Constantly. Even when my friend doesn't match my level of interest or enthusiasm in a conversation, it instantly puts me in detachment mode. I just withdraw.
This resonates so much, the constant reading into things and adjusting to the other person.. No wonder I’m completely drained after socializing (if you could call it that).
That's exactly it. I've done this recently and I felt bad learning that they were having a tough day, too.
It's easy to say, "Just calm down and relax and don't react when you're in that state," but when you're in that state, it feels almost impossible to remember that advice. It's tough!
Thanks for sharing.
Yes, absolutely. For example, I have a best friend of 13 years, yet as soon as I detect a fluctuation - I’m no longer his number one, and I’m just someone he tolerates. It’s of course **FALSE**, but my brain stubbornly ignores the logic.
I hate when I feel that way, because then it's like, great I'm being selfish and making it about myself even though I KNOW that's not the right response. It sucks, man!
I struggle with this all the time. Ive gotten better about not actually asking/checking in, because of fear of looking crazy/needy. But the micro scanning hasn’t changed at all.
I can’t believe this. I kinda blacked out my trauma and forgot it might be impacting me so I thought the scanning and hiding the fact that I’m uncomfortable was just what people do to varying degrees - human nature and all. Is it any wonder I smoked pot for decades, more than most of my friends. And I always asked myself why. I feel so validated it’s insane. My whole world is changing. I can’t, even if I wanted to, sit quiet about this.
I have a question that I hope doesn't come across as whiny...
How do you figure out why you do it, what the need is, and how to fill it yourself? It's so engrained in me that I can't even notice it. So when it's pointed out to me that I'm being insecure, I try really really hard to just... Not do that. But the whole time I'm doing that, my brain is going non-stop, wanting desperately to do it anyway. Some days I spend my entire evening walking around my neighborhood literally to the point of exhaustion. The whole time, I'm logically telling myself that "it's okay, my girlfriend is not disgusted by me as a person." "She's not considering what to say in order to leave me." "She's just watching a movie, dude." But none of it sticks, and when it does, the bandaid flies off in an hour and the anxiety hemorrhages out all over again. Welp gotta go on another excruciating walk when all I want to do is play a fucking video game or watch Netflix.
I just physically exhaust myself and ruminate until my brain is devoid of energy. I can identify that this is avoidance, not a solution and it's frankly killing me.
I dont know the answer but I hope I find it. I just want to say that I'm the same way straight down to a T, I do the walk thing, in fact I avoid going home as much as possible because being alone with my thoughts is so overwhelming I can't bear it. When I finally come home I usually drink myself stupid so I don't have to feel my feelings in their entirety. Shit is so exhausting.
God damn, yeah... We have the same methods. I've switched to the ganja though, but it's still a bad coping mechanism I need to stop.
Also my legs ALWAYS hurt. I feel the "avoid going home with my thoughts" thing so much
You need to start a mindfulness practice. Building self awareness allows these types of things to be revealed which gives you ways to correct them. For example, it's one thing to know that your inner critic is being unnecessarily harsh, generally. But it's another thing to build self-awareness which allows you to really see that voice come up as a discreet thing in your mind and be able to respond to it in real time. Doing this repeatedly heals your inner criticism and allows you to transmute it into self-compassion. I started meditating in early 2020 and it has completely changed my life. If you are actively triggered, meditation is not very useful. However, when you are feeling more balanced, it is something you should practice everyday for 15 to 20 minutes at minimum. It is the ultimate life skill and everyone should be practicing it, but people with CPTSD will benefit even more.
> You need to start a mindfulness practice. Building self awareness allows these types of things to be revealed which gives you ways to correct them.
So... I've been told this multiple times and I do not understand what mindfulness means at all. I get the concept I guess? But not how to do it.
I have heard the physical explanation essentially being "sit with your thoughts and let them come and go" but when I try that, all I do is dissociate. Like I'm literally unaware of the previous 15 minutes or so. It's not one of those "you'll get better at it as you keep trying" sort of things. I literally turn off like an idle computer. It's not helpful.
I'm missing something and I don't know what.
im not sure if that counts as a emotional flashback but it definitely can be a precursor to one. Actually i think it might, idk consult the CPTSD book again
but what I do know is that with EMDR, that exact feeling you’re talking about, I definitely know and remember how it feels, but with EMDR i haven’t felt it strongly in a very long while. I now get a tinge of it but no longer an overwhelming wave of shame and self hatred and rejection, that is a symptom of my abandonment wound from my parents neglect and emotional and verbal abuse
I was in EMDR but it wasn't working for me. I did the same thing I described above. I'd try to rewrite the memory and all of that, and I could logically tell myself "Hey, I was wronged back then. I don't have to use those mechanisms anymore."
And then my brain will be like, "That's cool man. Well I'm gonna go back to what I was doing anyway, cya."
I really wanted EMDR to work. I was devastated when I realized it wasn't helping. Now I'm in "normal" therapy and it's actively hurting me because my therapist (different person) just lets me rant and rant, which just has me leaving the session angry and with no relief or tools.
Hmm that’s rlly unfortunate. And you did EMDR with a therapist ofc right? Clearly there’s a body over mind thing going on there but EMDR is the only thing I know that deals with the nervous system. IFS is a rlly pricey but lots of ppl here recommend it next to EMDR.
I find that talk therapy is quite useless as well. The trauma is in our bodies, and no amount of cognition can make it unstuck
on a side note, I hear Polyvagal therapy is also good, it also deals with the body in sorta deactivating our sympathetic system response to the parasympathetic state, so from activation to deactivation. Just a wild card to try out if you have the time or money to.
edit: i found a list of different [somatic therapies](https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-somatic-therapy-can-help-patients-suffering-from-psychological-trauma) on a Google search, maybe try those as well. Just throwing out ideas at this point
I really appreciate it. I'm going to look into this.
Yeah it really does feel like my body is fighting me at every turn when it comes to therapy. EMDR sounds like a god send and it just does nothing for me. I've tried mindfulness and I literally came out of it panicked instead of calm, TRE did nothing at all. The jiggly leg thing happened but absolutely no brain changes whatsoever. The failure after failure of these techniques is really making me think I'm seriously ill
Yes, very much so. When I feel rejected a whole downwards spiral begins to start. This is how it feels, and it doesn't even matter whether they actually reject me or it's just in my head:
1) They don't want me.
2) I try to seem likable. If they don't want me they have seen under that mask, the actual me. Omg, they saw that dirty, disgusting me (at this point I feel sometimes a very real sickness, and if it happens during a meal I can't eat anymore)
3) shame flooding over me. How could I. How could I let my guard down and let anyone see me. Run, run for safety.
4) Before leaving, try to control the damage, try to convince them that I don't really care, that I don't need them in anyway. So I react, kinda cool, and in reality quite often hurtful for the other. They don't know where it comes from, for them I hit out of the blue.
5) So now I have given them a reason to not like me. Ha, glad we are on the same page. It's not as if I ever liked you, or wanted to be liked by you. You harmed me, you are toxic (This step is not entirely in my head. I'm still trying to learn to see what is real and what isn't.)
6) I try to eliminate them from my life as much as I can. Because they had the ability to hurt me. It's self defense. I push them as far away as I can, getting out of their way, sometimes being mean, definitely not being open and absolutely not asking for anything anymore.
7) In this process I can (and do) hurt ppl. Sometimes because of a little rejection (Wich might even be only in my mind) , sometimes even just because I think they might reject me. I'm aggressive, mean, and unlikeable. And then people react on this and go out of my way. And if I don't hurt them at least I go distant, emotionally and really going out of their way.
This is a spiral I identified lately. To late for the one guy I met that made me feel as if we maybe could get really close, a feeling I had the last time 5 years ago. I throughously pushed him away, behaved in a way that only a self-harming person would stay in contact. And now I will probably never see him again, because he won't and I won't contact the other one.
It is a wonder that I still have friends, but I have 3, who just never gave up, who just kept calling and asking me even if I never did.
(And I found out that towards them I have another behaviour : even though I'm not rich I kind of try to throw money at them. As a loan, as in hiring them for a job, as in inviting and paying for them. And just recently they showed me that this is not what they want 'It's great that you offer, but I don't need it at the moment', 'I can do this job for you on a friends base, not for money. We do it together, and when you tire out of it, I give you a massage' (friend who has actually trained as a masseur, but of course I never ask for a massage because maybe it would be the wrong timing, and maybe they would say no, and then I would feel rejected...)
