My bf says I will grow out of my trauma as I age is this true?

No. that is not how that works. your boyfriend clearly is very uneducated on this topic and needs to educate himself. you are correct, our bodies hold onto trauma, whether we'd like to forget or not.

The traumatic events I have experienced over the years are still with me. I have learned to deal with the emotional aspects with counseling, but there are still physical triggers that cause physical problems, esp now that I'm older and have more health issues. I'm better at compartmentalizing so I can function and work, but it comes at a price.

You won't forget it in the sense he means it.

But the longer and more distant you are from the traumatic events, the easier it is to deal with and the less it occupies your mind. Of course, that is presuming that you are taking positive mental health steps such as therapy with a trauma informed therapist, seeing a psychologist/psychiatrist, etc.

Yes, it does change our growth and development but in a twisted sort of way it can actually make us more attuned to others, loving, kind and empathetic-at least that's partly what it did for me. If we can find caring understanding people such as good friends, romantic partners, etc and build a new family out of them to replace our old crappy one then we heal and grow. Again, only speaking from personal experience.

To quote my late grandfather from Christmas 2012:

Me: "You mean I have to live like this for the rest of my life?!?!" while sobbing.

Him: "You make GOOD memories. And eventually they drown out the bad ones. The bad ones will ALWAYS be with you but eventually the good will be so much more that the bad will fade into the background."

He served in US Army during WWII and saw the worst of man's inhumanity to man up close.

I took his advice. And the second I see him in the next life I'll tell him he was so right. Because it worked. More wonderfully and magically than I could have possibly imagined at 26 years old

You cannot outgrow your trauma simply by waiting 10 years to pass. If anything, not dealing with it for so long could continue to mess you up in many different ways. It can continue to damage you both mentally and physically. Outgrowing your trauma is an active process that happens to take time. I hope you'll be able to gather your strength to explain this to him.

It’s like my ex saying that I need to toughen up when I had flashbacks and would ask him to stop doing something that has triggered me, and him also saying: “seriously, it’s been x years already, get over it, you have mental problems “ which made me relieve all the trauma and pain again.

Absolutely not. Wow. Don’t listen to him.

You don't need to have scientific data to prove him wrong. It's his assertion. The burden of proof lies on him.

And no. A movie-style memory wipe wouldn't change the way you feel in your day to day life. Your brain would still be wired the same way, the things that trigger you would still trigger you, you'd have actually it worse than ever, because you'd never be able to treat the root trauma to begin with.

"Time heals all wounds" only applies to people who aren't traumatised and then go through one or a couple of tough things. It's not true for people like us. It's dangerous misinformation to spread.

I understand he's not trying to be rude, but he's not trying to be informed, educated, or correct either. It's an opinion. That's it. Someone dilligently trying to do good would base their opinion on information, not what they wish were true. Also if it's a case of your view vs his, yours is based on lived experience. Which isn't up to the standard of scientific data (aka thousands of lived experiences), but it greatly outweighs a random opinion that a person could've picked up from anywhere whatsoever.

"Growing out" of trauma isn't a thing. It's like when someone says "time heals all wounds." For some people in some situations that's true, but for many it's not. Time can dull the sting of our trauma, but for some wounds, it's not that they get healed so much as we grow used to them. Like if a trigger doesn't seem to affect us as much, sometimes what's really going on is that we are so accustomed to dealing with it that we internalize more of that process. We can move through the triggered state more smoothly, but it still affects us. If we are able to pursue healing, we can integrate new knowledge, new habits, and move beyond the behaviors or traits that cause harm to ourselves and/or others.

But I would never call any of this "outgrowing" trauma. To outgrow something usually means you leave it behind forever, like a pair of shoes. Trauma doesn't work that way.

Quite the opposite.

Without help, you grow into your traumas and end up with maladaptive coping mechanisms

I'm 41. Your boyfriend is uneducated and ignorant. Hopefully it is not malicious ignorance.

Your boyfriend is extremely wrong

In many ways, the trauma and flashbacks actually got worse for me until I met my now wife. It only started getting better when I started living with her and finally began to heal.

Bless his heart. I sure wish that was true though. That would be awesome. Get a restart every decade or so…..

I find that I do forget my trauma and get better but only the trauma that I processed. Not the the trauma that I always remember every day without even realizing it.

Your boyfriend is full of poop.

You can heal, but that takes work. You don't just grow out of it, and even if you heal scars are left. It's why child abusers tend to be universally hated, they are the worst of the worst.

Perhaps he just doesn't understand the severity of the damage caused by child abuse. I would hate to think he was minimizing your issues, purposefully.

