Recent posts
#1
Friends / Re: I can make friends but I c...
Last post by Marcine - Today at 05:02:28 AMHi Blaithe,
Your post and the responses got me thinking.
Society's messages are that every human should have human friends, that more friends is better, that friendship is easy and natural...
I question these norms.
Certainly humans are wired for connection in general. But feeling connected is personal— I've known people who feel deeply connected to trees, to machines, pets, books, ancestors, the ocean, and solitude. Others to their families, colleagues, neighbors, fleeting tender moments of kindness from a stranger.
Small social circles, large networks... more superficial connections, deep emotional intimacy... transient interactions, enduring relationships... investing a lot of effort, easy flow.
I have been tuning into what connection and friendship means to me.
And choosing to learn how to be a good friend to myself. I figure that's a solid foundation for being a good friend to others and attracting healthy relationship.
I've found, after many decades of beating myself up for not having proper friends, that relieving the pressure on myself and connecting with what and who is meaningful to me seems to work best.
I wish you peace and connection in the ways you choose.
Your post and the responses got me thinking.
Society's messages are that every human should have human friends, that more friends is better, that friendship is easy and natural...
I question these norms.
Certainly humans are wired for connection in general. But feeling connected is personal— I've known people who feel deeply connected to trees, to machines, pets, books, ancestors, the ocean, and solitude. Others to their families, colleagues, neighbors, fleeting tender moments of kindness from a stranger.
Small social circles, large networks... more superficial connections, deep emotional intimacy... transient interactions, enduring relationships... investing a lot of effort, easy flow.
I have been tuning into what connection and friendship means to me.
And choosing to learn how to be a good friend to myself. I figure that's a solid foundation for being a good friend to others and attracting healthy relationship.
I've found, after many decades of beating myself up for not having proper friends, that relieving the pressure on myself and connecting with what and who is meaningful to me seems to work best.
I wish you peace and connection in the ways you choose.
#2
General Discussion / Writing about the trauma: is i...
Last post by Saluki - Today at 02:19:04 AMI've been thinking about this a lot. I've started and stopped multiple times writing my life story focusing on the abuse and I never manage to get far with it because?
I don't know if writing it down is helpful or self harm.
My initial idea was that if I write it all down in one place, I'll be able to "file it away" and forget about it, but obviously that's not happened. I'm haunted by the horrible memories and flashbacks in the same way whether I write about it or not.
Another idea I had was that writing it down could help others, for example, survivors of domestic violence who ended up in a relationship with an abuser because they were abused in their childhoods. I thought, somehow knowing that happens to a lot of people, could help them understand that it's not their fault they ended up with an abusive partner.
I didn't even understand I was being abused as a child - I just knew I wasn't okay and I thought there was something wrong with me.
I read a lot of autobiographies of survivors when I was stuck in my marriage to a psychopath and I remember always comparing the experiences of the writers with my life, sometimes putting myself down and thinking "I don't have it that bad, at least he didn't set fire to me" for example, which was bad for me. Other times I would think oh my goodness that's abusive, how could I not have seen it coming?" Or "If she escaped, so can I". So overall it was a helpful thing to read other people's accounts, but sometimes I worry that wanting to write about it means I'm fixated on the abuse that happened to me and obsessed with it. But that's ridiculous - I'm actually desperate to forget it ever happened. Then I realise how much I learned about avoiding certain behaviours and people, because if I forgot it happened, I could be in a very dangerous situation again and welcome people who abused me into my life and get abused again, or not understand when someone is grooming me to abuse me. So my CPTSD does serve a purpose (to protect me) but it's overprotecting me and I'm so confused...
I wrote a few chapters of my life story on multiple occasions. So many bits and bobs, nothing properly organised.
I'm also feeling like "why would anyone want to read that? It's so depressing".
I wrote some memories from my young adulthood on a forum for survivors of sexual abuse/rape and one of the moderators heavily edited it without telling me beforehand and then wrote to me basically telling me it was "glorifying drug addiction" and I was absolutely devastated. She didn't even keep a copy to send me privately. I felt violated. It was so painful writing that. It was so painful experiencing that to be able to write about it.
The attitude that survivor memoirs are some kind of "trauma porn" is really creepy. That scares me from writing my memoirs publicly/publishing them too. Because there probably are disgusting people who get off on reading about survivors traumatic experiences so that puts me off. I've already been humiliated once by an insensitive moderator. Imagine if I published my memoirs and got a horrible load of abuse from nasty critics. I remember reading a memoir of a woman who survived horrendous domestic violence and in the reviews on Amazon loads of people wrote nasty things about "I didn't like the way she stayed when it was obvious he was going to keep abusing her, frustrating to read her being beaten up for years and not leaving". I hate how ignorant people can be. Why read a memoir by a survivor of horrific dv if they're just going to blame her for the abuse because she didn't leave sooner?
Anyway I should talk about this with my therapist. I don't know whether I should write it or not. Maybe I should just write the novel I have in my head to try to focus on something else.
I don't know if writing it down is helpful or self harm.
