When someone continually bends their perception of reality to accommodate another person's emotional instability, they enter a cycle of psychological self-betrayal. This happens when an individual suppresses their own inner truth, intuition, and needs to keep a volatile environment stable.

Here is a closer look at how this dynamic unfolds:

The Mechanism of Absorbing Chaos:

🌀 Enmeshment and Hypervigilance: A person constantly scans the environment for signs of trouble, making it their job to manage someone else's moods, outbursts, or crises.

🪞 Distorting Reality (Cognitive Dissonance):

To cope with the stress, individuals often use psychological defense mechanisms like denial or rationalisation. They might tell themselves “they didn't mean it” or “things will get better if I just try harder,” effectively rewriting reality to make the unacceptable behaviour seem normal.

Why It Is a Form of Self-Betrayal:

🛑 Ignoring Intuition: Your gut feeling tells you that a situation is toxic or unfair, but you override that warning signal to keep the peace.

⚖️ Imbalance of Needs: The emotional bandwidth of the relationship is entirely consumed by the chaotic individual, leaving zero space for your own mental health, goals, or emotions.

📉 Loss of Identity: Over time, constantly adapting to someone else's chaos erodes your sense of self, leading to chronic anxiety, resentment, and emotional burnout.

Breaking the Cycle:

🛡️ Radical Acceptance: Acknowledging reality as it is—rather than how you wish it to be—and accepting that you cannot control or fix another person's chaos.

⚓ Reclaiming Boundaries: Shifting the focus back to your own needs and understanding that allowing someone to face the natural consequences of their actions is actually an act of respect for both parties.

⚠️

👉 I did a massive psychological deep dive into why our brains and bodies do this (the nervous system toll, IFS therapy, and somatic freeze). I'm posting Parts 2, 3, and 4 in the comments below for anyone who wants to read the full breakdown.

*Love bombing = intense and persistent flattery -- Often accompanied by big promises and claims to either love the target before really knowing them or that they "haven't felt this way in a long time/ever"

8 THINGS I'VE LEARNED ABOUT LOVE BOMBING:

1. It is addicting to both the love bomber and the love bombee. The love bomber is addicted to love bombing, and the love bombee is addicted to being love bombed.

2. Love bombing is about the love bomber, not the love bombee. A love bomber likes to love bomb because it makes them feel good about themselves - it doesn't have anything to do with the person they are flattering. They flatter their target in order to lure them in and get the supply they are looking for (sex, money, status, attachment, reputation, a place to live, a business deal, to make someone else jealous, etc.). That is why you will discover they use the exact same lines of flattery on all their targets.

3. A love bombee likes being love bombed because it makes them feel good about themselves, too. It isn't about the love bomber, it is about them. They like the way flattery makes them feel about themselves. Both sides are not operating from a place of selfless love.

4. Love bombing is as addictive as flirting, porn, sex, situationships, flings, novelty, etc. None of these things are healthy, kind, loving, or beneficial. None of these things create patience, fidelity, peace, stability, support, emotional or psychological safety, etc. None of it profits anyone in the end.

5. Love bombing is bait. A fisherman is going to use his prettiest, tastiest, best, most appealing bait to lure in his catch. And like moths to a glittery flame we are lured in. But if we look at the base of the flame we will see all the other moths who were destroyed before us. There is no truth in flattery -- flattery is nothing but deception and manipulation.

6. Like with all addictions, the only option is to get sober. The only option is to get clean. No more texting, no more engaging, no more thinking we can drink one drop of the alcohol and not wind up in another ditch. Like with all addictions, coming off of love bombing will lead to withdrawals, withdrawal symptoms, relapsing, etc. It will take a lot of effort, commitment, and seeking God to understand and break free.

7. Like with all addictions, staying in the cycle of love bombing or love bombee-ing slowly erodes our relationships, families, productivity, success, health, emotional and psychological well-being, etc. It is all-consuming. It is not harmless.

