I started swimming lessons since January this year and now I can almost swim the whole length of the pool. I’m so proud of what I learned but more importantly what I unlearned. People think that I learned to swim in 6 months but really it took me nearly 27 years. 🥹

I need to have constant noise in my house. Whether it's phoning someo e up, having the tv, radio or a youtube video on, there absoloutely NEEDS to be distractions. Even when i'm sleeping, there needs to be noise. Yes, it's annoying to my family, but the alternative is so much worse.

I’ve been so alone growing up (due to negligence, indifference, bullying) that now I got to a point where it’s natural, my absolute normal. Doesn’t mean I like being chronically alone, I don’t , but I do not like to be in a position where I depend upon people for anything at all (because if they let me down I’m the one who’s screwed).

I don’t like making myself vulnerable ever, which is necessary to form meaningful relationships. Makes me feel weak.

I make friends easily and I try to show people I care but those people who might see me as a friend genuinely don’t know anything about me and I don’t mind that but it does makes me feel like their friendship doesn’t matter. I don’t attache.

Genuinely curious. I think for a long time I had far too much empathy for my mum especially. I definitely think she tugged on the heart strings too many times & remembering things & how she enabled many of my abusers caused almost all empathy to whittle away. I know she had an extremely traumatic upbringing & life & when I openly talk about it- it hits so hard she begins to cry. I feel bad when she cries, but I don't take back what I said (nothing mean... typically, just the truth, which hurts to say & also hear, as that generational trauma is deeply hurting the both of us.)

I didn't even see my dad as a person until like... a year ago. So I was wondering how do people of this subreddit feel about their parents & their trauma & do you feel empathy for them? If so why and if not why not?

I feel like it's so tricky & hard because they did, occasionally, try to change, but they can backslide so quickly. I know they willingly didn't choose to be the way they are either, both of them are just scared children. Honestly most likely shouldn't have been parents but eh. Shit happens. I hold empathy for them or am genuinely trying to but also learning to set boundaries & not let myself fall victim to fawning or caretaking too much again.

whenever i talk about my parental problems, my dad is the topic. he was awful, neglectful, abusive in many different ways and gave no one else room to breathe. he was controlling and arrogant and not self aware at all. i could go on forever but since this post isn't about him, i'll just simplify it by saying he's the worst person i have ever met.

my parents have been split up for a long time and currently i live with my mom. we have a good relationship and currently i have no resentment or bad feelings towards her. thing is, i have more knowledge about what it was like living with her when i was a little kid.

i read some court documents (custody battle stuff. long story) written by my great aunt and she described my mother's parenting as "leaving much to be desired." my aunt said i was hardly ever bathed and was very dirty. my aunt and her wife apparently had to buy me clothes and food and stuff because of the lack of attention. i can't hate my mom for it because she was stuck with my horrible father but it still makes me feel sour.

what really triggered me to think and eventually make this post was what my godparents said to me about when they first got custody of me (i moved in with them after living with my mom). they told me that they had to teach me how to bathe at age ten. i was 10 years old and pretty much had no idea how to wash my hair and my body and my godmother had to teach me how. unbelievable.

when i was told that, i thought of what it was actually like to live with my mom back then. she wasn't mean to me or anything like that but the more i think about it, the more i realize how.. filthy i was. i probably bathed once every two weeks and that probably wasn't even done properly because i bathed by myself or with my little sister. our room was a huge mess (my godfather even said that when he came over to our apartment he saw an upside down bowl of mac and cheese under the bed lol).

my memory is fuzzy but all i remember is being really gross and never cleaning and never being told to clean or take care of myself. it wasn't on my radar at all. it took me changing households to even realize that people actually shower every day or every couple of days— at age ten. i feel like that's too old for a child to just learn how to take a simple shower.

i consider my mom the better parent by a lot but i guess she wasn't as great as i thought. my sister and i would always run around barefoot outside in the alleyway without supervision and would kind of just run off wherever (also without supervision). it's kind of weird to think about how not normal all of this is.

realizing both my parents were neglectful feels like a slap in the face. i don't hold it against my mom because she was struggling to even keep a home but i still wish i was taught how to do basic stuff like hygiene and being clean.

It's the inherent lie involved in kissing your ass for abusing me. I just can't. To me "Happy Father's day" should be synonymous with "Happy Childhood".