My initial idea was that if I write it all down in one place, I'll be able to "file it away" and forget about it, but obviously that's not happened. I'm haunted by the horrible memories and flashbacks in the same way whether I write about it or not.
Another idea I had was that writing it down could help others, for example, survivors of domestic violence who ended up in a relationship with an abuser because they were abused in their childhoods. I thought, somehow knowing that happens to a lot of people, could help them understand that it's not their fault they ended up with an abusive partner.
I didn't even understand I was being abused as a child - I just knew I wasn't okay and I thought there was something wrong with me.
I read a lot of autobiographies of survivors when I was stuck in my marriage to a psychopath and I remember always comparing the experiences of the writers with my life, sometimes putting myself down and thinking "I don't have it that bad, at least he didn't set fire to me" for example, which was bad for me. Other times I would think oh my goodness that's abusive, how could I not have seen it coming?" Or "If she escaped, so can I". So overall it was a helpful thing to read other people's accounts, but sometimes I worry that wanting to write about it means I'm fixated on the abuse that happened to me and obsessed with it. But that's ridiculous - I'm actually desperate to forget it ever happened. Then I realise how much I learned about avoiding certain behaviours and people, because if I forgot it happened, I could be in a very dangerous situation again and welcome people who abused me into my life and get abused again, or not understand when someone is grooming me to abuse me. So my CPTSD does serve a purpose (to protect me) but it's overprotecting me and I'm so confused...
I wrote a few chapters of my life story on multiple occasions. So many bits and bobs, nothing properly organised.
I'm also feeling like "why would anyone want to read that? It's so depressing".
I wrote some memories from my young adulthood on a forum for survivors of sexual abuse/rape and one of the moderators heavily edited it without telling me beforehand and then wrote to me basically telling me it was "glorifying drug addiction" and I was absolutely devastated. She didn't even keep a copy to send me privately. I felt violated. It was so painful writing that. It was so painful experiencing that to be able to write about it.
The attitude that survivor memoirs are some kind of "trauma porn" is really creepy. That scares me from writing my memoirs publicly/publishing them too. Because there probably are disgusting people who get off on reading about survivors traumatic experiences so that puts me off. I've already been humiliated once by an insensitive moderator. Imagine if I published my memoirs and got a horrible load of abuse from nasty critics. I remember reading a memoir of a woman who survived horrendous domestic violence and in the reviews on Amazon loads of people wrote nasty things about "I didn't like the way she stayed when it was obvious he was going to keep abusing her, frustrating to read her being beaten up for years and not leaving". I hate how ignorant people can be. Why read a memoir by a survivor of horrific dv if they're just going to blame her for the abuse because she didn't leave sooner?
Anyway I should talk about this with my therapist. I don't know whether I should write it or not. Maybe I should just write the novel I have in my head to try to focus on something else.
#3
Recovery Journals / Re: The tipping point…
Last post by Marcine - December 19, 2025, 07:40:35 PMYour heartfelt honesty, authenticity, and awareness reach me loud and clear, Chart.
Onward on the journey.
Onward on the journey.
#4
Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...
Last post by Marcine - December 19, 2025, 07:23:24 PMI send good, healing wishes, SO.
#5
Recovery Journals / Re: The tipping point…
Last post by TheBigBlue - December 19, 2025, 03:47:43 PMChart, I'm very aware I'm not an expert here, so please take this only as thinking out loud, not conclusions or advice. But reading what you wrote made me wonder about the quality of that sleep rather than the quantity.
What you describe doesn't sound like restorative rest so much as a very deep shutdown - almost a dorsal-vagal refuge. Given the repeated danger tied to mornings in your childhood, it would make sense if sleep became the safest possible state when threat felt unavoidable. In that light, sleeping "through anything" feels less like ease and more like a remarkably effective survival adaptation.
The part about anxiety being strongest while horizontal really stood out to me. Lying down is such a vulnerable, childlike position: no agency, no readiness. Standing up changes orientation, control, and capacity to act. It makes sense to me that your nervous system would settle once you're upright again.
And the coffee piece is fascinating. Research is mixed on coffeein and trauma, but subjectively it sounds like coffee may interrupt that collapse state, pulling you out of shutdown, restoring activation, clarity, agency and control. If so, that "coffee junkie" habit reads less like a casual quirk, and more like a smart, high-functioning way your system found to regulate emotional flashbacks when nothing else was available.
If any of that resonates, it really highlights how adaptive you were in an unsafe environment, but also how sad it is that you had to be. Many of us here learned similar workarounds just to get through the day.
Thank you for sharing this. It gave me a lot to think about. 💛
What you describe doesn't sound like restorative rest so much as a very deep shutdown - almost a dorsal-vagal refuge. Given the repeated danger tied to mornings in your childhood, it would make sense if sleep became the safest possible state when threat felt unavoidable. In that light, sleeping "through anything" feels less like ease and more like a remarkably effective survival adaptation.
The part about anxiety being strongest while horizontal really stood out to me. Lying down is such a vulnerable, childlike position: no agency, no readiness. Standing up changes orientation, control, and capacity to act. It makes sense to me that your nervous system would settle once you're upright again.
