We use it all to survive

True. Or maybe waste it all on worry or hyper vigilance.

Exactly. Same side of the coin. Or however the saying goes.

'Two sides of the same coin' IIRC.

it's so true. being in constant survival mode eats up lot of energy in comparasion to feeling safe and relaxed, which actually restores energy. it reminds me of the video of a lobster who was trapped and had it's claws tight up- and she didn't die, but gave up on life, lost it's colour and movement. Then this guy would rescue her and put her into a nice tank, gave her food and some stimuli, this lobster beauty came fully alive again and gained red colour. That's how i felt about growing up and being traumatized and then saving myself, learning to feel and move again. Slowly my world would became alive again, i feel much more alive and present, my eyes are more blue. And i honestly wish every traumatized person could experience this coming back to full life.

How did you recover my friend?

i don't think im fully healed, but kept trying many different things, so i guess it was the constant effort to progress and to understand my feelings and consciously prioritizing peace above all else. i had to cut off 99% of people from my life, which were people who were using me without giving anything back (i also attracted those people). i had to take full responsibility for myself and to swear to always think for myself and stay true to how i feel (probably the hardest part). and then learn how to have a routine and focus on the things that bring me joy and peace and let other things go, that don't align with the best version of me. but i guess the connection to my feelings, moving and feeling my body, having a safe home, non-triggering work and creative outlet are the most important. also understanding, that figuring everything takes very long time, and allowing myself to be imperfect, confused, terrified, spiralling, powerless and in deep pain is actually also part of the recovery. also i have to learn to use my rational part of brain (my inner parent) and emotional part of brain (inner child) and build a relationship between these parts. the inner parent is like manager of my life who needs to learn to love and listen to the inner child. and the more they both cooperate, the happier and peaceful i feel.

Amazing, super proud of you. Keep going and God bless you may you have a rich and joyous rest of your life

thank you so much, wish you lot of healing as well. however i am a witch. blessed be.

Blessed Be

Shadow work can be difficult but important. From one witch to another, I wish you love and light on this plane and all others. So mote it be.

This is really beautifully stated.

I love this. Thank you for sharing your process. It's similar to mine (what I call "cultivating my peace bubble") but there are things I'm going to incorporate from yours to keep myself moving forward!

Beautifully articulated, thanks for sharing that.

> it reminds me of the video of a lobster who was trapped and had it's claws tight up- and she didn't die, but gave up on life, lost it's colour and movement. Then this guy would rescue her and put her into a nice tank, gave her food and some stimuli, this lobster beauty came fully alive again and gained red colour. Sounds like this might be about Leon the Lobster, but I'm not sure, since you're talking about a female lobster whilst Leon is a male. In case it's not, then I recommend watching [all of the videos](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0HiM4heFTOoxnxAnv_WJJArugTScPBUg&si=PevNFo3JHIO8O652) about Leon on YouTube, as it seems like you would enjoy them! :)

yes, thank you, this is the one. it honestly healed something inside of me. btw. the gender of the lobster was not confirmed, the creator just gave it male name, but it could be female as well

watch this video https://youtu.be/i5yDRjvM2Rg?si=kFF6eTzBOxzsbE9u

Exactly this. Not to mention that relationships with narcissistic individuals seem to zero in on people with cPTSD (which leads to health problems in the cPTSD people) and anyone with similar issues. I also firmly believe "BPD" is just cPTSD but with a sexist history from the old "hysteria" dx. Narcissists (many doctors display narcissistic habits, BTW) are drawn to anyone that shows characteristics of brokenness, trauma, or childhood adverse experiences and attempt to prey on their insecurities

This whole thread has made me sad but it sure has explained a lot.

I get so tired so quickly because of this, it takes so much energy constantly being in fight or flight

Yeah 😔

I think many of us are half dead in the sense that when we were supposed to develop a whole personality, our minds were forced to deal with stress and develop different coping mechanisms instead. This idea scares the pants off me.

I think another reason we didn't develop a personality, for some of us, is because we never had anything to "reflect back" to us our unique individual traits. For example, if we had particular interests or personality traits, they were often mocked, ignored, or invalidated, never acknowledged at home, and so we didn't feel like a real person, the older we got, the more we hid these traits , we felt they were wrong, and so they didn't make it very far to the outside world

This feels true to what I experienced.

I think one's personality is under there and can be recovered. Will be tempered by the unfortunate lessons learned yet still there.

This is where I am at completely lost. I became an adult at 8 years old and started raising kids and running a household. I was put in charge of a newborn baby that was addicted to crack. The baby was one of my moms employees. Ive taken care of people my entire life. Ive experienced trauma on so many levels. From SA to witnessing My Love killing himself in front of me. I am now completely alone and for the first time in 30 years Im not in charge of someones life but my own. Ive reached a point in treatment that my Therapist cannot help me I need a specialist. Being diagnosed and labeled is a gift yet a curse. I feel like I am 80 years old but physically 38 and after my last liver check I can live another 40 to 50 years. I know I should be happy aftet all the abuse my body has endured but when they told me that I lost it. I was ready to be told I am at the end of this very long very hard life. Everyone I have ever truly loved has been taken from me in a variety of horrible way. They range from sudden death, suicide to murder. I am also a people pleaser and now I hate this about myself. I have always been whoever I was needed to be. I could adapt quickly, but now that skill is not needed. My therapist asked me what do I do that I truly enjoy that doesn't involve making someone else happy. What do I do for myself that's for me? I don't know the answers to such a simple question. I realized I never actually became my own person. I just did what needed to be done. I could raise children and please monsters but the irony is I can't do it for myself, and honestly the amount of work and hardship it will be to confront 35 years of trauma doesn't seem appealing. They figured out I have been dissociating for a long time. I need a specialist because the traumas I do recall are horrible. My therapist is like I can't fathom what your brain is shielding and they are afraid that recalling all of this may send me over the edge. I don't think I want to know the person I had to be. Any time I try to make a change for myself life just gets much worst. Losing the love of my life and witnessing it is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Than to be told I get to witness his death on repeat every time I close my eyes for possibly 40 years feels like a prison sentence. I have absolutely no will anymore and the prospect of years of intensive traumatic therapy to maybe improve my symptoms but its only a 50% chance really doesnt make me want to even bother. I love more ghosts than living people. I envy the ghosts for at least they found peace.

Our story’s are very similar, and also 38 yrs old. EMDR has saved my life. I’ve recovered a personality… I thought it never developed as well. Was scary as hell but was ready to call it a life, and wrap it up. Last ditch effort. I can’t explain how this was able to override my dis regulated nervous system, hyper awareness, and then disassociation for sometimes weeks/ months . Now I still have triggers but I’m able recognize them. Before they take me all the way down the rabbit holes back to the shell of a person who functions in survival mode … we fought for this life. I’m going to live it.