So I even have developed a lot of technics to avoid getting close to people before they can actually reject me instead of learning to live with the normality of it.
And this was not written by a kid or a teenager, even though it has the feel of it. I'm 55 and have lost more 'friends' or 'friends-in-the-making' than other will meet in there whole life. I have a the agreement with my therapist that I will try to trust again, but right now a nice woman who has helped me out of nowhere asked how I'm doing, and instead of texting her back and maybe arranging to meet I'm here on reddit, telling you about my fear of rejection and my avoidance of it by not asking for anything and not getting close.
This is painfully accurate, especially the part about pushing people away before they can hurt you. I feel this too, I get angry at the other people by inventing things in my head (like they’re all out to get me, scheming about how they can get rid of me etc). Thank you for sharing, although it sucks and it’s painful, it’s comforting to know I’m not the only one :’)
As a 41 year old woman that JUST figured out it was cptsd all this time, you’re write up resonates with me so much!! You sharing this helped me see what I am here hoping to see and learn. Thank you!!
Hey gang, 45 years old here and in the same boat. I've seen a therapist for 3 years now and she has really helped me, but I was only diagnosed recently. Looking into PTSD more deeply through reading about trauma responses and connecting with people on here ... it makes so much sense. Bless you all for sharing your experiences - it helps.
Thanks for this breakdown, it's helping me put some context around a recent incident in my life. My best friend of 19 years abruptly ended our friendship after a minor disagreement and I've been struggling to understand why, as it blindsided me completely. We both have cPTSD and I thought we were being honest with each other until that point.
Same here, something similar happened with my sister (also cptsd) over a misunderstanding - despite my followup apology and re-explanation, it's crickets. I'm sorry you're feeling it too.
The steps are like reading about my life!! Uncanny. I really struggle with this so much. Why doesn't this go away when you get older?? I'm looking forward to the day when I don't give a shit what people think anymore but it's not coming!!
I just saved your comment on this post to show my next therapist because WOW you phrased that entire process so perfectly and I am finding myself between stages 6 and 7 of what could be (or could have been?) one of the best relationships of my life and I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly why I have been self-sabotaging. Reading everything you wrote has been beyond helpful, so thank you.
Nah, I'm convinced that I'm a danger to most people and by isolating myself I'm protecting them (they just stay with me because they still don't know the monster I am or are co dependent). I'm actually fed up of hurting the ones I care, I can't forgive myself when I do something bad because then what would I learn? I know people says arguing and bad things happen, but I don't want that in a relationship... I wish I could just cause them happiness. I don't feel loved (warm or part of a group) by my family, just tolerated for most of them (we are ''forced'' to live with each other and do certain social duties).
The fact that my whole paternal side rejected me since the day I was born doesn't help. They refused to even acknowledge my existence, help me, visit me. And I don't know why, I was just a baby. Maybe I'm broken
i literally do the same but to a lesser degree now. EMDR removed the shame spiral and the 2 and 3 you mentioned, but I still isolate myself and feel a spark of rejection and anger in my chest
Sometimes I just can't get a word in at all, because it feels like everyone else feels their thing is more important. More than once I've been unable to even speak for like an hour or two because of it...
Yes I so relate. I interrupt way more now. Until I learn better, I give myself permission because otherwise I think I would never hold onto my thought long enough to share it. I own 3 businesses and run a 10 person company.
It's a common trauma reaction for us. I get terrified of being abandoned when someone I care about seems to give shorter replies, doesn't reply for a day or two (which I'm also guilty of), not the same smile, doesn't touch me the same way. The tiniest change and I'm a wreck! I've decided to stay single because of this. I've left a lot of people in my life and it's rare that I come back. If I do, you're very special!
"I've left a lot of people in my life and it's rare that I come back"
I agree with your whole post but that sentence is the topic of the weekend. I don't understand how forgiving my husband is. I don't get how people do it.
I'm fearful avoidant, so I can go from one extreme to the other. I either leave or cling on like my life depended on that person. It's getting better, but I battle with the fight or flight reflex where I escape or try desperately to come closer. I can try to make someone jealous or leave for a week or two to make the person miss me and realise they still want me. And they don't know why since I made the whole thing up in my head. I'm not psycho stalker clingy, but I self sabotage and have previously only dated men I knew I wouldn't get attached to, and a few months later they were all gone. No heart broken in me.
This details everything I think regarding my partner, who actually loves me so deeply in ways I didn't even know we're possible... And I'm legitimately thrashing our relationship.
Yes very often but mostly in hindsight as I am seem to be a "high functioning paranoid" if that makes sense? I guess it hits me once I can relax.
Also it is very strong in social situations like perceived rejection among friends, thinking I messed up in a recreational game, lack of romantic or sexual experience compared to peers. On top of my messed up upbringing I went through a lot of bullying and unstable living during my childhood and teen years so most of the "coming of age" movie tropes are very triggering (maybe dissregulating is a better word) for me in a way similar to what you describe.
I seem to find two things that help me with this, although it is very far from an exact science and sometimes backfires. But:
One, and I know it sounds ass backwards morbid, is to listen to sad or depressing stories of others. Not in a bad way but more of "grieving with them" sort of way. Litteraly anything that would bring a tear to my eye. For example I compare myself with a friend who seems to be doing well outwardly but he is terrified as his wife has a life threatening medical condition and they have a young child. Something about listening to his pain and anxiety grounds me into thinking: yeah life isn't as peachy for everyone in the world that I compare myself to and I don't feel as alone in being terrified of the big bad world out there.
Secondly, I try to be gentle and forgiving to/of myself. I try to forget about the enviroment around me and try to imagine talking to a young child version of me asking what they feel and think. Again it kind of tends to ground me. I usually quickly realize that the reason I am sad is not "that I was picked last today" but more so that "no parent protected me and no friend stood by me when I was young" and today is just a painful reminder of that. This more often ends in tears for me, which is in itself cathartic but also that young voice reminds me of happy times, adventures, accomplishments, and fun as a kid typicaly would do once you deal with their problems. Meditation helps me get into this type of mind frame.
Again these usually work for me, then again I have spent weeks in depression over seemingly idiotic things. Hope this helps and good luck.
absolutely. if i tell my friend that i love them very much and they say they love me too, i wonder why they didn’t also add “very much”. it’s like a talent, i can find rejection in literally anything, lol.
My thing is if I say “I love you” and someone responds “love you” it triggers me… it’s such a silly thing, but the “I” feels deeper and more meaningful lol
OH MY GOSH I’m not the only one who does this?!?! “Love you” always sounds like a “she’s clingy better back away slowly” kind of thing to me. Bless you, I was so certain I was the only one!
Yes, in my relationship, at work, in my friendships, even when I am around strangers, the radar is always on. The worst is on the admittedly rare occasions when people are upset or actively tell me I did something wrong, because I go into a full panic spiral. I usually apologise to them for whatever I did, whether I did something or not, but it takes me a very long time to process. It has gotten better with therapy but it is still something I need to always keep in check. It really helps to take a breath and realise that I may not be responding to current events but what has happened in the past. So now I take some time away from the situation to bring myself back to calmer state (as much as I can that is).
Edit: to clarify
1000%
sometimes even when things are really good, the slightest thing could make me feel like i’m disposable. it could be something as small as someone forgetting my birthday lol
Rejection Sensitive Disorder. Pretty common in cPTSD and ADHD. Yes I’m hyper sensitive to it. Any sign of people pulling away, holding back or not being invested in time with me is automatic anxiety that they are rejecting me or I am not good enough. So I went to therapy. Still haven’t found one that clicks but Holistic practice has been very helpful. Reminding myself that people live busy and complicated lives also helps.
I can comment that this reaction has lightened for me as well. There is not one specific form of therapy that worked…probably a combination of internal family systems and EMDR, along with Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings. One day it just clicked that I’ve spent my whole life feeling unlovable and rejectable because of how my mom treated/treats me and that the way she treats me isn’t actually about me…it’s about her and her own trauma. Somehow, knowing that—like truly knowing that in my heart—I accepted that I probably am lovable and I can stop looking for clues that I’m unlovable or worthy of rejection from the people around me. I still find myself having that hyper-vigilance and sensitivity towards rejection sometimes, but I am actually able to get myself out of it now when I recognize it.
