a direct reaction to those old survival mechanisms.
I’m sure there were good times mixed into the chaos, but my brain just can’t remember many of them. The one thing that did stick, though, was fishing. I developed this deep bond with it, and it’s still with me to this day. For some reason, the water was the one place where I felt completely safe. If I needed to escape the madness, that’s where I went. I’d be gone all day long as a kid fishing, and honestly, I guess they just didn't care enough to ever come looking for me, but back then, that neglect felt like freedom.
The second one that constantly plays in my head is the time he beat me so badly that I had two black eyes, and my whole body was covered in bruises and scratches. What kills me to this day, the thing I still don’t understand, is why I lied for him. When the school guidance counselor had asked me what happened, I covered for him. I made up some story about getting into a fight with another kid. I still wonder if they knew I was lying.

Because of how I looked and acted, I’m sure people at school saw me as the weird kid, the mean kid, the one who was always in trouble. But if people could have just seen where that behavior was coming from, maybe they would have understood. That’s another thing that really messes with me lately. I wasn't just judged by the other kids; I was judged by the teachers and the adults. The very people who were supposed to notice, supposed to help, just looked at me like I was the problem, without ever looking at what was happening to me at home.

Growing up, we didn’t have money, but we lived on a decent-sized farm. We had a huge garden, we got eggs from our chickens, and a lot of our food came from the cows and hogs we had slaughtered. Honestly, that’s one part of my childhood that I actually cherish. I think that kind of life is something everyone should experience. It’s hard to explain, but living like that gave me a deeper understanding of life. It taught me that even the animals we raised for food deserved to be appreciated and respected.

The actual dark memories of the farm, though, didn't come from the animals. They came from the chores. Like the chicken coop. I remember being forced to clean it out on a very hot summer day. My stepfather locked me inside the coop and told me I wasn't allowed out until it was completely clean. He didn't explicitly say what he would do to me if I failed, but I knew. I knew I'd get beaten.
Being forced to work like that, with a constant fear of violence hanging over my head, has completely transferred into my adult life. He made me do heavy yard work before my body was even big enough to handle it. I’m not lazy, at least I try hard not to be, but to this day, it is still hard to bring myself to do basic things like yard work. My brain still associates those chores with survival.

I don’t have an exact timeline for when all of these things happened to me. Whenever I try to put my life in a chronological order, it just feels like one big, jumbled mess. So I’m just taking these situations as they come to me, in the exact order they flash through my head.

The next situation takes place when I was in high school. For the first time in my entire life, my mom had bought me brand-new, actually nice clothes. I remember feeling so good about it. But when my stepfather saw them, he just flipped. He got furious at me just for having something nice. Later on, while I was out of the house, every single one of those new clothes got covered in bleach. Ruined.
I knew exactly who did it, so I confronted him. When I asked him why he did it, he looked at me and said, “If I’m not allowed to have nice things, you’re not either.” And then, because I dared to ask, he beat me up for it.
To this day, I look back at that and his logic makes absolutely no sense to me. Nobody ever told him he couldn’t have nice things. He was a grown adult with a job; if he wanted nice clothes, he could have gone out and bought them himself. But he was so miserable, and so full of envy, that he couldn't stand to see a teenager experience a single moment of happiness or pride.

The beatings I got were completely random. Sometimes there was a twisted logic to them, but other times, it was just because he was drunk and I existed. I remember one day I was just trying to take a nap on the couch. Nothing was going on and he just walked by and kicked me in the head for no reason at all.

But the part that sticks out the most from that time is the first time I ever stood up for myself. He had gotten drunk again and started hitting me with a belt. I was a little bigger by then, I still wasn’t very old. We were out on the back porch, which was pretty high off the ground, maybe five or six feet. He just kept swinging the belt, refusing to stop, so I finally had enough. I reacted. I shoved him off the edge of the porch.
His reaction to that fall told me everything I ever needed to know about him. The second I stood up to him, he backed down. He was a coward. That would be the only time I stood up for myself for a while, but it changed how I saw him.
Looking back, there’s actually one funny thing that came out of that whole situation. After he got up, he threatened to call the police on me. It was ridiculous, like I was the one in the wrong, and not the grown man beating a kid with a belt. I guess he was just trying to scare me into submission, but it didn’t work. At that moment, I didn’t feel bad for what I did to him. And honestly to this day, I still don't.