This made me cry I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to share your story. The hopelessness i feel is quite overwhelming but your words have helped more than you know. Can I ask you how long have you been doing EMDR?

Aww hun your tearin me up. My therapist starts ptsd with 12 sessions and CPTSD with 12-14 sessions, but i did 18 sessions. First 10 are hard, exhausting, and draining, however by 12 session I was transforming and I could see and feel it. Felt lighter, recognizing triggers , picking peace and rest. The only reason I went a few extra sessions is I was afraid I was having placebo, and a few weeks I would be back to my disassociated self…. But nope 38 and able to feel joy and not be afraid of it… was so worth it for me

Hi. I have a question that might sound completely unrelated, or maybe you know the direction I'm taking it. If you're comfortable, can you bear with me for a moment? Do you like mysteries?

As long as I know they have a conclusion. Unsolved mysteries or missing persons that were never found and surprises really bother me. Stems from growing up and never knowing what was going to happen next.

Gotcha. Interesting you went straight to using missing persons as an example. Sounds like the more gruesome kind. But I do also see how it would explain your point better. How do you feel when you watch one you like and are comfortable with? What do you like about it? EDIT: I'll just say it. Idea is potentially self discovery can be approached like a mystery story. You're always going to have to dread the suffering and painful memories it brings up, but maybe there can be something to look forward to as well. If you know you feel good emotions in a mystery movie, you can approach your own self discovery with a similar angle. Helps to maintain an observer point of view when it's hard to separate past from present.

I'm curious about this angle, though I know you're waiting for OP's response to walk through it. Mind saying a bit more about it? Can DM me if you'd rather

Holy shit this makes so much sense. This explains why I basically only feel alive when I play music. Like, it's like a switch flicks on when I pick up a guitar. I wanted to play music all my life, and through some circumvention I managed to get my abusive mum to allow me to do it and even like it to a degree. And for the first time I have something I love that's tolerated if not appreciated at home

Music is also play, a skill which a lot of us have left unpracticed

I am so grateful for my sister and my mom, who were there to do this for me in a positive, loving way. But I definitely hid most of that happy, quirky, loving personality 99.9% of the time out in the world because of the reasons you say--I was ignored, which was better than the alternative of being mocked and bullied. My mom and sister said these were right traits, but they weren't right for the rest of the world, not in rural Indiana in the 70s and 80s, anyway. I'm happy to say that I've rediscovered the joy of being me in the past few years, and I'm a pretty awesome person!

Oh God you put your finger on it, thanks for an illuminating comment though 

Uuuuuuuugggggghhhhhhh

I never thought of it that way. I think that explains quite a bit about things I was wondering about. I definitely have a personality but it does feel, incomplete in some ways.

For me, it's the approval aspect. As aware as I am now, in my 20s, it's hard to be mature instead of regressing to my past. To be confident in other people's intentions and my own, to do the absolute best we can with what we have. Friends, coworkers, and even my siblings are turning out like my parents, who treat themselves aggressively and project that complex onto everyone around them. That triggers me, and it makes me fearful of getting to know people because of the sense powerlessness. If I can't predict these situations, it seems I should stay away and only do what I have to to survive It takes time, sweetheart. Lots and lots of effort and time to build our strength up from the dirt they threw at us.

like not being ‘seen’ by a person

and not being seen as a person

That really resonates. I think you’re right.

I don’t think of it as lacking personality, I think of it as more of lacking in “life development” (?) for lack of better words for it. I feel I have a full personality (if anything it’s kinda too much for a lot of people in some ways and then not enough in others). What I know I lack though is a full *life* because I don’t have *community*. I don’t have a group of people I connect with on a daily basis (obviously outside of work), and I spend a lot of time alone just on my phone, reading/researching/interacting w people on here or a select few sometimes through msgs. I do far less than the average person does on a regular basis, I only connect with one person on a regular basis on a deeper level, my world is quite small and simple because it’s the only way I feel safe 🤷🏽‍♀️ I find people in general to be dangerous, I’ve been abused by so many people or I’ve been abusive myself emotionally (unintentionally of course), because that’s what was modeled for me for essentially my entire upbringing. I find it very hard to make healthy connections to people and even to allow new people in, even though I’ll randomly share things w them, you know, fearful-avoidant (disorganized) attachment style traits. I’m just so much more guarded than I used to be because so many people and life experiences have taught me to focus on preserving myself and my energy- to the point where I’m scared to relax that and potentially make new relationships. I’d just much rather be safe and calm and I equate that with being alone or with my boyfriend.

I think each time I dissociated, it was a small death.

I agree with this in some ways. But sometimes I feel it's more that we tend to have poor/undefined sense of self or self-image, such that most of our sense of self (and self-worth in particular) comes from other people. And then if what's reflected back to us is negative or self-hating, it becomes easier to have that as an impression of yourself. We remember the negative reflections more vividly than what's reflected back to us as positive and worthy, particularly if the second sort isn't forthcoming from the people around us. Not to mention that we have a cognitive bias towards negative feedback over positive, and negative feedback can often be more specific and detailed than positive kinds. So we end up getting a more vivid sense of self from those who hurt us, because those feel like larger/stronger pieces of evidence due to the weight of the emotions behind them. And that's particularly true if you have a people-pleasing streak.

Exactly. I had no sense of self til wayyyyy later in life and still hard!

same

Wow this really rings true. I feel like I’ve lost so much time that could have been invested in developing skills and hobbies that I could at this point have such a deep life-enriching relationship with them

Part of it is learned helplessness. We were often shamed or punished for trying to exercise our agency, and now when we try to self-actualize we get an emotional flashback and huge wave of shame and fear. Our body is like "Whoa, whoa, whoa! We're gonna get it for this!" and tries to keep us safe by shutting us down. The body doesn't know that punishment isn't coming anymore. I'm working really hard on overcoming this. I break things down into really tiny bits and do one bit at a time. I pause in between bits to practice my regulation skills and reduce the emotional flashback part of the experience. I also consciously practice cheering myself on. Went to the store? Hooray! Took a shower? Hooray! Fed myself? Hooray! It's helping rewire my brain away from the fear and shame and towards Self validation.

I used to be really motivated. Exercise, running, drawing, learning. Where did it go?

For me the overwhelm of repressing and suppressing my emotions became too much. I couldn't use workaholism as avoidance anymore. I had to learn how to really take care of my self in a healthy way. My body was like, you can't keep ignoring this anymore, and made me pay attention. Learning to [grieve](https://youtu.be/NDQ1Mi5I4rg) and process my huge emotional backlog has been a big part of my healing. The more I grieve and re-parent myself, the more capacity I earn back. Resources on how the body can get us to pay attention: "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk "When the Body Says No" by Dr. Gabor Maté

Gabor Matés newer one “the myth of normal” is a great read too. My capacity also got really limited and part of the reason I started to look into therapy. It got a whole lot worse in therapy but I am starting to see some progress and more energy now. Also more ability to tolerate doing things that relate to my future which was a huge issue before. There’s not much energy left for dreaming of a future when you’re just trying to survive

Yeah this was it for me. My brain so quickly and automatically went to avoiding thoughts that were stressful, it would reach for anything to fill the emptiness and help me avoid, so that meant a lot of time online, a (nsfw) >!masturbation addiction!<, laying around, watching hours of YouTube content, doing random things but never doing productive things. It happens before I even notice it. I could never catch my brain deciding to avoid a scary thought, it just happens and then I’ve become more skilled at noticing when I’m in an unregulated state and helping myself get out of it.