I would recommend giving him some reading to do. So he can educate himself on the subject, and not make a complete ass out of himself.

It can look like that cause a lot of people get treatment and start doing better with time.

However its very much putting in work + time that makes people cope better.

It takes time to heal but but if you dont learn how to heal time wont magically do it for you (sadly).

Just like one therapy session wont fix everything, thats where time comes in.

It can look like that cause a lot of people get treatment and start doing better with time.

However its very much putting in work + time that makes people cope better.

It takes time to heal but but if you dont learn how to heal time wont magically do it for you (sadly).

Just like one therapy session wont fix everything, thats where time comes in.

It can look like that cause a lot of people get treatment and start doing better with time.

However its very much putting in work + time that makes people cope better. It takes time to heal but but if you dont learn how to heal time wont magically do it for you (sadly).

Just like one therapy session wont fix everything, thats where time comes in

I used to think that as well. It definitely doesn't. It can resurface, especially if you have triggers you're unaware about and ongoing abuse/re-occurring trauma. It's a very stigmatised and misunderstood disorder, especially if you see it run within your own family and you yourself don't understand what's happening to you. It's lonely and empty when that happens. Everyone else is traumatised, but only you can see it.

However, I do believe you can heal in the sense of understanding your triggers and emotions.. being around others who understand and support you.

I think of life as chapters, there's ups and downs within it. But you are your own narrative. There's a point in life where you are free or take that opportunity to create what you want. That, to me, is healing.. Will it ever "go away"... honest answer is no.

I did quite the opposite. I grew into my trauma

Depends on you and your want/need to grow. You won’t age out of it but you can grow out of it.

It doesn't work like that at all. If you dont get therapy or work thru your trauma you remain stuck, no matter your age. And be warned, perimenopause (going through it now) makes mental issues worse.

No this is not true.

Not at all. Your brain has been rewired and you have an uneducated boyfriend telling you nonsense.

More like grow INTO it.

It gets less noticeable and less intense

Yeahhhh no. Doesn’t work like that at all. As I got older (41 now), my trauma tightened its hold on me, so what he’s said is complete nonsense.

I had a traumatic brain injury AND was molested as a child. I'm now in my 40s and only better because of therapy and medication, but I BARELY survived my teens, twenties, and thirties due to suicidal ideations and a number of attempts.

Do I remember the events in detail? No. Does it make me feel better? No. Because sometimes the weirdest shit will trigger me and I will have a panic attack.

My memory is swiss cheese as is, but the experiences I've had have left their marks.

Hell watching my Mom with her great grandchild was triggering because she went right back into her toxic behavior that I may have conciously forgotten but subconsciously still remembered. I stood up for my great-neice and felt proud of myself but also sad I didn't have someone willing to do the same for me.

That's a long way from the truth as far as I have read. On the contrary, the risk of suicide for people with suicidal tendencies increases with age in part because the personality structures harden. This also means that it becomes more difficult to change things or establish new, healthy habits in old age. That's why it's kind of funny when a 20-year-old health influencer tells a 40-year-old to "simply establish good habits". Perhaps your BF also means that you become more emotionally stable with age. And this is the case for the average person in old age according to psycological studies, but it can also be different for someone with trauma.

I don't know your story, but my parents are now in their 70s and they do everything, really everything, to avoid admitting that they made big mistakes. And I can really tell that their personality has hardened over the years. Two decades ago they were somewhat capable of self-reflection which is now completely impossible for them. Also, they both carry heavy trauma from their childhoods which were never addressed in any form of therapy or therapeutic setting and you can tell. They have so many CPTSD symptoms just normalized at this point and they're not happy people.

But despite from what your BF says, who should really read into CPTSD if you're important to him, you can find a way out of trauma with age with a lot of work IMO. Unfortunately there is no easy way out though.

It can be like grief. There is a picture of grief that shows grief in a jar as a ball. The grief stays the same size, but the jar it is in gets bigger in time, so there is space around it. It doesn't go away. We learn to live with it. Therapy helps sometimes with medication. Reading books about it helps, many reccomend here. The Body Keeps Score might be good for your bf to read. Trigger reactions might lessen with time and realizing the trigger before it causes a reaction. But the trauma is still there!

You can bury it. This results in a person who is emotionally stunted, crippled. That's what I did.

You develop coping mechanisms. Another way to say the same thing.

Try this:

Get the audio version of Fisher's "Healing the fractured selves of trauma survivors" (go read some reviews first)

Divide it in chunks, pre-listening. I suggest 10-15 minutes at a time.