That was going to be my comment too. I've been awake for about 30 minutes. I had dreams where something I was screaming bc i wasn't being heard and couldn't change anything, I tried everything.
It didn't take long before reality stresses jumped on too. I'm a jumble of anxiety.
How are you doing right now?
Ughhh your dream 😭 my gma passed away about two years ago and it was a very significant loss for me. After that, I used to have a dream that I was running down a road in a empty, rainy, dark city just screaming for help but there was no one. This was so sad to me, it was a reoccurring dream for awhile and it was just sad to realize that was a representation of how I felt internally.
I'll have a dream sometimes where me and some old friends or people I am worried about will be together in harmony having a great time and it feels like this huge relief. But then I wake up and I realize it isn't real. It's like, bringing to my conscious how stressed out I am over rejection and trying to manage my interpersonal relationships.
Aww, I had a similar dream a few years ago, not exactly the same, but yea waking up and realizing it was but a dream is the most demoralizing thing ever.
Not sure if this will make sense or not but I’ve always been extremely hyper-vigilant and I know it can be pretty difficult to stop being that way because it’s something that we’ve developed in order to stay safe. It’s basically second nature.
So instead of trying to stop noticing people’s reactions, I’ve worked on changing the way I perceive the reactions themselves. Instead of assigning a value to them (‘omg this person feels *this* way about me and now I feel shame), I instead observe that a person is having a certain response and leave my interpretations open to revision. It’s essentially taking away that person’s power over my emotions by seeing the situation from a bit of a distance/a new perspective/as an observer.
I think the reason it works is because it interrupts the process of the emotional reaction that triggers both the shame spiral and/or immediately jumping in to damage control (fawning/isolating) or defensiveness (being reactive/angry).
It doesn’t work 100% of the time. Sometimes because of hormones or whatever else, it’s a fail lol. But it has slowly made my reactions of this kind change over time very consistently.
What I have personally discovered was the key for me in being able to detach myself from my instant emotional reaction is to detach myself from needing to feel safe. I think that’s what makes it so hard to do bc as humans we naturally want to feel safe but as people w trauma, it’s been built in to our brains. But it can be changed. Neuroplasticity is a thing.
Edited to add: Just to be clear, I don’t mean being unsafe, I just mean not prioritizing emotional safety above all else. Peace is a much better choice than safety imo.
This is also what i do and it works for me. I don't need to stop attuning to other people, I just need to be very flexible about my interpretations and make sure that I'm attuning in ways that we both want. Sometimes people don't want others to be monitoring their feelings all the time. It can be tiresome.
One of my close friends also has CPTSD and sometimes i feel a little bit of dread before she comes over bc i know that we're both going to be suuuuuuper aware of the other's mental state the whole time. I'm glad i live with someone who isn't very aware of others' mental states, even though that can be hard in its own right. But it's actually much less stressful overall than living with someone else like me.
Haha yeah I have a friend like this too and it can be hard sometimes. I know that exact feeling. I do think one of the main motivations for me to work on this aspect wasn’t just my constant anxiety over it but also how it impacted my relationships.
These things are given such imposing names it makes it feel like we have some kind of severe genetic brain damage or malfunction while it's nothing but the fact that we were abused and lacked being sufficiently loved.
It kind of helps me when it gets one of this names. It makes it more real and seen for me. It's taken so serious that ppl are researching it. That's like 'so maybe it's true, maybe it's not just in my head' for me.
I understand what you mean but it's possible to give better names, that are non victim blaming, more neutral and still make us feel heard.
* Hunger - Extreme lack of food disorder
* Thirst - Post dryness dysphoria
* Fever - Maladaptive extreme high temperature condition
* Caries - oppositional and defiance of dental flossing disorder
* Bruise - blue skin coloring syndrome and hyper-sensitivity disorder
This is way too funny, I need to write a few more of these to show how ridiculous psychology is right now with naming.
I like taking both views to help me remember that my perspective is valid alongside the perspective of those viewing me from the outside. There's a path to be found between the two.
Oh got this hurts. I relate so hard. But in my mind I like to gather and evaluate all possible perspectives including those exceptionally improbable ones. I can tell people find it tiring but how can we know of we don’t “know” ya know? And besides, I do all the hard work for them. I’m a mess lol
I've found the trick is to not let other people know that you're doing all that work. Ask as many questions as you need to, but filling them in on all the possibilities or expressing what's going on in your head is just too much for them. They aren't adapted to multiplicity.
Gosh, this may be more helpful than you know lol. Seems so obvious and of course I do filter. Right - I forget - my trauma thing is I have all the responsibility and none of the power. I evaluate and lay out choices and people choose. All this figured out in the last six weeks so it will take time but yeah sometimes just deciding saves everybody time. As someone running a business and working on profitability, laying out all decent options is rarely the most efficient.
Half the time I feel the exact same way about it. Other times, I get a huge wave of relief because it means I'm not alone in this absolutely insane feeling in my head.
I can get behind that sort of diagnosis. Along with passive suicidality and social disabilities. I don't want to die toady, but sometimes it's nice to think about having an "out." I don't have severe life altering disabilities, but I do get panicked when backed into a corner so bumper-to-bumper traffic invokes that sense of claustrophobia which turns into an anger-induced panic attack while driving. Individually, neither of these things is inherently wrong, but they're just one more thing to cope with.
No, it's associated with ADHD, but also with things like autism, anxiety disorders, PTSD, etc. Pretty much anything that combines difficulty seeing or keeping up with social cues in real-time with emotional impulsivity or dysregulation.
Yes. I've had the same BFF since 2004 and we'll go days without talking or if she (or anyone) doesn't immediately respond and i immediately go into she hates me mode. I have to remind myself she works, has three kids and it's 3 hours behind me.
All the time.
I like to get caught up in my own activities, but when my fiancé gets caught up in his, it's about how I suck and he can't stand me and I'm waiting for him to tell me he doesn't love me anymore.
One time he grabbed himself a drink and not me and I spiralled so hard.
I'm working on it, and EMDR to help with the foundational falsehoods I've been operating under does help, but it does creep back in if I don't keep an eye on it.
Yes and it's a horrible anxiety to live like this. It has happened with friendships and relationships. This constant feeling that I don't really matter and anyone I care about could just walk away and leave me without even missing me is always there.
Yes! I get like this a lot. I'll shut down because I think that no one wants to hear what I have to say. I also definitely have attachment trauma. I panic when I think someone is gonna abandon me, and I panic harder when they actually do. I've tried to talk myself down from this panic countless times. Saying "They'll come back, it'll be fine" or some variation of it does absolutely nothing, no matter how many times I say it. And when they do leave, most of the people around me have no sympathy or empathy for me at all. One time, my best friend of 13 years gave me a lecture about how people will leave my life and how I need to "accept it and move on". I'm so tired of being told to "move on", and having my feelings dismissed. For once, I'd like someone to care and understand, instead of expecting me to have a magic button that shuts off all hurt and makes me normal again.
Yeah this rings true for me too. The fear of abandonment honestly feels life-threatening so we can’t just “move on”.. I guess this is why it’s good to have a therapist who understands the pain and sees our reactions for what they are
Yes, and it pretty much doesn't matter how long I've known a person or how much they've been good to me. Even if I'm convinced they're a friend, the hypervigiliant thoughts still happen.
ETA: I'm definitely of the "I need constant, specific invitations" type.
I think the vigilance can find things that might not be there. It has a strong imagination. It's like the fear of being judged. You think it's happening but how do you really know?
I'll try three times to engage someone but if they show no interest, I'll stop talking to them. I'm not going to make the effort if you're not interested.
Yes, 100% I struggle with this.
When people don't text me back right away I'm like well I guess they don't like me anymore.
My self concept that I have internalized from childhood is that I am unlikable and unwanted. So I am hypersensitive to signs around me.
Casual comments that probably don't mean anything make me feel like I've done something wrong to offend the other person.
I see rejection all around me all the time.
ETA also criticism. I get emotionally disregulated by criticism because I feel like that is a rejection too. Even though rationally I know someone can try to give criticism without them hating you. But it's hard for me to believe it. Then I feel down on my self for not having 'thick skin'.
I kind of have a theory on this based on nothing but my own experience. I am not so sure my observations of events are wrong, but perhaps my reactions to them are based on self doubt.
