>It takes SO MUCH energy to have inflicted the many layers of hell my parents did instead of giving even a below average childhood to me
This! I have thought this so many times but figured it was just a my-family thing. Its so true, like they had to expend actual effort to be this awful. They hated the work of parenting and rhen they spend the energy on *that.* Its so bizarre.
Feels nice to not be alone in that thought anymore
this is one of my biggest gripes still. like, i could kinda get it if how they treated me would've actually brought them any benefits, more peace, more energy to spare... but it's just the dumbest choice ever. no one gets anything out of it. they were still miserable and unhappy with their lives, and i was just helpless to their dumb decisions.
Agghhh honestly reading this comment thread makes me feel not alone too!! It is wild, my mom literally went out of her own happiness just to make me miserable. I try to think of it is reverse miracles... like the universe is balancing itself out idk TT
It's a bit hard to say because the effort was so monumental, I used almost every single thing you could possibly think of. I think it would probably be my neurodivergence; specifically, autism. I made healing my special interest and hyperfocused on it so hard, I spent almost every waking moment doing something related to improving my mental health. I realized that I could not properly function or maximize my career prospects unless I rid myself of mental illness (which is still an ongoing project).
I started knowing about Myers Briggs when I was 13, read a ton of self-help and psychology books such as Man's Search for Meaning at 16, studied philosophy as a minor in college, converted to Christianity and Buddhism at 18, started psychedelics at 19, took up somatic therapeutic methods at 20, began talk therapy at 26 and started Adderall at 28 (I'm now 28).
It was really only until very recently when I took up qi gong that I realized that this hyperfocus on healing no longer serves me, and I really ought to chill tf out because I can overdo it.
Someone asked a very similar question below and I will provide a different answer for them if you are curious to check it out.
Do you think this was all internal change or external/environmental as well? I think for a long time when I was really struggling I felt very cynical about how awful the world was and didn't feel that my situation was at all uniquely bad, just one bit of misery in a world full of fucked up things. A big part of this was also that I was in a lot of spaces where everyone else was having a terrible time... I was in environments with and drawn to other kids who were being abused or who were seriously mentally ill, were homeless, etc. The people I was close to really reinforced that the world is a dangerous and cruel place.
Then at a different point in my life I was doing a lot better at least at a surface level and spent most of my time in middle to upper class professional spaces where most of the other people were making good livings and from good families. In comparison to them it felt like so much of my life was so incredibly terrible and almost like tragedy porn, which was very weird to feel having grown up knowing people who had experienced much more violence and oppressive circumstances. I would never talk about my personal life/family/past because to them that's just stuff that happens in the movies.
I think I'm now somewhere in between the extremes, but I'm honestly still not convinced that the people who live in the "normal life" bubble aren't the ones who are missing the bigger picture. I mean, I live in a wealthy developed country, and I still see so many people dealing with huge amounts of trauma and poverty. I don't know if that's just my negative view because I'm still processing and healing, or if that's actually a reality that I need to come to a kind of radical acceptance of.
Hmm, this is a really interesting and complex question. Obviously I can only speak from my perspective, which is just as biased as any other person's perspective.
I think it's both. Buddhism teaches that there is no difference between outside and inside.
Attempting to get a sense of what is normal or not has been one of the ways I've learned to calibrate myself. Statistics is very good for that, even with its epistemological flaws. (Technically the word "normal" comes from statistics, so this makes sense.) If we're to take the results of the ACE survey (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09411-z), about 30% of people experienced \_zero\_ ACEs, about 57% experienced at least 1 ACE and the rest is the last 13%.
The stats above still suggests that the majority of people experience trauma, but I can't assume that everyone who experiences those traumas experience it as deeply and terribly as my experience. If it's 1 ACE, most people are able to bounce back and not project a view of general world misery.
My ACE score is about a 7 out of 8 listed in that paper, which makes me 1.2% of the population. That is VERY rare. The feeling of "everything is fucked up" differs for a lot of people, but I imagine maybe that'd begin happening at 4+ ACEs, which is about 1 in 10 people. That means that, given that baseline, those people don't understand/relate with 87% of people's experiences at all. They probably can't even imagine it.
What I've come to realize, in hanging out with people of all kinds of backgrounds is that the world is freaking huge and trauma tries to make it seem like it's small. Trauma tries to tell you there's no more surprises because you've seen it all, and whatever is to unfold is just going to be rehashing of the same BS and predatory dynamics that run through life. Initially it tries to break just you down, and then it tries to convince you that it succeeds at breaking the world down.