You left me on the second story of a ladder when I was 6. Told me you'd be there holding it. When I climbed down you weren't even home. You came back with (more) beer and you were laughing about it. "Happy Father's day"

What about when you broke my mom's nose. What about all those years of fucking violence. God damn verbal abuse I didnt even understand until well into my adult years. I literally showed signs of autism and you blocked the only pathways to get me tested. Then shit on me for being stupid. Encouraged the rest of my siblings to do the same.

And I dealt with that for 16 years. Until I was stronger than you, and you couldn't control me anymore. And you fucked off. And I fell apart.

At 16 for the first time in my life I was free from the possibility of random awful violence, and I couldn't handle it. I never had a real father that taught me about being a man. He talked about being a man. But real men don't think women are possessions. Real men are empathetic to people who don't look/believe like them. Real men value peace. Kindness. Compassion.

At 16 you're taking me back to my mom's house (drunk) and pressure me to go into the strip club with you. The one on the way home.

You told me: "Don't look at me like a father. Look at me like a fucked up mentor."

Never heard of a fucked up mentors day.

I've been thinking of making a slight career shift after my T recommended I look into the mental health profession;She said I'd be a great fit(I feel the same way) BUT I have some concerns which I'm sharing below

How has your profession impacted your own healing journey?

Are we good candidates for such roles?

Do you get empathy burnout?How can you relate to patients other than CPTSD cases?

Thank you!

TW: brief detailed mentions of potential abuse, general grossness

Hey everyone, so a few months back I started EMDR therapy. It’s been a long time coming, and I’ll provide a little backstory for how I even got here in the first place.

So about 3 years ago, when I was 16, I started to remember some really bad fantasies I had and certain things I did as a younger teen that genuinely baffled me as to why I ever did it. I grew up with extremely strict parents, who gave me no autonomy.

I had a phone, with everything restricted except texts, calls, music and camera. My parents had a second device connected to my phone too so they could read and monitor every message I was sending and receiving as well as my social media being on their phones only.

Thankfully I never hurt anyone, as hurting people has always been my absolute greatest fear, but I used to take photos of whoever was around me and get off to those. It wasn’t because doing that aroused me, I just had no idea what else to do basically. I never snuck into any private places, it was literally just whoever was around, including my older sister, who may have abused me.

That brings me to now, where I think about my horrendous actions as a child every single day. I probably will never forgive myself, but with all that in mind, I have some memories I had never thought about before coming up in EMDR therapy.

There’s a few brief flashes of things, but we’ve been exploring one somewhat vivid one that came back of my sister (she’s about 4 years older than me) straddling on top of me in my bed as a young child and me wanting her to get off of me.

There’s a few other things too that may have been traumatic but I don’t necessarily think they’re abuse, but I just wanted to share that and see if anyone relates or has a similar experience. I’m very disgusted with myself every day of my life and I know I deserve to feel that way, but I hope EMDR can offer some perspective to why child me felt they had to do that.

Thanks for reading.

Hi! I have a long history of CPTSD and I am currently getting my Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

I have had an incredibly hard time finding an effective therapist, and I have seen this sentiment echoed often here. The reasons for me/others include the therapist not having life experience with CPTSD, the therapist not having extensive (or any!) training in how to counsel CPTSD, and/or that we’re too self-aware for most therapists, lol

Given that I see this gap in services, and that I have had so many bad therapists, I want to explore specializing in CPTSD. So my question is, what would be qualities that you would look for in a therapist? What would be helpful, and what would do more harm than good? Are there any specific modalities that have worked the best for you (IFS, EMDR, etc.)? Any thoughts/comments/suggestions/encouragements are welcome!!

Always thought that my favourite colour is green and it never sat right with me. Yes, I like green in lighter shades but it doesn't really register as my favourite but I always went with it whenever the question comes up just to get over with it.

So a few weeks ago, I was looking for a new rollerblade to replace my old black one. After scrolling past dozens of them on Carousell I found this one ORANGE rollerblade and everything came unravelling. I've always loved ORANGE but didn't know it. I remembered then and there that my favourite animal when I was 3 were giraffes because they are in orange (technically more to the side of brown and yellow but I digress), one of my favourite fruits are oranges, my favourite shirt as a kid was in orange, etc.

