As the community continues to grow and attract people who are just figuring this all out, we've decided to change the weekly thread focus to be more open and encourage newcomer questions and support. Please use this thread if you are seeking support or have newcomer questions. Want to see if your post topic has been discussed here? Type "subreddit:cptsd" after a search term in the search bar (ex. "friendships subreddit:cptsd"). Here are some common newcomer questions:
- DAE struggle with expressing anger?
- DAE struggle with anxiety/ depression?
- What are emotional flashbacks? How do I deal with them?
- How do I set boundaries?
- Was this (situation) abuse? Was it bad enough to be considered trauma?
- What books do you recommend?
- What type of therapy worked best for you?
- How to deal with relationship struggles/ anxiety/ fear of intimacy?
If you are new to r/CPTSD: Please check out the rules below, and for our mobile users who can't access the sidebar, more resources are located below the rules. These can also be accessed from the auto mod message that greets any post.
Keep the rules in mind when you post & comment:
- This is a peer support community. Be a supportive peer.
- Don’t ask for diagnosis, don’t diagnose others: Respect that you may not have all of OPs details and even a trained, trauma informed care provider cannot diagnose over the internet. So don't. Assume the context of OP as a CPTSD survivor or supportive partner of a CPTSD survivor.
- No hate speech
- Please be mindful about triggering content. Avoid graphic thread titles, and use [Trigger Warning], NSFW and/or the spoiler tag whenever appropriate.
- No RaisedByNarcissists lingo: A lot of folks come from the RBN support community. A lot of us do not. To keep the sub inclusive to CPTSD newcomers and survivors of different backgrounds, use common language synonyms for RBN acronyms. There are some exceptions.
- All content must be CPTSD related: Our lives, our struggles, and our victories with CPTSD.
- No Self-Promotion: Don't sell stuff or recruit for studies and projects without explicit mod approval. This thread is an exception; in the Vents & Victories thread, you may self-promote blogs, videos, and other media you created.
BIPOC
We recognize that healing communities such as r/CPTSD are not exempt from the insidious impacts of racism, whether overt or covert (for example, invalidating, minimizing, or microaggressive comments made by those with good intentions). In these cases, we encourage users to report the comments as Rule #3 violations. Because of the subreddit's high profile and open nature, this problem will continue to be with us, and we therefore can only promise a "safe-ish" environment for BIPOC. Racial trauma will always be on topic here at /r/CPTSD, but BIPOC users that want a more closed space can make use of /r/cptsd_bipoc. Thank you to the mod team at /r/cptsd_bipoc for helping us write this verbiage.
Additional Newcomer Resources
- Crisis Resources
- Emotional Flashback 1st Aid Kit
- Grounding & Containment Tools
- An FAQ Guide to CPTSD
- Our Library of Books, Media, and Healing Resources for CPTSD
- Common Myths About CPTSD
- The 5-Steps to Find a Therapist Plan
- The CPTSD Wiki Project Index, while currently under construction, has all of the above information and regular updates on many additional topics you may find helpful in your healing journey
I started college. It's been hard. I was overwhelmed with the different online platforms every teacher was using, differently. It's a mess.
I want to study psychology.
I put a lot of effort into my assignment, pushed myself, and then it wouldn't accept my submission. It was a video recording, of me talking about myself, introducing myself to the class, using the schools software, and I had to keep making it over because it didn't save a failed submission.
I got an F. There's always a couple, he said. It's not his problem. Apparently it's mine, but I don't feel in control of it.
I saw myself being set up for failure, and it was stressing me out so much it was impacting my other courses.
I had to drop psych. I'm still raw about it. I'm ruminating. Part of me wants to tell him, as a teacher, I would have never, never left a student feel so abandoned, and as a teacher I don't respect him, as a teacher.
...
For writing class I finished my essay. Again, the tech. I upload the assignment, there is a green check mark, I press next, I go to a new screen with next week's assignment, and I think I'm good. Nope. Pushed the wrong button. 0 points.
And... I put everything into it. It's one of the best pieces of writing I ever wrote, I think. It's about the show blue eye samurai, and my journey of healing from trauma. I'm really proud of how it turned out.
I'm really sad that I don't get to celebrate it as a win, the way I was expecting to. I really wanted this win.