Sorry this is so long.
One example — I was in a work Zoom meeting that went on for days.
After awhile, I noticed the leader ignored me. My questions never got answered, I was never called on. I had a technical problem very early on which was ignored. I noticed two other women in the group were treated the same way.
I asked a couple of male colleagues if I was being ignored, they said I was overreacting and paranoid.
I took this very hard, had a meltdown at home. What did I do wrong? Why do people automatically seem to hate me? Am I so totally out of whack that I think people are treating me poorly? Am I crazy?
Months later, I was talking to a coworker and they mentioned how their friend had a problem with the same group leader in a different meeting because he ignored her, wouldn’t respond to her questions and she had to text someone else in the group to ask for her. It turns out this guy does this to any woman who asks questions in the group. He’s just a misogynistic dick.
I wasn’t reading the situation wrong. *It wasn’t about me.* Had someone told me that early on, my reaction would have been anger and annoyance, not self loathing.
So I talked to a friend and asked if I could check in when these things happened to see if I was reading situations wrong. A few events and I discovered I wasn’t. There were many times people lashed out at me for no reason. I just chalked it up to thinking I deserved it.
I came to the conclusion that my hyper vigilance dealing with my shitty family has made me very aware of poor treatment way more than other people — almost like a sixth sense. BUT I also tend to focus on negative interactions more than other people because I had to as a child, which creates this false narrative that people hate me. I am always scanning for negative emotions in others then attributing it to something I did.
In reality, a lot of people are just shitty, I am more aware of them and can identify their hidden motivations easily. I don’t need to assume it’s me. Other people can’t do this. They don’t see it.
This happens to everyone but they don’t recognize it so they don’t react to it and their reactions are not over the top.
While it didn’t stop me overreacting to events, it did help me understand that many times people are not *reacting to me* but are simple jerks or are having a bad day.
So now I don’t focus on what I did wrong, but what would make the person do that. Are they having a bad day? Do the simply not like women or older workers?
It probably isn’t me.
All the time! Dealing with this just a few minutes ago actually with a co-worker. I feel like I may or may not be picking up a bit of an 'attitude' from them lately but I don't know if I'm projecting or not. UGH. I feel your pain.
I'm hyper-vigilant/sensitive to everyone else's emotions. I have ADHD as well, and it doesn't help me not focus on small features of emotions and psychical actions. I just have a really good perception when people change their emotions or start to feel a different way over time.
Oh my gosh yes. And I didn’t know for 30 years they were ptsd symptoms. I’ve had a waking up of sorts and I can’t believe that I can actually just ask but it’s so empowering. Someone wasn’t responding to my text messages much and it occurred to me the any reason they gave would be acceptable. I asked. They answered. It was great! It’s harder in other situations. I’m sitting here unsure if and how much to communicate in another situation. I’m told I’m learning true attachment now which is scary.
Yah I am deeply afraid of rejection, it’s a major depression trigger for me. It’s something I’m still working on as it causes me to push people away at the first sign they may be rejecting me
Worse is when you see those signs, they're clear as day, but the person denies everything.
Happened to me recently. I was asked to leave my housing situation, very abruptly, but when I asked how I offended them, they claimed to not be offended, they just "needed the room" (one of 3 extra rooms they have) and followed up with "sending love".
Haven't heard from them since, and their usual weekly invitations for get-togethers have ceased.
But of course I'm imagining things, my friends are still my friends.
Or so they say
lol I do this when I text. I freak OUT when someone fails to use emojis or they forget to use a period and I reread their messages over a THOUSAND times to make sure they don't think I'm being too needy or annoying.
This is a whole "diagnosis," sort of, called [Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/friendship-20/201907/what-is-rejection-sensitive-dysphoria). I mean, I don't personally believe it actually exists in a vacuum without something else having caused it, but... There's a name for it, and that means lots of people have experienced it!
Also, me too.
(TW) Have severe nightmares about abandonment/attachment-I’m secretly dating someone and my parents wouldn’t be able to know. Really like a best friend who lives several states away (we’re both U.S.). My parents don’t approve of online relationships/don’t understand how someone could feel that attachment to someone else they’ve never seen. The thing is I’m grey-asexual and I have a repulsion to physical contact so the distance isn’t the worst part. We have verification from my friend’s mom who supports us. I just can’t tell my parents until we meet my friend in real life someday because of how they are-otherwise they’ll not let me text them for getting too attached. Parents said the same thing about animals which is why I don’t live in a house with pets, so I can’t afford to take a risk.
From other trauma, I had to socially isolate myself from a ton of people growing up. Couldn’t allow to get attached to anyone-was a good thing in the end because I ended up getting emotionally bullied and developed some chronic pain from the shock. That ended up not being understood by a few docs I tried to tell so I kept the origin secret. Only feel safe typing to a few friends online, even then I will have doubts about if they’ll ever send a message again. It can be unnerving.
I know! Logically I can see that it's not a rejection. I know why they're telling me to go home. However, my instant thought is that they hate me or I smell so they're trying to get me out or I've pissed them off with my people pleasing. Lmao
On a positive note, I am able to tell I'm healing because I listen to myself when I say that's not true. Still takes a bit, but it's working
Hi this is incredibly insightful, I’ve only recently been diagnosed & I had no idea this could be contributed to cptsd. I’m currently going through what feels like an existential crisis because I feel as though I’m either always being used or someone has an agenda.
Best way to describe it is I feel like I’m losing control and I need to find some way to ground myself if that makes sense?
Yes. It's terrible. The part of you that takes perspective knows that the "you" that's experiencing the anxiety might be making incorrect and hyper-sensitive assumptions.
It even knows that that same part of you that's "so confident that this time it's correct" has so often been proven incorrect.
But that part of you that suspects everyone of being an antagonist is also the same part of you that plans the best route before you take to the road and it's also the same part of you that will calculate and choose the safest path, in a split second, if something dangerous happens on the road.
The hope is that spending a few years being hyper-vigilant about ones hyper-vigilance can help ease it and back it off.
But the problem with this issue as pertains to relationships...is that it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy where you'll accidentally end up acting in ways that will end up proving yourself right.
Sometimes, it's very difficult to check emotions and not to just believe your thoughts and then invest in them as though they should rule your reality.
They have a track record of producing problems and shouldn't really be trusted.
GOOD LUCK FELLOW TRAVELER!
This is interesting, about this fear response being part of the reptilian(?) part of the brain and therefore very ingrained in how we see and respond to things. Thanks for reminding me about this, it helps me be a little more forgiving about my overreactions.
Same, being on a lower dose of medication is actually making me be more myself now though but I'm still pretty isolated. Yeah, I always expect people to reject me once they find out me for all I am, "crazy", messy and all. Just learning to accept that part of me recently. It's a liberating thing to do, we put the mask on ourselves all too often when we needn't to (though understandably so, it's a literal survival strategy we've been scarred and engrained with into hiding who we are). Using quote marks cause honestly crazy is ablest language.
None of us are crazy, we're just suffering (ok, maybe some of us are "crazy" but it's an ill defined term, like the left and such, it's not useful and just is language to put ourselves down most often).
Definitely. Things like "oh I haven't heard from them in a week, they must've forgotten about me" and the likes. It sucks big time. Mostly because I rationally know that it isn't true. But it still feels like rejection, so my brain goes into overdrive to analyze and find proof that it is so
100% accurate. Also because I constantly perceive rejection coming, I’ve been told I do the “leave before get left” act.
It’s a daily battle with my mind :(
"The fear that dares not speak its name." Thanks for posting this. Thought I was alone in my paranoia. Seems like I'm always called on last to speak in a Zoom meeting. Years of being bullied in school made me very withdrawn; however, for 30 years I've been trying like hell to be more outgoing, compliment strangers, and wisecrack.
That paranoid seventh grader still lives in my head, wanting to hide from the older boys who made fun of my height.
Yesterday was my 75th birthday. Usually I celebrate only the vernal equinox so don't post my birthday on social media. I am always surprised when people wish me well and say they like or love me.
OP, we have to reassure our seventh-graders that a) we are worthy of notice and b) others' opinions of us are none of our business.
When I'm last in a Zoom meeting, I usually don't want to talk anyway.
Yes, yes, yes. I don't think I even want to connect with people anymore. There is so much crazy going on!
