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I am coming out of freeze, very slowly

and with that, one of the big revelations, has been how badly i am coping, i can do some bare minimum (my job, and make some food), which i think is purely out of fear, but beyond that, i cant say take on a hobby as i am just stuck a lot, sitting zoned out, or consumed by my addiction

i faked being an adult in my teens and twenties, i faked it very hard, and it was easier to do so, as other people were also figuring stuff out, but they did that, and developed an identify, and moved on, i dont feel i have had that as my symptoms got worse

i have lost the point of this post, but sharing the thread to see what clicks with others

thanks

Did you have a light bulb moment where it just clicked? Or was it a slow process of addition?

I feel like I’m hanging on by a thread man with this job, im barely functioning, I come home and crash and feel in a numb daze. I’m scared of the defenses coming down and not being able to function, I’m scared of losing everything.

How do I validate my body’s need to rest while also not feeling safe

I think that life will obviously never be perfect and comfortable. We also all eventually get old, sick, and die. So healing isn't some nebulous utopian eternal existence.

There is the term "good enough" parents. I guess there is a "good enough" life.

What things need to be good enough for you to feel "healed"?

To me I think certain external factors need to be good enough first. Then you can do the internal healing, that allows you to function in a healthy way in society and life.

We need the space to grow that was denied us as children. I think that's why so many of us are stuck.

I'm stuck in poverty, homelessness, and isolation. You may have a place to stay, and money, but at what cost?

Do you live with toxic people? Work at a toxic job?

I think if it like having this open infected wound. You need to go some where sanitary and safe. To rest and recover. Instead you are forced to wallow in the mud and dirt to eek out your survival. The wound never heals, but you can eat.

I guess this is a rambling way of me saying what I always say. It's the environment. Everything hinges on this. You can go to therapy for years and just get worse, if you live in an unhealthy environment.

You can't heal from the survival strategies you created when those strategies are still needed to survive.

I have recently had a few reports from members of this sub saying they are unable to post/comment, with Reddit displaying a warning text of some sort. I am still investigating this and unsure what is causing it, but it looks like it started after Reddit activated a couple of site-wide filters on November 26th.

If you are having issues posting and/or commenting, I can't see that on the mod side, so please send me modmail and I'll sort you out manually. I unfortunately can't fix this for everyone automatically since I don't know what is causing this, but I can manually add you as an approved user so you can post/comment.

You may want to write your posts and/or comments in a separate app and copy+paste from there, in case Reddit won't let you post.

I am very slowly coming out of freeze, and in doing so, somethings are revealing to me about how my system became organised defensively, and its quite confusing, so i am seeking views.,,.

For context, i have cPTSD, realising now at 42, that its mostly been freeze / collapse but i spent a lot of my life with active fight / flight too, until adult traumas kicked in at age 27. The biggest things that has impacted my system has been preverbal trauma (0 to 3), and quite severe abuse and neglect there.

When i was 27, a very significant trauma also happened, that pushed my system over more fully, i was living on my own, and i was clearly very depressed, but i didnt know it at all, and i didnt feel it. I was in a bad state:

- I would lie in bed watching shows, and only get up, if i was literally about to burst to poop or pee, and sometimes i didnt make it to the toilet. I didnt feel sad, i felt nothing and didnt know that either, maybe occasional frustration but that was rare, i was in autopilot, very little space or awareness of my state.

- my weight ballooned 20kgs and i bought bigger clothes but really had no idea i was getting bigger

- my addictions all got much much worse, but now i see they were like a lid to keep me safe from the world and feeling, and the few remaining now still do that too.,

- i withdrew from society - but also didnt know i was doing so

I guess the crux of what i am seeing is, the behaviour speaks to a depressive period, and from now going inside, i think if it wasnt numbed out, i may not have survived. I am curious though, i had just no awareness of this experience, and it went on for 5-7 years, i could work, and fake it to the world, but i was just so shutdown on my own (that still the case, but my awareness is growing and becoming a bit more embodied)

Seeing how others interpret this

I am pretty sure it's most of us.