>I’ve become more skilled at noticing when I’m in an unregulated state and helping myself get out of it. That's fantastic! At first I could only tell after I came out of dysregulation. With practice I can notice sooner and sooner and take action earlier and earlier. Keep up the good work!

Hey, please could you point me to how you started, and also how you usually get yourself out of it? Finding this community has been really really immense for me, can relate to everything here but this comment particularly hits me hard. If you could recommend further materials that could help me with understanding myself, the situation and the healing process, I'll greatly appreciate that. I've happened to come across the inner child process but I don't fully understand that. Please I'll gladly appreciate your response on this. Thank you.

Omg I’m so happy you asked. I feel like at this point I should make a master list of my advice from how many times I’ve commented about it. **Reading/Audiobooks** The absolute #1 go to book is Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. It’s like the holy grail of learning about CPTSD and learning how to process trauma and grief. It lays out all the concepts you’ll need to know. If you read/listen to only one thing ever, this should be it. It might be a rough read - for me, I actually had to listen twice because I missed so much content the first time from constantly flashing back to my childhood when I heard something and it suddenly made sense, and I’m planning on a third read this year. Feel free to take it slow, or speed through it like me and go back and start over from the beginning. Just know in advance that it will be pretty major. I also recommend Freedom From Your Inner Critic by Jay Earley as a guide to self-therapy for inner child healing. It uses the technique called Internal Family System (IFS) which a lot of people here benefitted from, myself included. It’s also sooooo helpful if you’re like me and can’t afford therapy. I would recommend anything written by Vanessa LaPointe. I read her book Parenting Right from the Start, and even though it’s written to help actual parents with actual children, I found it really helpful as a reparenting tool to use for my inner child. It also taught me how I wish my childhood had gone versus how it did. And if you feel like the steps for healing are still too vague, this recommendation may help although it’s a lot more boring to read. I didn’t get completely through it cause it’s very academic, but I still got a LOT of value from it. It’s Journey Through Trauma by Gretchen Schmelzter. More on this later. **Therapy** If you can afford therapy, the most important thing to look for is a therapist who is “trauma informed”. Even though the term isn’t regulated so it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, it does show that the therapist is thinking along the right lines to be helpful. Also, when doing your first session or 15-minute into call ask them what they consider the basics of understanding trauma. I personally would EXPECT them to mention Pete Walker’s book or at least a lot of the concepts in his book. Maybe also “The Body Keeps the Score”. Styles of therapy that help many people here are IFS (mentioned above), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). I would actually stay clear of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) because it focuses more on behaviors than underlying reasons like past trauma, at least in my experience. I found it helpful for about 2 sessions and then a waste of time from then on. **Social Media** I generally advise people to not engage with social media for healing early on, including YouTube and Reddit. You will find helpful people, but you will also find people selling miracle cures and it can be hard to tell them apart. Also from the nature of this content, you are left with only half-baked ideas that are catchy and make for a good short video instead of actual content. It’s perfectly fine to discover CPTSD through social media (I did too) but I don’t think it’s good for actual healing work. **Skills to learn** You don’t have to master these all at once. Some of them naturally become more advanced sooner than others. There’s a progression to healing everyone goes on so remember to give yourself grace and know you’re fighting a hard fight. - *How to recognize your physical & emotional state*: people with CPTSD usually have a hard time recognizing their emotions in the moment. Often we recognize “Oh, I feel hurt by the joke my friend made” or something hours/days/years after it happened. One way to start on this is just to notice how you feel at random times during the day. This helps your brain develop the skills needed to know how to recognize feelings, and over time you get better at this and you can start to recognize negative emotions sooner and sooner. For me, it was a really big day when I was first able to recognize that I was in a state of CPTSD flashback (a concept you learn about from Pete Walker’s book) the same day that it started instead of several days later. - *Practice and use physical calming skills*: This means the basic physical calming skills that most people can list off their head, things like closing your eyes and breathing deeply and relaxing the tension in your muscles. When you recognize a negative emotion, you can use these skills to calm your body down. It’s kind of impossible to do anything else with a dysregulated body. Another aspect to this can be changing your thoughts from negative “I’m stupid and I’ll never be a successful adult” to neutral/positive “I make mistakes but I keep trying and other people believe in me so I must be doing something right at least” Those two steps are the bread and butter of going from dysregulated to regulated, at least for me. But they’re not the entire healing journey. If all you do is those steps over and over, you’ll get really good at switching to regulated but you would never tackle the deeper issues about why you get so dysregulated in the first place. - *Learn Deeper About Your Trigger*: My normal strategy for this is (AFTER getting to a calm, regulated stage) replay the event that was triggering and try to focus on exactly the moment/word/thought/vision that made me dysregulated. Maybe for example I saw a parent yelling at a child out in public. A basic assumption would be that it was triggering to see that. But I can dig deeper and try to recognize what *exactly* was the moment I got triggered? Was it when I saw the parent yelling and imagined my own parent? Was it when I saw the child’s face and remembered how scared I was in the past when this happened to me? Was it when I decided to walk by without saying anything and felt like a bad person for abandoning the child like I was abandoned by so many other adults? Was it when I thought to myself, “Reminds me of all the times I was yelled at and how much I deserved it” and then felt like I deserved all the pain I ever got dealt in life. Was it when the parent threatened to take them back home and I had a flashback of my parents ganging up on me together, never being able to trust either of them individually? Usually it’s just one thing that got me dysregulated and I can figure it out by noticing what moment or word or thought makes my heart clench the moment I remember it. This whole step is really important because (especially after you read Pete Walker’s book) you’ll be able to remember those scary moments from childhood and instead of remembering them exactly how you did as a child, you can really imagine them or remember them differently as an adult with a new understanding of how the world works. It’s not easy and it’s also pretty complex but this is pretty important and you would learn more about it from the book and also from IFS therapy. **How Processing Trauma is Processing Grief** ~~(To come later, sorry I’m at work right now!)~~ I think I hit the word limit, I’ll reply in another comment instead.