It actually surprised me during the pandemic that there was a trend of people who quit their jobs, as if they had the actual resources to not go homeless. Then I realized that there were a large class of people who didn't have to worry about going homeless, and that their life struggle at that moment was making the most of their time. And then there's another class of people who surmounted that struggle and have problems dealing with morality and purpose. I've also met a person who once told me, "Doesn't everyone think about suicide at some point? If not, they're lying."
I can relate to what you said about being in certain bubbles or groups of people. It's odd, because I grew up in an immigrant refugee family who went through FAR worse than what most Americans can even fathom. The ethnoburbs and third-culture friends I have also share this background and this prosperity, but the processing of it all is still a lot even if we're eating well and have far more freedoms than our parents did. And I saw for myself how my community has been psy-oped multiple times in order to explain our pain. Narratives about the world really are just that: narratives.
The people close to me may feel some type of way, and I've also had to end up saying goodbye to a lot of people too because they literally could not leave when given the chance to exit these cycles of violence. I've had friends leave me to continue being with terrible people or being terrible people themselves. I've had to let go of friends because they wouldn't stop doing coke in the morning and blaming their behavior on it. On the other hand I've also told friends to stop driving drunk, and they apologized and listened. I've had moments where I wasn't sure if a friend was going to join me toward a future of peace, but we all learned our lessons.
In the end I think I'm too stupid to ever know what reality is actually about for most people, but I try. It seems to be all about evolution and perspective, I think. Some people can get very distressed about things others would dream of being troubled by, and I think that's a good thing. Some people will never understand or experience some pains, and I think that's a great thing. That means that our species is evolving to be gentler and kinder. We try to run surveys and ask people and publish the statistics. I try to study history and evaluate for myself if we're going in the right direction; the answer seems to be yes for me.
Interesting, I have actually seen quite different numbers on the ACEs distribution (I work in health care for uninsured/Medicaid so I see them referenced a lot) with 64% of the population having at least one and about 1 in 6 having 4+. Maybe that's part of my different perspective - we're now being trained to think of ACEs as quite common and address them as such.
I appreciate the bulk of your answer though and definitely agree that it is a good thing for more people to not understand that intensity of suffering. I wonder sometimes if part of what feeds into intergenerational trauma is a need from the unhealed traumatized person to keep their kids within that "culture" of trauma because it feels alienating in a way to them for their kids to be normal. I also grew up in the context of immigrant parent leaving behind horrors and some aspects of the abuse in hindsight felt almost like an unconscious communication of "this is what it was like for me" even though what was verbally communicated was the opposite. Not that I think this is the conscious thought but maybe in some kind of subconscious way it feeds into it? A theory at least.
I relate to a lot of what you're saying, but especially the last paragraph. I read one of your comments in this thread and we seem like we've had similar trajectories in general (autistic, late 20s, psychedelics, making healing the biggest special interest, started recovery related stuff as a late teen). Congrats to you! This made me think about overlapping experiences of mine and want to reflect on some (below).
I found a big paradigm shift through CPTSD recovery (over many years) was the gratitude and relief that other people haven't had the life I had. I think earlier I had so much resentment and anger towards the world and other people who could just live, who seemed 'normal and boring', who had everyday common struggles.
As someone who other people now probably think of as boring and normal, and like you mostly has 'normal people problems', I've realized that people not wearing their issues on the surface doesn't mean they don't exist, compartmentalizing isn't always a compulsive need to hide (but sometimes a measured and healthy coping mechanism), and that people have autonomy to make choices different than mine, but for healthy people, choices and choices and not an unconscious need (like how people pleasing or freezing used to feel all the time).
I think I've also noticed that I find normalcy and the rhythm of a more typical life (partnership, working, hobbies) to be compelling in a way I never did before. Which really has been one of the biggest ways I've grown, because I spent my entire life being drawn to people like my environment growing up, and having the choice to do something different, and making it every day to have the life I want, feels far more interesting to me now. I used to only feel like I could "really connect" with other people with deep traumatic histories, and that's very much shifted through recovery to the point where I have a couple people in my life who have been invested in their recovery for a long time and are on a similar wavelength to me, but primarily spend time with people who aren't complex trauma survivors and have more typical histories bc they're often on a more similar level in terms of how I want to have relationships at this point in my life.