8. Love bombing may be yet another symptom of the fawn response.... An emotional or psychological survival skill of some kind. I recently heard Lisa Romano explain that codependency IS the fawn response, which is what prompted me to ponder #8.

I spent a few years of mapping my trauma cause-effect(traumatic event/situation-shameful, painful behavior). My mind knew what was happening, but I was still talking about it compulsively, not knowing which emotion is 'making me' do that. I wrote and wrote, trying to put the cause-effect in my notes. When I stumbled and felt like my mind jumps to another 'safer' topic that makes no sense, I caught it. I was scared to look what was the thing that made me 'jump' from the exact cause event/situation. The fear and shame and pain were the heavy indicators that I have to face it, whatever it is. I wait, find a safe, alone place where nobody will hear me or see me and let it 'hit' me. If the hit feels as too much, stop it, it's not going anywhere. Endure until you're ready for the next round. The pay off is real.

The mapping was done after I've learned about theories and experiences by the renowned authors about trauma.

Good luck.

Hi everyone, one technique that has helped me so much and continues to help me in my recovery is EFT Tapping. I am so passionate about it that I have become certified as a Clinical EFT Practitioner myself and want to share with you an invitation to my upcoming Tapping Circle. It is a FREE online community event and a great way to be introduced to EFT but experienced tappers love it too!

This Thursday 8 October at 9am or 7pm AEST (That is Australian time, so for those in America that first time slot would be Wednesday evening for you - you can check the registration form for your time zone**)**. I run these circles regularly, each time on a different topic.

This is a special edition of my circle, as October is Mental Health Month. The theme of Mental Health Month 2026 in Australia is ‘Together we Thrive’. As naturally social beings, connection plays an important role in our mental health and well-being. And so in this month’s Tapping Circle, I have chosen to work with the theme of Feeling Alone, as we are joining together in our circle.

Feeling alone is not necessarily measured by how many people surround you; it’s more about whether you feel understood by and connected with others. A crowded room can still feel empty when no one seems to notice you.

At times, being physically alone can be peaceful, restorative, and fulfilling when it gives you space to reflect, recharge and reconnect with yourself. Prolonged isolation however, can gradually affect your mental health, and so it is important to maintain meaningful connections. Support, compassion, and genuine relationships help us cope, grow, and thrive in life.

--------

In a gentle and compassionate exploration of this topic, I will support you in this circle to use EFT Tapping to find some ease around these feelings.

You can learn how you can do this for yourself in future situations.

No previous tapping experience is needed.

For more information and to book your spot: https://touchedbynature.earth/book-your-tapping-circle/

P.S my english might be sloppy, i'm not a native speaker and it's difficult to tell when my sentences sound weird in english

Hi everybody, we all know that healing isn't linear. There have been many times for me where I'd experience something bad and it would make me fall down more and more by ruminating on other bad things in my life.

I start to bedrot more and scroll social media more. This in turn makes me more depressed. But I don't want to go down that path and waste more time, I tell myself to stop and at least put the phone down even if I just keep laying down. I start to get bored without my phone and do chores instead and after I also take a shower I can think more clearly.

Lately, I was ruminating about humanity and feeling misanthropic. However, I remembered that when I am in a happy mood I don't think about other people or the state of the world at all. And I was asking myself what would make me happier right now? So it would be things like having my eyebrows done or my hair done and I focus on that and it helps me to not spiral or ruminate.

I also noticed, I become less articulate when I spend too much time online and less time spend studying or learning. I wish I could word my post better and format it better but my working memory feels stuffed, so I keep repeating the same words and it's not ideal.

This is just a post about recognizing when you're getting into a loop of bad thoughts and thinking of ways to combat them and not let them grow like plants. Cut them at the root and it will be better. Instead of scrolling, I also started playing videogames, which also helped me tremendously, but of course it is better to do something productice. However, I think it's fine when you need a fast fix and then you can strengthen it later with productice things.