For example, the trauma associated emotions. Grief, deep self hatred, rage directed at others, crushing shame. I'm so terrified there's something seriously wrong and dark inside myself I avoid all my feelings out of fear. I have this horrible vindictive side of myself that I wish didnt exist and I end up capitulating into a shy people pleaser out of fear I'll do something crazy if I express my actual feelings. I get so tangled up in shame and guilt about this.

Hopefully I don't physically freeze as well as mentally freeze.

Edit- still alive. Fun times.

When I'm stuck, that usually involves conflicting motivations. There are ideas for what I could, should or want to do, but something also keeps saying no to those ideas. Maybe this can be seen as a conflict between different parts of me.

It doesn't seem like a lack of motivation. There is plenty of motivation to do various things, but the motivation to not do them is stronger.

A key problem is intense feelings and intense motivation telling me to not do things. I think that is where the connection to trauma exists. The extreme and possibly unreasonable intensity of those probably comes from feelings that weren't processed during past events.

I’ve eaten junk food twice today, I just feel stuck, so I go for what’s convenient, then I feel even worse. Rinse and repeat. I do anything to feel something, and that sinks me down even more…

Is that a normal freeze response thing?

i was trying to somewhat recover from basically a lifetime of what i think was daily collapse/dorsal vagal shutdowns by not continuing to do studying and not going into work and avoiding any stress. it will be my 4 month of doing that now. i was also doing some somatic stuff and a ton of other things to manipulate stress levels, like with my diet and i started doing better at some point.

i haven’t really changed anything about what i do but recently i haven’t been able to get more than 2 hours of sleep a night and have been feeling really depressed. does anyone have any ideas about why that might be the case?

the insomnia is especially stressful for me cause my entire life before i was not able to sleep without medication for it but like i said in the past couple months i was able to and now suddenly im not again

Guy with multiple issues, from India here. CPTSD freeze, fawn and flight. No Fight at all.

1. About the things that worked :

Finding the thing that worked is as difficult as finding the reason how and why it happened. Hard one. But it is not as unnecessary as finding how and why it happened.

It's physical activity for me. Joined gym and that's the thing that worked for me. I have read somewhere that lifting weights help us to heal. Is it true ? I don't know. But those cardio stuff, those weight lifting exrcecises certainly help, to keep our mood right. You feel shitty, and then you enter the gym and exrcesise, and come out of the gym. There's considerable differences in your mood, before going to gym and after coming out of gym. There certainly is.

2. Abut the things that didn't work :

I can write a book for this. It's CBT that didn't work. CBT doesn't work.

We are weak. Too weak to stand up. We are like magnets for the narcististics. For example, let's say I am a freeze guy. I dont have any direction and I need some direction. I don't have any capability to know which is direction is right or wrong. A guy who is fight and flight has that tendency to give the direction to someone. He wants to make someone work like the way he wants. He says the truth and whatever he says will always be truth. And I need someone who always tells the truth. That guy knows the truth and I should follow it.

We dont have sense of self, do we ? What do we like ? How do we say the right-ness and wrong-ness of things ? No we really dont have sense of self. What we do, highly depends on where we are and what are our surrondings and all we crave for is to be accepted. A person beside you asks you to scream in the wedding ? Just scream without thinking, so that you agree with him , in a way you are accepted by him. You know that a person beside you is someone who doesn't like the religion ? Just discuss few things about atheism and he likes it. We are pure people pleasers and we completely lack the sense of self, I know both of these are different issues. If you have read "A song of ice and fire" novels, we have tons of issues, which Theon Greyjoy also has. Complete lack of sense of self. We really don't know who we are how should we stand. Our standing depends a lot on who are we surrounded with.