The physical abuse was really only half of the story. The mental abuse was the other half. Honestly, a lot of the mental stuff is hard for me to remember now. I’m not sure if my brain just blocked it out, or if it got completely overshadowed by the physical violence, but I know it was always there. It left its mark.
I remember him constantly telling me I was lazy. He’d tell me I was never going to be anything or have anything in life. He’d constantly tease me and call me gay, too, even though I never showed any signs of that, he just said it because he knew it was a way to dig at a kid.

But looking at my life now, there's a heavy irony to it all. I know for a fact that a lot of the reason I have the things I do today is out of spite. It’s not all about him, just partly. But spite has definitely been one of my biggest motivations in life. When you grow up poor, doubted, and told you're going to fail, something inside you just clicks. You want to prove him wrong, sure, but you also just want to prove the whole world wrong. You build a life and accumulate things to show that the hand you were dealt wasn't going to define you.

My mother is another major part of my life story, and honestly, she’s a part of the story that really messed me up, too. Like I said before, I just don’t understand why she stayed with him when he treated me the way he did. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t nice to anyone in that house. We all walked on eggshells. But I’ve always felt like I got the absolute worst end of his abuse.
Through all of it, she never really said anything to him. She just watched, or looked away, and kept her mouth shut. For a long time, I wondered if she was just too terrified of him to speak up. But looking back at it now as an adult, I don’t think that was it. I think she was more afraid of him leaving her than she was of what he was doing to her son. I’m definitely leaning more towards the latter of those two. It’s a hard thing to swallow, realizing that the one person who was supposed to protect me chose her own comfort, or her own fear of being alone, over my safety. My stepfather was the monster, but my mother's silence is the part that leaves a completely different kind of scar.

The worst of it with her started right when I technically became an "adult." I got a job, and at first, the deal was that if I wanted to stay there, I had to buy the groceries. That was my rent, I guess. But it slowly crawled into something much worse. She started asking to "borrow" money that I never saw again. Then she convinced me to take out multiple loans that I also never got any money from, framing it as a way to "build my credit." It kept building and building until it got to the point where I wasn't even allowed to hold onto my own debit card. I remember one specific day, I took my card to work just so I could buy myself something to eat. When she found out, she got mad and told me I needed to get out of her house. I was probably only eighteen at the time. To me now, eighteen is still just a kid. I was a kid being financially abused by my own mother. That situation built up a massive wall of resentment inside me, and it’s the exact reason I don’t talk to her to this day.

Bringing it back to me in the present day, though, I often tell people that my mind is so messed up it actually circles all the way back to feeling “normal.” But I get it now—I understand that what I call normal is probably completely different from what most people would consider normal. What happened to me affects me in ways that I see every day, and honestly, I'm sure it affects me in ways I haven't even realized yet.

These are just the parts that I can remember and that come back to me in flashbacks and dreams. This isn’t even half of all that happened to me as a child.

There is this constant voice in my head that I can’t seem to turn off, this pressure that tells me I’m always failing or that I have to do better. I beat myself up daily over everything. If I rest, I feel lazy. If I succeed at something, I feel like I should have done it faster or better. When you grow up being told you’re lazy and never going to be anything, that voice becomes your inner thoughts. Even though I have a job, a family, and a home, I still wake up feeling like that little boy who has to prove he’s allowed to exist. It’s exhausting to constantly fight a war against yourself just to feel like you are doing enough.