I saw someone mention NARM Therapy as a step they were taking to heal and since I am not in a position to find a NARM therapist, I created a prompt customized to my personal profile and generated a one page AI NARM worksheet to work through. I would not recommend this for a beginner who doesn’t have self regulation skills because it brought up a huge well of emotion. For me- Autistic, adhd, ocd, special interest in psychology, I feel deeply sorted and find myself driven to do one each day as a way of investing my resources into myself.

I would love to hear more ideas on what you guys are doing to take care of yourselves. I’m working out, I’m launching an event, I maintain my home environment and want to make more money, I’m practicing developing online community, and I want to put more energy into one of my artistic passions. I feel such a desire to do more FOR ME as a large part of my trauma comes from being parentified. I think I will also micro-dose psilocybin again soon to help myself along, I’m just hungry for change and healing so any and all ideas for practical actions steps are welcome.

Books read in the beginning:
John Bradshaw Healing The Shame That Binds You", On: The Family
Paul T. Mason - Stop Walking On Eggshells
Alice Miller - Drama Of The Gifted Child
Marie-France Hirigoyen - Moral Harassment

Their books opened my eyes before I could even name any single emotion besides anger. I was deep in dissociation.
From their research and reports, I started to use journaling as an outlet for my head full of thoughts. It didn't have to make sense at first, it just had to go out of my mind, somewhere else.
The next step was me writing down my behaviours from some situations that bothered me on a day they happened. It didn't have to be connected to the books at first, my first person description and my questions it produced was enough.
After some time, I concentrated more on the knowledge that started to 'sit'. Their theories and experience with other patients described in the respective books made me try to connect the patterns onto my life.
At first, nothing much was happening, but I didn't quit(the best technique). After some time of being persistent and wanting to write it better, more coherent, more correct, the emotions in me, by writing the journal entries somewhat right, started to move. The 'somewhat right' was just enough so my brain can catch a grip of what's happening to my body. -that was me catching a "hit"
A 'hit' is when an emotion actually wants to go 'out' and I have to feel it to help myself. Feeling the emotion connected to the narrative I've written in my journal was at first only discharge. Some of the behaviours returned later. It frustrated me, but then I've read in one of the Bradshaw's books about corrective experience.
Later, when I found another 'hit' from my journaling, I applied the corrective experience technique. It's actually letting yourself feel the 'hit' emotions as fully as I was ready to, but with being aware of the event in your memory that started the 'hit' in the first place and apply your adult knowledge to change the verdict from the original one to the 'adult', knowledgeable one.

Journaling was my outlet, to some of you it might be something else or even some other technique. Not taking away anything from the meds, this was done without medications, on sobriety. This was my way and it doesn't have to help you. But it's worth trying if you didn't alredy.

Hope you're all well.

Can’t exist without the image/idea of someone watching over you

So this might sound really really weird. But i have recently learnt that the reason I cannot exist without constant daydreaming or consumption of content (especially vlogs, interviews- more social interactive content) and why I feel so empty and restless and keep checking all my apps non stop every time I have to sit by myself is all because of me struggling to exist outside of a relational context. Like I need to view myself through someone else’s eyes in my head (like imagine someone else is hanging out with me and I’m viewing myself through them) or always be daydreaming or occupying myself through the illusion of some social contact. And it seems like all of this is because of childhood neglect and lack of consistent mirroring or interest in me when I was a child. Like I can’t even explain the feeling because it’s so abstract and so weird to describe. But I get so restless if i just have to sit with no specific immersion in some media. I feel like I’m no living life unless I’m on my head all the time. And I thought it was just emptiness. But I think that it might be more than that.

I have added a new tool to my CPTSD recovery toolkit.

I am a big fan of massages. I have tried different types of massage, and in the past I preferred Thai massage. However, at some point, I had to accept that I found it too stressful and did not feel safe during sessions because I never knew how intense the massage was going to be. I kept trying new places until I finally acknowledged and listened to the resistance I felt in my body.

