Seeking Clarity: Unpacking Trauma and Emotions

Anger Triggers​

I’ve discovered that I get angry when I need to do something because admitting needs automatically means failure in my mind. It’s virtually impossible not to need something. From food to sleep to money, living requires things to survive. Needs just mean that I’m still alive which is pretty good because I can’t desire anything when I’m dead or numb or dead inside. So needing things doesn’t mean I’m failure but that I’m winning actually for still being alive.

Obligations are another trigger. I think this comes from the trauma of the sexual assaults and growing up in a house where I was physically forced to do things. I had any situation where it feels like my hands are tied and I have to do something. I think I have to switch my thinking about this since not all obligations are like that. Some are enjoyable like taking care of children or just things you do to contribute in a functioning society like taxes although the US tax code could use some work. Obligations don’t always imply abuse

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I thought taking a day or two off work to work through some of the cognitive beliefs holding me back would help. But coming back things are the same. It’s like more things pop up instead that are so random and don’t fit the situation at all. I really hate it. I know being frustrated at the journey doesn’t help but I can’t understand why I’m fine for the most part just hanging out on a weekend but at work I can barely read a paragraph.

I know it’s a shame spiral. Do I feel shame around taking the days off? Maybe I’m worried about what others would think about me if they knew I did it. I know they wouldn’t understand. Maybe they would. I can’t really predict the future or what their reactions would be. Maybe they would ask me to use the time to do things for them or ask me why I didn’t use the time to do the things they wanted.

Sometimes I just need the time to manage all emotions and chatter in my head. Is that so wrong? I just want some peace and some quiet. Some sense of tranquility and lightness. I don’t want or need people berating me in person for doing something for myself that I need to do to function. They might now think it’s necessary but then again they don’t combat their own erroneous beliefs often or have PTSD. It’s just not the same.

I know I shouldn’t care about what those people think who may never understand what it’s like but there’s another part that holds onto the shame. Sometimes I wonder if I should tell these people that I have PTSD and talk about what life is like for me. But at the same time, I don’t trust these people. They have a history of using the “weaknesses” of others against them and spreading it around. I don’t trust them enough to tell them anything so personal about me. At the same time, a part of me wonders if it would make it easier. Is there a chance that telling them would make my life easier? Is there evidence for it? Not really. Even if they were compassionate for a moment, history shows what their response would be not long after.

I'm sorry work is so difficult. You are going through a lot, and have to fight for your needs to keep you functioning in secret/without understanding. Not feeling safe to describe important needs is hard. Understandable and natural to be frustrated and tired. It sounds like there is a lot of stress, added psychological weight at work from this. You are not failing for struggling there.

BuildingSelf24 said:

Sometimes I just need the time to manage all emotions and chatter in my head. Is that so wrong? I just want some peace and some quiet. Some sense of tranquility and lightness. I don’t want or need people berating me in person for doing something for myself that I need to do to function. They might now think it’s necessary but then again they don’t combat their own erroneous beliefs often or have PTSD. It’s just not the same.

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Experiencing this regularly would burn me out. I think it goes hand-in-hand with this:

BuildingSelf24 said:

I can’t understand why I’m fine for the most part just hanging out on a weekend but at work I can barely read a paragraph.

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Additional stress that feels normal is still taxing.

BuildingSelf24 said:

I know I shouldn’t care about what those people think who may never understand what it’s like but there’s another part that holds onto the shame.

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If you grow up in a place where approval = survival, it's hard to not care or feel hurt when not understood.

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

I'm sorry work is so difficult. You are going through a lot, and have to fight for your needs to keep you functioning in secret/without understanding. Not feeling safe to describe important needs is hard. Understandable and natural to be frustrated and tired. It sounds like there is a lot of stress, added psychological weight at work from this. You are not failing for struggling there.


Experiencing this regularly would burn me out. I think it goes hand-in-hand with this:

Additional stress that feels normal is still taxing.


If you grow up in a place where approval = survival, it's hard to not care or feel hurt when not understood.

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Thank you journaling it out was able to help. It was easier to get some work done. You are definitely right. It just feels like I’m not cared for. It’s a big wound I have that I haven’t gotten over yet. Maybe because it took so long to realize what love and care should look like. I still don’t know fully. I really thought that you had to have your family’s approval in order to survive but I’m realizing now that’s not true. They can and should care even if they don’t approve.

I think I hold a lot of shame for believing certain things and falling in with certain communities. When I think about it, the things they said made no sense and were so contradictory, but I just automatically believed. I know it was a response from childhood. I was taught to never question anything and to take in whatever was said to me. I thought my education and learning how to think would’ve helped but in the moment I guess my upbringing and trauma response kicked in.