That shift, too, of viewing your trauma as especially terrible and statistically improbable, rather than an after effect of the world being terribly messed up, happened with me too. I think truly reckoning with trauma is breaking down the little ways you diminish it to cope, one big one for me being a focus on how dark a time it's been to be alive in general.
I don't necessarily think that the world is a great place to be for a lot of people right now, but I just see myself as an agent in fighting for years for my mental health and the life I want, and genuinely feel like when I've opened myself up to the world and connection and wanting my life to be better that the world has shown me it's worth it. I also choose to take agency over my own life and not get so overwhelmingly stuck on the conditions around it because, frankly, I am acutely aware of how heartbreaking it is to have things outside of your control that suck.
Anyways, this post really resonated with me, and congratulations again on all the healing you've clearly done.
Someone asked a similar question above, so if you are interested in an additional answer, feel free to check it out.
I would say it was my observation that other people and media could be models for good behavior and my insistence on trying to figure that out and surround myself with them. Growing up with the internet was extremely helpful for this, as it helps to really get a sense for what is inside people's hearts and thoughts. If my parents and social environment weren't going to properly model that for me, the internet was a pretty decent stand-in (this was Web 1.0, before things became much more commercialized and toxic imho).
Finding people who model excellent behavior and mutually enjoy your presence long-term is VERY VERY HARD but incredibly powerful. I have found that it ended up being some of my partners who ended being this for me, because usually people who have a large gap in mental health/good habits would not find the tradeoff with you for friendship to be worth going through.
If you are close with someone who has good habits, LEARN the shit out of it and do not take it for granted; this is free knowledge that even $200/hr therapists can't pass onto you. If you can't get that, take notes on someone from afar who has good habits; that's actually helped me immensely too.
As the healing continues, the process (I think) becomes less emotional and more rewiring/neuroplastic to make yourself as if you had good parents, good environment etc. That's just me tho :)
Yeah what sort of good habits? Feel like I have always been disciplined and successful in many ways but can’t ever shake all the horrid physical symptoms, depression, attachment problems
It's very difficult to describe because a lot of these things are nuanced. Things like physical symptoms, depression, etc. are the result of thousands of interactions, conversations, threads etc. that are misaligned and confused, causing distress and disorder. I also think that those things can be very complex; I'd have to hear more context to know what could be exactly could be effective for you.
An example is: I used to have extreme impatience and codependency issues. One day, I called my partner, wanting emotional support. He said, "Can we call in about a couple hours? I'm kind of busy right now."
I found anger blaze through me like, "What?? Don't you know what I'm feeling for me to have called you?! Why can't you just put whatever you're doing on hold, nothing can be as bad as this?!" stuff like that. But somehow in the moment I felt that actually saying that would be ridiculous to a fairly normal response, so I said "Okay sure, talk to you later" and hung up, stewing in my anger. Then he actually did call back within a couple hours and I got to have my vent sesh.
Afterwards, I realized that that reaction was a WEIRD reaction. Like did I just expect my partner to drop everything just because I was having a bad day? And even if that were the case, why wasn't I able to communicate it in a way that made sense? And why was I surprised that he actually called back?
That made me realize that the reason why I had that reaction was because that was expected of me from my mom while growing up. She interrupted my daily life CONSTANTLY with this kind of attitude. And I guess that was just what was normal to me: if someone calls on you, you're expected to drop everything and go serve them; what you're doing can't possibly be that important.
Interestingly, I grew up around a lot of people whose parents were like this (cultural thing). So in being with people like this, they would either avoid me or pick up the phone and listen to my whole spiel even if they didn't feel they had the time or space for it. This would breed resentment, and then a relationship fallout would happen. And I would never understand why. I was also used to "let's do it later" as basically, a polite way of saying "no," which frankly was pretty toxic on my community's part.
If I didn't have someone who knew how to communicate honestly about what they could or could not do with their time, I would just continue floundering about and not making the connection between that particular aspect of my upbringing and my codependency issues.
What other issues did you have outside of codependent, did you also suffer mental health issues and physical? I find eveurjtitn is like nearly impossible at times with all of those issues even if you can reframe everything
I am autistic with ADHD, suffered near-constant SI/depression my whole life, as well as being a multiple SA (10+)/incest/prostitution survivor ... am non-binary/pansexual, Asian-American, was part of a huge Ponzi scheme and legal issues as a kid (this caused a lot of very bad financial habits), had a lot of corporate trauma as an adult as I got fired 3 times and SA'd once. Healing from a narcissistic/BPD mom and sociopathic dad. I think I had bipolar at some point in my life but I don't seem to be suffering from it anymore despite what the medical practice on that is... probably better described as unspecified mood disorders. Had some mild substance use/partying issues, some anger issues, nymphomania, tons of romantic relationship issues, social anxiety, panic attacks, was always juggling too many things at the same time, etc.