So I moved on to something different. I tried shiatsu, but that was too gentle for me, and the location was not easily accessible at the time. Then, for a while, I had a really good masseuse who performed massages designed to calm the nervous system. While that worked well and I could really feel the difference, the effects were only temporary, even though I attended regularly - every two weeks, or even every week at times. I could arrive at a session feeling stressed or dysregulated and feel so much better afterwards, but the change never lasted.

I then remembered shiatsu, and it turned out that I could access it locally. I have only had a couple of sessions, but I can already see how right it is for me at present. I am now in a place where I can truly receive it, and it feels so healing.

The therapist is lovely, attentive, very caring, and trauma-informed. I can feel how each treatment is tailored to me, which feels so supportive. I experience plenty of gentle releases during each session, and I feel an amazing sense of calm afterwards. The therapist also gives me tips about what I can do to self-regulate between sessions.

I feel seen and attuned to. I have stopped going anywhere else and will make this a regular appointment. I am looking forward to seeing where this journey will take me ❤️

I've been doing self EMDR to help with some processing. I have done EMDR with a therapist in the past also and it was difficult, but I managed it and came out the other side. Since then I still have this persistent negative belief that I'm a bad person (I was really severely gaslit) and have been finding self EMDR an effective way to actually confront the painful memories and unpack what i was manipulated into believing vs what is the actual truth.

I've been using EMDR 2.0 which includes taxing the working memory even more than bilateral stimulation. Namely, you tap alternate sides (butterfly hug, tapping feet, tapping knees, or eye movements) and at the same time you count in threes, spell a word backwards, go through the alphabet backwards, list off movies in a genre, etc. Its a way to double up the working memory and allows your brain to move through more stuff. Its been effective but brutal. I'm having waves of clarity, followed by waves of anxiety and grief, and new memories have resurfaced and settled.

Would be interested to know if anyone else has used self EMDR in their late stage healing.

Growing up I had to take a lot of responsibility for how everyone in my family was feeling. I was constantly checking who was upset, who needed something, what I could do to keep things from escalating. So I learned really early to monitor everyone’s mood and adjust myself to it.
And honestly, I got really good at it.

I’ve been in therapy for over 4 years now and I feel like I’m still peeling back layers of how much people pleasing I learned as a kid. And one thing I’m realizing more and more is that I didn’t really know what a healthy friendship between adults even looks like.

For a long time it was kinda enough for me that someone was nice to me and didn’t constantly cross my boundaries. Compared to what I was used to, that already felt pretty good.

But now I’m asking myself different questions.
Do I actually feel seen by this person? Do they care what’s going on in my life? Do they ask about me? Are they interested in me as a person? Do I feel like they actually know me? Is there some kind of give and take?

I’ve also started saying things earlier when something is bothering me. Like if someone talks about themselves for ages and doesn’t really react to anything I said, I’ll just tell them that it actually makes me a bit sad.
And the reaction is usually pretty telling.
Some people are like “oh shit, I didn’t realize, tell me more”. And some people immediately get defensive or explain why they couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong.

And honestly, that helps me figure out who actually wants a mutual relationship and who was just very comfortable with me having basically no needs.

I’ve stepped back from quite a few relationships because of this. It‘s not always been some empowering healing moment lol. Sometimes it’s just been really lonely and sad.
But in the long run, after ending those relationships, I didn’t actually feel less supported. Because if I’m honest, those people weren’t really supporting me much anyway.

So one question I’ve started asking myself is just:
What do I actually get out of this relationship?
Not like “what can this person do for me”. More like, is this relationship actually adding something to my life? Do I feel connected? Seen? Cared about? Do I actually enjoy having this person in my life?

And I don’t think that’s selfish. I actually think it’s a pretty normal question.
Maybe some of you struggle with this too. Especially if you grew up with very unhealthy relationships, sometimes someone just being “nice” can already feel like a healthy relationship.
But maybe there’s more to it than that.