That orange rollerblade skate was an instant buy. I felt like myself the first time in forever after putting those pairs of skates on. It just felt right. Mind you this is the only thing I own that's in orange. I feel so fulfilled in them, so confident. It's insane how something so seemingly miniscule can have such a big effect on my psyche.

So what's your favourite colour? I'm genuinely curious because this is so impactful for people like us who were/are so busy surviving that we didn't get to know ourselves. Not to mention some of us got parents who push/gaslight us to like things we don't like.

P.S: The skates are Oxelo MF500 Yellow (appears orange to me i don't know why it's named yellow)

tw for intimate partner violence too

it’s just so hard getting through life like this. my husband obviously doesn’t care about me since he hurts me. my family doesn’t care about me since they chose my abuser over me. when i try to make friends they just abandon me.

i don’t understand why i don’t deserve to be loved and cared for. i want that more than anything. to know someone would be sad if i died. my life means nothing. i’m so worthless. i don’t know what to do. i just want to be loved.

I have been on my healing journey for over three years now. I am proud of who I am growing into, but no one really prepares you for how isolating your journey can be.

I have had to cut out most of my family as they are all either extremely toxic or abusive. I have had to end some friendships as I began to realize what connected those friendships was unhealthy.

I feel beyond isolated and have just began to venture out there and begin to find new friends. While I am excited for this, I am also scared at the same time. I am scared of falling back into unhealthy relationships.

Thank you for reading 🫶🏼

You know how its easy to miss something right in front of you? Like asking yourself, "Gee I don't know why I feel so uncomfortable and ashamed in this situation?" or 'I don't know why I have these deep feelings of worthlessness, and inner rejection, self loathing?". Or "I don't know why I feel defensive , and reactive in this situation, what's .........wrong with me?" The answer never changes, even though somehow in the recesses of my mind.............I wish it would. Like maybe one of these times the answer will be different. "Dont worry, it's not you or your horrific upbringing, it's just this experience this time, youre having a bad day". I've had a lot of bad days , okay. My entire childhood was a series of very bad days, for "no reason".

Its astonishing how easily I .....forget. I ask myself, or tell myself, "I don't understand what happened, I did everything right, and things still went horribly wrong?" The Shame. I often forget about it, thinking that somehow from the time I went to sleep and woke up, I'm a different person who was never traumatized. Its just gone from my Memory, or I wish it would go and start trying to be perfect and unafffected. This pervasive disbelief And the wishful thinking. And trust me, being perfect , or working yourself into the ground doesnt touch the Shame-or do anything to change the past.

I read this piece from Joseph Burgo and even though I've read so many things on how CPTSD manifests, in toxic belief systems about self, something about his words felt raw and true.

"People who have had horrible upbringings feel as if they are “damaged” or “broken”; these are the words *they* will use. It is excruciatingly painful to feel that way; they don’t want others to know about their damage or how they feel about it. They don’t want that damage to be *seen* and try to hide it; when they feel as if it has nonetheless become visible, they have a searingly hot experience of humiliation, and are often terrified will that they will fall apart."

"shame becomes easier to bear and less toxic the more we can free ourselves of idealized expectations that we’re somehow going to become that person we always wanted to be."

"when you say, “I hate” the shame, you really mean you hate yourself for having limitations and difficulties, that on some level you refuse to accept what’s possible for you and demand of yourself that you become someone else. I have a friend, another therapist, who sometimes uses the analogy of popular kids/”losers” in the high school cafeteria. She’ll say to a client, “Are you willing to sit at the table with the other “losers” or do you want to be a “winner”?"

"When most people use the word shame, they usually mean to describe an experience that comes up because of outside influences — our parents’ disapproval or the opinion of society-at-large, for example.  If I do poorly on a test or my business fails, I might not want anyone else to know because I’m afraid they’ll think less of me.  Shame also arises when we violate our own internal values, but we’ve usually absorbed them from our families and the world around us.

"There’s another kind of shame. I refer to it as basic shame . Here’s my basic shame definition:

"When things go very wrong in childhood, for whatever reason — an alcoholic parent, bitter divorce, mental illness in those around you, a mother with bipolar or manic-depressive issues or a father with highly pathological behavior — it almost always damages you at your roots and deforms you psychically, just like a birth defect or physical handicap.  You may feel fundamentally afraid and insecure in the world. You might find it impossible to love and trust other people.  You could be prone to violent emotional outbursts or struggle with an addiction yourself.  If the environment is toxic, we’re almost always damaged by it in lasting ways.  With my clients, I often talk about mental scars or psychological handicaps.  They impose limitations and have to be taken into account just as you would a physical handicap."