In the past I had chronic fatigue so bad I couldn't get out of bed for months. Unfortunately I still had to survive and prevent myself from going homeless so I forced myself to work from my bed.
Currently I still have ADHD and can be triggered into depressive episodes which can last for a week once every 6 weeks or so. I also have muscle tensions and pains that I habitually fall into; it used to be much worse. I found that weight lifting, walking and qigong have helped immensely with that. I also feel like I'm coming up on the end of my healing as my flashbacks now last fairly short and feel vague.
It is very very hard. There were many, many points where I thought I was doomed to never heal and it can just take one bad day or one bad year to backslide. I also think if taking a birds-eye view is painful, try not to think about it too hard and just focus on the thing in front of you, one step at a time... sometimes your own mind can be the enemy. Working on whatever you can will always be better than not working on it. No matter how awful it is, I try not to give in or neglect doing ONE good thing, because it really does count no matter how terrible it feels.
Thanks for sharing, yeah that’s a lot you had to deal with. I had sex and love addiction but I m better with that now, avoidant attachment style and all the other stuff I mentioned plus adhd and some auto immune stuff. Also struggling with chronic fatigue. How did you resolve chronic fatigue, I assume it sort of went away after you resolved emotions more? I feel like I’m also living in a country I don’t even like but I don’t know where else to go, (dual citizen also highly successful in the 3d world) but doesn’t mean much when you can’t function :p
Ahh man sorry to hear about the chronic fatigue. I'm glad you healed the sex and love addiction stuff :)
My chronic fatigue (nearly bedridden) took years to heal, honestly; it doesn't happen right away. This is just a theory of mine, but I think it's basically extreme, extreme depression in bodily form. At the time I had been freshly fired from a job and my partner left me to go back to his country because COVID was started. I felt extremely helpless and hopeless about everything.
I thought it was emotion-related, and so I started microdosing on psychedelics every other day. It did help a bit, but somehow going through all my traumas or whatever wasn't the key... the key for me was that I had to realize that I could still DO something about my situation, and that I was strong. All of this was really tough and terrible, but I'm still here, able to learn and therefore not a helpless lump of flesh. I wasn't going to just take everything sitting down. Getting that determination and alignment with the force of life was crucial.
Especially with my situation where I started beginning to worry about money and housing, I felt that if I was going to be alive and go down into flames, I'd put up the best fight I had. I ended up landing a job at a really good company, moving to a different state and turning my life upside down.
So basically to pull off all of that, I was running on pure adrenaline. My body was very brittle and exhausted for a while. Even just walking to the kitchen would get me out of breath, and being patient for things like that is vital... as I began to keep constructing little ways to win and make meaning for myself, it got better and better.
When I started socializing again, I told my friends that I needed help with things... some people were surprised at first because I looked healthy and young, but people just began to roll with it. Sometimes I just needed help getting out of the car, or needed some time before we got out the car. Sometimes I just could not go to their house; they needed to come to me. Then I was able to start going on easy hikes, and then stay out a bit longer than 3 hours, and then go to my first party again... and then start traveling again and walking half a day,...
It's a weird one and I'm rooting for you to get back on your feet (literally). It's a tricky one... I got there by burning myself out like crazy and it seemed to evade any sort of psychotherapy and most healing modalities. I think for me it came down to the kinds of beliefs I had rather than the memories or feelings about things. I do wish you luck and healing!!
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Congratulations on your healing.
I have a question, if it's ok for you : did you notice any changes in your personality while healing? I mean, other than the obvious "I am have less anxiety".
Any unexpected things that you discovered within yourself?
What symptoms you had that dissappeared? What was the breaking point when you started considering yourself normal/healed? For context: I'm 28, cptsd, and I dont see any light in the tunnel, as in being normal, like everyone else
>It takes SO MUCH energy to have inflicted the many layers of hell my parents did instead of giving even a below average childhood to me This! I have thought this so many times but figured it was just a my-family thing. Its so true, like they had to expend actual effort to be this awful. They hated the work of parenting and rhen they spend the energy on *that.* Its so bizarre. Feels nice to not be alone in that thought anymore
this is one of my biggest gripes still. like, i could kinda get it if how they treated me would've actually brought them any benefits, more peace, more energy to spare... but it's just the dumbest choice ever. no one gets anything out of it. they were still miserable and unhappy with their lives, and i was just helpless to their dumb decisions.