Ask him as a favour, to commit to a short chunk of time per day to listen to the book. Listen to a chunk. Talk about it. I think the book is about a 9 hour listen, so in small chunks it will be about 2 months of readings. The talks should echo your experiences.

If he gets sidetracked and does more reading on his own, that's great.

Here's the thing: Trauma is going to be with you for a long time. Much of who you are today is the result of trauma. That will be true even when you heal. He's going to need to deal with a traumatized you for a long time. If he's totally not willing to do this, or some other form of learning who you are, then IMHO he isn't the right person for you.

Good luck.

I didn't get therapy until my mid 40s when I just... broke. It hadn't gotten better with time. I had literally forgotten much of the trauma. In fact, I hadn't even realized memories I did have were actually trauma because I'd never considered I was traumatized by my childhood. I knew it was not typical. I knew it had bad elements. I knew some of it was pretty messed up, but I was FINE.

Until I wasn't. Until I crashed and burned and had to understand what was happening and why. Then I started therapy and all those incidents I'd managed to hide away in the dark cobwebby recesses of my subconscious started leaking through. They never went away. They were just lurking. Like the monsters they really are.

You have to do the work. You have to banish the monsters with effort. They are never going to just leave. The monsters are all the bad things we think about ourselves that we were told or "learned" in our childhoods from the people who were supposed to be showing us our strengths and helping us deal with our weaknesses. When a child isn't given those parameters and only gets shown how wrong they are, they have to relearn those life skills. That is a LOT of work for those of us with C-PTSD because we have to start learning like a kid again and accept that we aren't the bad things. That our weaknesses are human and not inherently evil or whatever was drummed into our little brains. And that we do have strengths that no one ever acknowledged. Obviously we are all stronger than we were told or WE WOULDN'T STILL BE HERE.

We think often of the monsters that are humans. They are the ones that made us this way, no? And we often banish the human monsters from our lives. I'm no-contact. So I did that part.

Being no contact didn't stop the REAL monsters that live inside my brain from continuing to hurt me. The guilt. The doubt. The anger. The sadness. The pain. The disappointment. The utter and complete confusion as to why. The words and actions that made me feel less. Those are the monsters that will live in the cobwebs for years. Decades.

And you'll never know until you walk a little too close to that shadow in your mind. A song you haven't heard since childhood. A lookalike of someone from your past at the grocery. A smell when you're in a new place that reminds you of.... something....but you're not quite sure. The monster might grab you right then and there. Or he could take his time and wait until you can't even pinpoint what the trigger was that caused the monster to find his way out. But they will wait. They are very patient. But not infinitely so.

The monsters are never going to leave on their own.

depeneds if you put in the work on yourself to be better as human and heal through your trauma

i know a lot of incredible women that have worked hard on thier trauma and themselves and turned into emotionally buetiufl humans. they didn't forget thier truama. they worked on healing out throught it.

Time definitely helped me. The older I get the more I'm able to understand the trauma that happened to me, I'm better able to understand my situation and have been actively working on my symptoms :D I wouldn't say grow out of it per say, but as we get older the trauma we experience may get easier to digest.

Unfortunately no. The older you get the more you realize how un healed you really are. You gotta keep working at it till the end.

You can grow beyond your trauma. That takes time, but time alone will not heal your wounds.

When did your boyfriend get his medical degree?

As true as it is he will grow out of being male.

That’s so blatantly incorrect I want to laugh. Literally the reason people go their whole lives being miserable with declining mental health is because they ignore their trauma 🙄 Like does he think it just magically heals itself? I’m annoyed by your BF.

No that’s gaslighting/minimizing your feelings

No, he's just wishing it away.

The fuck is wrong with him? Being empathetic is rational. Being emotionally regulated is rational. Logic and emotions work hand in hand. There's no either or else. I'd say leave his ass. There is no need to tolerate this again

Telling an adult that they will grow out of something is rude.

I can tell you just from reading the heading, this is NOT true. It requires work and time. Lots of work. Hard work. And he should shut up about things he has no education in.

I am proof it does not get better. If he thinks that, he will likely be the one to retraumatize you. My husband thought if he ignored it I would just get better too. Ironically, if he had helped support me and educate himself on trauma to understand me I think I would be so much farther along with healing.

Don't sacrifice yourself for anyone else. It isn't worth it.

oh, good lord.

I describe it this way: When we're children, our brains are still growing and developing. We're learning how to be people.

If someone in our life is abusive, or we get neglected; our brains develop around that. We don't learn how to be people the same way as most of our peers. Our brains and nervous systems sense danger when there isn't any. We react to things the way we learned to do as children, which in many cases doesn't work in adulthood.