3. The things that need to be solved :

Tried Somatic therapy stuff. Yes I did try. But while I came to the final conclusion, whether it is working or not, I couldn't continue it because it is very costly. A session takes almost 2.5K INR which is really costly. I always wanted to try IFS therapy but again, that's costly. It is not that I don't have 2.5K INR. But I am the sole earner of my family and parents are dependent on me. So I am extremely conservative financially. IFS'ly speaking, a part of me doesn't allow me to take this costly therapies.

One of the observation I made with myself is, I just can't connect with people. I can't. I dont put any effort for the connection. For example, when another person sits there I just dont want to speak anything. It is boring. Why do I not play football ? Because I know that I just dont want it. So like that it is. I just can't want any human connections, if truth to be told. It's like, I can't explain it. What is even there to talk with him ? Should I ask boring and useless questions, like, How is coconut rate in his town? What's there to talk ? And hence, I am lonely. I don't have any friends as such in my life. I am in my mid twenties and I am lonely and I never really was in any relationships before as well.

Another observation is, my automatic nervous system is strong that I literally don't have any control on it. I can't smile when I am nervous [I can't fake], and when someone makes a kind of facial expression [like disugusting or like showing their anger on me] I completely give my everything to autonomic nervous system and it rules me. Feels like I don't have any say in it. It is so so so so so so so so strong and I am too weak infront of it.

I belive, I need to focus on getting this nervous system corrected and for that I need to connect with myself. How to do that ?

Do you think yoga would be helpful in addressing all these above issues? "Connection" is a thing that's lacking within me [connecting with oneself and connecting with others].

Any suggrestions are welcomed.

I grew up in the Midwest moving around almost every year, as an only child, with a narc Karen as a single mother.

I just got done visiting my partners hometown in Washington state and I’ve been reflecting on what a real childhood looked like. And I’m extremely sad and jealous of his life.

He had real nature, real culture, has a better sense of self.

I just feel so sad and angry that my moms mental illness held me back from SO MANY childhood memories and developmental steps that I’ll just never get back and now all I have left is the MESS my mom gave me.

Which now apparently is my responsibility to heal and develop an identity. It just frustrates me so much.

I am.

I saw a post about terror on how much time has gone by, and a lot of people resonated with that. Myself included. I woke up this morning feel pretty worn out and under the weather. Thats how I woke up yesterday. I know the way I live is making this worse. Because of my poverty and homelessness. I dont eat very healthy foods. I also spend all my time laying in my tiny bed in the car,because there is no room to stand. I know laying down or sitting is terrible for your health. I know I should be exercising. Im also alone all the time, which is worse than smoking cigarettes.

All these negative behaviors add up, and I can feel them. I can feel time catching up to me. I dont want to be like this, but I also feel its to overwhelming to change all on my own.

Thats where the waiting for help comes in. I was lucky enough to get expanded medicaid, but it is really just making me worse. I saw a doctor and they just told me I have more health problems. That I should exercise. Yes I know. Now my anxieties worse and Im still not exercising.

I got yet another therapist. Shes nice enough,but she really phones it in. Plus I see her once a month. I have a difficult time remembering her name, I see her so little. I do video sessions, so thankfully it shows her name there.

Time is slipping by faster and faster. No one is coming to help. So obviously I have to help myself. That just never works out long term. AT best I do stuff for a few weeks. Then I dissociate. Lose time, and its been days or a week since I last stuck to my goals.

If I cant stick to walking. How could I stick to a job? Really I wish I could make money online. Writing or Youtube might now pay much, but I also dont need much money. All I really need is a reliable larger vehicle I can set a desk up in. I try to work laying in the bed, but the laptop hits the roof and its so cramped.

Its crazy to me my parents could so easily help, but dont. How can you be so cruel and selfish? Of course if they were decent people I wouldnt need their help to begin with. I wouldnt have CPTSD and structural dissociation.