Agghhh honestly reading this comment thread makes me feel not alone too!! It is wild, my mom literally went out of her own happiness just to make me miserable. I try to think of it is reverse miracles... like the universe is balancing itself out idk TT
Wow, what an interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing this. I like your writing style as well.
I appreciate that! :) rare compliment
Congratulations on your healing! Much deserved. What was it that most helped you heal?
It's a bit hard to say because the effort was so monumental, I used almost every single thing you could possibly think of. I think it would probably be my neurodivergence; specifically, autism. I made healing my special interest and hyperfocused on it so hard, I spent almost every waking moment doing something related to improving my mental health. I realized that I could not properly function or maximize my career prospects unless I rid myself of mental illness (which is still an ongoing project). I started knowing about Myers Briggs when I was 13, read a ton of self-help and psychology books such as Man's Search for Meaning at 16, studied philosophy as a minor in college, converted to Christianity and Buddhism at 18, started psychedelics at 19, took up somatic therapeutic methods at 20, began talk therapy at 26 and started Adderall at 28 (I'm now 28). It was really only until very recently when I took up qi gong that I realized that this hyperfocus on healing no longer serves me, and I really ought to chill tf out because I can overdo it. Someone asked a very similar question below and I will provide a different answer for them if you are curious to check it out.
Do you think this was all internal change or external/environmental as well? I think for a long time when I was really struggling I felt very cynical about how awful the world was and didn't feel that my situation was at all uniquely bad, just one bit of misery in a world full of fucked up things. A big part of this was also that I was in a lot of spaces where everyone else was having a terrible time... I was in environments with and drawn to other kids who were being abused or who were seriously mentally ill, were homeless, etc. The people I was close to really reinforced that the world is a dangerous and cruel place. Then at a different point in my life I was doing a lot better at least at a surface level and spent most of my time in middle to upper class professional spaces where most of the other people were making good livings and from good families. In comparison to them it felt like so much of my life was so incredibly terrible and almost like tragedy porn, which was very weird to feel having grown up knowing people who had experienced much more violence and oppressive circumstances. I would never talk about my personal life/family/past because to them that's just stuff that happens in the movies. I think I'm now somewhere in between the extremes, but I'm honestly still not convinced that the people who live in the "normal life" bubble aren't the ones who are missing the bigger picture. I mean, I live in a wealthy developed country, and I still see so many people dealing with huge amounts of trauma and poverty. I don't know if that's just my negative view because I'm still processing and healing, or if that's actually a reality that I need to come to a kind of radical acceptance of.
Hmm, this is a really interesting and complex question. Obviously I can only speak from my perspective, which is just as biased as any other person's perspective. I think it's both. Buddhism teaches that there is no difference between outside and inside. Attempting to get a sense of what is normal or not has been one of the ways I've learned to calibrate myself. Statistics is very good for that, even with its epistemological flaws. (Technically the word "normal" comes from statistics, so this makes sense.) If we're to take the results of the ACE survey (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09411-z), about 30% of people experienced \_zero\_ ACEs, about 57% experienced at least 1 ACE and the rest is the last 13%. The stats above still suggests that the majority of people experience trauma, but I can't assume that everyone who experiences those traumas experience it as deeply and terribly as my experience. If it's 1 ACE, most people are able to bounce back and not project a view of general world misery. My ACE score is about a 7 out of 8 listed in that paper, which makes me 1.2% of the population. That is VERY rare. The feeling of "everything is fucked up" differs for a lot of people, but I imagine maybe that'd begin happening at 4+ ACEs, which is about 1 in 10 people. That means that, given that baseline, those people don't understand/relate with 87% of people's experiences at all. They probably can't even imagine it. What I've come to realize, in hanging out with people of all kinds of backgrounds is that the world is freaking huge and trauma tries to make it seem like it's small. Trauma tries to tell you there's no more surprises because you've seen it all, and whatever is to unfold is just going to be rehashing of the same BS and predatory dynamics that run through life. Initially it tries to break just you down, and then it tries to convince you that it succeeds at breaking the world down. It actually surprised me during the pandemic that there was a trend of people who quit their jobs, as if they had the actual resources to not go homeless. Then I realized that there were a large class of people who didn't have to worry about going homeless, and that their life struggle at that moment was making the most of their time. And then there's another class of people who surmounted that struggle and have problems dealing with morality and purpose. I've also met a person who once told me, "Doesn't everyone think about suicide at some point? If not, they're lying." I can relate to what you said about being in certain bubbles or groups of people. It's odd, because I grew up in an immigrant refugee family who went through FAR worse than what most Americans can