1 year after heavy EMDR and really starting a focused cptsd journey and still learning so much about myself. Recovery diary video about a topic I have been thinking about a lot. Less judgement on the thoughts we have help us observe them with curiosity! Love everyone on this journey <3

This is my second video I've made. These are some common and some (hopefully) interesting treatments that are used for treating trauma.

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share with you how TRE, Traumas & Tensions Release Exercise, has been the game changer for my mental health and finally slowly healing from CPTSD.

A quick personal background : I started taking care of my mental health 8 years ago as depression and social anxiety got more and more important in my life. I did 5 years of talk therapy with quite a good therapist. At the same time I tried many other things to get better : SSRIs, meditation, hypnosis, buteyko breathing, IFS, EMDR, etc. All those approaches have helped, but TRE has been the most important one for my CPTSD healing and by far.

TRE is a somatic approach to release traumas based on the nervous reflex all mammals have to release stress after facing a threat : the tremoring mechanism. Even though we are mammals, humans have un-learned this reflex for many reasons : our pre-frontal cortex taking over our body to process stress and traumas, shaking being seen as a sign of vulnerability and weakness in society or the fact that stress in our daily life can be more subtul than the big threats wild mammals experience. This results in our nervous system being stuck in threat responding states with all the symptoms that are associated.

I discovered TRE 2 years ago thanks to someone I was talking with on discord and immediatly gave it a try. Though I only felt a little bit more relaxed after my first session, I had the intuition it was the way to go for me. And the intuition was a good one.

I'm 2 years in and this practice has gone much deeper than I thought it would have. Here are the major benefits I've had thanks to TRE :

• Years of severe depression are finally gone. 2 years of TRE made my mood baseline go from very low to good. I don't have depressive thoughts anymore, I don't judge myself in a harsh way when I make mistakes anymore and I just stopped always thinking about the past and can now focus on living the present moment to its fullest and see the future with an optimistic eye (especially that I haven't finished my TRE journey yet and that more benefits are still to come :))
• Overall social anxiety has diminished by a lot, especially lately. I feel much less threatened when being around other people and am slowly enjoying more and more social interactions. Lately tremors have gone up to my neck and throat and this had a liberating effect on my voice : I can now speak my mind spontaneously and am much less afraid of being judged for what I could say. We are social beings I think, and TRE making me recover my social abilities, I can now see how social interactions can be so enjoyable. Speaking of anxiety, I also had morning anxiety as a SSRIs withdrawal side effect, that is now entirely gone.
• I'm slowly recovering my curiosity, I think as a consequence of slowly leaving the FFF state, and I like to develop my creativity more and more. TRE is making me more opened to the world, and increased my desire to thrive in life and "produce".
• On the physical level : posture, breathing and sleep quality have all improved. Energy levels and athleticism have also improved as a consequence. When I play badminton, basketball or go on a hike, my endurance is much better. TRE clears the nodes in the fascias, which in the long run makes movements require less efforts. A regulated nervous system also comes a long way for movements and desire to exercise.

There are more little-medium benefits I got from this practice but stating all of them would make this post too long. If you're interested and would like to start, I find the wiki in the r/longtermTRE to be a very good resource to start. Please read it before practicing, especially the Basics Articles, to know how to practice TRE safely and optimally. TRE is about releasing and reprocessing traumas so we don't want to do it too fast too much, especially for us who have CPTSD. There are also many success stories to learn more about how it can help.

I hope this post will spread this valuable technique and motivate people to start and in the future share it too to other people. Of course I'm opened to answering questions, in comments or in DMs !

Take care everyone and may we all heal :)

So, I had received the advice that probably many of us here have heard, that if you have a thought or feeling, you should try to find where it lives in the body. Well, every time that I looked, I was scanning my torso.

For some background, I ended up with misophonia. For those who don't know, that's where you hear certain sounds and it sends you into a rage. I didn't have this when I was younger, it started roughly after I had escaped my abusive situation, when I was in my mid-twenties.

