sappho

Yeah, my dad is like that. But my mom is riding some sort of cycle along with me. Sometimes she admits that they fucked up my childhood, sometimes she tries to convince me that it wasn't really abuse because they love me and they didn't mean to. It really feels like I'm losing my grip on reality, especially when they claim not to remember the things I do.

Oh my goodness I relate to that so much. One of the hardest parts of the recovery process has been trying to stop blaming myself for my trauma reactions. I've been in a funk all week and I'm mad at myself for not even thinking to use my coping skills and just dissociating, and then I'm frustrated at myself for the coping skills not working (am I doing it wrong?), and on and on.

It's a bit weird but sometimes it helps me to look at fluff videos of abused dogs being rehabilitated. Something about seeing an animal suffering just like me reminds me that the main things I need in this process are love, gentleness, and compassion. I'd never get frustrated at a dog for being frightened and unable to calm down.

I really would recommend Pete Walker's work if you find his flashback stuff useful! His book Surviving to Thriving was one of the first I read on CPTSD and it felt like finally finding the instruction manual for my brain. It can be a really heavy read though and bring up a lot of buried feelings.

Have you read Pete Walker's flashback management steps? They have been the most effective for me, especially the mantra he suggests. There's also some useful suggestions from /r/CPTSD here.

I've been wide awake for the past five hours trying to stop my brain from revisiting traumatic memories - so you aren't alone in dealing with this kind of thing, I'm sorry you're having a flashback right now. ❤️

If you base your whole identity around conforming to society's idea of masculinity, it's quite destabilizing to see any critique of that. So the very idea is "deranged" and what we really need is more "paternalism"

This hurts because when I was a kid I wanted nothing else but to be an author. I wrote constantly, I read books about how to be a better writer. I don't know what happened to that part of me. It's completely gone. I think the pressure put on me to succeed academically destroyed it, because now every time I think of writing I feel anxious and sick to my stomach. I can't do it without feeling like I'm going to die.

So many have died and no one is mourning them. Every day our leaders loosen restrictions and downplay the severity of the virus. It's mass death without respect and without closure. So maybe part of you wants to watch that number to see that it's real, to see that at least one person cares - yourself.

I think you just connected something for me... I browsed /r/TiA way, way early on, when it was mostly about otherkin and in that brief window before it really went to shit. I found my diary from high school and inside I have this huge crisis about whether I'm "really depressed or just lazy." It was strange to read because I don't remember how I got so many of those ideas or that it took me so long to realize I very obviously was mentally ill. Now I'm thinking I must have absorbed it from the anti-SJW culture.