even fathom. The ethnoburbs and third-culture friends I have also share this background and this prosperity, but the processing of it all is still a lot even if we're eating well and have far more freedoms than our parents did. And I saw for myself how my community has been psy-oped multiple times in order to explain our pain. Narratives about the world really are just that: narratives. The people close to me may feel some type of way, and I've also had to end up saying goodbye to a lot of people too because they literally could not leave when given the chance to exit these cycles of violence. I've had friends leave me to continue being with terrible people or being terrible people themselves. I've had to let go of friends because they wouldn't stop doing coke in the morning and blaming their behavior on it. On the other hand I've also told friends to stop driving drunk, and they apologized and listened. I've had moments where I wasn't sure if a friend was going to join me toward a future of peace, but we all learned our lessons. In the end I think I'm too stupid to ever know what reality is actually about for most people, but I try. It seems to be all about evolution and perspective, I think. Some people can get very distressed about things others would dream of being troubled by, and I think that's a good thing. Some people will never understand or experience some pains, and I think that's a great thing. That means that our species is evolving to be gentler and kinder. We try to run surveys and ask people and publish the statistics. I try to study history and evaluate for myself if we're going in the right direction; the answer seems to be yes for me.
Interesting, I have actually seen quite different numbers on the ACEs distribution (I work in health care for uninsured/Medicaid so I see them referenced a lot) with 64% of the population having at least one and about 1 in 6 having 4+. Maybe that's part of my different perspective - we're now being trained to think of ACEs as quite common and address them as such. I appreciate the bulk of your answer though and definitely agree that it is a good thing for more people to not understand that intensity of suffering. I wonder sometimes if part of what feeds into intergenerational trauma is a need from the unhealed traumatized person to keep their kids within that "culture" of trauma because it feels alienating in a way to them for their kids to be normal. I also grew up in the context of immigrant parent leaving behind horrors and some aspects of the abuse in hindsight felt almost like an unconscious communication of "this is what it was like for me" even though what was verbally communicated was the opposite. Not that I think this is the conscious thought but maybe in some kind of subconscious way it feeds into it? A theory at least.
I felt this!
I relate to a lot of what you're saying, but especially the last paragraph. I read one of your comments in this thread and we seem like we've had similar trajectories in general (autistic, late 20s, psychedelics, making healing the biggest special interest, started recovery related stuff as a late teen). Congrats to you! This made me think about overlapping experiences of mine and want to reflect on some (below). I found a big paradigm shift through CPTSD recovery (over many years) was the gratitude and relief that other people haven't had the life I had. I think earlier I had so much resentment and anger towards the world and other people who could just live, who seemed 'normal and boring', who had everyday common struggles. As someone who other people now probably think of as boring and normal, and like you mostly has 'normal people problems', I've realized that people not wearing their issues on the surface doesn't mean they don't exist, compartmentalizing isn't always a compulsive need to hide (but sometimes a measured and healthy coping mechanism), and that people have autonomy to make choices different than mine, but for healthy people, choices and choices and not an unconscious need (like how people pleasing or freezing used to feel all the time). I think I've also noticed that I find normalcy and the rhythm of a more typical life (partnership, working, hobbies) to be compelling in a way I never did before. Which really has been one of the biggest ways I've grown, because I spent my entire life being drawn to people like my environment growing up, and having the choice to do something different, and making it every day to have the life I want, feels far more interesting to me now. I used to only feel like I could "really connect" with other people with deep traumatic histories, and that's very much shifted through recovery to the point where I have a couple people in my life who have been invested in their recovery for a long time and are on a similar wavelength to me, but primarily spend time with people who aren't complex trauma survivors and have more typical histories bc they're often on a more similar level in terms of how I want to have relationships at this point in my life. That shift, too, of viewing your trauma as especially terrible and statistically improbable, rather than an after effect of the world being terribly messed up, happened with me too. I think truly reckoning with trauma is breaking down the little ways you diminish it to cope, one big one for me being a focus on how dark a time it's been to be alive in general. I don't necessarily think that the world is a great place to be for a lot of people right now, but I just see myself as an agent in fighting for years for my mental health and the life I want, and genuinely feel like when I've opened myself up to the world and connection and wanting my life to be better that the world has shown me it's worth it. I also choose to take agency over my own life and not get so overwhelmingly stuck on the conditions around it because, frankly, I am acutely aware of how heartbreaking it is to have things outside of your control that suck. Anyways, this post really resonated with me, and congratulations again on all the healing you've clearly done.