Or as I put it to someone: the hardware is borked. Like, I can learn to work around it to some extent. But the basic hardware is still a mess.

What's ironic about his idea, is that many people's brains force them to forget the experiences that traumatized them!

(Meanwhile I can remember everything. At least I know why I do shit.)

I forgot some of my trauma, but it was because I damaged my brain by binge drinking alcohol for a decade. Not the way to go.

With time, I think you can heal by working through your trauma. In 10 years, you certainly could be doing well, but I think that will be due to the amount of effort put into creating stability and safety to experience your authentic self. For me, that looked like 2+ years of both rehab and therapy (and counting).

I'm surprised "growing out of trauma" is so widely touted. I've actually never heard of this. I guess I just have lived in trauma-informed areas...

This is the kind of stuff that makes me so incredibly grateful that I will never have a romantic or sexual partner in my life again. And I don't mean that to be a brag because the love of my life died from a terminal illness but for God's sake am I so grateful that I don't ever have to go through this b******* anymore. Op, I can't tell you what to do about your relationship because that would make me complete hypocrite but I want you to be happy and if you don't think that you're being treated right please please do the best thing for yourself and get away from the person that's not treating you like you're supposed to be treated. I am not going to make any assumptions about the person you are with. This might be the best person in the entire universe. I just cannot help but heal a broken heart right now because I am so scared for people with the same diagnosis as me and oh s*** turns out with loved ones sometimes. I just really want the best for you. Please don't ever ever let anybody drag you down all the way with them. And almost happened to me. I can't even talk now I'm f****** crying. Baby, relationships are so overrated. The only relationship in the world that is not overrated is the one with yourself and I know that's cheesy as f*** but it's true. I feel like such a baby right now but I just also that there's so many people that I can't protect and that's really narcissistic I think of me but I don't want other people hurt like I have and do sometimes. Decades of turmoil especially with the love of my life. I don't want anyone to have to go through all that. Some of this s***'s way to embarrassing for me to even put down right here. You deserve the best sweetie.

You learn coping skills as you age, and you process things as you age, which can improve any number of mental health issues. But, aging alone has nothing to do with it. It’s just time, practice, perhaps combined with treatment. I suspect he meant that as you age, you learn and develop, which is true. I doubt he was trying to be mean, just not expressing himself very precisely.

I don't think that "growing out of it" is good wording.

You can learn to heal, but some parts of us will never forget. It takes hard work and lots of pain. We don't just grow out of it like a toddler with shoes, but we do grow. And as that growth occurs, if you nurture yourself correctly, and if you have good people and tools to help you, the trauma CAN diminish, and we can learn to not let it control us. The strength of that growth doesn't happen overnight. It takes long nights and deep, intentional thinking, and honesty and compassion with yourself. I'm not an expert, I can only say what I've lived. I'm not healed yet, but I'm on my way. My trauma has less power over me than it did 6 months ago, and I'm not going to let what happened ruin me for the rest of my life. I'm not strong, but I'm strongER. Our trauma changes us, sometimes forever and sometimes just for a very long time. But we CAN be healed. It's just a matter of time.

So no, we don't grow OUT OF it. We grow THROUGH it and learn to conquer it with our growth.

Make him read "The body keeps the score"

Sorry he invalidated your experiences like that. I've found that people who haven't lived through these types of experiences often can't understand how fundamentally changed by it we are. He needs to educate himself before he speaks.

Nope and I hate this belief and I keep getting told to just move on and forget about it but it's not how it works at all. PTSD/CPTSD/DID has memory loss of the event as a symptom and it's a common one lol.. yet people still exhibit clear signs of trauma and feel the effects of it daily.

This might sound grim but, the body keeps the score. The trauma is a subconscious process that runs 24/7 especially if it was in childhood. Your environment shapes you.. and that's what makes trauma so hard. Childhood trauma becomes embedded into your fundamental development, to an extent it permanently affects the way you view people, yourself, and the world long into adulthood. And that's it, that's what CPTSD is.

Trauma changes you, and I wish people without PTSD/CPTSD would stop saying that "you just need to move on", "just forget about it", "stop using it as an excuse (depends)", "it happened so long ago". They don't understand, it's not that we can move on or forget about - we actually tend to lol. But our brains are changed, and probably permanently. Our cognition will never be the same, our personalities stunted or unstable, dissociation iasues.. hypervigilance. Our entire brain has changed in response to all the bullshit we had to endure, just to protect us from experiencing it again. It's a subconscious process.

LOL, no. Not true at all.