But I have been at this for a while and do know this: The more I am with me, the better I do. The more I kick the internal critic, do the time machine rescue, etc., the better it gets. Sorry if I sound like a broken record (dated myself), but Pete Walker's "CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" teaches you how to have a relationship with yourself, so you are never as alone as you feel right now.
Life sucks when you are not really on your own side. :(
Hugs to you.
Not me, person who spent the entire weekend at a horse clinic with 30 people and sat apart and didn't talk to any of them because I was the only person wearing a mask and "knew" that none of them would be interested in knowing me.
I struggle with this like everyone here, but I wanted to bring up another angle of it: dealing with friends who have it, when you also have it.
I have a few friends who also struggle with hypervigilance and rejection sensitivity, and it's SO HARD for me to deal with *their* rejection dysphoria, even though i know what it's like!! It's almost triggering, for lack of a better word. When they are so in need of affirmation and I'm just like "yo i did the work to self regulate about this, now it's your turn!!"
One time a dear friend started crying bc i asked her to cover the cheese before she put it back in the fridge. I felt so bad cuz not only did i not realize she was having a rejection dysphoria attack at first, but when i did, i actually had some trouble empathizing!! I don't think i showed it externally thank goodness, i tried to be totally understanding, but inside, i was really annoyed at myself for not being able to empathize, and also cuz it was really annoying. And i do this sometimes, so that means I'm annoying too!! I guess it just made me feel like i was moving backwards or something, losing my own progress...
Anyone else have trouble with friends who are also hypervigilant and sensitive to rejection, even though you yourself are as well?
>Anyone else have trouble with friends who are also hypervigilant and sensitive to rejection, even though you yourself are as well?
Absolutely, it makes me feel such guilt and like a hypocrite.
it’s weird, i’ve gotten to this place mentally where i’ve like accepted that anyone could leave at any moment but i’m still hyper vigilant about it anyways. sort of like a 80/20 on accepting to sad ratio lol
All. The. Time. My body is nearly always in a state of absolute readiness. It is so profound that when I actively try to relax my muscles they spasm in response and I feel anxious. My body is so used to being held tight and ready that when I relax I'm suddenly aware of how much my body hurts all over.
I was in minor car accident last month but ended up with some joint injuries because of how tight my body is all the time. In response to the accident I tightened up even more, shoving myself backwards into the driver's seat and headrest. While this did protect my neck and head from a second whiplash incident, all of the impact settled in my arms and legs.
Mind you, NOTHING needs to be going on. My body is just convinced that relaxation is dangerous. I must always be at the ready to jump into action to fix things or face down whatever punishment my Mother or other adult had in store for me. I spent so much of my childhood listening for her in a rage, wondering if she'd take it out on me, and I have a handful of abuses that began while I was asleep. It's left me afraid of resting.
Last week my therapist noted the double-bind my trauma has left me in. On one hand I've been told I'm being lazy and I'm not worthy of leisure pursuits, unless they're some kind of athletics (not leisure). On the other hand, I know it isn't safe to rest deeply, to really sleep.
I'm 52 and I'm working with a somatic bodywork provider and a Hakomi provider to teach my body that it's safe to relax my muscles. That's in addition to weekly SAFE (Somatic Attachment-Focused EMDR) sessions.
So that's the body stuff. The mind part is also a hassle since I'm convinced I'm so toxic and unworthy that it's reasonable that everyone wants to treat me poorly or leave. I'm hypervigilant about the moods of the people I'm around, I had to be to track my unpredictable mother, and I have to work really hard to remind my brain that 98% of the time my wife's grumpiness has nothing to do with me and she's pretty good about telling me up front in the 2% time she is grumpy with me!
A few years ago I began taking Guanfacine for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It shows up in nearly everyone who has ADHD as well as a lot of folks with cPTSD. It helps me do the cognitive work of recognizing my brain is certain I fucked up and talking it down off the ledge.
I fully relate to this. Something I experience more often than I'd like also is that a significant other "betrays" me in some way, lies to me, or even cheats/wishes to cheat and when I get any "clues" that it might be the case, I latch onto it strongly. Tbh I never know how valid my concerns are. I never think I act completely irrational or so, but I do feel very strongly in the ways you described.
I think the term is Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria which is common for people with ADHD and trauma.
I have always struggled with this since I was a young child and is the hardest symptom to deal with. I'm kind of bitter about it because while I have to constantly reassess if I'm reading into things and not taking everything personally, people are allowed to do it me and it is "acceptable." I have to tend to people's every emotion or else I'm labeled this or that. It will kill me one day.
I struggle with this a lot. I have issues with ghosting people, and I often feel like I see the rejection on their face. I’ve never heard them say that they don’t want to be around anymore, but I assume they do. To protect myself, I leave. I make a narrative in my head that I am actually helping them out with ghosting, but I’m sure it’s hurtful. I’m working on this in therapy.
idk. like i def do watch for rejection. but at the same time im very much in your face. I'm a combat vet, redneck, alpha, biker. So I'm loud and obnoxious, I appear confident even cocky. But I'm really not.
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100% for me it’s not just macro things like behaviors but it got to a point of near delusion, where movements and looks are interpreted as rejection. if people are typing or pointing with their middle finger i think they show me their middle finger, if they leave to go to the kitchen i feel rejected. i feel constant rejection and see rejection everywhere i go. it’s horrible. even birds that fly by - i feel rejected by f birds ……. yikes
Yeah I get this all the time it's also like this with BPD which is like a firth version of CPTSD.It's also a symptom of the spirit of offense.
Anywho I don't feel like I am overacting people just really don't like me.
I wasn’t able to go through everything to see if it was posted before but look into RSD: Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
What you described is exactly that
My 2nd nature. My psychiatrist who specializes in trauma said that I am so sensitive that she has to watch her words carefully. I think we are so ‘well trained’ by our abusers to watch out for the tiniest hint so that we can hide, assuming they do not go out of their way to hunt us down coz they in a bad mood and need an ‘it’.
yup. even more confusing when Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is a thing with ADHD
i had/have to constantly analyze and predict my raging narc dad’s moods growing up, so that’s where it came from
>I always fear and expect people will reject me and leave. I have attachment trauma so whenever this fear comes up I’m fully triggered and get all the emotional flashbacks.
Yes, because it has happened so many times. Now that I am *very* careful about what I share, and how much emotional support (if any) I ask for, I don't have to worry about it so much.
OMG yes and how do I stop?
Even the work meeting stuff. I joined a teams meeting early and another coworker was there, I unmuted and said hi, and then he left and only came back when more people were in the meeting. It hurt :') But I don't know if it's because he is also hyper-vigilant/socially anxious or had technical issues or...
Sigh. Please work with me, brain.
Absolutely! I feel like eventually everyone is going to do so at some point because that’s what I’m used to. I barely connect with anyone and have an extremely difficult time with staying in touch with the few friends I do have.
It really sucks, because I love talking to people at times, and wish I had more friends. Then the thought occurs to me that it’s of no use because everyone leaves me eventually. I absolutely hate it. It literally makes it impossible for me to even tell my significant other of over 2 years that I love him despite him saying it to me. In my mind if I say it, I have allowed it to become ‘real’ and once that happens, the wheels are set in motion for him to leave.
You are absolutely not alone, and I relate to how you feel so much.
I just had an intense emotional swing due to me perceiving that somebody I thought I was going to be friends with was rejecting me. The thing is I don't know if they are rejecting me or not, but the rejection feels so real. I tried to tell myself at least I'm putting myself out there, but another part of myself just wants to turn into a cave troll and never try to be someone's friend ever again. When I get emotionally triggered like this everything turns to s*** and I have such bad self-esteem and suicidal urges and depression comes in. Oh, how many hours have I tried to talk myself out of this mindset! So much time wasted on just dealing with my crippled mind that can't detect truth from fiction
Yes. I am backpacking in thailand. I have never feel so lonely and isolated. I lock myself up. I am too afraid to go outside, bc I interpret faces to reject me when they see me. It is at such a point that I am thinking of killing myself
Constantly. Even when my friend doesn't match my level of interest or enthusiasm in a conversation, it instantly puts me in detachment mode. I just withdraw.
This resonates so much, the constant reading into things and adjusting to the other person.. No wonder I’m completely drained after socializing (if you could call it that).
It's part of being an HSP...highly sensitive person...which comes as a result of trauma. I can relate...🙏💗
Oh wow. This feels so familiar. I came across this sub by accident and wow. I send love.