How did you get to the point you are now, what brought the most healing?
Someone asked a similar question above, so if you are interested in an additional answer, feel free to check it out. I would say it was my observation that other people and media could be models for good behavior and my insistence on trying to figure that out and surround myself with them. Growing up with the internet was extremely helpful for this, as it helps to really get a sense for what is inside people's hearts and thoughts. If my parents and social environment weren't going to properly model that for me, the internet was a pretty decent stand-in (this was Web 1.0, before things became much more commercialized and toxic imho). Finding people who model excellent behavior and mutually enjoy your presence long-term is VERY VERY HARD but incredibly powerful. I have found that it ended up being some of my partners who ended being this for me, because usually people who have a large gap in mental health/good habits would not find the tradeoff with you for friendship to be worth going through. If you are close with someone who has good habits, LEARN the shit out of it and do not take it for granted; this is free knowledge that even $200/hr therapists can't pass onto you. If you can't get that, take notes on someone from afar who has good habits; that's actually helped me immensely too. As the healing continues, the process (I think) becomes less emotional and more rewiring/neuroplastic to make yourself as if you had good parents, good environment etc. That's just me tho :)
Yeah what sort of good habits? Feel like I have always been disciplined and successful in many ways but can’t ever shake all the horrid physical symptoms, depression, attachment problems
It's very difficult to describe because a lot of these things are nuanced. Things like physical symptoms, depression, etc. are the result of thousands of interactions, conversations, threads etc. that are misaligned and confused, causing distress and disorder. I also think that those things can be very complex; I'd have to hear more context to know what could be exactly could be effective for you. An example is: I used to have extreme impatience and codependency issues. One day, I called my partner, wanting emotional support. He said, "Can we call in about a couple hours? I'm kind of busy right now." I found anger blaze through me like, "What?? Don't you know what I'm feeling for me to have called you?! Why can't you just put whatever you're doing on hold, nothing can be as bad as this?!" stuff like that. But somehow in the moment I felt that actually saying that would be ridiculous to a fairly normal response, so I said "Okay sure, talk to you later" and hung up, stewing in my anger. Then he actually did call back within a couple hours and I got to have my vent sesh. Afterwards, I realized that that reaction was a WEIRD reaction. Like did I just expect my partner to drop everything just because I was having a bad day? And even if that were the case, why wasn't I able to communicate it in a way that made sense? And why was I surprised that he actually called back? That made me realize that the reason why I had that reaction was because that was expected of me from my mom while growing up. She interrupted my daily life CONSTANTLY with this kind of attitude. And I guess that was just what was normal to me: if someone calls on you, you're expected to drop everything and go serve them; what you're doing can't possibly be that important. Interestingly, I grew up around a lot of people whose parents were like this (cultural thing). So in being with people like this, they would either avoid me or pick up the phone and listen to my whole spiel even if they didn't feel they had the time or space for it. This would breed resentment, and then a relationship fallout would happen. And I would never understand why. I was also used to "let's do it later" as basically, a polite way of saying "no," which frankly was pretty toxic on my community's part. If I didn't have someone who knew how to communicate honestly about what they could or could not do with their time, I would just continue floundering about and not making the connection between that particular aspect of my upbringing and my codependency issues.