My mind constantly fights with itself about the fact that my childhood was completely stolen from me, yet the world still expects me to show up and be a perfectly functioning adult. It’s a weird paradox. Half of my brain is trapped trying to process being almost drowned in a pool or beaten for reasons unknown to me, while the other half has to pay bills, go to work, and keep the house running. Society doesn't pause for your flashbacks. You still have to wake up, put on a straight face, and execute daily life even when your mind is screaming from things that happened twenty years ago. You’re forced to play the part of a stable adult while rebuilding a foundation that was shattered before you were even old enough to understand it.

When I say my mind got so messed up that it circled back to “normal,” that’s exactly what I mean. Chaos became my baseline. When you live in a war zone for seventeen years, peace feels terrifying. Your body gets addicted to the adrenaline of waiting for the next blow, the next screaming match, or the next random beating. So when you finally get out, and you have a quiet home and a loving family, your brain doesn't know how to handle it. It feels unnatural. My mind had to break and rearrange itself so many times just to survive that my definition of "normal" is completely twisted compared to everyone else's. I had to learn how to exist in a calm room without constantly scanning for exits.
Because of that, I find myself sitting in the quiet sometimes just wondering—who would I have been if none of that had happened to me? What kind of man would have walked out of a childhood where he was actually safe, encouraged, and loved? Would I be more successful? Would I be less guarded? I’ll never get the answer to that question, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. But despite that lingering wonder, I look at myself in the mirror today and I’m proud. I am glad I turned out as what I would describe as normal. I didn't become a monster. I didn't become my stepfather, and I didn't become my mother. I became a man who loves his family, protects his son, loves his wife and survived hell without letting it consume his soul.

The Gift and the Burden
If there is one thing that came out of living in a constant war zone for twenty years, it’s that I developed an uncanny ability to read people. I can walk into a room, look at a total stranger, and know their energy and their intentions before I even speak a single word to them. To the outside world, it looks like a gift, almost like a superpower. But the truth is, it’s a highly advanced threat detection system that my childhood forced me to build. When you spend your formative years walking on eggshells around a violent stepfather and an unpredictable mother, your physical safety depends on your ability to predict the weather in your house. I had to learn how to read the exact weight of a footstep in the hallway, the tiny shift in a jawline, and the cold look of resentment in an adult’s eyes hours before the explosion actually happened. My brain turned that constant scanning into an automatic, lightning-fast background program just to keep me alive.

Today, that ability is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I am rarely fooled by fake people. I can see through manipulation instantly, and it gives me the ultimate radar to protect my wife and my son from unsafe environments. But it is also a heavy burden. Because my mind treats reading people as a literal matter of life or death, it never truly rests. Walking into a crowded place or meeting someone new forces my brain to process a massive wave of human data all at once, which leaves me feeling completely drained and on guard. It is the gold refined from the fire of my past, proof that while they were busy trying to break me, my mind was busy building a brilliant system to keep me alive. But it’s exhausting to carry a radar built for a war zone when you’re just trying to live a peaceful life.

The Gold Refined in the Fire
That radar isn’t the only good thing that came out of the wreckage. Surviving that hell forced me to build a backbone and a moral compass that nothing in this world can shake. Growing up around adults who lied, twisted the truth, and refused to own their actions made me a man who values radical honesty. I am man enough to look at my own flaws and admit when I am wrong, because I know exactly how much damage a parent’s denial can cause. The farm taught me a deep respect for the value of life, and the river taught me how to find my own peace when the rest of the world is screaming at me. Many people turn to self-destruction to escape their loops, but my trauma drove me out into nature, giving me a lifelong sanctuary that I now get to share with my son. My parents thought they were teaching me that I was nothing, but they accidentally handed me the perfect blueprint of exactly who not to be. They forged a protector.

At the end of the day, I have to accept that I will never get an apology, and I will never get an answer to why they did what they did. Those big empty spaces in my memory will probably stay empty, and the loops in my head might never completely turn off. But I am refusing to let their cruelty have the final say in who I am. They took twenty years of my life, but they don't get a single second of my future. My stepfather and my mother tried to convince me that I was nothing, but the life I have built today proves that they were completely wrong.

