TW: Vent Blog

And it turns out, nope, everyone still wants you to keep it down and act normal or you're not a part of society and you will still be ostracized if you say what happened because people prefer pretending it doesn't happen and they don't wanna hear about it.

Not every insult sounds like 'your stupid' or 'your ugly'

Abusers may not say 'your just crazy' when they try to gaslight you. They may say things along the lines of

'you dont even try'

'if you were smarter you would ____'

'why can't you be normal?'

When trying to insult you

They may say something along the lines of

'Well I'm sorry that's what you *thought* I did'

'you need a therapist your mental illness is changing your perception'

'why do you argue everything'

When they try to gaslight you

Lots of abusers try to be subtle about how they insult and manipulate you so they can hide behind plausible deniability.

"we weren't trying to insult/manipulate you we'd *never* do that! I can't believe this is what you think of us. That just shows that *you're* in the wrong. You need to apologize"

Sound familiar?

...Why not give it to them, then? Why is your child so deprived of attention that they're resorting to self-harm and other dangerous behaviour in an attempt to get it?

Even if needing attention was the sole reason they're doing it (which it often times isn't), that's still a sign that you've been neglectful of your child's physical and emotional needs.

spread the most UN noticed

abuse, be aware

Literally every website has become a thousand times more inconvenient, bloated with promoted or recommended shit, stupid UI/UX changes pushed by out of touch billionaires.

The tipping point this week was Google changing the regular "Web - Images - Videos - Etc." tabs with fucking stupid ever-changing search suggestions, making the site a thousand times less accessible and so much more annoying to use

its so incredibly scary, it feels like your mind is constantly playing tricks on you and you start to doubt whats real and what isnt.

PTSD is characterized by chronic stress-like symptoms that occur some time after a traumatic experience. The symptoms include but aren’t limited to hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, flash backs, and general anxiety. C-PTSD occurs after extreme, on-going, or repeated trauma.

Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD. I personally believe people who are highly attached to their emotions and senses are at higher risk of developing PTSD after a traumatic event.

I am one such person. I’ve always felt like my sensory and emotional experience was visceral in a way that not everyone could relate to. And if they did relate to it, they never would have talked about it. It feels my internal speakers are always turned up to 11 and almost everyone else sits at a comfortable 3. I’ve always felt extremely overwhelmed by crowds and large groups. I don’t do well under certain bright lights, or with lots of loud noises. I was like this before I developed PTSD. It’s definitely part of my core personality and not something I learned.

PTSD took my visceral (and sometimes frankly very beautiful) emotional world and warped it into terror. I could no longer feel the joy in the world because all I could ever feel was just a little unsafe. All of my energy was redirected towards a deep distrust of myself and the world around me. I was afraid of this and so I tried to shut it off completely.

I was initially prescribed xanax, and then zoloft. I was diagnosed with “panic disorder” and sent on my way. These sure did shut “it” off. They shut off everything. I stopped having emotions. I stopped caring. I had no regard for myself or anyone else. Those medications might work for some, but they were probably one of the worst things that could’ve been given to me at the time. I’m frankly shocked I survived that time of my life because I did not care if I lived or died. But I was always a high achiever so no one would have known or thought there was a real problem. I was still going to work and functional.

I found weed around the same time but I didn’t think it had the “power” to replace my xanax. And it wasn’t medically recognized in my state yet so I really wasn’t convinced it had any therapeutic value. It was just the little thing I did every once in a while that I enjoyed.

I was able to get off of Zoloft and regain some of my feelings. But Xanax… I wasn’t ready to give that up as easily. It was the first thing I ever took that was actually able to stop my panic attacks as they were happening. Of course, once it wore off I felt 1000000000000x worse but it worked when I needed it, right?…

Well, I had one more bad experience with Xanax then swore I’d never take it again. I haven’t used it in over 5 years. I told myself I was done with medications and would just try yoga. I was still using weed but again, I didn’t understand the value.

At this point, 5 years ago, I still didn’t even know I had c-ptsd. I knew I had a really bad panic disorder but I never thought to characterize it as that until marijuana became medically legal in my state.

“Oh stonedkitchenwitch, that’s real convenient that you suddenly found you had c-ptsd when it was on the list of approved medical conditions”

Ya. It was. I started to look into it and I realized what I’d been dealing with since I was young was much more than just an anxiety disorder.

I started to buy GOOD marijuana. I started to realize that the right stuff made me feel truly at ease. Like I could actually listen to myself and not the stress demon that seemed to live in my head. I could actually shut him off, and just… be. Just be me. As I learned to sit comfortably alone with myself I realized that I actually liked myself, and that my mind could be somewhere nice to live rather than the literal horror zone it had been for most of my life.

Just like any other drug, marijuana isn’t like this for everyone who takes it. I don’t think it’s for everyone. But it was never disorienting, or overwhelming for me. It always felt like it was gently bringing me back home to myself.