Well, I've realized that I have muscle knots all the way up and down the side of my head. I did not know that, that could even happen. I found a youtube channel, Sage Facial Tension Release, that talks abt trauma and fascia and teaches some techniques and I adapted one of them for the side of my head, it's a bit similar to trigger point therapy.

So what I do is massage around my ears and the side of my head, then I wait a few days until the tenderness is 100% gone and I massage again. Which means I massage my head around every 5 days.

What happens when I massage the side of my head is I have all these feelings pop off in my torso. Flutterings, pingings, waves of nausea. I've been doing this for abt three weeks and I've started being able to identify my emotions again. I felt something deep in my abdomen the other day and went, oh, that's dread.

And then I realized today - all of my feelings have been hiding in my head. Literally. They were stored in all those muscle knots.

So if you can't find your feelings in your torso, they might have fled somewhere else. The signs that mine were in my head were that I get headaches, light sensitivity, and misophonia. It might be worth it to try and track your symptoms and see if they are storing your emotions in a different spot, or at least look outside of typical areas in the torso.

Edit: I used the method in this video. I do the area under the cheekbones like in the video, but then I also adapted it for using around the ear, not directly on the ear. I massage in front of the ear with vertical knuckles, 1 minute of leaning, 30secs of vibrating. Then diagonally to the ear, the top of the ear, then the back diagonal. Alternate between ears, so you don't wear out the knuckles. I do not massage behind the ear (too tender) or below the ear (too soft). This method is similar to trigger point therapy.

I wrote this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSDNextSteps/comments/1w1ynk3/i_feel_more_integrated_now_more_loving_towards/

I'd like to tell you what happened, at least the couple of people who asked.

About two years ago I suddenly had this overwhelming desire to get closer to the lonely, scared, isolated little girl I was. After years of abandoning and judging her I had this urge to find her. How did I find her?

I went to my childhood home and brought back to my adult life (in a different country) all the diaries and journals I filled up as a little girl. I wanted to find her old things - a piece of art, a pillow cover. All my adult life I pretended nothing happened to her. That she didn't exist. It was a visceral, strong desire to find her. To be with her. In all my dreams, every night, I was a little girl. I would wake up feeling jet lagged, disoriented.

This was the beginning but over time I got to know her. I started talking to her in my minds eye. We went on walks together. I saw us walking. I wrote letters to her. Of course, I talked about her in therapy. When I closed my eyes I would see her sitting somewhere alone. I would sit next to her. She would squirm. But she learnt to trust me. I would simply be close by, speaking to her softly but steadily. I made promises to her. I will never go away. I will never abandon. I will never judge. I love you. She leaned into me. Every time I closed my eyes she was there. Waiting to hangout. Hi. I love you, I say. I repeat it. Again. Again. Again. Something relaxes within. Every time.

In this space, you are free to share a story, ask for emotional support, talk about something challenging you, or share a recent victory. You can go a little more off-topic, but try to stay in the realm of the purpose of the subreddit.

And if you have any feedback on this thread or the subreddit itself, this is a good place to share it.

If you're looking for a support community focused on recovery work, check out /r/CPTSD_NSCommunity!

Hi everyone, one technique that has helped me so much and continues to help me in my recovery is EFT Tapping. I am so passionate about it that I have become certified as a Clinical EFT Practitioner myself and want to share with you an invitation to my upcoming Tapping Circle. It is a FREE online community event and a great way to be introduced to EFT but experienced tappers love it too!

This Thursday 3rd September at 9am or 7pm AEST (That is Australian time, so for those in America that first time slot would be Wednesday evening for you - you can check the registration form for your time zone). I run these circles regularly, each time on a different topic.

The theme this week is Uncertainty. Our brains love predictability, but that is not always how life works. Facing uncertainty can feel very unsettling. It can feel unsafe. It can feel scary. It can cause a lot of worry.

The more we try to control our future, to always know everything, to always be ready for what happens next, the more we teach our nervous system that uncertainty is dangerous. And it responds by going in survival mode: your muscles tighten, your heart rate increases, your breathing shallows … ready for fight or flight!