I am stepping out of the survival mode that kept me locked up for so long. It is a daily fight to stop beating myself up, and it is hard to navigate being a functioning adult when your foundation was completely shattered as a kid. But I am doing it anyway. I am showing up for my job, I am showing up for my wife, and I am showing up for myself. I survived hell, and I am man enough to look at my wreckage, own my flaws, and still be proud of the person I became.

The ultimate victory isn't changing the past; it’s making sure the past dies with me. When I look at my six-month-old son sleeping safely, I know with absolute certainty that the cycle is over. He will never have to wonder if his father loves him, he will never have to lie to a guidance counselor, and he will never have to walk on eggshells in his own home. I will carry whatever scars I have to carry, and I will get the therapy I need, because my family deserves a man who is healed, not just a man who survived. The jumbled mess ends here. My son is safe, my home is at peace.

Maybe even though it seems like I have this figured out I’m still seeking advice about how to process all of this?

I don't believe I have a safe regression place to go back to. I lost my twin on the womb, so not even that was a place of warmth and peace like everybody refers to. After being born I had to take expensive formula so I was resented for that (I sort of feel like they think I am the twin that should have died), and then hated from a young age every day after that. I have been remembering sexual abuse memories from before I had language and it is all very murky, confusing, every feeling at once, despair, a pain that does not have relief and that I cannot make into words, that I cannot escape, it is torture. It is the rawest form of most extreme vulnerability, probably the energy of animals when they are faced with a predator, that freeze response, that. My partner cannot be around me when I regress, gets brothered that I am putting such heavy energy in the room. I have no one to talk to, no family, no support from anyone and would like to get some perspective.

If anyone has gone through something similar or has any advice for me, I deeply appreciate it. If you have anything to say at all please don't hesitate to comment. I would like to feel less lonely.

I (16f) have always been very self aware and attuned to my emotions.. I realized I’m constantly sharing my feelings and thoughts and trauma with everyone.

I’m still going through what people have called “very traumatic things that most people wouldn’t even dream of”, and not just a couple. THAT IS THE LAST TIME IM TELLING ANYONE THAT.

I’d like to keep this stuff to myself. How can I catch myself before talking about this stuff and how can I be comfortable with feeling my feelings and being alone with them?

I don't believe I have a safe regression place to go back to. I lost my twin on the womb, so not even that was a place of warmth and peace like everybody refers to. After being born I had to take expensive formula so I was resented for that (I sort of feel like they think I am the twin that should have died), and then hated from a young age every day after that. I have been remembering sexual abuse memories from before I had language and it is all very murky, confusing, every feeling at once, despair, a pain that does not have relief and that I cannot make into words, that I cannot escape, it is torture. It is the rawest form of most extreme vulnerability, probably the energy of animals when they are faced with a predator, that freeze response, that. My partner cannot be around me when I regress, gets brothered that I am putting such heavy energy in the room. I have no one to talk to, no family, no support from anyone and would like to get some perspective.

If anyone has gone through something similar or has any advice for me, I deeply appreciate it. If you have anything to say at all please don't hesitate to comment. I would like to feel less lonely.

TW for vivid descriptions of flashbacks and a car accident, if you don’t wanna hear abt it, pls don’t read, and care for yourself before other people on the internet, thank you <3