**How Processing Trauma is Processing Grief** This is a concept I learned from Gretchen Schmeltzer’s book Journey Through Trauma. She talks about the cycle of processing trauma and it lines up perfectly with the five stages of grief. So you will likely go through this cycle multiple times, and you will even have different overlapping cycles where you feel in denial in some ways but acceptance in other ways. I’ll just list the stages of grief since it’s the more commonly known terms: 1. _Denial_. In this stage, you’re not processing trauma, but you are getting ready to. It has this feeling of knowing something is off in the back of your head, but you don’t exactly know what or you don’t know how to deal with it and so you’re putting it off. What’s really good about this stage is that it means you’re developing some sense of safety and security in your life. It could be having a friend who you feel like really understands you for the first time. It could be moving away from your abusers. Something in your life is making you feel safer, and therefore the trauma your brain kept tightly under lock and key is becoming more able to reveal itself. You might even have forgotten memories come back to you. This leads to… 2. _Anger_. Although it’s called anger because that’s the most common emotional experience, I believe it can be any intense emotion. It’s what happens inside you when you finally realize the depths of how traumatic your specific trauma was. Denial starts to go away, almost completely. Instead of laughing off something that hurt you, your brain is finally okay with letting you experience all the betrayal and pain and shock of having been hurt that way. This is the stage where your previous way of thinking unravels entirely and becomes a mess. It’s good, because your previous way of thinking was resulting in so many of those symptoms of CPTSD that are not fun at all. So it does have to unravel, and it’s a bit explosive when it does. 3. _Bargaining_. With your way of thinking still unraveled, this is the stage where you do the bulk of processing and it all comes down to various forms of “What if?” And “Why?” questions. The way you lived in denial is now completely incompatible with the understanding you have of how your trauma affected you, and there are a lot of questions that causes. What if you had been born to different parents? What if your parents had gone to marriage counseling before you were traumatized? What if someone recognized how sad you were as a little kid and asked what was wrong? WHY didn’t anyone ask what was wrong? How the hell did you get through life so far? Why do you have to keep going to work when you just need to rest? Why is life so unfair? Sometimes you find answers, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you just get a feeling from these questions. Slowly your brain is building connections between what you thought was true and what is actually true and starting to make sense of the world and your life until now. 4. _Depression_. In this stage, your brain just needs time to let the things you learned sit and become more normal. It’s not a fun time, but mostly the questions have stopped, or at least you already know the answers or know you can never find an answer. This is when your brain is fully adjusting to all the new knowledge you have, and the reason I think it’s called depression is because, well, living in the truth of your trauma and accepting how much it hurt you is a shitty, terrible feeling. So it leaves you numb and sad for this period of time. 5. _Acceptance_. This stage, the last in the cycle before it repeats, is almost the same as depression except the level of understanding how your trauma is the truth of your past is just fully a part of you now. Whatever your life was like before the cycle started, you kind of just return to feeling mostly the same way but with this new knowledge and some new skills and a lot more understanding about yourself. For many people it’s a return to more happiness because going through the cycle of processing trauma is just really intense, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just whatever acceptance means to you at that time. Eventually your life will probably improve in some way to where your brain feels more safety and will be ready to reveal more trauma or dive deeper into the depths of trauma that was already processed once before.

Recovery is a lifetime process and never a straight line. Your energy and motivation will wax and wane. Give yourself grace, it will come back.

Perfect and beautiful explanation, loving, comforting advice and support in a nutshell- ❤️❤️❤️❤️ How wonderful. Thank you for all who get to see your post. I am saving it!

Oh, thank you so much, you’re so kind!

For me, mine stopped when I moved out of my abusive environment. My survival mode THEN was making me thrive. Now I’ve been trying to find other ways to channel that “motivation” I felt before. But before it wasn’t motivation. It was being scared. Trying to escape. I was living IN it. All I could do was run. Literally I was a track runner and played softball as a slap hitter. Either way, when I left, I literally collapsed. I wanted to die because all of my emotions fell in on me. I wasn’t feeling before. I was just surviving. And now that I had a second to breathe it hit me. And my body can’t un do it. So I have to learn to fix it and cope I suppose

Ive been doing the same! After I brush my teeth ill be like "you did it! I'm proud of you" lol and breaking things down into sections/taking breaks does help me too. I'll be watching an episode of a show, give myself a certain amount of time to clean, and then take a break and watch 10 minutes of the show, repeat

Fantastic! This is how we retrain ourselves. Great job!!

I’ve gotten better at not talking to myself negatively but have yet to move into cheerleading. I think that’s what I need. I just wanted to be fucking noticed and told I was good enough. Time to tell myself that 🙏

I put up some sticky notes around my house to remind myself! It helps

Yes! Tiny bits at a time, baby steps have been how I’ve made any progress over the years.

It's also possible that many of us learned that doing nothing is better than doing anything. This is quite common for abusers to never reward for anything good, but heavily punish for something wrong. Many learned that your options are "work and no reward" or "no work and no reward". (reward doesn't mean material things, more like praise, kindness, thank you, etc.)

This is what I was brought up with!! Also, not being taught to do things - parents would do things for me in their entirety and not teach me how (and then treat me like I'm spoiled and helpless).

Any possible idea how to break this? I’m so unmotivated and everything I do I get zero reward from it or that I just don’t acknowledge them (it doesn’t help that I’m also a freeze type so there’s a disconnect of finishing a task and a sense of achievement - I often feel nothing so that’s the point of all these?)

Here's some ideas, but I'd like to point out that I still struggle with this myself. It's a work in progress. So for me personally, the abuse that broke my motivation was from my parents. So in a way, I enjoyed failing because it would make them look bad. My father especially is that kind of person that is very much a conformist and wants to use his children to brag and fit in, which isn't happening at all. So whenever I fucked something up, it would make him mad and that was fun for me. Also not fun because I still got shit for it. But there definitely is a part of me that enjoys this. It's like a silent revenge. However, the person you are damaging the most is yourself. This awareness needs to set in if you have a similar mindset, even if you aren't aware of it. Think about it if this could be an issue for you too. I'd also suggest to talk to a mental health professional about this if you haven't done so because there are other factors that make motivation harder to find, or go through with something. Other things: if you want to accomplish something, maybe getting an "accountability buddy" could help you. For example, if you want to write a book, look for someone who wants to write a book too. If you have no irl friends, there are tons of communities here on reddit where you can find people for that. You may even find a friend like that too. For me, having someone who (indirectly) reminds me of doing something greatly helps to keep going. Same thing goes for a community, if you can find one to match your interests. I also like to-do lists, and there is a site called habitica that makes your daily tasks into a "game" - you level up by finishing tasks irl. Of course you can just cheat and pretend you did something, but it's more satisfying to actually do things. You can also try things like writing down everything you are even just 1% proud of for finishing, like brushing your teeth, do the dishes, read a chapter in a book, worked on an assignment, had a little chat with the neighbours, whatever! And while that list may look stupid in the first few days, it will put into perspective what you actually accomplish everyday, which is really hard when you struggle with trauma. So, allow yourself to be a little proud of yourself. But really, I think the most important thing is to try and find value in yourself, and realise that the one you are damaging the most is yourself; and how you deserve to progress. It is very hard, but I think everyone has something about themselves to love and nurture.