Your boyfriend seems to not understand what trauma is. I'm really sorry. I know how it's like to talk about your trauma with people who are close to you that don't understand anything about it.

No. Not only is that not true, but it’s dismissive and abusive.

I don’t agree with what he is saying. I am 58 and just starting to work on past traumas going back to childhood. It’s challenging work. My therapist has said that young brains seem to respond to treatment more quickly.

For some reason I remembered the case of a guy who was paralyzed but awake during surgery ( anaesthesiologist messed up) and then they gave him some amnesiac drug so he wouldn't remember and sue them. He didn't remember, but his body did, started having panic attacks and developed paranoia and eventually couldn't live with it anymore.

It's a bit like that I guess, you may not remember, but your body does.

It worsens with age actually, if unadressed. Not to mention our tendency to develop auto immune disorders because of built up trauma.

It’s pretty clear you dont agree with him and you don’t believe it, so im not sure why you are asking the question you already answered.

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I've found overall that my trauma responses and other related mental health challenges have improved with time and treatment but that's not true for everyone, and I don't think I will ever be 100% okay.

It's been 10 years this year, and I still have bad days but I'm very proud of my progress and am very happy with the life I have built.

There is hope for improvement and better days, the distance helps but it takes active work for these things to happen it's not about forgetting.

I hope he is able to listen to the information you've gotten from others on this post and is able to gain a better understanding of how trauma affects people and how that looks long-term.

“The Body Keeps the Score” is a really good book and addresses a lot of how trauma doesn’t just disappear with time.

Being a survivor and healing is an active role in a journey that you can pursue. It is not easy and will be painful at times, but with therapy and perhaps other medical help, perhaps over time you can make progress with integrating the trauma and learning ways to manage the feelings and such that come with it.

If your boyfriend wants to be a supporter of you on this journey, he’s got a lot to learn. Starting with that book is probably a good start, and I’m reading another that will hopefully be one I can recommend soon too.

I don't think you "forget" with age; I'd say you get more "numb" to it, but it never disappears. From experience; I'd say if one doesn't resolve their PTSD and talk about it, it'll follow the person regardless how old they get. They'll just get better at coping it with age, but it can get worse if something that happens that triggers the previous episode. It becomes a baggage that can impact your life / relationships.

Overall, it's disappointing he didn't acknowledge your experience and downplays your feelings.

This is amateur trash pop psychology. Trauma tends to stack and get worse over time not better UNLESS something is done to process it and improve the situation. Sometimes people manage to do that without quite knowing what they were doing, so it makes it look like it was time, but it was specific things they managed to do over time.

Also conscious recalling of a trauma has very little to do with how badly it may still effect you because the normal way of trauma is to stick around and cause stress responses and other things when situations trigger it even if the original memory is no longer easily recalled.

Former therapist who also has a lot of trauma...... your bf is either lying or he's being extremely ignorant to the point he is actively hurting others with his false perception of the reality of trauma.

Edit: A very simple Google search will show the some of the science and psych behind trauma.... so this is never going to be a "my opinion versus his"... it's fact versus ignorance

no. that is not true at all and leaving trauma unresolved will likely only make it worse. the grief and trauma in your life does not get smaller. as you cope and learn to manage those experiences, the memories stay the same size - however, your life gets bigger and grows around the trauma, not away from it

The traumatic events we go through change us. It’s not a scrape on the knee that will heal in a few days. It’s not a cold you have to get over. It’s a life full of healing. Some days will be better than others. Some days you won’t think about what happened and some it’s all you can think about. And in some cases you have to completely rewrite your brain and your life. It’s hard work to keep going but we do.

Age can do one thing and that's teach you how to cope with it rather than grow out of it. To grow out of it means to learn a new way to think and relate to your emotional self. So in a sense you do "grow" out of it but I doubt that's the type of growth your boyfriend meant.

Idk. Maybe in some ways. I know how I am now is completely based on my trauma. But it feels so far away now, another life.

Yes and no. All up, he is wrong. Time does not heal mental wounds. You will not get better by existing longer. But time can help you get distance from traumatizing events, and if you are getting support and validation during that time, it can make you mentally stronger to be able to face your traumas more effectively later. So, sorta yes in that sense, especially if your perspective evolves based on how you are living life differently.

I've been away from my abusers for over a decade now and I have not "grown out of it". Have I gotten stronger? Yes. Have I put in effort to heal from parts of it? Absolutely, Yes! But I still have a very long way to go before my work is done, if that's even possible, it could take the rest of my life. The memories of abuse are still there, the wounds from my past still linger, but some of them are scars now.