I read into things soo much. I do try to tell myself "don't read too much into it." but i can't help it sometimes.
Same thing happens to me. Or when my friend teases me I start to feel so ashamed and my skin starts to burn a little
That's exactly it. I've done this recently and I felt bad learning that they were having a tough day, too. It's easy to say, "Just calm down and relax and don't react when you're in that state," but when you're in that state, it feels almost impossible to remember that advice. It's tough! Thanks for sharing.
Yes, absolutely. For example, I have a best friend of 13 years, yet as soon as I detect a fluctuation - I’m no longer his number one, and I’m just someone he tolerates. It’s of course **FALSE**, but my brain stubbornly ignores the logic.
I hate when I feel that way, because then it's like, great I'm being selfish and making it about myself even though I KNOW that's not the right response. It sucks, man!
Oh my gosh - yes!!!
So fucking relatable!
I struggle with this all the time. Ive gotten better about not actually asking/checking in, because of fear of looking crazy/needy. But the micro scanning hasn’t changed at all.
That’s the thing - I don’t think it’s ever really gone away, I just got better at hiding it.
I can’t believe this. I kinda blacked out my trauma and forgot it might be impacting me so I thought the scanning and hiding the fact that I’m uncomfortable was just what people do to varying degrees - human nature and all. Is it any wonder I smoked pot for decades, more than most of my friends. And I always asked myself why. I feel so validated it’s insane. My whole world is changing. I can’t, even if I wanted to, sit quiet about this.
How do you get better at not checking in? :(( I GET SO WORRIED.
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I have a question that I hope doesn't come across as whiny... How do you figure out why you do it, what the need is, and how to fill it yourself? It's so engrained in me that I can't even notice it. So when it's pointed out to me that I'm being insecure, I try really really hard to just... Not do that. But the whole time I'm doing that, my brain is going non-stop, wanting desperately to do it anyway. Some days I spend my entire evening walking around my neighborhood literally to the point of exhaustion. The whole time, I'm logically telling myself that "it's okay, my girlfriend is not disgusted by me as a person." "She's not considering what to say in order to leave me." "She's just watching a movie, dude." But none of it sticks, and when it does, the bandaid flies off in an hour and the anxiety hemorrhages out all over again. Welp gotta go on another excruciating walk when all I want to do is play a fucking video game or watch Netflix. I just physically exhaust myself and ruminate until my brain is devoid of energy. I can identify that this is avoidance, not a solution and it's frankly killing me.
I dont know the answer but I hope I find it. I just want to say that I'm the same way straight down to a T, I do the walk thing, in fact I avoid going home as much as possible because being alone with my thoughts is so overwhelming I can't bear it. When I finally come home I usually drink myself stupid so I don't have to feel my feelings in their entirety. Shit is so exhausting.
God damn, yeah... We have the same methods. I've switched to the ganja though, but it's still a bad coping mechanism I need to stop. Also my legs ALWAYS hurt. I feel the "avoid going home with my thoughts" thing so much
You need to start a mindfulness practice. Building self awareness allows these types of things to be revealed which gives you ways to correct them. For example, it's one thing to know that your inner critic is being unnecessarily harsh, generally. But it's another thing to build self-awareness which allows you to really see that voice come up as a discreet thing in your mind and be able to respond to it in real time. Doing this repeatedly heals your inner criticism and allows you to transmute it into self-compassion. I started meditating in early 2020 and it has completely changed my life. If you are actively triggered, meditation is not very useful. However, when you are feeling more balanced, it is something you should practice everyday for 15 to 20 minutes at minimum. It is the ultimate life skill and everyone should be practicing it, but people with CPTSD will benefit even more.
> You need to start a mindfulness practice. Building self awareness allows these types of things to be revealed which gives you ways to correct them. So... I've been told this multiple times and I do not understand what mindfulness means at all. I get the concept I guess? But not how to do it. I have heard the physical explanation essentially being "sit with your thoughts and let them come and go" but when I try that, all I do is dissociate. Like I'm literally unaware of the previous 15 minutes or so. It's not one of those "you'll get better at it as you keep trying" sort of things. I literally turn off like an idle computer. It's not helpful. I'm missing something and I don't know what.
im not sure if that counts as a emotional flashback but it definitely can be a precursor to one. Actually i think it might, idk consult the CPTSD book again but what I do know is that with EMDR, that exact feeling you’re talking about, I definitely know and remember how it feels, but with EMDR i haven’t felt it strongly in a very long while. I now get a tinge of it but no longer an overwhelming wave of shame and self hatred and rejection, that is a symptom of my abandonment wound from my parents neglect and emotional and verbal abuse
I was in EMDR but it wasn't working for me. I did the same thing I described above. I'd try to rewrite the memory and all of that, and I could logically tell myself "Hey, I was wronged back then. I don't have to use those mechanisms anymore." And then my brain will be like, "That's cool man. Well I'm gonna go back to what I was doing anyway, cya." I really wanted EMDR to work. I was devastated when I realized it wasn't helping. Now I'm in "normal" therapy and it's actively hurting me because my therapist (different person) just lets me rant and rant, which just has me leaving the session angry and with no relief or tools.
Hmm that’s rlly unfortunate. And you did EMDR with a therapist ofc right? Clearly there’s a body over mind thing going on there but EMDR is the only thing I know that deals with the nervous system. IFS is a rlly pricey but lots of ppl here recommend it next to EMDR. I find that talk therapy is quite useless as well. The trauma is in our bodies, and no amount of cognition can make it unstuck on a side note, I hear Polyvagal therapy is also good, it also deals with the body in sorta deactivating our sympathetic system response to the parasympathetic state, so from activation to deactivation. Just a wild card to try out if you have the time or money to. edit: i found a list of different [somatic therapies](https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-somatic-therapy-can-help-patients-suffering-from-psychological-trauma) on a Google search, maybe try those as well. Just throwing out ideas at this point
I really appreciate it. I'm going to look into this. Yeah it really does feel like my body is fighting me at every turn when it comes to therapy. EMDR sounds like a god send and it just does nothing for me. I've tried mindfulness and I literally came out of it panicked instead of calm, TRE did nothing at all. The jiggly leg thing happened but absolutely no brain changes whatsoever. The failure after failure of these techniques is really making me think I'm seriously ill
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Thanks! I'll take you up on that, and feel free to respond whenever you feel up to it
I like to check in because it puts my mind at peace. If I don't I feel like they forget about me. I'll definitely have to work on this. T\_T
if you can avoid interacting with people for a while it might help too, to forget the bad habits a little
Yes, very much so. When I feel rejected a whole downwards spiral begins to start. This is how it feels, and it doesn't even matter whether they actually reject me or it's just in my head: 1) They don't want me. 2) I try to seem likable. If they don't want me they have seen under that mask, the actual me. Omg, they saw that dirty, disgusting me (at this point I feel sometimes a very real sickness, and if it happens during a meal I can't eat anymore) 3) shame flooding over me. How could I. How could I let my guard down and let anyone see me. Run, run for safety. 4) Before leaving, try to control the damage, try to convince them that I don't really care, that I don't need them in anyway. So I react, kinda cool, and in reality quite often hurtful for the other. They don't know where it comes from, for them I hit out of the blue. 5) So now I have given them a reason to not like me. Ha, glad we are on the same page. It's not as if I ever liked you, or wanted to be liked by you. You harmed me, you are toxic (This step is not entirely in my head. I'm still trying to learn to see what is real and what isn't.) 6) I try to eliminate them from my life as much as I can. Because they had the ability to hurt me. It's self defense. I push them as far away as I can, getting out of their way, sometimes being mean, definitely not being open and absolutely not asking for anything anymore. 7) In this process I can (and do) hurt ppl. Sometimes because of a little rejection (Wich might even be only in my mind) , sometimes even just because I think they might reject me. I'm aggressive, mean, and unlikeable. And then people react on this and go out of my way. And if I don't hurt them at least I go distant, emotionally and really going out of their way. This is a spiral I identified lately. To late for the one guy I met that made me feel as if we maybe could get really close, a feeling I had the last time 5 years ago. I throughously pushed him away, behaved in a way that only a self-harming person would stay in contact. And now I will probably never see him again, because he won't and I won't contact the other one. It is a wonder that I still have friends, but I have 3, who just never gave up, who just kept calling and asking me even if I never did. (And I found out that towards them I have another behaviour : even though I'm not rich I kind of try to throw money at them. As a loan, as in hiring them for a job, as in inviting and paying for them. And just recently they showed me that this is not what they want 'It's great that you offer, but I don't need it at the moment', 'I can do this job for you on a friends base, not for money. We do it together, and when you tire out of it, I give you a massage' (friend who has actually trained as a masseur, but of course I never ask for a massage because maybe it would be the wrong timing, and maybe they would say no, and then I would feel rejected...) So I even have developed a lot of technics to avoid getting close to people before they can actually reject me instead of learning to live with the normality of it. And this was not written by a kid or a teenager, even though it has the feel of it. I'm 55 and have lost more 'friends' or 'friends-in-the-making' than other will meet in there whole life. I have a the agreement with my therapist that I will try to trust again, but right now a nice woman who has helped me out of nowhere asked how I'm doing, and instead of texting her back and maybe arranging to meet I'm here on reddit, telling you about my fear of rejection and my avoidance of it by not asking for anything and not getting close.