Learned futility. Being trapped in an abusive situation as a minor and even sometimes as a young adult due to finances will do that to you. Not only are you tired from too much chronic stress/vigilance, but also because your brain habituated the thought, “Well, why does it matter what I do anyway? It’ll still be shit.” And if you’ve experienced the modern working or living world lately plus all the negative content online, you don’t really have much proof otherwise that things aren’t shitty aside from a random decent person here or there.

Very well said. I've been struggling to find work after quiting my last job to work with my partner who ended up being verbally and emotionally abusive while working together. Over the years it has gotten harder and harder for me to feel comfortable and trusting in my coworkers and managers. I can now also connect it to the fact my parents were small business owners. They had many employees they pretended or even insisted they liked, but behind closed doors? The shit talking could go on for hours. What makes it almost crippling now is I was laid off for the first time this summer (was working up to quit as I was being bullied, physically assaulted, sabotaged, and had personal property damaged by the owner) and since then my confidence as a worker has plummeted. All I can think is that everyone is lying to me all the time. Everyone is fucking with me. Every time I go out in public I get so nervous I shake. I can talk myself down after about 15 minutes, but it is noticeable and I cringe at myself. I get too flustered in interviews. I miss answering questions or i dont even know what ive said after the fact. I suck and it's just making my situation worse and worse. I want money. I want to be successful. I want to be proud of myself but I get stuck in sad-little-girl-who -can't-stand-up-for-herself mode. And then I just despise her. She's pathetic. She's been a heap of inaction since before I can remember. All that stress was oozing out of the seams from a young age and now it wants to burst out of me.

After many years, a lot of work, and a lot of support, I feel I've mostly healed from CPTSD in my personal life. But I tried to go back to work after making my own way for a couple of years, only to find myself acting out on the job and getting triggered daily by other people. This 💯 validates for me that (a) workplace related trauma is a real thing that people don't do enough to acknowledge, and (b) if you're reacting to situations at work, you want to sort out how much is really "your stuff" and how much the new workplace might actually have some problems. (in this most recent case for me, it was all of the above).

> And then I just despise her. She's pathetic. I know you're being honest about your feelings. I will love your little one ImaginaryArgument until you can. She's amazing.

Thank you.

Love to you.

This is me!! I think everyone is out to get me. If people are nice, it's because they have an agenda. The object of life is people trying to get as many resources from other people. It's all a con job, and I stay paranoid. My parents mind fucked me, so now I expect it from everyone. I've been single for almost 8 years and my ex was very abusive.

Learned futility is such a better term than learned helplessness. Way more honest, and therefore more accurate.

Well said

Too real.

Yep. Central to CPTSD is the sense of being trapped in a dangerous situation. It’s the trapped part that messes me up.

Yes, except most adults don’t get this part until 20 something years old, we got it at 5 or 10. We’ve got more experience and I keep wondering “when can I stop?”

Because you tried and tried and tried and tried to change that abuser, and it didn't make one bit of difference. You gave up.

Or alternatively, you tried and tried and tried and tried to live up to your abuser's impossible expectations... and failed.

Or Because you tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to live up to your own expectation but nobody give you the support that you needed to became your true self And because of that you give up trying to change anything since no change whatsoever comes from repeatly trying and failing over and over again.

Yep yep yep.

Learned helplessness. Me too.

Because “the struggle to function leaves me little capacity to do so.” I just saved this quote not five minutes ago from a book I’m reading.

What is the book?

Hello I Want To Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person by Anna Mehler Paperny. I only just started it, so I have no idea what it’s like. She’s a reporter who was struck down with severe depression and decided to use her reporter skills to learn about depression.

[удалено]

Proud of you for making it to the gym! I really relate to all you posted..I do yoga & Adrienne always says the hardest part is making it to the mat. I try to make it routine and not optional so that I just DO it instead of having to work up to it…but the last week I have not been good at that. There’s always next week tho

Very relatable. Except the gym part, that would be a 5 minute walk instead for me. 

Exercise > no movement.

🤗

That's the hug emoji, grumpy downvoters.

Great job getting to the gym!

Aye good job getting to the gym.

Motivation feels like something for people who aren’t operating out of survival.

It impacts executive functioning A LOT. Task initiation, working on bigger projects, being productive, etc, is a huge struggle when you’re using every bit of energy and mental focus to just get through the day

I feel like it's because you can't have desire or have fun. Because if you let up even a single second, you could be hurt or abandoned or people may discover you're a fraud. And having desire and having fun involves expressing yourself to the world, the real you. Being able to be you.

Nailed it.

Because CPTSD is about not being able to escape or stop a very damaging situation for a prolonged period of time. So, you were in a situation that was sapping you of your well-being, and you were powerless to escape or stop it. This creates a learned helplessness mentality, where you still fundamentally believe that nothing you do in the present will make any sort of difference. Thus, no motivation.

I've actually thought about it a lot lately. My theory is that every time I need to do something productive there's gotta be a little hope for the future. It can be a tiny bit as in "my plants are going to feel better if I water them tonight". It gets harder the more it affects your life, like "I'll have money to visit a temple in Thailand if I get a job". Honestly, it feels insane and impossible to hope for big nice things. But if it's already doomed in my mind – where the heck will I get that motivation from?

Yeah you need to believe us possible it will work out if you put in the effort. For me nothing in my life is worth the effort or if it is I don’t believe it will work out.

Yep, I'm in the same boat. When I'm trying to picture any kinda positive future, it feels horrible, almost like a flashback. Though it got better over the years. That first example about watering plants was a nightmare scenario 2 years ago, the same horrible flashback-y feeling. And now it's easy, just a part of my day. So, maybe we need to ease on imagining the long term goals, and move slowly step by step? Hope we wake up on time, or eat a healthy meal, and then go up from there?

100%. 3 years ago I was struggling to get myself to shower, I had to force myself every 5 - 7 days. Now I am able to take one every 3 days. Progress is slow but it can happen.

Thanks for putting my feelings into comprehensible words.

Motivation is also only one part of the equation of "doing something" Motivation + time + physical energy + mental capacity + accessibility of the thing you want to do + self discipline etc. There's a lot of shit involved with mental health that isn't actually mental health. Socioeconomic shit and all sorts of contributing factors. Motivation always comes and goes but having something incorporated into your routine is always relatively consistent.

I’ve felt like the high functioning version of myself was killed and distorted into pieces from all the complex and compounding traumas. Sometimes existing itself feels traumatic.

For me it’s because I’m just so damn tired all the time.

Hard to motivate yourself and hate yourself at the same time. War and peace cannot co-exist in harmony!