No, that's definitely not how things go away. I didn't tell anyone I was molested and abused as a child, until I told my husband recently. I held onto that trauma for 30 years. I was fully planning to take it to my grave. Life kept getting worse, though, and I'm not willing to let this control my life anymore. It doesn't get any easier to carry, and it doesn't go away on its own. Don't waste your life being held down by trauma. Find someone you trust to talk to, or even a counselor might be able to help you with this and at least you can let it go😊

Nope. They're idiots. However, DONT DESPAIR. IF we learn to manage our reactions to trauma - and this is a commitment only YOU can make - it dies get better. It never leaves entirely, but I'm now at the point that I'm rarely triggered, and even those I can get to pass quickly. But YOU gotta commit to learning how.

I feel like age has made it worse for me. But I am working on it.

No. I’m 50 and still dealing with my trauma.

NO. Take it from someone like me who’s lived over 50 years with this trauma. It does not go away on its own (unfortunately). It just keeps coming back and manifests in different ways and with different people which only pulls you back into the cycle where the whole thing starts over and over again. I am now finally seeking therapy to overcome these patterns which have made me so unhappy and are now tearing my body and health apart. Life is too short to loose any more valuable time and potential happiness. The right answer is it takes work, a lot of work, to get through this hell on the way to happiness. I am finally doing this now because I am so tired of it and I feel like I’m loosing all hope. Please seek help and be prepared to spend some money. Not fair since we didn’t cause this but we have to pay financially to get help. The hope is you will find the right therapist for this job, not all therapists are right for you.

No not necessarily, I wish it was true tho..

I’m a professional hypnotherapist that treats and resolves PTSD in clients. Tell him from me, that’s not how it works.

No not true.

It's like saying you'll grow out of cancer. Without intervention it doesn't get better.

Your bf is an insensitive dickhead hun coz this isn’t true 🫂

You said it best!!!!! Yes it lives in the body and your nervous system will remember! Everything you said is true. If he was even a little bit correct the world would be a much better place I THINK. It doesn’t work that way. Time May lessen it but it’s there and it comes in waves. You don’t ever forget.

He is dead wrong. I’m 60 and just now experiencing the worst of my CPTSD. It was triggered by infidelity in my marriage and opened up lifelong wounds.

I have been in therapy and AA for 30 years and was keenly aware of the childhood neglect and abuse, and was in no way prepared for my CPTSD trauma responses to my husband’s betrayal.

Get therapy, do the healing work. Ignore your bf. He’s in denial.

No, he is wrong.

Absolutely not the body majorly holds on to developmental trauma. It sounds like you have a boyfriend who is ignorant about your condition.

There’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score. I’d check that out. Also some YouTube videos for it.

Humans are resilient and can overcome a lot of stuff. But trauma lives in our bodies and deep in our brains.

No. I realized when I was 43 the terrible consequences of my childhood, it's been five years and I have to fight and struggle and work through it all. Because I thought it's ok most of life, the hidden snares of the issues nearly ruined my life.

For me it gets worse . Bc you’re more aware of things . And you piece them together. I can make myself go mad by how I was treated . Idk why he even said that. That’s kinda a slap to the face

No. I think I'm worse with age as I start to actually unpack and deal with what happened. It took me 20 years to even start. I've been living in survivor mode for almost 27 years, so more of my life than not.

To repeat the affirmation — no. That is the exact opposite of how trauma and CPTSD work. That’s sorta the point of having special words to describe it.

It can get a lot better though! If you have the means, I strongly recommend a trauma informed EMDR and IFS therapist.

On to the bf…his misunderstanding is very common. I do not know him possible so he might be an insensitive jerk who won’t listen, or he could just be an insensitive jerk that will listen

You have a strong reaction because he did not validate your pain or ask. Him saying you would forget felt like minimizing to you.

You can send him some articles on CPTSD and trauma that you think reflect your experience and if he learns and acknowledges— great. If it’s radio silence or arguing…well he might not be the most supportive person for the long haul.

No, this isn't true. For me, who waited until I was in my 50's to deal with my traumas, and to speak about them, I feel like my mental stability became much worse - like the entire world came crashing down on me. Maybe if I'd been able to open up when I was younger, I'd have learned how to manage triggers & my mental health better, and received professional help. But here I am. The memories never fade. If he's interested and caring enough to understand trauma and how it stays with people, The Body Keeps the Score is insightful.

I’d argue it gets worse. Life is hard for everyone and as negative experiences stack up and your body ages and you become less independent… not good.

I’m 41 years old and left home at age 18. While physically leaving was undeniably a good choice, I didn’t begin tackling the trauma until a few years ago.