hi guys. I’m 16 years old and yesterday i got in a severe head on collision at highway speeds. I was the front passenger, my bf (18) was driving and his mom was in the back seat. No major injuries besides his mom having a fractured vertebrae (this includes the other car involved.) Thank whatever being was watching over us. Starting off, don’t hate on my bf. he’s a sweet angel and has been overworked for weeks now. something, unfortunately, was bound to happen due to his sleep deprivation, stress, overworking, etc. I don’t blame him and he has since profusely apologized to me and my family for the pain he caused, and all is forgiven. I’m more so here to discuss how to deal with the flashbacks going forward. I have been experiencing intense, visceral flashbacks ever since the accident. I cannot be alone or else i’ll be thinking about it. I know it’s still fresh as hell and that’s why, but i’m trying to get coping skills early. Because i was in the front i saw everything happen. Right before impact i closed by eyes prepping to literally die right there on the highway. Luckily, i did not and promptly opened my eyes and screamed. This is especially adding to my anxiety. I keep thinking about the moments before impact, the sounds of our car spinning and the other car hitting us, the sounds of me and my bf screaming, the sirens, the chatter and noise. I can feel how it felt to have my chest forced into the seatbelt and how my body got jostled around. Not to mention the ER visit and subsequent medical treatment. (although everyone, including the highway patrol, were incredibly kind and understanding thank god.) Plus seeing my bf of a year be so scared, bloody, and hooked up to machines in the hospital didn’t help the trauma soup i had boiling. I already have a therapy appointment scheduled for next month, but that’s a long time to wait to speak to someone about a traumatic event that i wanna talk to someone about NOW, ya know? So anyway i just really really want to hear your experiences with flashbacks and how to manage them. (particularly if you also have motor vehicle based trauma.) i cannot physically be alone anymore without being a nervous wreck. Thank you for reading and pls take care of yourselves.

I (35 f) am on my second month on Prozac. I’ve been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder also OCD and ADHD. I am a business owner of two very successful businesses and am a high achiever and hard worker.

I don’t believe in excuses so therapy is so hard for me to get on board with. However I still tried. And I will try again soon but I have a bad track record of quitting therapy. I feel so judged by these women who I feel like are just punching in the clock to listen to my trauma. I need advice. How do I find a good therapist?

I have very traumatic past memories. It has made my current relationships hard to sustain. Everytime I reach out to a therapist it never works out. I feel like they’re just clocking in and performing a job. That’s not helpful to me. I end up feeling vulnerable and naked. Added trauma.

Has anyone felt this before? What can I do?

Hi. I am a mother who managed to leave my partner a year ago, after 8 years together. The breakup happened after months of emotional terror that ultimately led to a nervous breakdown on my part. Still, I feel an incredibly strong and painful trauma bond that makes it difficult to completely let go emotionally, and I so desperately need to vent my thoughts with someone who understands.

My ex is emotionally completely cold due to long-term pill abuse. Throughout the relationship, I was completely erased; I only existed in his world and had to look after him constantly. In our daily life, my daughter and I always had to adapt to him based on how his day was going and whether or not he had slept, as he struggles heavily with insomnia. He rarely does anything with me and my daughter, and we are often sidelined. He can have good periods, but then he always falls back into the exact same pattern.

He also has major challenges with intimacy due to medical reasons. We never kiss or hug when sober, and we only have intimacy and sex those times he is drunk. He has used my guilt against me for all these years, and he knows exactly which buttons to push.

I carry complex PTSD from my childhood after growing up with a father who was an alcoholic, where an enormous responsibility to rescue him was placed on me from the time I was only 5 years old. In addition, I lost my older brother when I was 16, which has made me extremely afraid of losing the ones I love. I recently realized that I was programmed to believe that love means taking care of and saving others at the expense of myself.

Now that I have started setting boundaries for the very first time, I notice that he is becoming desperate. He sends manipulative messages during the night and uses the financial situation (we still own a house together) as leverage to get us to move back. He has also made cynical comments about "just replacing me" if I don't do things for him anymore. Rationally, I am fully aware of what is the right thing for me to do, but deep down, I still carry a hope that he will change, even though I know he probably can't. I feel so incredibly empty and used up, but I have finally decided that my kindness shall only go to those who give something back, and to my daughter.

Right now, I am using my energy to support my daughter's father, who is going through a heavy depression and needs help to function for our child. Still, this process of breaking the trauma bond with my ex is so incredibly heavy.Have others here experienced being stuck in a trauma bond with a cynical person, and had the same childhood baggage of always having to rescue a father who drank? How did you manage to resist when the hope, the guilt, and the emptiness hit you the hardest? Thank you for reading.

i struggle often with intrusive thoughts around abuse that I have undergone and am currently undergoing. i want an outlet to safely express these thoughts, in a controlled environment but I don't know where to look, or who to even go to. i just want a safe space to explore the thoughts I have without being told they are what I genuinely think, because it seems everyone else on the internet assumes ALL thoughts are wanted

Hey there everyone. I'm a middle aged guy from Australia. I've dipped in and out of this sub for support in the past (and to give support of course, it really does help your soul when you can help others).