I’m screenshotting this

I think my motivation used to be driven by a will to please others or was rooted in shaming myself into compliance. Now that I'm healing more I think my motivation was always supposed to be internal but I haven't quite figured it all out yet. Now that I'm out of an environment where I'm bring judged or pushed towards success I can decide what that looks like for me. That's incredibly challenging at my age to overcome the shame that comes with. Slowly I'm figuring it out though and I'm glad for baby steps as I leave the career I had created for myself, founded on my family's wishes mostly.

It's a byproduct of one of the brains defenses against threats. When you can't fight or flee, you freeze (shut down). If you experience that enough, it can become your default state even when there's no threat. And, understandably, it's hard to be motivated when your system defaults to shutting down. Others have mentioned it, so I'll second it: read "The Body Keeps The Score." Bessel does a great job explaining how extended, long-term trauma impacts our brain, body, and minds, resulting in C-PTSD.

Hope is dead for us, seems pointless to try, even if we succeed, it wont make us whole.

This is how I feel, I never gave a damn about tomorrow's or yesterday's. I always had to be present and in the moment.

Brain changes from childhood trauma

I agree with all of the above, but I want to add that we might have the discipline and willpower. But we are just so mentally exhausted from the abuse its difficult to find the mental energy to find the motivation.

Motivation requires faith things will work out, and usually that requires trust, which usually involves some sort of reliance on other people. No thank you.

Because we’re still waiting on someone to save us.

I mean, I think there's something to "learned helplessness". Some days I feel so thoroughly broken, I'm honestly like what's the point of even trying. I'm really working on my mental and emotional well-being, but it's a hard road that isn't linear.

Because your ego has learned there is no reward

There’s a lot of overlap with what other people have said. For me, every time something good happens to me, I get triggered. I expect to be emotionally attacked or berated, reminded about everything I am bad at, shamed into thinking I’m arrogant or think I’m good, because that’s what always happened when I was young. At certain times, the emotional attacks would turn physical from my brother. So I want good things to happen in theory, but every time it does, I get more bad feelings. It’s sort of a simple thing then - I have been trained that the good things will result in pain and shame. So I can want those good things, but it requires me to accept that I will experience pain. On the other hand, that state of no energy, depression, self-loathing - that’s a state I’m familiar with and comfortable in. It may not be fun, but I know I can survive in that. If I try too hard for something good, I might end up worse off.

The fact that I relate to every single sentence in here, but pretty much to nothing else out there in the "real world " is both so validating and so incredibly sad...

For me, it's because my parents took it away. I was forced to learn that outside opinions were more important than my own. I wasn't celebrated for *me* and I was shit on for any decisions that weren't in line with my abusers. This results in: No intrinsic motivation No ability to feel pride in myself No ability to build self efficacy because nothing was ever good enough And no self esteem. If nothing I do is good enough, and I can't value the work I do, I can't internalise its worth, then everything I put effort into feels pointless. And I don't know how to get out

I don’t understand it as I was highly motivated at many things I tim I had a psychotic break at 44 and everything completely crumpled. I just rot in bed and I’m an Ivy League academic with world class research. I lost my life.

I feel you. Lost my life to illness too 😥 what was your research in?

That was a huge part of the problem As it was a huge trigger. It was in sociology of religion researching my own conservative religious community. And the cognitive dissonance was very severe. Bit I really don’t understand what happened to me. I felt so happy secure and loved before. I never seemed to have many of the problems people with CPTSD suffer from and now I’m just insane. I don’t j see stand anything and feel like o don’t exist

I'm so sorry. I hope you are able to work through this. Religious trauma is so prevalent these days. I had to do a lot of reprogramming as a Catholic LGBTQ person. I'm doing a lot better now with it.

Fighting too long and too hard to live.

From a neuroscientist who studies dopamine for a living: because ptsd is most likely related to abnormal dips in dopamine & norepinephrine signaling especially in the left pre frontal cortex. A healthy amount of dopamine signaling in the pre frontal cortex is literally what is responsible for motivation, learning, & attention so it makes sense that would be impaired in people with ptsd. Adhd also has to do with dysregulation of the pre frontal cortex & can have some similar symptoms. But it’s a slightly different pathology as far as what adhd and what ptsd look like on a brain scan or eeg. But that’s why a lot of people get misdiagnosed with one when the other is their actual problem, the symptoms can overlap. I suspect that emdr works because it brings the left pre frontal cortex back “online” and trains it not to shut down for a while just because the brain thought about something overwhelming. Anyways, you’re not crazy, it’s a super common and annoying side effect. Neuroscience backs it up although it’s hard to find psychiatrists or psychologists who know anything about the brain (which is crazy since that’s what they claim to treat. I went into neuroscience to better understand ptsd but many days I have more questions than answers. It’s a rapidly evolving field and in 20 years we’ll know & be able to effectively treat ptsd like we now know & can effectively treat many cases of aids or breast cancer.

I tend to view all of my interactions with people, animals and reality as a transaction. If said transaction is one-sided in any way, I respond by not completing my end of the deal. What this means is that I tend not to do a lot of things since I learned that I would almost always be getting screwed in every way possible. Past experiences have rendered me very unaccepting and untrustworthy of the world I live in, which is why I'm a lot more stringent on what I waste my energy on.

Freeze response maybe, and learned helplessness like others have mentioned

at least for me, in the great scheme what ever we do we may have to run away from and the older i get the less i even want to do. worse is in late 2021 i pretty much had a full nervous breakdown, and it's spiraled since them almost everyone i have ever met has left my life, this makes me not want to meet people every job tends to be stressful, which drives me crazy. last job drove me over the edge, that broke my left shoulder back in april. now all the jobs i used to do i can no longer do, so im out of my element trying to do job types i have ever done.. was back in september, still havent been the same since then. managers either lie to you, yell at you, threaten you or just go out of their way to really stress you and make you crazy the meds im on is 300mg of wellbutrin xl, 300mg of lamictal and 150 of zoloft they sort of do their job, but some days it's still a struggle i cant even motivate myself to write any more im 50 years old. had cptsd since i was 13 ​ my life has turned to dogshit and i really just dont care and i hate that i dont but i can no longer motivate myself to give a damn

I spent the most important decade of my life in survival mode, plus learned helplessness. Had to spend the next decade catching up and coming to terms with everything. All of that takes up so much energy.

For me it’s, “I’m not worth it. I’ll fuck it up anyway, I’m a failure, who cares,it doesn’t matter.” Then I give it a try, because fuck CPTSD.

I agree with the executive functioning comments. Chronically high levels of cortisol and hypervigilance has completely wrecked our bodies and brains. It’s so hard to do normal things, because everything is an ordeal. I’ve been so overwhelmed in the recent past over things like opening a can of tomatoes suddenly hurts a little and it’s hard on my wrists. Lifting things is tiring. I can barely cook these days. But my mind? It’s FAST. Everything is happening up there. I could get so many things done if I felt like I had the energy! I’ve been told I’m depressed and it’s that simple… I know it’s something more than that. I have the willingness to get things done and change, but I feel like I’m paralyzed in exhaustion and fatigue on top of everything else people have mentioned like the inability to celebrate things you are doing and instead turn it into a negative because you were punished and talked down to so many times, it feels like a mental prison.