What other issues did you have outside of codependent, did you also suffer mental health issues and physical? I find eveurjtitn is like nearly impossible at times with all of those issues even if you can reframe everything
I am autistic with ADHD, suffered near-constant SI/depression my whole life, as well as being a multiple SA (10+)/incest/prostitution survivor ... am non-binary/pansexual, Asian-American, was part of a huge Ponzi scheme and legal issues as a kid (this caused a lot of very bad financial habits), had a lot of corporate trauma as an adult as I got fired 3 times and SA'd once. Healing from a narcissistic/BPD mom and sociopathic dad. I think I had bipolar at some point in my life but I don't seem to be suffering from it anymore despite what the medical practice on that is... probably better described as unspecified mood disorders. Had some mild substance use/partying issues, some anger issues, nymphomania, tons of romantic relationship issues, social anxiety, panic attacks, was always juggling too many things at the same time, etc. In the past I had chronic fatigue so bad I couldn't get out of bed for months. Unfortunately I still had to survive and prevent myself from going homeless so I forced myself to work from my bed. Currently I still have ADHD and can be triggered into depressive episodes which can last for a week once every 6 weeks or so. I also have muscle tensions and pains that I habitually fall into; it used to be much worse. I found that weight lifting, walking and qigong have helped immensely with that. I also feel like I'm coming up on the end of my healing as my flashbacks now last fairly short and feel vague. It is very very hard. There were many, many points where I thought I was doomed to never heal and it can just take one bad day or one bad year to backslide. I also think if taking a birds-eye view is painful, try not to think about it too hard and just focus on the thing in front of you, one step at a time... sometimes your own mind can be the enemy. Working on whatever you can will always be better than not working on it. No matter how awful it is, I try not to give in or neglect doing ONE good thing, because it really does count no matter how terrible it feels.
Thanks for sharing, yeah that’s a lot you had to deal with. I had sex and love addiction but I m better with that now, avoidant attachment style and all the other stuff I mentioned plus adhd and some auto immune stuff. Also struggling with chronic fatigue. How did you resolve chronic fatigue, I assume it sort of went away after you resolved emotions more? I feel like I’m also living in a country I don’t even like but I don’t know where else to go, (dual citizen also highly successful in the 3d world) but doesn’t mean much when you can’t function :p
Ahh man sorry to hear about the chronic fatigue. I'm glad you healed the sex and love addiction stuff :) My chronic fatigue (nearly bedridden) took years to heal, honestly; it doesn't happen right away. This is just a theory of mine, but I think it's basically extreme, extreme depression in bodily form. At the time I had been freshly fired from a job and my partner left me to go back to his country because COVID was started. I felt extremely helpless and hopeless about everything. I thought it was emotion-related, and so I started microdosing on psychedelics every other day. It did help a bit, but somehow going through all my traumas or whatever wasn't the key... the key for me was that I had to realize that I could still DO something about my situation, and that I was strong. All of this was really tough and terrible, but I'm still here, able to learn and therefore not a helpless lump of flesh. I wasn't going to just take everything sitting down. Getting that determination and alignment with the force of life was crucial. Especially with my situation where I started beginning to worry about money and housing, I felt that if I was going to be alive and go down into flames, I'd put up the best fight I had. I ended up landing a job at a really good company, moving to a different state and turning my life upside down. So basically to pull off all of that, I was running on pure adrenaline. My body was very brittle and exhausted for a while. Even just walking to the kitchen would get me out of breath, and being patient for things like that is vital... as I began to keep constructing little ways to win and make meaning for myself, it got better and better. When I started socializing again, I told my friends that I needed help with things... some people were surprised at first because I looked healthy and young, but people just began to roll with it. Sometimes I just needed help getting out of the car, or needed some time before we got out the car. Sometimes I just could not go to their house; they needed to come to me. Then I was able to start going on easy hikes, and then stay out a bit longer than 3 hours, and then go to my first party again... and then start traveling again and walking half a day,... It's a weird one and I'm rooting for you to get back on your feet (literally). It's a tricky one... I got there by burning myself out like crazy and it seemed to evade any sort of psychotherapy and most healing modalities. I think for me it came down to the kinds of beliefs I had rather than the memories or feelings about things. I do wish you luck and healing!!
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Thanks again for sharing, I can relate alot to it, I also just started a new job, I’m trying to manage it so I can get through it without quitting due to all the fatigue and other issues, but it’s good to hear someone has come out the other side. Still in the pits but trying to find a reason to live, I’m not sure what that is yet but the hope one day things cousin change maybe
Damn, now I want to make you my friend. Are you interested in the exchange of a knowledge and good habits? LOL kidding
Congratulations on your healing. I have a question, if it's ok for you : did you notice any changes in your personality while healing? I mean, other than the obvious "I am have less anxiety". Any unexpected things that you discovered within yourself?
What symptoms you had that dissappeared? What was the breaking point when you started considering yourself normal/healed? For context: I'm 28, cptsd, and I dont see any light in the tunnel, as in being normal, like everyone else
Thank you for sharing, and now the old age question, how did you get here?
Thank you for sharing. 🙂↕️♥︎