I know others here need help, but dont have it.Ive thought about it a lot. How could we support each other? I like games and collectibles so my brain always goes to some kind of game we could all play. I just dont feel like its a lack of motivation thats holding me back. Its not that I dont want to achieve goals. Its that I never have energy for it. I also dont have a reward taht is attainable thats worth the effort.

Im going to get to much into the weeds. This is already long. Basically Im carrying a sack of rocks. I need to take rocks out to be able to do more work. I dont know how. SO I need help carrying the sack, but no one will do that either. So I just sit on teh ground trying to breathe with this heavy sack crushing me.

my mom had stroke symptoms on wednesday while she was outside she couldnt move her body and her arms were too weak, slurred speech, and droopy face. ambulance came immediately. then she got better so they sent her home, no scans, no tests... her blood pressure was taken and it wad really high but they didnt even give her anything for it. friday she had the same symptoms hospitalized again. inside the ER she had the same symptoms again. her blood pressure skyrocketed cant talk arms weak droopy face. 5 times this happened and got better and worse and better. they didnt give her anything for her blood pressure. they said they cant do anything before the ct scan. ct scan came clear. same thing happens in front of them. they didnt do anything and told us to wait for neurologist. we waited for hours with the fear that she will have it again and it will be worse and she might not get better after. finally at night the neurologist came and it happened in front of her again, blood pressure goes up and she cant speak and her face droops. my mom started crying and i started crying because they wouldnt do anything to help her. finally they gave her a seizure medication to stop it. and she got better. but still nothing about the blood pressure bc they "didnt know what it is." she wasnt allowed to drink water or eat. all we were allowed to do was to "wait until the doctor says something" where is the doctor? helping other patients not die. finally the doctor came and they started to give her seizure meds and blood thinners. she had high blood pressure and headaches since monday. and she told them on wednesday and they told her shes fine. and finally friday night, even though she spent the whole friday having these "mysterious" stroke like "seizures"... only friday night she recieved blood pressure meds. because "they cant do anything until the doctor sees her." well the doctor is helping more urgent cases.... and on saturday night she got an mri. mri showed up with a stroke. they gave her more blood thinners. her blood pressure seems under control now. my mom had strokes in front of all of them and they said its not a stroke because of the ct scan.they all very well knew that someone can have a stroke and not show up on the ct scan. but they watched her have a stroke and pretended she has a mysterious unknown condition. when she was having the exact same signs of the stroke that was written on the FAST poster right next to us. i know that the ER line is insanely long. and i know all of this is caused by long lines and understaffing. i know thats just how the ER and the healthcare system works. when i had a groin cyst 1+ year ago they sent me home for warm water bath. they said it looked good. but they wouldnt listen to me when i said that at night it got really big and looked really bad and that it hurt really bad and it wouldnt stop. and then they wouldnt give me an appointment at the walkin anymore, bc it was flu season and my "bartholins cyst" wasnt important enough. i was on telehealth every day begging them for help. the cyst got infected and was removed surgically 2 weeks later. but it didnt heal or get better. my doctor said "dont worry its not HS" two more operations later my doctor diagnosed me with HS. and btw, surgery is not recommended for HS because it usually comes back right after. what a joke. 3 surgeries and sticthes on my groin. i couldnt walk i couldnt sit i couldnt pee i couldnt even lay down. i was in pain for weeks. and i wonder if the very first person just listened to me and prescribed anti biotics instead of "warm water", would i still be here today 1+ year later with an open wound i have to manage every day? maybe yes maybe no. its not under our control. its not under my control that i will be traumatized over and over. just another friday. my mom could have died and i would have blamed myself forever for not convincing the doctors of her situation. we are lucky they finally believed. mere luck. thats what our lives depend on. honestly im in freeze because thats just the life i got. im not someone who has capacity to not be in freeze. my life standards wouldnt let it. and for those people with "normal" lives i wonder, how privileged do you need to be to not be in some sort of trauma response your whole life? and i wonder maybe if you just have enough love and support, you can get through anything. is it true? i have no hope anymore and i think people who have hope do not understand me. because if they did understand they wouldnt have hope anymore. and im okay. i will go to work tomorrow. if im too tired ill call in sick, even though i cant. i am still alive just hopeless. and i watch people who have hope. i feel i have only anger. but you cannot go anywhere with it. you must supress it and pretend to be normal. our society is fundementally broken in every level. but i must push myself to be normal and to handle things. i think of wanting to be alone. not sure if it would help. but i dont have it in me to see hope in another persons eyes. too close for me. i dont have hope im just... letting everything be. lucky enough i can afford to do that. but hope is nothing but a painful wound. i know im lucky. and i have control over some things. how do i manage the HS? very hardly i can. very low capacity... i miss friends i lost. i miss them because they didnt have hope either. they were as angry as me. maybe i can make more friends like that.