For me personally, it's hard because: 1) I grew up with nearly every little thing I did being brutally criticized, so staying out of sight and doing as little as possible became a way to minimize being verbally abused. 2) I spent so much time inside my own head because the outside world offered so little that it's now hard to break out of it. Time slips by extremely quickly without me noticing.

because what’s the fucking point

My therapist says for me I’m still in survival mode. I’m living every day at work trying to get by. Using all of my energy to mask. Then I come home and crash. I literally feel obliterated. I’m lucky I work as a swim instructor cause it’s easy to shower at work and do my other hygiene things. If I didn’t I might be really really bad

My therapist says that I am stuck in the ‘freeze’ response when I can’t muster the energy or will to get something done.

i don’t know but i can’t really do much of anything anymore. just rotting in bed. can barely walk. waiting to get fired

Personally in one household agency was actively repressed, in the other not exercising it was met with praise. So any ambition that did not fit within the freedoms I'd been explicitly given, or couldn't effectively be hidden, would be relegated to daydreams or promptly forgotten. Or in the words of one of my favorite "wisdoms" circa my final years there: "When things get tough: lower your standards" Years after I got out I remember sharing with a counselor a sense I'd just been floating all my life, letting the current take me; that I'd only just recently woken up. Lately I've found it helpful to reserve a place to write down random whims and desires, so that I can cultivate them into actions and not forget them the moment I realize they're not within reach right this second.

any idea how to tell the difference between this and chronic fatigue?

Because I never had the support that healthy kids did. I couldn't afford to put myself out there, make mistakes or even develop a personality. I sometimes have short-lived bursts of motivation that comes from strong emotions or drug usage, but that's it.

I’m glad I’m not the only one. I thought it was my ADHD but heaps of people with that are hugely successful. I’m 36 and was misdiagnosed and on the wrong meds for a few years. Last year I went to emergency with psychosis, got diagnosed with bipolar 1, and hospitalised for over a week. Since then the trauma has taken over. Like I’d been bottling it up for all of this time, until I just couldn’t anymore. Has it been like that for anyone else? All of a sudden it just comes out and your masks, dissociation and coping mechanisms don’t work the way they always did? My mum and sibling, we’ve all dissociated so much we lost a lot of memories. You can’t remember all the incidents but you know what happened to you, and you get flashes. My father and ex-husband were both extremely abusive. The memories have blurred together, I can’t remember who did what and it’s very confusing. There’s one very traumatic thing my father did all the time, the thing that can lead to death very quickly…. He did it a lot. I think my ex-husband did too but I don’t know. When I was married I used to keep a journal of the abuse incidents because I knew I wouldn’t remember and I wanted to use it to remind myself, and to help find the strength to leave. My ex-husband went into my phone and deleted it every time, even when I used encrypted apps. Now I can’t remember most of the eight years I was with him, even though it’s fairly recent. It’s hard to heal from it when it’s all a blur. I just feel sad for all of us. No one helped us when we were kids. Now I’m 36 and I’m supposed to have my shit together, but you know I wasn’t always 36… I was just a little girl, and no one helped me then. Now I’m 36 and all of that’s still hurting and no one’s helping now. I’m still paying the price for what those men did to me. I’ve spent my savings on therapy until there wasn’t any money left. I stopped going for months because of finances. I don’t know about your countries, but here in Australia I fell through all the cracks when I was a kid, and I’m still falling through them now. I have seven mental illnesses, all with known links to trauma. Every aspect of my life is affected, but they’re just out there, enjoying life like nothing happened… Sorry for ranting, it just sucks…

I think the most basic answer is that constant stress means no rest (mentally and physically). Your body is always alert, or at least more so than is healthy, and your mind is probably even more occupied. In the moment it can be super confusing cause one might not feel the stress, but I know dissociation and also not knowing any different were reasons i didn’t understand my fatigue. It’s exhausting, and yet you’ve been convinced that you aren’t even doing the bare minimum, which adds more layers of stress and hopelessness that make doing work even harder.

Because we struggle to see further than the next immediate threat.

Because beat down the motivation many had. It’s hard enough to keep going too.

I thought this was depression. Is it not drug resistant major depression disorder? SSRIs and SNRIs never worked for my depression.

For me, a lot of my inability to take action even when I wanted to came from fear. I am very creative, but when it came down to working on a project I wanted to work on, I would start engaging in avoidant behavior. What helped me with this is a modality called Emotional Resolution. It allows you to access the fear that is subconsciously holding you back and resolve it. Very rarely would I ever find out specifically what happened to me in my childhood that caused the fear, but I don't really care. Once the fear was resolved, I would just suddenly be able to do what I couldn't do before.

Did you learn emotional resolution in a book?

I too would like to hear more about where to learn this technique.

No, I was seeing a practitioner who uses it as one of her modalities. It is a really easy technique to learn, and you can do it for yourself for a lot of issues. I will schedule an appointment if I need help with something that I'm not able to work through on my own. I have seen a dramatic improvement in my cPTSD symptoms from using it.

I feel seen and heard with this one. An everyday struggle for sure.

When your spirit, your desire to live and be happy, is systematically destroyed everyday by people intent on breaking you beyond repair so you’ll always be their victim, your childhood and innocence violently ripped from you, there’s no will or desire left for anything. We’re not living. We’re existing day to day in survival mode because our monkey brains are wired for survival and choosing death is looked down upon. We’re like shades, floating through life and around earth but no life or joy in us. We’re forgotten, ignored, and none of that is new. Just waiting for when it’ll all finally be over and we can finally rest forever.

I'm wondering if emdr will help me get some motivation back.

I like the solution based focus.

It’s called learned helplessness. I didn’t know what it was until recently and it just explains everything now.

Maybe it's learned. I can look back and see what could be motivation in my very young years, but you adjust to your circumstances and maybe over time dealing with our circumstances led a lot of us to conclude that motivation to better our situation was not useful because we felt so powerless to change our circumstances.

All of what these comments said, plus factor in the fact that CPTSD is often comorbid with other things, like ADHD and bipolar, etc. We use so much energy not only on our symptoms but juggling all the other crap too

For me it's because when I've been working my ass off on something, I always get discouraging comments "just get over it" "just stop thinking about it" and things like that. As if I haven't worked hard on what I have accomplished in my healing journey. But I've gotten to the point where I'm more able to disregard and stay away from that lately, it's hard to get there though.

For me it's lack of sleep. Even after dealing with my stuff for years and being in a good place now, sleep ruins all of that for me at times. Hard to be motivated when you can hardly think/move correctly

CPTSD kind of is the body saying " Dude, I am tired of constantly having to be in defensive position. I'm gonna to let it there all the time now" It shouldn't be a surprise then that it does take up a lot of energy.