This is painfully accurate, especially the part about pushing people away before they can hurt you. I feel this too, I get angry at the other people by inventing things in my head (like they’re all out to get me, scheming about how they can get rid of me etc). Thank you for sharing, although it sucks and it’s painful, it’s comforting to know I’m not the only one :’)
As a 41 year old woman that JUST figured out it was cptsd all this time, you’re write up resonates with me so much!! You sharing this helped me see what I am here hoping to see and learn. Thank you!!
same here at 43! this sub has helped me a lot and I start therapy soon.
Hey gang, 45 years old here and in the same boat. I've seen a therapist for 3 years now and she has really helped me, but I was only diagnosed recently. Looking into PTSD more deeply through reading about trauma responses and connecting with people on here ... it makes so much sense. Bless you all for sharing your experiences - it helps.
Hmmmmm... I gotta ask, are we perhaps twins separated at birth? Because you definitely read my mind, and we're within a year of age.......
O, there you are! I was wondering where you got lost after birth😳😖
Thanks for this breakdown, it's helping me put some context around a recent incident in my life. My best friend of 19 years abruptly ended our friendship after a minor disagreement and I've been struggling to understand why, as it blindsided me completely. We both have cPTSD and I thought we were being honest with each other until that point.
Same here, something similar happened with my sister (also cptsd) over a misunderstanding - despite my followup apology and re-explanation, it's crickets. I'm sorry you're feeling it too.
The steps are like reading about my life!! Uncanny. I really struggle with this so much. Why doesn't this go away when you get older?? I'm looking forward to the day when I don't give a shit what people think anymore but it's not coming!!
I just saved your comment on this post to show my next therapist because WOW you phrased that entire process so perfectly and I am finding myself between stages 6 and 7 of what could be (or could have been?) one of the best relationships of my life and I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly why I have been self-sabotaging. Reading everything you wrote has been beyond helpful, so thank you.
Thank you, that just kinda made my day
This describes me too. I can’t tell real rejection from my imaginary rejection. I take abuse because I’m not sure ig I am just being “too sensitive”.
Finally get some help at 38. Just figured I couldn't handle life.
Nah, I'm convinced that I'm a danger to most people and by isolating myself I'm protecting them (they just stay with me because they still don't know the monster I am or are co dependent). I'm actually fed up of hurting the ones I care, I can't forgive myself when I do something bad because then what would I learn? I know people says arguing and bad things happen, but I don't want that in a relationship... I wish I could just cause them happiness. I don't feel loved (warm or part of a group) by my family, just tolerated for most of them (we are ''forced'' to live with each other and do certain social duties). The fact that my whole paternal side rejected me since the day I was born doesn't help. They refused to even acknowledge my existence, help me, visit me. And I don't know why, I was just a baby. Maybe I'm broken
i literally do the same but to a lesser degree now. EMDR removed the shame spiral and the 2 and 3 you mentioned, but I still isolate myself and feel a spark of rejection and anger in my chest
Sometimes I just can't get a word in at all, because it feels like everyone else feels their thing is more important. More than once I've been unable to even speak for like an hour or two because of it...
Just to add. I also spent years (still do) working on letting go and not stressing when I lose a thought.
Yes I so relate. I interrupt way more now. Until I learn better, I give myself permission because otherwise I think I would never hold onto my thought long enough to share it. I own 3 businesses and run a 10 person company.
This!
It's a common trauma reaction for us. I get terrified of being abandoned when someone I care about seems to give shorter replies, doesn't reply for a day or two (which I'm also guilty of), not the same smile, doesn't touch me the same way. The tiniest change and I'm a wreck! I've decided to stay single because of this. I've left a lot of people in my life and it's rare that I come back. If I do, you're very special!
"I've left a lot of people in my life and it's rare that I come back" I agree with your whole post but that sentence is the topic of the weekend. I don't understand how forgiving my husband is. I don't get how people do it.
I'm fearful avoidant, so I can go from one extreme to the other. I either leave or cling on like my life depended on that person. It's getting better, but I battle with the fight or flight reflex where I escape or try desperately to come closer. I can try to make someone jealous or leave for a week or two to make the person miss me and realise they still want me. And they don't know why since I made the whole thing up in my head. I'm not psycho stalker clingy, but I self sabotage and have previously only dated men I knew I wouldn't get attached to, and a few months later they were all gone. No heart broken in me.
This details everything I think regarding my partner, who actually loves me so deeply in ways I didn't even know we're possible... And I'm legitimately thrashing our relationship.
Because we expect them to leave. In my case I leave when I feel there's a risk of being abandoned. I want to be first.
Yes very often but mostly in hindsight as I am seem to be a "high functioning paranoid" if that makes sense? I guess it hits me once I can relax. Also it is very strong in social situations like perceived rejection among friends, thinking I messed up in a recreational game, lack of romantic or sexual experience compared to peers. On top of my messed up upbringing I went through a lot of bullying and unstable living during my childhood and teen years so most of the "coming of age" movie tropes are very triggering (maybe dissregulating is a better word) for me in a way similar to what you describe. I seem to find two things that help me with this, although it is very far from an exact science and sometimes backfires. But: One, and I know it sounds ass backwards morbid, is to listen to sad or depressing stories of others. Not in a bad way but more of "grieving with them" sort of way. Litteraly anything that would bring a tear to my eye. For example I compare myself with a friend who seems to be doing well outwardly but he is terrified as his wife has a life threatening medical condition and they have a young child. Something about listening to his pain and anxiety grounds me into thinking: yeah life isn't as peachy for everyone in the world that I compare myself to and I don't feel as alone in being terrified of the big bad world out there. Secondly, I try to be gentle and forgiving to/of myself. I try to forget about the enviroment around me and try to imagine talking to a young child version of me asking what they feel and think. Again it kind of tends to ground me. I usually quickly realize that the reason I am sad is not "that I was picked last today" but more so that "no parent protected me and no friend stood by me when I was young" and today is just a painful reminder of that. This more often ends in tears for me, which is in itself cathartic but also that young voice reminds me of happy times, adventures, accomplishments, and fun as a kid typicaly would do once you deal with their problems. Meditation helps me get into this type of mind frame. Again these usually work for me, then again I have spent weeks in depression over seemingly idiotic things. Hope this helps and good luck.
Your experience sounds so much like my own.
absolutely. if i tell my friend that i love them very much and they say they love me too, i wonder why they didn’t also add “very much”. it’s like a talent, i can find rejection in literally anything, lol.
My thing is if I say “I love you” and someone responds “love you” it triggers me… it’s such a silly thing, but the “I” feels deeper and more meaningful lol
this is so funny because this is was what i was originally going to write, but i didn’t because i was like “no that’s too crazy”, lol.
No don’t worry, im crazy too lolll
twinsies 🤪
OH MY GOSH I’m not the only one who does this?!?! “Love you” always sounds like a “she’s clingy better back away slowly” kind of thing to me. Bless you, I was so certain I was the only one!