Given everything that is happening to me, I really think I should be in extreme distress. Instead it feels like I just endure everything because I “have to.” Grin and bear it. Wait it out. Push through my primary responsibilities as best I can. I just endure and endure, and on the outside (I think) seem mostly “fine.” Not happy. But not distressed. Not losing it. Not totally decompensating. Because I’m not. Yet.

Sorry to be a bit vague about it. Basically many other people in my situation would not be functional at all. Many would be far more “emotionally” symptomatic than I am, dysregulated, suicidal, or already “collapsed.” The only reason I am not, like, hospitalized yet are the dissociative mechanisms that are just instinctive and automatic. I can keep distance. “It is what it is.” But the dissociative barriers are weakening. The distance is closing.

And as the distance gradually closes, I fear total freeze and/or descent into collapse. I can tell that my ability to function through the situation is cracking under the weight of it, and worry that there is going to be a reckoning. I can see that it is getting harder and harder to keep up the demands of my adult life as I deal with this situation. Can anyone relate to this? How do I ready myself for the walls to fall and to feel everything I should be feeling? To intercept potential decompensation and collapse?

Today we had a discussion about me considering getting a job. How we're going to get money. I asked for food and he started throwing things around and huffing and sighing.

He said I should wait until tomorrow when the money comes and I don't know if he was joking.

I wonder if I should start to walk to the store myself so I don't have to ask for food anymore.

It's sad to see what once was a very optimistic home life, come to a sudden and steep decline. It happens again and again.

I like to smile like everyone else.

My busy life involves:

1. Lying around angry, ruminating cycles of dialog or manifesto-like essays in my head.

2. Reading about other people's trauma, either in subs like this, or implicitly in their pleas for advise in relationship, co-worker, roommate, bad landlord, etc. subreddits.

3. Other subreddits I find consuming my hours are direct in asking for moral validation: AmITheAsshole, DidIOverreact.

4. Time I spend on YouTube is watching shifty people being uncovered and getting their comeuppance. True crime, industrial incompetence, scam artists...

The key components are, near triggering myself (lol) with some moral wrong, either my own traumatic past or by putting myself in the shoes of some online person, establishing to myself that I understand the psychological motivations of the person doing the harm, and finally how to undermine them.

Fantasizing about ways to take from my abusers what they took from me. Thinking of ways for people to escape their shifty situation, their abuser. Thinking up ways to explain to someone why they are in the moral right, to counter the flawed arguments against them they were given. Watching and appreciating the work that goes into bringing a criminal to justice, or just thinking if and how I woud be able to avoid thier victim's fate.

I.e. useless daydreaming, sometimes with electronic and / or chemical paraphernalia. Surely these are the consequence of half a lifetime of foring those instincts to be quiet for survival: those instincts are suddenly finding every outlet they can.

And don't it feel good! I am an adult with money and can litterally afford to do this all day!

And I wonder if I have an "addictive" personality.