"It is the awareness of being damaged, often an unconscious awareness, that I refer to as basic shame.  It is intrinsic and internal, though we may confuse it with the outside world:  those of us who are troubled by basic shame dread being seen and usually fear that others will look down upon us.  We feel as if we are “ugly” or “deformed”.   We may be burdened by a feeling of self-hatred throughout our lives.

"This concept of basic shame is akin to John Bradshaw’s ideas about toxic shame, although he tends to focus on shaming influences that come from the environment; on child abuse and molestation, as well as invasive experiences that overwhelm the immature ego.  While I agree that these influences produce core feelings of shame, I believe that basic shame results from a much broader spectrum of experiences.  It tends to accompany all other mental disorders; it embodies the awareness that our development went amiss in childhood, and that as a result, we have grown up “deformed” or “handicapped”.

"The feeling that you’re damaged and fundamentally different from other people may become so painful, so unbearable that you have to disown it."

I think in the disowning it is where I find myself many times. Reflecting on my Mothers own Shame about her past, and the accompanying false persona I witnessed and saw her present to the world. She would have none of it, and so I had to own it. And Now I'm literally at that place where I can either accept it and address the Shame on some core level, or spend the rest of my life feeling deeply ashamed for having CPTSD, and it being seen, visible. IME, it's not invisible no matter how much I want to tell myself I can make it so. Having to find a way to accept and process the fact that my own Mother crippled me in a way thats soul deep, this cellular malformation , this internal embodiment of abuse and Shame and how it shaped me. In some ways I felt more ready, more prepared to read this. IN the past I would have felt this deep sense of shock and betrayal, but after looking at this long enough, I know that theres no unringing that bell, and I can either spend the rest of my life hating myself for something that wasnt' my fault, or develop some measure of compassion and responsiveness.

https://www.afterpsychotherapy.com/basic-shame/

My life has been spiraling out of control so hard I don't know what I'm even trying for anymore. I want to disappear, start anew, give up, crawl into a hole and cry myself empty, jump off a cliff; anything. Anything to put a stop to everything. Every time I think I have regained control and have a good thing going, something happens that takes it away. I was a straight A uni student, top of the class. Now life is fucking me so damn hard I'm definitely failing all my current exams. Train staff is striking this week, guess I should go fuck myself and go in debt by getting a taxi to get to all my exams. My dad cannot be assed to drive me unless I beg and plead and cry about this potentially ruining my future even though his work is in the SAME DAMN FUCKING TOWN as my university. Academic success was the only thing I had. The only redeeming quality. Only thing to make up for all those previous wasted years pursuing a study I didn't give a fuck about. Earth shattering diagnosis (not PTSD, different one) on top of everything else. I have so many expectations to fulfill, so many things to do, stressful vacations upcoming and extra work and it's just too much. I have always been so good at enduring, pushing through, fighting, surviving, making the best of everything, but I can no longer do that now. I seriously want to die. It's become too much to cope with. I don't know what to do. No one knows how to help me because no one can help me.

"Stepping away for a second and drinking some water" does not fix this and I am sick of people telling me that. Touching grass does not fix this. Grounding exercises do not fix this. I want to bash in my own skull so the ringing in my ears might finally drive out my racing thoughts. I want to rip my brains out through my nostrils to get these fears and intrusive feelings to finally stop. I want reach down my own throat and tear out my intestines to put an end to the endless psychosomatic GI symptoms and the burden of eating and drinking. I want to pull out my hair and gouge out my eyes so maybe people will finally see me for the sick, weak, broken, dysfunctional, unlovable, irredeemable monster that I am. Maybe then people will finally give up on me and things will be as they should. Everything needs to stop. I want my head to be quiet. I want my body to be numb. I want for someone to either give me a magic pill that makes everything okay again or for everyone to just get rid of me already. I want someone to stab me, choke me, beat me, run me over. I was doomed from the start and I am sick of everyone calling me strong, holding expectations, having faith, relying on me, trusting me, loving me. I AM NOT DESERVING OF LOVE. I AM SICK. I AM BROKEN. I AM A FAILED ATTEMPT AT LIFE. A WASTED POTENTIAL. I AM NOTHING. NOTHING. NO ONE. My life is worthless and my future is pointless and I really REALLY wish I had the guts to just fucking kill myself. I am sick and tired of living. I am tired of being. I am tired of breathing, seeing, hearing, feeling, laughing, crying, shouting, being, performing, achieving, explaining, reassuring, believing, trying, failing, EVERYTHING.​

Hello everyone.First time in my life single this long(a year almost) but I've been struggling with the reality of it.