Now I recognize when I’m in that fawn mode just saying what someone else wants to hear and can recover quickly, but it’s definitely still there. Feeling so much shame about it isn’t helpful. I can feel mad at the people who intentionally tried to deceive me but the others were just espousing their beliefs. I feel it’s my fault and the blame is on me for being naive and stupid enough to believe. Why couldn’t I think in those moments? I know it’s one of the effects of PTSD. Maybe a part of me wanted to believe what they were saying was true and wanted to believe that I could trust more people and that the world was more fantastical than it actually was. I know different now. Trust is earned. People don’t just become trustworthy because I want them to be. Probably another holdover from childhood. Having no choice but to trust people even when they’ve shown repeatedly they cannot be trusted.

It’s hard to convince myself I’m not a failure. Looking at the definitions I know that they don’t apply to me. I know I may not be competent at certain things and that I can make mistakes due to poor judgment. But that’s sometimes. I’m not useless and there are things I’m successful at or have been. There will be more successes to come and more failures too. Such is life. It’s a generalization to say that I’m a failure or even to say that I’m a success. My status is still pending. I’m a work in progress. Still under construction.

I feel like I have oblige the wants and needs of others because I don’t respect my own. Listening to Crappy Childhood Fairy, she mentioned this. Maybe certain parts of me don’t deserve to be shamed and hidden away. Maybe I don’t need to deprive myself from connecting with others. Maybe it’s not a bad thing that I want to connect with others. Maybe I felt like I was at the mercy of others because I didn’t consider or even acknowledge my own feelings, thoughts, wants, and needs. It’s not selfish to consider myself. It’s only selfish if I only consider myself and the benefits to myself.

I guess I didn’t really have any respect for myself. I wanted good things for myself and generally saw myself as good but didn’t really acknowledge my myself in regards to others. Their thoughts, feelings, and desires all took precedence to my own. In relation to others, there was no me just a husk. I know this comes from childhood. I wasn’t allowed to share any opinions, feelings, or needs, especially if they were inconvenient. I could only think of my family and what they wanted from me even making sure to anticipate any needs to prevent shaming or even violence if the neglect of their wants was perceived as a slight or a terrible character flaw that needed to be beaten out of me.

I don’t necessarily have to put myself first when thinking about or interacting with others but I have to at least consider myself even the parts that conflict and try to resolve it.

Just acknowledging that things have been hard and that it’s hard to do certain things lately made me feel relief. I think I’ve been beating myself up about things being easy or that things should be easy. But they’re not. They might be easy for people who don’t have to deal with the CPTSD or even for myself before my symptoms really reared their head. But now that’s not the case. When my mind or emotions are in certain states, it hard to do things and even harder to do them well. I can acknowledge that without comparing myself to others or even saying that it should be easier be do. It just adds more shame and judgment and makes it even harder to function. It’s already hard enough. I don’t need to make it harder. The challenge is just getting through the day and doing it well. I don’t need to add anymore on to that. It’s already hard enough as it is.

I think I need to focus on myself in the moment and how I feel and think currently. This would reduce the sense of shame and keep me from comparing myself to others or even my past selves. Focusing on what is current to bring myself into the moment fully.

I’m realizing that I actually hate myself. I thought I loved myself. I wanted the best for myself and to have good things in my life and to be good. But looking at the definition, I definitely hate myself for the inner turmoil and conflicting emotions and I still have an aversion to my emotions. How my family acted towards me is how I act towards myself. It’s not love and care. In all this time trying to heal, I didn’t even realize that I don’t even like myself. I hate what I’ve become. Then again, I have hated myself for a long time with only brief periods when I feel okay and good about myself.

What would make me actually love myself? Feeling good but that only happens once I feel good about myself. It’s a hate loop. Why do I hate myself? I don’t even know. I think I’m just frustrated with how things are. I’m tired of feeling all these negative emotions, feeling down, and not being able to think properly.

Looking at the definition for self-love, I don’t think I have that. I don’t approve of myself or have a positive view of myself. I don’t think I view myself as valuable. I think I placed my value in living up to the standards of others. It’s why I’m still drawn to people who seem to have the answers and try to live up to what they say. I find myself freaking out if I don’t agree with or match what they say.

I’ve never taken the time to see if I like myself. I’ve asked myself what I wanted to be or who I want to be, but never if I like myself. Who would I have to be for me to like myself? I don’t really know. All I know is that I want to feel better and to succeed. But succeed at what exactly? Right now I just to keep myself alive and be healthy. But a part of me sees success as gaining some sort of status or high position and getting recognition from others but at the same time I shy away from that. I feel undeserving or like it’s too much for lowly me. The eyes of so many people do not feel safe. It feels too vulnerable and exposing.