Right now I’m dealing with the emotions bottled up from my parents’ divorce. They divorced when I was 7. The feelings are incredibly fresh and I recently learned that I blamed myself for it, more than most kids because of how my father used marks and bruises on me as a weapon (I was a tomboy).

Those emotions don’t just go away. That would be nice, but they don’t.

Hi! I’m 64 and still dealing with it. I will say that age does allow you to see a bigger picture and things that were so worth fighting for in my youth aren’t all that important now.

However, I still have my triggers and work to keep my reaction smaller. I’m able to catch myself more often. It’s not due to age, it’s due to LOTS of therapy. And the right kind too.

What a dumb ignorant thing to say. You shouldn't even have to argue with him, if he cares he can research and any reputable source will explain that that is, unfortunately now how it works. I just joined this sub today because I had a mild panic attack over something that happened to me nearly 20 years ago and I managed to hardly ever think about for years

The cruel fact is that some of the symptoms of CPTSD can get worse as we get older if we leave our trauma unresolved and don't actively do the work. This is because it gets easier to give into self-destructive impulses. A big one is indulging the tendency to self-isolate. It's hard enough to hold onto relationships in adult life anyway, and if you find people very triggering, it can be all too tempting to just let those relationships go. Time may be a healer if you were endowed with the developmental skills to process traumatic experiences, but sadly it's usually not if you weren't so fortunate.

49, still in therapy...Where's the cut off point?

Nope not true at all. Takr care as soon as you can.

No.

no

No. I’ve forgotten most of my past but the fragments of memories coming from my trauma still haunts me.

Your BF doesn't know sht. Has he read a single fcking book on trauma? He pulled his uninformed opinion out of his a$$ and foisted it on you presenting it as a fact.

I had a BF like yours and have family members like this and they are INVALIDATING. Challenge him to become more trauma informed. If he continues to be a cocky little know-it-all well, remain at you risk. Do not expect empathy or compassion from this man as you two move forward.

As we age, many of us gain resources, wisdom, support, distance, and perspective that keep us safe and help us to navigate our trauma, but recovery is WORK. It's the work of a lifetime.

Don’t I wish. OMG my life at 57 would be so much better if I just aged out of the effects of childhood abuse. Your boyfriend needs to get educated and I find his analogy flawed. I’ve had a couple traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and they don’t work anything like he describes. This dude has no medical understanding and is playing doctor.

For both TBI and CPTSD it takes actively working to heal the damage done to recover. In both cases symptoms may come back. Post-concussion syndrome is a thing sucks let me tell you. In times of stress or if exposed to new triggers flashbacks may happen years after you’ve done major work and are able to live a fairly normal life.

It actually gets worse... I would encourage you to sit down and chat with your BF about educating himself even slightly before he dares open his mouth to speak on this topic again.

My husband is great with understanding my trauma therapy and he still checks to see if he's right in explaining how trauma is healed to other people because he doesn't want to get it wrong. He never does, but he always checks because he knows that as close as we are and as involved as he is... It's just not his area of knowledge as much as it is mine and he respects that and strives to continue learning and bettering his understanding of trauma.

We've been together for 14 years, and he's been acting like that since we were 18.

If he ever said anything like that to me after finding out about my trauma I'm not entirely sure I would have stayed with him. His response to finding out was to help me find therapy, not tell me I'll forget about it after a while.

If you plan for this person to be long term, they need to understand more about trauma YESTERDAY, and please, for your sake, do not settle for someone that won't learn or will only do the bare minimum. You WILL end up hurt. This process isn't easy and you have no choice but to bring 90% of your therapy home with you because that's where the real work is done.

Your healing is part of your romantic partners life no matter what because it's part of yours, and your healing deserves not just their respect, but their attention, love, and support too.

No, that was a shitty thing to say. And it feels manipulative to me, almost like what he really wanted to say is "hurry up and grow out of your traumau."

That is simply untrue. I remember far more of my traumas now than I did 15 years ago, and as far as I am aware, that’s a very common experience. I hope he is able to educate himself and support you as your healing journey unfolds!

Completely false. I'm 53.

Unfortunately, even when people think they're meaning well, their true lack of understanding can be incredibly invalidating. Sometimes they're just ignorant, but other times they're both ignorant and arrogant about it, and convinced they know better than you. Even closest family and friends can be like this. I've learnt that I just have to accept that they're incapable of understanding.