I just wanted to know what everyone's experiences have been like with GP and then other mental health professionals regarding this?
I have bipolar type 2. (No need to read on if you don't want to).

No one needs an entire backstory but I really am struggling with holding the line of NC for my mother and LC with my father.
I've tried grey rocking in the past. I've tried NC and LC in the past, about 5-6 times I would say, and it's just rebounded back to a fractured version of what it was beforehand.

My younger sister - so much braver and smarter than me, went NC with literally everyone (including me, because I was still in contact with our parents) about 5 years ago. That's been ultra hard for me. But at the same time I am furious with our parents, and myself at times, for not understanding where my sister has been coming from, and where I should be coming from.
The brainwashing has been devastating, I think that's the appropriate word. And on top of that both parents I am still convinced 'mean well' (I can hear you screaming at me that they don't) but that they were utterly, unbelievably incompetent. On top of that our mother has BPD (not shared with us - had to find out though an ex husband of hers) and a TBI that occurred when I was 16 and my sister was 14 (apparently that shaped a lot of what she's developed into). I'm coping with this by channelling what she's like into an antagonist character in a book I'm writing.
My father we are convinced that he has high functioning autism. He's never been checked. But it's pretty clear he's on the spectrum and it's become a quiet joke in the extended family "Oh haha that's just how he is" - No. It shouldn't be. To show up for his kids, he should have taken some responsibility to get that looked at.

I'm at the point now where I have thrown away relationships rather than working through them. I am terrified that I am 'splitting' myself but have been told I don't have BPD myself, simply reflecting upbringing methods(?). I've always wanted to have children, but it's not happened. Now I see my cousins and their young children, and their happy families, and it makes me so upset and depressed.

I also work with children, and constantly need to pull myself up on remaining professional - following the rules in disciplining them and saying no to them - this is extremely hard for me.

This year though I dropped down to casual employment, then didn't get shifts. Then had major issues with where I was living, then became 'unhoused' or whatever they call it - I don't want to use the term homeless as it doesn't feel that way - but bouncing between places, friends/car/hotels and looking desperately for work while trying to cope with worsening bipolar.
I don't know what to do, where to go, getting caught in the trap of thinking long term to help for certainty, but then not being able to do that because I need to focus on grounding techniques and making it through the day.

I could go on, happy to talk in the comments.

I’m (F) having a hard time lately, I feel sick and upset about what happened and how I’m disgusting for “letting” men rape and abuse me. I feel like it’s all I’m good for and I feel stupid… and yeah logically I should know I’m worth something but I feel ugly and idiotic. Idk what else to say, I’ve been sexualised since I was 6… idk what else to think. It’s so stupid. I’m so stupid. Ugh. Idk just a vent I guess.

G'day, my name’s Aslan, I’m 23, and I’m an Aussie Man who’s completely broken emotionally by everything in my life, especially by my dad. I’m the product of my dad raping my mum. When she got pregnant, they forced her to marry him,she was 18 and he was 23. My dad was always abusive to her and me. My mum just hated me, though I get why. She walked out on us when I was 8 and I haven't heard a peep from her since. From then on, my dad tortured me for years. I was a really active kid, so I got put into figure skating. I turned out to be bloody good at it, which ended up being my own grave. My dad saw he could make a buck off me, so he made me train for about 10 hours every single day. He’d beat me and rag on me whenever my performance dropped even a bit, and he strictly rationed my food,I could only have around 500 calories a day. I was stuck like that for years, and from the time I was 12 to 16, he sexually abused me too.