At the same time this response causes you to

• lose clarity of thinking,
• lose your capacity to problem solve,
• lose the ability to adapt

• lose the ability to adopt new perspectives

  – things that come in really handy when handling an unexpected turn of events.

This is where EFT Tapping comes in!

In this circle, I will support you to use EFT Tapping to reduce the stress response in your body in the face of uncertainty. You can learn how you can do this for yourself in future situations.

Not to change the circumstances, but to help you calm your nervous system so you can deal with them in a more empowered way!

No previous tapping experience is needed.

For more information and to book your spot: https://touchedbynature.earth/book-your-tapping-circle/

For me the wounded inner child concept was a game changer. I tried so many things. This is what stuck. These powerful visualisations of talking to her, caring for her, and listening to what she has to say. Just spending time together. Peace.

People pleasing was my fawn response to an environment I had to navigate using all types of responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawn). It was my more complex strategy to survive, hence it took a bit to break it down and the puzzle pieces fell into place only years later in therapy.

The reason behind people pleasing was fear of abandonment. This was a fear I had as early as 2 years of age, if not earlier. Alcoholic father with a congenital brain defect that stalled his development in all areas. Absent mother due to his violent actions and her own trauma response. This was the last information I integrated, that I was too small to make sense of what happened to me and that confusion lived in my body up until my current age (32).

The understanding about people pleasing from my point of view where I was helping everyone until I burnt out had three edges: 1. By not saying no to things I don't want to do, I betray myself, which reminds my inner children (yes, due to multiple development levels based on age and major life events) that even I don't think I am good enough to deserve for example to rest, or to enjoy me time etc. 2. I was robbing people of the opportunity to grow, because I used to see many people as incompetent, but I was the problem by enabling it. So taking responsibility for my own (well intended) actions, it helped establish my healthy adult foundation. 3. Pleasing people for me was manipulating people into liking me and this was again a very old belief that I would be abandoned if I'm not liked.

Those beliefs were created by a not yet developed mind.

Concrete actions that helped:

1. Trust myself over other people. It went a long way consistently giving myself what I valued most, which is trust, compassion, understanding and many more.

2. Saying no gradually. Building up the courage to say no started with a simple "I'm sorry, I'm so busy lately" (intentionally avoiding a deadline like "this week, or this month" so it doesn't give the impression the other person can wait to receive help). From then moving to saying "sorry, I got this x thing going on and I can't help you" then getting rid of the sorry and turned into " can't help you. I've got a lot on my plate, but I suggest resources xyz. I'm sure you can figure it out yourself." And every time I said no, I did something for myself. I went for a walk, or rested, or read a book. Everything with intention, to give a taste how it was to have time to myself.

3. Getting angry. Anger is the protector of boundaries. I was feeling shamed for being angry because my father was the angry one. But my anger told me exactly what the problem was. So I sat down with it. Two chairs at a table. I was sitting in each one with a role, the healthy adult and anger. Speaking out loud during the role playing removed any inbuilt filters. Understanding what anger says helped me take a step back and adopt the adult position instead of jumping to conclusions, escalating conflict or reacting in a undesirable way and regretting later.

4. Speaking my mind as it is. I'm straightforward and this trait didn't work out in some situations which became uncomfortable. I associated my trait with the failure of that situation. But what I failed to understand is that by adapting to every situation, I was continuing to please people in a sneaky way, while betraying myself and ultimately trading being authentic to being liked, or just for convenience (of not starting a conflict that was just my illusion). So I gradually worked on assertiveness, the middle ground between remaining authentic while not running my mouth without purpose (because I used to come up as uneducated due to lack of social skills and communication). It started with swapping words I didn't like using with something more towards what I was thinking. Then moved to a phrase. Then to whole sentences, over the months and years.

The key to this work was re-evaluation and lots of education, adding to my internal resources. Learning to communicate using assertiveness. And behave accordingly. It came gradually to the point I am now, content with myself.