I believe, even if you can work through your trauma logically, mentally, and find strategies for coping, and working through emotions, your body keeps the score. (For some people anyway.) I can think I'm completely normal, fine, but someone will suddenly do something that triggers a survival flight/fight/fawn/freeze response in my body that I've got no control over. I can go from 'normal', to suddenly completely dissociated/derealised, as if i'm not in my body anymore, but watching from afar. If you're a gun, and someone pulls the trigger, you can't stop yourself from firing. You have to find people willing to work with you, put up with you, on feeling safe enough etc, that they never pull the trigger.

Your boyfriend is a bit ignorant. You don't "grow out of it". It's not a pair of pants. It takes therapy and more effort imaginable. Sometimes medication is needed to help regulate too.

It will not ever disappear. What can be done is stated above; It's just learning new or honing your own healthy coping skills.

Add-on Emotions are unique, it is both fact and opinion.

Uhhhh ... no. Definitely not true. "Time heals all wounds" isn't true. Maybe convenient amnesia would, lol.
I was in denial (and didn't fully understand the gravity of my situation) all up until I was 29. Everything's hit me like a truck. So in my case, I'm in pain AND working on improving (and eventually breaking free) at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive things, you know?

Is this some way of trying to tell you that he doesn't want to hear about it again because he hopes you'll forget about it then? It's like when people say "it's in the past." It's so infuriating. I've heard talk like that is called "spiritual bypassing."

You're right to be upset, because this was a really delusional thing for him to say.

Your boyfriend knows absolutely nothing about trauma or head injuries for that matter. Those are his very uninformed ideas, essentially his imagination, and they are incorrect. Certainly not based on scientific evidence that is out there and available to learn about either. I’d be wary about following any of his “advice” without fact checking it first.

Your boyfriend does this thing that everyone does, not listening. Instead filling the space with "nice, helpful, and original" things, that are always the complete opposite and self serving.

What he's talking about is denial. I met plenty of people that forget their trauma, my dysfunctional and abusive family.

I know it’s easier said than done, but try not to let it send you into an anxiety spiral. I’m here to tell you that your boyfriend is spouting complete nonsense, because I had a traumatic brain injury at age 9 and today at almost 37 I’m finally dealing with it. You might get better at burying the trauma as you get older, but it absolutely doesn’t go away. I’m successful, high functioning, high achieving…Then it all caught up with me earlier this year and next thing I knew I was flat on my ass and couldn’t figure out how to get back up.

I believe that he is uninformed. It doesn't work like that. There was an incident that changed my life entirely and took me thirteen years to understand why it happened. And I am still getting over it amidst everything else. You never outgrow things, you just live with it.

No. That's just Hollywood BS. The things that fade with time aren't true trauma, just pain. Like a friend moving away or pet loss. It hurts, it will always hurt, but it gets easier to deal with over time.

Trauma, the kind that rewires your brain because your ability to downshift emotions gets messed up. You go from being able to handle anxiety to feeling everything is dangerous.

The big issue is that 'therapy helps' but only if you get the right kind. Something like CBT can acurially make it worse. Think, you don't treat a broken leg by stretching. Good treatment but wrong disorder.

no.you need to process and get support and probably therapy. it gets much worse as you age no better unless you proactively address it.

Lol no. I have a lot of trauma that I don't remember. Trust me I wish I could so I could process it but I just blocked a whole bunch of my childhood out. Doesn't stop the panic responses.

If he doesn't try to understand he never will. There is plenty of "scientific evidence" about this. Heck, making simple searches on google will tell you that healing from trauma is NOT simple in ANY way. We don't even fully understand it to this day. There isn't even a pill you can take to cure it.

I would try to break it down to him in ways that are easier for people like him to understand. Maybe relate having CPTSD to things like a tiger who was raised having to fight other tigers to keep their food, or a flower that grew up in extremely rainy conditions, or even extreme versions of CPTSD like a child growing up in extreme abuse and neglect... a tiger who then joins a community of beavers will have the instinct to attack the friendly beavers, the flower who gets replanted in drier conditions will constantly feel the lack of water or will wilt and die, the child who grows up and tried to adapt to normal environments will perceive every person in their life as a threat and will live in a constant state of fear. If you try to relate these examples with your experience of being raised in certain conditions, maybe he will understand.

But like I said, he will not understand if he doesn't try.

I am not going to beat a dead horse everyone here pretty much agrees that you will learn cooping tendencies that will help but you will never get over it. I would just suggest that you get him to learn more about trauma in all forms. Also speaking from experience it is hard to find a partner who is understanding about serious mental trauma and not just physical trauma. From what you said it kind of seems like that physical trauma is what he is more familiar with and in no way is that right but the cooping tendencies are very much different and some times people can't see that.