Didn't I read somewhere addicts are liars? What lies have I been telling myself? Fuck, where'd all my money go? My tooth feels funny...

Cough, choke. <weed smoke> cough

Ah, is all good now...

...where was I? Regardless, it's all just dopamine seeking BS. If only we could get paid for angry tirades or for giving self-righteous advice we never have to follow!

Not sure where this goes... If you're collapsed where is your non-time going? What fills your empty days until there's no time left for anything that matters? Do they have specific flavors, like my spicy preference?

Can you connect them plausibly to dopamine related activities? Are tasks required for survival only done to get you to more of that sweet neurotransmitter released or are they accumulating toward something?

I'm convinced the trick to "recovery" is subverting this process somehow, building better habits through dopamine seeking, lol. This should, by the only definition that matters, feel great, haha, but even typing the words "better habits" made my eye twitch...

I've gotten this far coasting on my own dopamine. Why not the rest of the way?

I saw someone's post on social media that the distance and time between 1984 and 2004 is about the same distance and time between 2004 and 2024. which makes me think wtf. I've been stuck in this dissociative matrix a long time. I find myself having flashes of urgency and rage that I'm not where I want to be. It pushed me to keep digging even harder. Fleshing out those parts of myself . I'm going hard into somatic experiencing and IFS. I realise I 'should' do that gently. But I don't have more years to waste.i will not have the support and resources in 2 or 5 years from now. Quite frankly, my physical health won't last that long with the poor sleep, dissociation & blood pressure issues after covid. I have been increasingly having this sense that the game is at close, and I don't feel like I'm going to 'win', but I want to be more ruthless with my recovery and needs. I can't keep repeating over again the type of support I need. I will continue to learn how to pull every thorn out of my own eyes and soul. I don't want a relationship, friends or money ( but ofc i need money for safety). I want my ability to grieve back. I want to think , feel, and be present as humanly as possible. Just like I'm haunted by my dreams waking me up and metaphorically banging on my doors at 4 am. I intend to wake myself the fck up.

🙁 😢

this is it. how i feel. my feelings are sad. i know i shut down when my dad puts me down and hurts me/ makes me upset. but i knowat this point as an adult and as someone who needs to be civil with, since i rely financially on, i cannot, absolutely cannot behaveviolently. i am not able to lash out in fight mode, exactly.

the only thing that has helped was stepping back. but heres the thing, sometimes hes in the way physically or ometimes ...there is nothing for me to step back to. like my back is against a wall.

im making a metaphor here but he literally is sometimes in the kitchen with me, where htere is only one entrance/exit so if i wanted to leave the kitchen in order to kind of be in adifferent room, he would just be there, and he just stands there. its weird. in a socially awkward way. like, wow.

it's really strange how my body and brain compartmentalizes things. its like i can cry without feeling the feelings behind them. i guess i learnt to distance myself from parts of me really well, that there's this glass wall still between me and my feelings. even so, i guess this is progress. i just wish it wasnt so hard.

I think part of why I am stuck is because I need something I cant get. Justice.

Justice is such a big part of human existence. If you hurt someone, you pay a price. You might lose money, and you might go to jail. A company is negligent and hurts a customer. There is a price they pay. When they dont. Society gets upset. Like when cops kill and harass people with zero consequences.

Justice is a part of the healing process. Its a key step. Step A,B,C, and D. You cant skip step B. Except somehow thats what we are expected to do.

I made a post about needing to go through anger to get out of collapse. This is a key part of it. If there is no justice, anger will just burn everything down. Because it has no end. SO anger becomes useless, and collapse keeps you safe, out of jail, and alive.

I have to get up, shower, get ready, do my laundry, pack, and get back to campus. And at some point I have to start my week overdue essay and start catching up on weeks of learning, as well as whatever stuff I need to worry about in the near future.