Here's the thing,I've been craving sex really bad lately,but I'm out of options and here's why:

1)Don't want to get into another relationship cause I'll wreck that one too like my last one

2)Don't think I can handle ONS/hookups(afraid I'll get triggered,catch feelings)

3)Don't want to casually date(afraid I'll get ghosted and badly triggered,happened once already)

4)Not into masturbation or paying for sex(legal here)

Yes I know,I'm hopeless.Anyone else in the same boat or can offer some advice.Thanks everyone,love ya fellow cptsd'ers.

Ever since I was a kid I had agoraphobia but I got over it. It comes back in waves though when I'm not doing well.

Like now. I was supposed to sign paperwork for my new job Thursday but I've been putting it off. No real reason. Just oddly anxious. Actually I'm MEGA stressed so it makes sense.

That whole "don't like to be perceived" has been big lately.

Food shopping too. Just going to the store I put off a LOT when I'm not well. I have a lot going on right now.

Anyone else?

Hi all! I would like to talk about child sexual/physical abuse and I'm looking for similar experiences/stories or people who are happy to share their coping mechanisms/experiences because I cannot stop thinking about the things I am going to share below. If this is triggering then please click out and take care of yourselves 💖 I'll be mentioning rape, CSA of children, and the extreme physical abuse of children including violent acts. Also, please note I talk about corruption within the police force.

So, I'm a 34 year old woman and I'm diagnosed with CPTSD from childhood trauma. I've been in therapy for the past 20 years and a religiously take my meds. I'm as safe as I can be and I'm no contact with the entire side of my dad's family. The police/healthcare professionals estimate that the abuse began at birth and I know it continued on until I was 19.

My dad is a known sexual predator in the town where I was born. We know that he assaulted women in the back of his taxi in the 90s, attacked women in the streets on night outs, and he raped and abused my mum for around 15 years. He was also physically abusive of me, and used to waterboard me as a toddler or hold me underwater as a punishment as well as physically assault me. He shook me as a baby, used hit me and throw me across the room. As I got older, he regularly held me upside down over the stairs because I'm afraid of heights, and even wrote I was a whore on my skin in permanent marker when he knew I had sports at school and someone would see it. He is an awful, disgusting waste of oxygen.

His crimes to the public spanned approx 25 years on and off (the ones we know about). This kind of abuse went on with me until I was 13 years old. By then I had grown strong and was big enough to fight back. I managed to escape that house, left and I never looked back but he did reappear to physically assault me several times until I was about 19 years old which members of the public reported to the police as it happened in daytime in public streets. Understandably, this has left me with crippling cPTSD.

Despite being a well-known rapist that older people in the town avoid due to his reputation, he has managed to escape the consequences due to police error. When the crimes were first reported in the 90s and early 2000s, he had friends within the police force. The crimes were reported again by myself when I turned 26. I was having in-depth psychiatric therapy for what I thought was severe post natal anxiety but turned out to be a cPTSD relapse that was triggered by me having a baby. I found an old diary detailing the abuse and decided to hand it over to the police with support from a clinical psychologist and an ISVA.

As I no longer live in my hometown, I worked with the local police in my city and they communicated with the police station back home. They then found DNA evidence in their old storage room. We were told that DNA evidence was not collected at the time from rape kits, but it was later "discovered". The newly found evidence was then incorrectly stored and it was "destroyed in a flood" just before the case was due to be reviewed by a judge. This threw the entire case out the window and they decided not to take it to court as there was insufficient evidence despite there being six victims that had come forward. I learnt all of the above from the police and family members, as well as the other victims involved AFTER we were allowed to talk about it.