When I was 16, a training accident broke my back, which was fatal for my career. He was so furious with me that when I got discharged from the hospital, he bashed me so hard he broke my leg just to make sure I couldn't run away. Once my health "improved" and I could stand up again, he just dragged me straight back to training. I couldn't stop winning competitions. I had fame, I was good-looking, and I’ve always been really sweet and affectionate, which my dad knew how to market bloody well. But I wasn't allowed any luxuries or care, all the cash went to him for drugs, booze, and bringing hookers home. By the time I hit 20, nothing was getting better, but I managed to get a scholarship to train in Spain. I moved there for two years and lived on my own for the first time in my life. And wow, I just blew up. I quit the sport in the worst way possible, swearing out everyone who’d ever treated me like rubbish. I came back to Australia and kicked my dad out of the house ,a house he’d bought with my money. I threatened to kill him if he didn't rack off. He took all my money, but I didn't give a stuff. I was in my own home, alone and peaceful for the very first time. I went out to the yard where my horses were and just went for a ride. When I got back inside, I looked in the mirror properly for the first time. I was completely wrecked. I'm 187 cm (6'1") and I weighed under 55 kg (121 lbs), you could literally see the bones in my skull. I’ve been seeing doctors since then. Physically, I’ve got stunted growth, bulimia nervosa, anaemia, severe malnutrition, and osteoporosis. As for the mental side, I haven't seen a psychologist yet,I honestly reckon there’s nothing left to fix in me. I hate my life. I spend all day at home with my horses, I don't want to do anything else, ever, and I hate everything. Sometimes I just think about giving up and dying

What should I do?

I'm sorry for being negative, I'm so sorry

I had a tumultuous childhood, my mum (F52) was only 18 when she met my dad who at the time was 32 years old, they met at her boyfriend’s funeral after he died in her arms after a car accident. Not the strongest foundations for a family. I’ve always harboured some negative thoughts towards my dad because of how he took advantage of my mum in her vulnerable state as a teenager. However I have worked hard to maintain relationships as I don’t have a lot of family and they have put the effort in to have a relationship with me.

My relationship with my dad was pretty up and down, we had very differing opinions on women in the world and we had a lot of arguments but I felt like he respected how I have always been a strong woman, he raised me to be that way after all. He moves to the other side of the world for a marriage when I was 19 and we fell off a bit. I moved to that country for a few years and really worked on rebuilding our relationship. I’m now back in my home country away from him and my mum has dropped some bombs about him.

She told me that when I was about 4/5 years old, my dad was arrested for publicly masturbating over a woman in her front garden from his car. She told me he enforced “conjugal rights“ with her and it was often non consensuaL. She told me more details about their meeting and how he coerced her into a relationship and it’s frankly disgraceful. This is everything I despise about the world. I have always accepted that he’s just a little misogynistic and that maybe our arguments did a little good in convincing him of certain things. I had no idea the level of his depravity, that he is actually a straight up sex offender.

I have had my faith in men a little bit more squashed and it’s affecting me pretty deeply. I think about the woman who was violated by him and how she probably wasn’t the only one, how they have we traumatised by this man who I call my dad.

I don’t know where to go from here, he’s a bit of a sad lonely old man at this point and to be honest it seems like maybe that’s what he deserves. But I am struggling to push down the part of me that cares about my dad and it hurts thinking about what he will feel when/if I were to confront him or cut him off over it. Has anyone experienced anything like this and can perhaps offer some insight or advice?

TL:DR Found out my dad is somewhat of a sexual predator, not sure how to go about it.

