Something I Want Others to Know About CPTSD is ...

[Saluki]

I just thought of something else: I pretended to be doing better than I was to my therapist because I thought I SHOULD be doing better. I was in some ways but not in others. I got stuck in everyone wants a happy ending land so I wrote my own happy ending but then I couldn't live up to it. I tried: I really really tried. But I couldn't do it. I think it's important professionals are aware a lot of us do that: pretend to be okay when we're not because it's expected of us. It's expected of a lot of us to pretend to be okay from birth. We learn to shut up because our crying gets us punished.

[Bert]

I couldn't agree more with Saluki... And not only to my therapist, but to everyone.

[Moondance]

Yes I agree as well. I believe it's very much ingrained in us to pretend we are okay when we are not.

[NarcKiddo]

I agree, too.

I want people to know that our logical brain can perfectly well understand that a situation is safe but that does not stop our emotional brain from sounding the emergency klaxon and battening down the hatches. Until our emotional brain has lived experience of safety it WILL NOT respond to reason, no matter what our logical brain does. The dissonance between the logical and emotional can be unbearable. This means that healing can sometimes feel like one step forward and ten steps back. The one step forward is when you engage your logical brain and understand in theory that, say, person X is safe. Then person X does or says something that does not feel safe due to your trauma, and emotional brain kicks in. The ten steps back feeling is when logical brain is engaged just enough that you can see your own emotional (over)reaction but cannot alter it.

Healing is not linear and a ten steps back blip does not mean that healing is not happening.

[Bermuda]

That is so so true NK.

[Moondance]

Yes so very true Bermuda and even some trauma informed people really don't get it so yes I would very much would like others to know this.

I would like for others to know that being pushy about anything at all, whether covertly or not that this pushiness is retraumatizing especially at the beginning of recovery or healing.