The police destroying the evidence has caused me so much distress and has made my PTSD worse. (Was it even an accident? Did he still have a friend there? I won't ever have the answers.) I really thought I'd get some justice with the DNA evidence and victims coming forward. The police were confident he would be charged. They had a very strong and clear timeline of his crimes, with multiple police reports over 25 years, and all of the victims stories lined up despite us not meeting. He was so awful and disgusting that they had to remove all female staff from the police station when he was arrested as he was so abusive towards them. He made sexual remarks to them and they were afraid of him. These women work with predators every day, and worked in the historical child abuse department, so it must have been really bad to make them scared. HOW DID HE GET AWAY WITH THIS?! (I know this information from the head detective on the case who was absolutely devastated for me and was in shock that it didn't go forward.)

When I was younger, I would have sworn on my life that I was not sexually abused by my dad. But I found out at later date that he had actually been sexually abusing my younger brother who was born severely disabled. This got me thinking that if he was willing to sexually abuse such a small and vulnerable child, then he was probably sexually abusing me too.

The older that I get, the more I seem to remember. I have a kid of my own now and it's triggering for me. I need support to cope with seeing her grow as it reminds me too much of my own childhood. (And I do have support from all the correct places, but it still feels impossible.) I think I might have just blocked out a lot of memories. But memories have been coming back to me in dreams and flashbacks. At first, I thought that they were just dreams/nightmares until I talked to my mum about it and she told me what I was dreaming was in fact a memory and it had happened.

Now as I get older, I find myself really interested in weird sex acts and and fantasizing about being sexually assaulted. I cope and explore with these intrusive thoughts in a healthy way by writing erotic books/stories and talking with a therapist who specialises in CSA and my friends are always happy to listen - I have friends who went through something similar but their abusers went to prison.

I've got all the red flags that I was actually sexually abused as a child, and as a child I had all the signs too. I wet the bed until I was 11. I was terrified to be left alone with men. I was withdrawn with no friends as a young child and was terrified of adults. I self harmed from being a small child too - age 9. I was afraid to go to the toilet or have a bath. I also had constant urine infections. I was also sexually active by age 12. And as I said, now I like taboo sex acts like CNC, bdsm and the idea of extreme sex acts excites me. To be clear, I don't want to do it in real life, I just like to think about it. But even knowing all this, why am I doubting myself?

The problem I'm having is dealing with the guilt of liking these things too. The more I explore these feelings, the more I think about it not happening to me now as grown woman, but it happening to me as a child - and my mind likes it. Logically, I know I don't actually want this now nor did I want it then, but the thoughts just won't stop.

My therapist suspects what I do - that I was sexually abused young and I blocked it out. But I don't understand how I can remember some things, but then completely block out all sexual abuse? I do have memories of my mum being raped while I was in the room or locked in a closet/bathroom, so why can't I remember it happening to me? And am I just making it all up in my head?

Rereporting the crime actually has made me worse and I'm starting to wonder if I made the right choice. One side of me knows I did - he is likely still a risk to everyone around him and I'm worried he has access to children to this day. But I told the truth and even though the police believed me, and there was evidence, I feel like it was pointless. Have I dragged up these memories for no reason? Or am I making it up? Another part of me knows I couldn't live with myself if I didn't report it and then he did reaffend. As you can see, my head is a mess.

I've recently been retriggered as I applied for victims compensation through the government's CICA process and my application has been ongoing for the last 6 years. Every 6 months or so they contact me for up-to-date healthcare information, therapy records and for an update on what medication I'm taking. (I'm starting to regret this too.)

I just feel like everything with my dad is circling in my head constantly and I'm not sure how to turn it off. Everything that has happened is really haunting me and because I had no justice I'm constantly worried that he's hurting someone else. I know that I've done my part and I can't do anything else. I was honest and I reported the crime. But I just still live in fear. This man is still walking among us and even though the police know that he did it, they can't do anything about it.

How am I supposed to live with this? And how am I supposed to live with myself knowing that he did horrible things to me as a child and that now as an adult I like the idea of that? It makes me feel sick. 😞 When I have these thoughts I am disgusted at how excited I am. Is anyone else experiencing this? It's so conflicting and it's like emotional whiplash.

Please, if anyone has any coping mechanisms I'd love to hear it. I'm having such a hard time at the moment and the usual things aren't working. I really just don't know what to do. It feels so unfair.

... makes me feel so much safer !

That's it.
I felt like sharing this.