I have been raised by a narcissistic mother, no need to go deeper about what I've through. I live now in my own apartment, I cut my family off for 5 years, then she suddenly reached out to me because my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the closest sibling to him was me. I know that she reached to me just to use me to help her golden child. Anyways, I love my siblings and I feel bad for them having to live in that house in denial or maybe they feel helpless i don't know. So I took that chance to be in contact with my siblings, I go there every two weeks, she treats me in a very formal way as if I am a neighbor which i actually like because i do not want her to cross my boundaries. The other day something really stupid happened and she got angry while texting me and she said " you should've shut your mouth and took my permission" (mind you it is a personal decision regarding attending a relatives gathering) I can hear her sharp tone through the screen I just know her core personality. Anyways, this triggered me I got angry my friend was next to me and I just couldn't hold myself together I started shouting and saying she has no business in my life and I don't want to go to them anymore ..etc. The thing is.... when my trauma is triggered I always have this nightmare of being trapped in that house and no matter how much i wanted to leave i just can't do it and she keeps following me and harassing me in my sleep. A lot of times I wake up shouting and other times my mood gets ruined the whole day and I just feel emotionally unstable. I always get this nightmare when I'm triggered. How to get rid of this deep fear that is carved into my subconscious? I'm an adult and live on my own I just know she can't do anything but I've been through hell before that with her, the most feeling i had back then was feeling helpless and trapped, and these two feelings always come to the surface as a nightmare even though while awake i can rationalise any bad emotions but deep down it is still there :( is there some kind of way to, like, retrain my brain or smth?

I can't believe this is fucking happening to me again. Just as I was finally making a statement at work, proving my worth, and deeply understanding the domain, offering fixes I get triggered and now FOR ONE WEEK I have been fucking DEAD. I can't believe this is happening. I'm juts dead. It's all panic and disassociation and hot flashes and fight or flight.

I have trauma regarding masculinity. I'm a COWARD. I'm scared of other men. Confrontations trigger me. Every year I get triggered like at least 3 times. But this time the trigger came from a very unexpected place

I was hanging out with my only friend, woman, 10 years older than me. All of a sudden she says smth like, you know if it wasn't you, I'd never hangout with a guy who doesn't pay the whole bill when we hangout. It shows that you're not masculine and have low testosterone. But you are just not socialized, so that's okay. I disassociated immediately, started having hot flashes, and started staring at one point. She realized and starting endlessly telling me how im a great guy, how she appreciates me, etc etc. I didn't hear any of it. It was all muffled.

I come home, cant fall asleep till like 5 am. Then I wake up and everything is destroyed. The deep fucking knowledge I gained at work is gone. I'm panicking. I started just not working and playing video games all day. Stopped cooking. My whole life gone.

This was supposed to be my star week at work. I was supposed to finally prove that I'm not there by accident. I'm just so tired.

...and if it hasn't yet, you probably haven't gone deep enough.

There is a rage that lives beneath survival. A rage that builds when you realize how much of your life was shaped by someone else's dysfunction. How much of your personality is a byproduct of having to survive chaos. How many of your choices were never really choices at all, just coping mechanisms disguised as decisions.

And when you finally see it, when you feel it fully, it's not pretty. But it's necessary because anger is clarity. Anger is boundaries forming in real time. Anger is the nervous system screaming, "I'm not safe yet."

Let yourself feel it.

It's not the end of healing. Sometimes, it's the beginning of it.

I feel like a toddler who hasn't yet grown out of my ego-centrism, but I'm twenty and it's been eight years since I was diagnosed with PTSD. I do, of course, understand why I made everything about my trauma at the beginning; I was twelve, actively undergoing chemotherapy, paralysis, etc. But I still think I handled it better then, when I was twelve, than I do now. For the past two years I've basically cried every single day, often for hours. I'm somehow able to relate almost any sad event to my own trauma, and work myself into a crash-out. Literally any time I see a video about some sort of medical issue (cancer, Alzheimer's, etc.), I start sobbing uncontrollably for the next couple hours, even though my trauma is nothing to what they had to deal with. I feel like I'm trying so hard to hold on to this one thing that happened nearly a decade ago, even though everyone else has moved on.

I’m in a relationship that I desperately want out of but I’m really conflict avoidant and it’s stops me from leaving. The person I’m with is very verbally abusive and is very controlling like to the point where I can’t go or do anything without her being there including riding to my work and sleeping in the car. I want out of this 4 year relationship but I just can’t pull the trigger on doing it I can’t do seemingly anything without it causing her to cuss me out or just making my life difficult. She’s cheated on me as well multiple times but I just stay to avoid the conflict. I need advice on what I can do to help with this thanks.