And the coffee piece is fascinating. Research is mixed on coffeein and trauma, but subjectively it sounds like coffee may interrupt that collapse state, pulling you out of shutdown, restoring activation, clarity, agency and control. If so, that "coffee junkie" habit reads less like a casual quirk, and more like a smart, high-functioning way your system found to regulate emotional flashbacks when nothing else was available.
If any of that resonates, it really highlights how adaptive you were in an unsafe environment, but also how sad it is that you had to be. Many of us here learned similar workarounds just to get through the day.
Thank you for sharing this. It gave me a lot to think about. 💛
#7
Recovery Journals / the next step
Last post by sanmagic7 - December 19, 2025, 03:10:56 PMi'm in a new mind place again, which marks the next step for me. i have a doc now, one, which i haven't had in i can't even tell how long. maybe not since i was a kid. for some reason my memory of doctors in my past has been being shoveled from one to another. even the ones i thought were going to be the ones to take care of me - 2 that i remember, one for childbirth, one for general - both were called away at a crucial time in my medical history, and i had strangers, once again, doing whatever procedure was important at that moment.
so, i never felt like i could say 'my doctor said or did this or that', or had one who knew me and my history. and in mexico, unless you paid out of pocket, which i couldn't do, the health service was a series of revolving doctors in training (they were sent to our small town to do their internship, so to speak, but it wasn't supervised, nothing like what we have here in the states, they spent a year in our town, then would move on to the big city). so, health care there was spotty at best. i mean, the cancer which continued to crawl across my head for over 15 yrs was diagnosed alternately as eczema or psoriasis. it wasn't till i got back to the states that a doc took one look and gasped in astonishment, too biopsies on the spot. turns out it was 2 types of cancers, and he saved my life, literally.
at any rate, i'm now here, planning to stay here, and have an established doctor for the first time in a very long time. it's a new feeling, kinda good, actually, settled, strong, reliable. that's nice.
and another next step is getting a new T, which i'm in the process of doing. that will feel nice, too, especially if i can find one i work well with. we'll see. so, step by step . . .
so, i never felt like i could say 'my doctor said or did this or that', or had one who knew me and my history. and in mexico, unless you paid out of pocket, which i couldn't do, the health service was a series of revolving doctors in training (they were sent to our small town to do their internship, so to speak, but it wasn't supervised, nothing like what we have here in the states, they spent a year in our town, then would move on to the big city). so, health care there was spotty at best. i mean, the cancer which continued to crawl across my head for over 15 yrs was diagnosed alternately as eczema or psoriasis. it wasn't till i got back to the states that a doc took one look and gasped in astonishment, too biopsies on the spot. turns out it was 2 types of cancers, and he saved my life, literally.
at any rate, i'm now here, planning to stay here, and have an established doctor for the first time in a very long time. it's a new feeling, kinda good, actually, settled, strong, reliable. that's nice.
and another next step is getting a new T, which i'm in the process of doing. that will feel nice, too, especially if i can find one i work well with. we'll see. so, step by step . . .
#8
Recovery Journals / Re: starting over
Last post by sanmagic7 - December 19, 2025, 02:58:21 PMthanks, SO. it is, indeed, but the more i think about it, the more sense it makes to me. those messages that were already established by the time i was 4? 5? had to have started quite a while before to be so firmly ingrained in my little mind that i couldn't go to my M w/ a question. hmmm . . . 
just realized i'm over my self-imposed limit of 25 pages for a journal, so i'll go start a new one now.
just realized i'm over my self-imposed limit of 25 pages for a journal, so i'll go start a new one now.
#9
Recovery Journals / Re: The tipping point…
Last post by sanmagic7 - December 19, 2025, 02:55:18 PMdang, chart, that makes a lot of sense to me. at least, the idea that sleep was a protective agent for you so you didn't have to hear what was going on, which, i'm assuming, was pretty scary for a kid. and mornings being so terrible for you, well, that's when the screaming would be happening, right? sounds like real-time triggers, over and over. how awful for you! so, if sleep and the aftermath of sleep, which would be mornings, trigger the awfulness of what you went thru, it also makes sense to me that coffee would kind of block all that and put you on your way to some sense of normalcy, it being a trigger of your own to get you out of the feelings of the past.
and if none of this makes sense to you, please ignore. just thinking out loud.
at any rate, i'm glad you have coffee to stop the effects of the past. it might not have to be forever, but for now it seems to help a lot. love and hugs
and if none of this makes sense to you, please ignore. just thinking out loud.
at any rate, i'm glad you have coffee to stop the effects of the past. it might not have to be forever, but for now it seems to help a lot. love and hugs
#10
Recovery Journals / Re: Post-Traumatic Growth Jour...
Last post by sanmagic7 - December 19, 2025, 02:43:07 PMSO, hope you keep feeling better, both physically and emotionally. glad you have your shrink today to help you manage all that's going on. also looking forward to you being able to run again. love and hugs