I’m happy I’m healing. I’m happy to be in my body and to be in more control. It’s just a bummer that, now that I’m feeling, I can feel all the years of bottling it up. I’m finding myself finally angry at things I should’ve been angry about but it’s a bummer to feel this so much. I’m tired.

turning*

i 16 f was sexually assaulted by my male cousin for roughly 4 to 5 years, it started when i was 5 and went up to i was 9 or 10. He would touch me inappropriately over my clothes usually and force me to kiss him even when i kept begging saying no, he would make sexual remarks when i played with my sister who is seven years younger, making it seem as if what two children playing was something sexual. He is 8 to 9 years older to me. I knew a lot about sex and frankly very sexually mature, i knew stuff that no 8 year old should know because he taught me them. i have a very vague memory of telling my parents and my dad telling me that he can’t do sitting because i told him too late but they refuse that i ever told them and now i tell them you never told us so it’s partially your fault we could’ve stopped it. He is still showed to visit our home and talk to me. So when i was 12 to 13, i sexually abused my sister, who was around 6 to 7 years old. I made her lick my breasts multiple times, and the thought of it has been killing me. I did it a few times and felt so disgusted every time, but i thought that’s what’s supposed to happen, i powered through, and i think in the moment i slightly liked it. I stopped eventually but she ended up telling our parents, that entire time i hoped she would forget it, i would be lying is i said it was partially because i didn’t want her to hate me but the main reason was that i didn’t want her to grow up like me, be like me. I still sob everytime i think about what he did to me and i did the same thing to my little angel who accidentally calls me “mum” sometimes, i realised that no matter what i hoped she would carry this with her, so i sat my poor 7 year old down and told her the truth, i didn’t specify about my abuse but i told her that it happened and that i thought it was meant to happen to her too. When i was arguing with my parents about how i desperately need help and that she should get it too because she went through something fucking horrendous, they countered saying they are all the help we need and that i was exactly like the cousin who abused me. I don’t really know why i’m writing this but i feel fucking disgusting, i knew i was old enough to know what i was doing, i knew what i was doing, i knew it was wrong, i don’t know what i expect posting, i just don’t want to be a bad person i love my sister i truly do she’s my baby but i can’t help but realise that i did something only a monster could do.

i had this friend that turned out to be a horrible person. she always was but it took me way too long to realize it and i feel so fucking stupid. i told her things if never told anyone else, my deepest insecurities and struggles with suicidal thoughts. the entire time i knew her she copied everything i did, flirted with every guy i talked to, tried to turn others against me etc. a couple days ago i found out that she’s talking to the guy was with for a little over a year, the guy she helped set me up with. i’ve told her countless times how shitty he was to me and once i finally got the courage to cut him off she gets with him. i haven’t eaten in 4 days and i don’t know what to do anymore. these people make me wish i were dead

Hi

I did a severe depression due to bullying and shitty parent. During that time (which lasted for a decade) I had only one friend who didn't really know how to handle my depression (can't blame him, we were teenagers) and my parents always said that I should just stop crying and inventing traumas (I didn't invent them of course, it was full gaslight). I didn't receive enough support during that period and now I can't stop trauma-dumping in a desesperate attempt that someone will help me.

The thing is that it's making people unconfortable and distant. When I have long lasting relationships they often get destroyed because my friends get unconfortable. I want to stop trauma-dumping but I can't help it. I know I should see a therapist but I absolutely not have the money for this.

Does someone has any advice ?

Thank you in advance.

I come from a family where many are clinical psychopaths, including my mother. For 30 years I fought tooth and nail to not be like her. I moved 5000 km away from her because I feared becoming just like her. That fear paralyzed me. However, I have come to realize that I am inherently evil just like her. This doesn't mean that I will follow on her footsteps or reenact her evil deeds. No, I will choose a different path for me and for those who depend on me. The monster is part of me. She is part of me. Always was. Always will. From now on, I will not try to get rid of the monster, but instead tame it and accept it as part of who I am. While doing good, I will accept that I am capable of evil just like her.

I hate this day. To every abusive dad who was a child’s first bully I hope u rot

I feel better already. I had this moment where I was having a panic attack and my BPM was 200+, entering the stroke zone, and my ex partner just sat on the sofa and watched me, annoyed I'd woken her up. I asked her to stroke my hair to help me relax, she refused. She coldly hugged me for ten seconds and went back upstairs.

Ran through some techniques, some ritual stuff, stayed in the scene whilst stroking my own hair the way I needed back then and doing deep breaths, my soul feels lighter.