If I don’t see myself as valuable even to this world, why am I still here? I don’t want others to win. I don’t want them to take over the narrative of my life. Am I really not valuable to the world? I have been beneficial to the lives of many people and still am. What about myself? Am I not valuable to myself? I’m doing what I can to keep myself alive. Is that not enough? When will I be enough for myself? I already am. I guess that was the effect of all the trauma, having people mirror that I’m worthless to me to the point that I start to believe it. Just because they didn’t think I was valuable enough to treat properly, doesn’t mean I have to think that way about myself. I am and will always be valuable to myself. I’m the most important things in my own life because without me, I have and am nothing.

BuildingSelf24 said:

What would make me actually love myself? Feeling good but that only happens once I feel good about myself

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I wonder if part of the reason I’m attached to my anger is because it shows that I’m starting to care about myself. It’s the evidence that I have strong feelings towards myself. Makes me wonder if I retraumatize myself just so I can feel like I love myself by getting angry about it. What I really need is consistent positive regard for myself which has been rare these past few years. Give myself the good attention and approval. Doing what I didn’t get as a child, that positive regard.

My default mode with shame is to deny or repress it. This was definitely modeled for me as a child but I also developed that so I could do the things I wanted without feeling the shame of my family’s disparaging comments. But the repressed shame is there in mind in the background most of the time and most days. I have to snap myself out of that repression and denial mode to see whether it’s justified or not and respond to it appropriately.

There’s definitely something around wanting to do things urgently. It’s also tied to childhood since I had to do things quickly or else get beat and then somehow do them well while crying and being distressed and hurt physically and emotionally, probably mentally too since having someone yell terrible things at you in that state would be a mind f. But there’s also the side of me wanting to do things urgently since I had to wait to do them before. Even with this, it’s better to evaluate what is needed in the moment based on my current state and the circumstances. It’s probably not a good idea to do my nails when I’m having anxiety. Hands will probably be shakier than usual and take more effort to keep steady and mistakes will enhance it even more. Nail care would be fine though like filing, putting oil or a cuticle remover on. Snipping the hang nail or loose cuticles should wait though since I need a steadier hand for that.

I think I still hit myself over the head with the idea that I should be able to do things without the overwhelming emotions and negative thoughts. But what am I going to do? They come up and all I can do is try to manage them, figure out their root, and work to heal it, so maybe that specific thing won’t trigger me again. But that’s a process, not an overnight fix, especially considering that my own mental states triggers me a lot. I’m trying to get to the point where I’m triggered less but I’m not quite there yet and that’s fine. It’s not ideal but it is what it is.

That in between phase of working on a goal but not quite being at the finish is triggering for me. I know it comes from my mom never praising me and always setting higher and higher goals for me to reach to before she ever did. I only remember two times she was happy for me or complimented me: when she found out I could start paying her rent and when I made a vegan jerk burger. All happening when I was an adult 22-23. It felt like I would never earn her praise and gave up. The one time she seemed proud of me in front of others was when I started working at the same company as her and she could show me off to her coworkers and boss. I felt so weird when she hugged me in front of them. She hasn’t done that in as long as I could remember so probably since I was a toddler or baby. It was so uncomfortable and I wanted to push her off me but I couldn’t do that to her in front of people. I felt sick about it like I was her show pony that she normally neglects but suddenly dresses up to look nice for the photos and competitions. I still haven’t gotten any praise for her about my career or school achievements. I seriously doubt I ever will.

I think it triggers me when I’m in that in between phase because of that experience as a child. I feel like I’m inadequate and that I’ll never get the praise or thing I want until I reach the end. Isn’t just having the good goal enough? Isn’t actively working on it enough? Isn’t not giving up on it enough? I can praise myself every step of the way even though she never did. I can tell myself that I’m doing a good job and to keep going. The in between matters without it I couldn’t reach the goal. I matter even if I’m in an in between phase. I don’t have to arrive before I matter.

I finally finished "Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists". The last book I read on trauma I skipped the section about relationships but now I'm thinking about coming back to it. Relationships are huge stressor and trigger for me. I'm stuck in the past for many events in my life. It's like my default setting to go over things over and over again. To relive them mentally and emotionally, even hallucinate them.

I'm relieved to finally be finished but I'm going to miss the experience of reading it for the first time and realizing that it's talking directly to me. So many things were actually how I felt and what I experienced. The tools provided were invaluable and actually helped. Now, I need to implement them fully. I'm reeling a bit at the daunting task but I can always revisit it if I get overwhelmed or confused.