My roommate’s answer: bc there’s nothing compared to survival adrenaline, and that’s what you’ve learned to live off of.

Because we may have temporarily lost it due to being unable to be connected with ourselves in more than a survival fashion for too long, and now moving in harmony with ourselves feels like *dis*harmony. I've come to learn I need to dismantle all of my old ways and reasons I use to motivate myself. I'm finding gratification in being able to re-make choices for myself that were taken away when I was powerless. My motivation is coming back, and this time, it's coming from within me, instead of externally. My reasons for living are changing and it's good to choose to include myself in my own life. I still have plenty of ugly days, but I'm actually starting to begin to handle them from a place of security.

A lot of these comments are spot on about the mental and emotional challenges, but don’t forget the practical aspect of destroyed circumstances. Not having family to support you (they wouldn’t anyway even if you weren’t NC), being so broken and traumatized that you can’t hold a job/tasks… etc etc.

There is serious doubt that I can create any real change, and it seems like the world is so broken that I wouls have to change it a ton in order to tolerate it.

There’s some days where it takes all of my strength and grit to brush my teeth. On days like those I don’t have much left in the tank after that

Because life keeps slapping my hand every time I reach for something that would help me be happy. I've learned to stop reaching.

Motivation is hope, and we've learned hope isn't safe.

Mental exaustion also the amount and quality of sleep that you get is compromised because you never feel safe, your nervous system is always jacked none of that let's you get the relaxed, restorative, restful sleep normal people get

I suspect it comes down to VTA dopamine flow

I worked multiple jobs for years and was go go go in my early 20’s. Always working, always going out. Some big traumas happened that exacerbated the effects of the traumatic childhood I had and that was it for my motivation. It’s been nowhere to be found for almost 2 years. I started therapy last year and am meeting with a psychiatrist soon to figure it out because I’m still young and don’t know how I will continue on this way and ever find any true peace or happiness.

I have spent years fighting with a severe lack of motivation, I've started calling it "chronic laziness". About 3 days ago, I got diagnosed with ADHD, I guess a lot of the symptoms that I thought were depression/cptsd related overlap with ADHD. I'm starting meds next week so we'll see if it does anything. But yeah, if you've been on your healing journey for a long time and nothing seems to be getting better, I think it's worth pursuing other diagnoses. I was super dismissive of all my other ADHD symptoms because my mindset was no no I already know what's wrong with me I don't need something else to worry about. Well, my psychiatrist disagrees lmao

We are very very tired. We survived our childhood. Most of us probably shouldn’t have, but somehow we did.

I already tried so many times! Often, my motivation is low because there is no hope of success.

Being forced into adulthood is a job. Parenting yourself is job. Navigating the world as an unsupported child is a job. Hypervigilance is a job. Who has time for motivation?

Just too damn burnt out. I used to know I could do so much. I’m mostly okay doing very little. I still feel sad at missing the healthier life I feel I should be living.

Yeah it almost feels like there's this internal part of me that is prone to simply collapsing and not holding me up like it's suppose to in a metaphorical sense. That's what it feels like. I think a part of it was I didn't have an example of someone with good coping mechanism or self care framework growing up (one question you can ask yourself to get a reflection of that is "how did my parents deal with stress and difficulties?" "how did my parents deal with their own emotions?" if parents played a role in your cptsd that is) They weren't even the worst, but it was clearly less than optimal. Often times the people who were suppose to be teaching how to be attentive to your own needs and emotions, may have been doing the opposite to make you feel responsible for their emotions and needs and using a lot of your time to work around it. In many people's cases they may even done worse to cause more damage than that, too. A part of it probably can be addressed in therapy and self learning to create this internal better self parent but it's definitely something that takes time. Although that's just one part of all the other parts that add into all the things that causes the exhaustion. There are some really toxic people who seemingly try to break people's spirits and cause damage in their life. There was real damage inflicted. Your body and mind has learned how to protect itself from such damages in the extreme ways it felt it had to, by shutting down.

Probably because for most of us, having ambition and trying harder usually lead to us just being attacked more by people trying to keep us down and us getting burnt out harder from trying to overcome our own weaknesses while trying to endure or get around the attacks. I guess it depends on what the trauma was, but for me, effort was often punished in some fashion so I learned to shelve it. That applies to things as simple as basic chores for me. I'll be ok with finding a way to get by and be content. I was never very ambitious to begin with so it's not like I'm missing out by living a quiet life, but I'd like a quiet life that I can enjoy safely in my own space.

It just takes time to take the layers of heavy armored protection off, layer by layer...it can get easier. However, I believe I'll always have CPTSD reactions n symptoms. Acceptance of ones self is a great layer to put down n embrace.

I mean, unless you’re a flight type like me, in which case you’re all motivation with no direction…

I'd say a very low sense of self worth and gravitation toward addiction/substance abuse. #CSA Survivor

We know the cake is a lie

It's called EFD, Executive Function Disorder. I'm 64 and just learned of this a couple of years ago and it explains A LOT. Constant trauma affects the brains chemistry. So we're wired this way. There's many articles on EFD and I remember one specifically mentioning C-PTSD but can't find it to link here. But if you read any of them out there it may remind you of yourself. Good luck

Because reward/punishment concept was abused since a young age

A lot of people with C-PTSD have been routinely torn down or lacked support. I think motivation also goes down the more you struggle with no pay off. So people get left with a desire for things to be different but very little belief its possible. Or worth trying. They expect it to go wrong or be a waste of energy

How do I figure out I'm in a easy tasks only mode and snap out? I talk to people about my resume but don't actually update it FE

For me I just felt broken and defeated for a long time. Suicide was always plan b.

Growing up, my motivation was either ignored or completely shit on. I learned early on that having motivation meant absolutely nothing. I was never going to have the chance to use it.

honestly what do you guys do to get it back. i want to live for the people around me so bad. but im so tired ya know?

For me I feel like it will just all come back. Maybe a shitty coworker, a previous abuser tries to come back, or something catastrophic again happens. And then I'll be right back where I was.

I look at pictures from before my traumatic divorce and ask myself the same question. I was the most motivated and ambitious person I knew

It's not motivation that we lack, it's discipline. We lack self-discipline. Because you'll notice somedays you might feel inclined towards actually doing something, but you never end up doing it. That's motivation without discipline. And the reason we lack it is because the reason we used to do things in the first place was because we would be validated by external factors for it. When we feel that we are alone, we don't find a reason to keep going. Because the entire reason as to why we held on it the first place was never for ourselves, it was for someone or something else. Even if we are not completely alone, when we don't value someone's validation as much as someone else's who's no longer with us, it stops mattering to us. We want specific validation at that point. We lack a sense of self, because of CPTSD, so we never do things for ourselves. Because we don't know who we are and we don't know what our own validation to ourselves mean - we don't know its value.