this is not a kindness

me, going from actively suicidal back to passively suicidal again: well, glad that’s over

I know this might make people mad, but absolutely refusing to even attempt to treat your mental illness, and instead just endlessly inflicting your unmitigated episodes on the people around you, is abusive. Your loved ones are not stress toys that you can just squeeze every time you feel bad. It is bad if someone says your repeated behavior is hurting them, and you take no steps to change. I know damn well that you can’t always help how your brain acts, but I’ve also spent a lot of years trying to stop my spiraling brain in its tracks, work on strategies to calm down, and consider the impact I’m having on others, because I grew up in a household with people who have the attitude of, “I have the right to consume all the attention in the house and drain your energy every single day because I feel miserable, and you’re the bad guy if you say that I’m making you feel bad and that I need to get help. I can treat you however I want because of my anxiety.”

Are they ‘trauma dumping’ or are they just discussing their life experience and you are such an asshole that you can’t stand to be confronted with information that makes you uncomfortable for 0.005 seconds???

Like it is beyond wild to me that it became commonly accepted that the person with trauma who is struggling to cope with it is the one who is ‘in the wrong’ in a situation that could be described as ‘trauma dumping’ gtfo

im so tired of being unable to say "no/please stop" because if i do the other person will hurt themself

if you self flagellate, self harm, self deprecate, etc when someone says "no thanks" to you or says "hey this made me uncomfortable" or generally sets a boundary, you are punishing for setting a boundary. maybe not intentionally, but it instills the mindset that if someone sets a boundary with you, something bad will happen.

If you genuinely enjoy being alone, do you ever wonder if it is an inherent part of your character or if it stems from feeling inescapably lonely in the first place until you taught yourself to enjoy the peace and happiness one can find in solitude? what if the reason you now prefer & choose solitude at every turn is because you were a very lonely child, or teenager, not by your own choice, and that’s how you learnt to thrive and grow, so you no longer know if you can do that around people? There might also be an element of personal pride, an unconscious “you can’t fire me I quit” point when your brain decided to switch your feelings about solitude from distress to relief. I often find myself defending my love of being alone, to people who worry that I can’t possibly be happy to live in an isolated house in the woods; I insist that I do! I really do specifically enjoy the isolated factor and chose to live here because of it, but then I wonder how to differentiate an ingrained love of solitude from an acquired ability to thrive off unchosen loneliness, to learn from it and be nourished by it; to what extent it might be a form of contentment built on a bedrock of resignation.

it's kinda crazy what a common experience it is for like your parents to do something insanely traumatizing to you and then just not remember they did it at all while you remember forever

I just got lightheaded from reading this

a lot of people’s trauma symptoms get worse when they’re finally safe

“Still waters let you see all the way down…” yep.

Sorry I Spent all mY spoons this week already and it's fucking Tuesday. We're heading to the knives

and is your shame helpful? is it inspiring goodness and change? or is it keeping you frozen in time unable to move on and be everything you have expanded to be?

i don't know who needs to hear this, but guilt, self-hatred and shame are not sustainable sources of growth and healing. you can't hate yourself into feeling better, or being better. you can't repeatedly punish yourself for your flawed humanity and expect wholesome results.