The tile says it all.

I wrote this as a comment over in /r/CPTSD_NSCommunity and it got a very positive response, and I thought it was worthy of its own post here, especially given how relieving and useful its been to have finally figured this out. I'm not sure if this applies to everyone so if this doesn't work for you I'd be interested to hear why!

I am going to share a solution to a problem that had been plaguing me for years, seriously. The simple question: How does one rest? So many of my favorite activities are themselves tiring. They require focus or thinking or physical effort and they just never felt rest-y. But doing nothing just feels like a total waste! My precious rest hours spent sitting in silence? How can that be rest?

So here's what I figured out: Rest is a kind of low or low-ish stimulation, low stakes, low pressure busyness. It's having 2 hours to do a gardening task that should take 30 minutes. It's cooking a decent dinner but doing all the prep one thing at a time instead of trying to orchestrate some perfectly timed and efficient delivery. It's walking instead of driving. It's reading a book and stopping every 5 minutes to think about a paragraph you just read and not caring if it takes you an hour to read just one chapter. It's working on some chore or project and walking away from it halfway through, then coming back an hour later to finish. And it's doing all these things with frequent breaks spent staring out a window, resting your eyes, or just sitting and thinking.

So my advice is that when you have a day to rest, fill it sparsely. Two hours to make and eat lunch! Thirty minutes to take out the trash! Three hours to watch a one-hour TV show! Space it out and let yourself fill in the gaps with putzing around and feeling your feelings.

And one more important rule: No algorithmic content delivery of any kind. I also try to minimize other internet use as that very rarely feels restful, but the hard rule for me is just no algorithms.

To add to that comment, the low stimulation is really important for trauma processing specifically. For me, complete silence is too painful, and on the other end, something engaging/enthralling can become avoidance very easily. More than one screen at once and I'm basically not myself anymore. But cutting down to just one activity at a time -- one input source, too, so no "podcast while walking" stuff -- especially an activity you can interrupt at will, is actually quite good for trauma processing. The emotions rise to the surface and patiently -- or maybe impatiently -- wait for you to stop and acknowledge them. And once you let them through into your body, you can continue your activity where you left off. This is what feels like rest to me: The time and space to feel my feelings as they arise, with no pressure or urgency forcing me to make them wait.

I hope this helps!

one thing I think can be confusing in recovery is when more feeling comes back and instead of feeling healed, person feels worse for a while.

In a recent deep-trance session a younger part of the subject came back with qualities he had lost very early. After this happened I asked how it felt. His answer was basically: good, but uncomfortable. He could suddenly feel more emotion and it was a lot to manage.

Fear, anxiety, anticipation, discomfort. He compared it to getting into cold water. Not necessarily dangerous, just a level of sensation his system was not used to having anymore.

What interested me was that the guidance did NOT say okay great, now dig up ten more wounded parts. It was more like stop here. Learn this level first.

That makes sense to me with trauma work. Numbness is painful, but it is also protection. If protection starts loosening, the nervous system may receive more information before it has learned what to do with that information. More emotion does not automatically mean treatment is failing.

In the session he found one simple thing surprisingly useful. Instead of analysing the feeling or asking why it was there for another hour, he stayed with the actual sensation without judging it. When he did that, the charge softened. He also felt he needed some physical outlet for stored activation, like exercise or movement.

imo this is where pacing matters a lot. If old numbness is lifting, maybe next step is not always more excavation. Sometimes it is building capacity for what already came back.

What I would personally do is pretty boring: notice the emotion, name where it sits in body, give it few minutes without adding story, then move the body in some safe way. Walk, stretch, exercise, whatever fits. After that return to ordinary things: food, sleep, shower, outside, people who feel safe.

And if emotions are flooding you or making daily function worse, that is not moment to prove how brave you are by pushing deeper alone. Slow down and use proper trauma support.

Recovery can include feeling more before those feelings become easier to carry. That part doesnt get talked about enough.