It just feels like there's no point. Even if I just shower to get rid of the gross feeling I have currently, and I do nothing else today, I'm going to have to do the exact same thing for the exact same reason tomorrow (or whenever I actually get to it). It doesn't feel like progress. It doesn't feel like I've actually done anything. Especially when the people around me do everything I need to do and more without expending a fraction of the mental effort I need to expend in order to get things done.

And I think I get what people mean when they say to "start small" or "do just one thing" or "just do it for five minutes." There's a lot of reasons that can help but the results (for me) are so damn fickle. I can't count the number of days I've pushed through every ache and pain in my mind just to get that shower or chore done, only to feel completely spent and awful and in no shape to take on any of the things I actually need to get done.

I'm just looking for a reason to feel like I have a way forward when I feel this shit. Every little thing I need to do is just so hard. And it's not like I need to do it soon, it's that I needed to have done it a week ago. I just don't know what to do.

Fun times.

I know this collapse is going to kill me young.Well youngish. You cant lay down 95% of the day and not expect to die a horrible death. My heart is always pounding and fluttering. Just kind of waiting to die alone with a heart attack. :)

Its funny how the dog Im watching doesn't want to go outside because its to cold,but thats where I am every day.

I keep seeing references to emotional pain as being the same/similar and processed in the same way that physical pain is processed in the brain.

I don't get this.

Emotions can be unpleasant, but not painful.

E.g. I find music that uses heavy distortion to be unpleasant. A children's choir where the kids are only vaguely on pitch is unpleasant. Spilling burning kerosene on my hand is painful. Hitting my thumb with a hammer is painful.

Do other people find emotions actually painful in any meaningful comparison of hte term?

E.g. Rank these in order of least to worst:

• P: Slamming your thumb in a car door
• E: A good friend breaking off contact saying they never want to see you again. (rejection)
• P: Getting frost bitten fingers or toes and feeling them thaw
• E: Being let go at work with the statement your work is unacceptable.
• P: Spilling burning fuel on your hand.
• E: You are forced to move, Losing your home, and community, and having to find a new job all at once.
• P: Breaking your arm or leg skiing.
• E: Having a friend die in an accident.
• P: An old injury aches.
• E: The joke you told at a party fell totally flat.
• P: Walking on blistered feet the third day of a hike.
• E: Something you said as a compliment was taken the wrong way, and they are angry at you.
• P: You snag a sharp toenail on a blanket, and half rip off.
• P: Getting up the next morning after way too many crunches and planks.
• E: Someone else gets credit and a bonus for the work you spent your entire weekend completing.
• P: You get a soccer ball in the nuts.
• E: Get called a racist or a pedophile
• E: Being told by the choir director that you can stay because this is an inclusive choir, but please stand at the back, sing quietly and face the corner.
• P: Skidding out mountain biking and having one side of your leg more or less all road rash.
• P: You're cooking, have been chopping hot peppers and rub an itching eye.
• E: Mom writes your brother, apologising for not raising you right, but never mentions it to you.
• P: Bad sunburn. You peel twice.
• E: Asking your crush if they would be willing to go on a date, and they laugh and say, "I'd rather go out with a troll"
• E: Have a beer bottle thrown at you and shatter at your feet from a passing car. The fragments miss.
• P: Moving through the house and stepping on a lego.
• E: Being told, "get a life, loser"
• P: getting a paper cut.
• E: Finding another thing that you are no good at.

I've not done this yet. I think for me most of the emo ones will come on the list before all but the most trivial physical ones.

As well intentioned as people may be in trying to help people with CPTSD or other dissociative disorders. You cant start something and not finish it. You cant break down the defenses that a person developed in a lifetime to survive, and leave them to figure the rest out on their own.

You cant rip open a festering scab and leave them to deal with the consequences.

You cant expect people with no resources, in poverty, alone, and homeless. To be able to just bounce back and be functional after you take them apart. Then leave them.

What other business would not be sued into bankruptcy?