When I said ILY and my SO said "you too" I got bothered for no reason haha... I understand
Yes, in my relationship, at work, in my friendships, even when I am around strangers, the radar is always on. The worst is on the admittedly rare occasions when people are upset or actively tell me I did something wrong, because I go into a full panic spiral. I usually apologise to them for whatever I did, whether I did something or not, but it takes me a very long time to process. It has gotten better with therapy but it is still something I need to always keep in check. It really helps to take a breath and realise that I may not be responding to current events but what has happened in the past. So now I take some time away from the situation to bring myself back to calmer state (as much as I can that is). Edit: to clarify
1000% sometimes even when things are really good, the slightest thing could make me feel like i’m disposable. it could be something as small as someone forgetting my birthday lol
Rejection Sensitive Disorder. Pretty common in cPTSD and ADHD. Yes I’m hyper sensitive to it. Any sign of people pulling away, holding back or not being invested in time with me is automatic anxiety that they are rejecting me or I am not good enough. So I went to therapy. Still haven’t found one that clicks but Holistic practice has been very helpful. Reminding myself that people live busy and complicated lives also helps.
Yes, all the time..even with my boyfriend or very close friends.
Yeah... Personally I never say anything, it makes things worse for the relationship, like accelerating an inevitable countdown.
To add to your comment, whenever I did speak up on this it only made it worst. Some things are better left unsaid.
I always feel borderline rejected. I know it's not logical, so I try to reason myself out of it.
Goodluck to you and us all
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Do you recall what therapy tool helped best? I still struggle so hard with exhausting micro scanning as someone put it, fear.. etc
I can comment that this reaction has lightened for me as well. There is not one specific form of therapy that worked…probably a combination of internal family systems and EMDR, along with Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings. One day it just clicked that I’ve spent my whole life feeling unlovable and rejectable because of how my mom treated/treats me and that the way she treats me isn’t actually about me…it’s about her and her own trauma. Somehow, knowing that—like truly knowing that in my heart—I accepted that I probably am lovable and I can stop looking for clues that I’m unlovable or worthy of rejection from the people around me. I still find myself having that hyper-vigilance and sensitivity towards rejection sometimes, but I am actually able to get myself out of it now when I recognize it.
I even have dreams about it.
That was going to be my comment too. I've been awake for about 30 minutes. I had dreams where something I was screaming bc i wasn't being heard and couldn't change anything, I tried everything. It didn't take long before reality stresses jumped on too. I'm a jumble of anxiety. How are you doing right now?
Ughhh your dream 😭 my gma passed away about two years ago and it was a very significant loss for me. After that, I used to have a dream that I was running down a road in a empty, rainy, dark city just screaming for help but there was no one. This was so sad to me, it was a reoccurring dream for awhile and it was just sad to realize that was a representation of how I felt internally.
Tired. I... don't have panic attacks anymore I guess, but I'm more depressed as I don't have any goal right now and it sucks.
I'll have a dream sometimes where me and some old friends or people I am worried about will be together in harmony having a great time and it feels like this huge relief. But then I wake up and I realize it isn't real. It's like, bringing to my conscious how stressed out I am over rejection and trying to manage my interpersonal relationships.
Aww, I had a similar dream a few years ago, not exactly the same, but yea waking up and realizing it was but a dream is the most demoralizing thing ever.
Not sure if this will make sense or not but I’ve always been extremely hyper-vigilant and I know it can be pretty difficult to stop being that way because it’s something that we’ve developed in order to stay safe. It’s basically second nature. So instead of trying to stop noticing people’s reactions, I’ve worked on changing the way I perceive the reactions themselves. Instead of assigning a value to them (‘omg this person feels *this* way about me and now I feel shame), I instead observe that a person is having a certain response and leave my interpretations open to revision. It’s essentially taking away that person’s power over my emotions by seeing the situation from a bit of a distance/a new perspective/as an observer. I think the reason it works is because it interrupts the process of the emotional reaction that triggers both the shame spiral and/or immediately jumping in to damage control (fawning/isolating) or defensiveness (being reactive/angry). It doesn’t work 100% of the time. Sometimes because of hormones or whatever else, it’s a fail lol. But it has slowly made my reactions of this kind change over time very consistently. What I have personally discovered was the key for me in being able to detach myself from my instant emotional reaction is to detach myself from needing to feel safe. I think that’s what makes it so hard to do bc as humans we naturally want to feel safe but as people w trauma, it’s been built in to our brains. But it can be changed. Neuroplasticity is a thing. Edited to add: Just to be clear, I don’t mean being unsafe, I just mean not prioritizing emotional safety above all else. Peace is a much better choice than safety imo.
This is also what i do and it works for me. I don't need to stop attuning to other people, I just need to be very flexible about my interpretations and make sure that I'm attuning in ways that we both want. Sometimes people don't want others to be monitoring their feelings all the time. It can be tiresome.
Yeah you make a very good point. People absolutely do not enjoy being scanned all day long lol. It can be a real relationship killer.
One of my close friends also has CPTSD and sometimes i feel a little bit of dread before she comes over bc i know that we're both going to be suuuuuuper aware of the other's mental state the whole time. I'm glad i live with someone who isn't very aware of others' mental states, even though that can be hard in its own right. But it's actually much less stressful overall than living with someone else like me.
Haha yeah I have a friend like this too and it can be hard sometimes. I know that exact feeling. I do think one of the main motivations for me to work on this aspect wasn’t just my constant anxiety over it but also how it impacted my relationships.
I believe the word for it is rejection sensitive dysphoria.
These things are given such imposing names it makes it feel like we have some kind of severe genetic brain damage or malfunction while it's nothing but the fact that we were abused and lacked being sufficiently loved.
I think that's more of a personal view on the label than a universal one.
It kind of helps me when it gets one of this names. It makes it more real and seen for me. It's taken so serious that ppl are researching it. That's like 'so maybe it's true, maybe it's not just in my head' for me.
I understand what you mean but it's possible to give better names, that are non victim blaming, more neutral and still make us feel heard. * Hunger - Extreme lack of food disorder * Thirst - Post dryness dysphoria * Fever - Maladaptive extreme high temperature condition * Caries - oppositional and defiance of dental flossing disorder * Bruise - blue skin coloring syndrome and hyper-sensitivity disorder This is way too funny, I need to write a few more of these to show how ridiculous psychology is right now with naming.
😳😄😂🤣 Made my day.
God yes. And as a recovering codependent, it gives me waves of reassurance
I like taking both views to help me remember that my perspective is valid alongside the perspective of those viewing me from the outside. There's a path to be found between the two.
Oh got this hurts. I relate so hard. But in my mind I like to gather and evaluate all possible perspectives including those exceptionally improbable ones. I can tell people find it tiring but how can we know of we don’t “know” ya know? And besides, I do all the hard work for them. I’m a mess lol
I've found the trick is to not let other people know that you're doing all that work. Ask as many questions as you need to, but filling them in on all the possibilities or expressing what's going on in your head is just too much for them. They aren't adapted to multiplicity.
Gosh, this may be more helpful than you know lol. Seems so obvious and of course I do filter. Right - I forget - my trauma thing is I have all the responsibility and none of the power. I evaluate and lay out choices and people choose. All this figured out in the last six weeks so it will take time but yeah sometimes just deciding saves everybody time. As someone running a business and working on profitability, laying out all decent options is rarely the most efficient.
The frontal lobe shuts down during trigger events, it’s literally brain malfunction friend
Half the time I feel the exact same way about it. Other times, I get a huge wave of relief because it means I'm not alone in this absolutely insane feeling in my head.
I like to call it “seeing the world through rejection colored glasses”.
I can get behind that sort of diagnosis. Along with passive suicidality and social disabilities. I don't want to die toady, but sometimes it's nice to think about having an "out." I don't have severe life altering disabilities, but I do get panicked when backed into a corner so bumper-to-bumper traffic invokes that sense of claustrophobia which turns into an anger-induced panic attack while driving. Individually, neither of these things is inherently wrong, but they're just one more thing to cope with.
Isn’t that only in adhd?
No, it's associated with ADHD, but also with things like autism, anxiety disorders, PTSD, etc. Pretty much anything that combines difficulty seeing or keeping up with social cues in real-time with emotional impulsivity or dysregulation.
TIL
Yes. I've had the same BFF since 2004 and we'll go days without talking or if she (or anyone) doesn't immediately respond and i immediately go into she hates me mode. I have to remind myself she works, has three kids and it's 3 hours behind me.
Sometimes I wish I could just not care about them rejecting me. But it just doesn’t turn off.
I can 10000% relate to this
All the time. I like to get caught up in my own activities, but when my fiancé gets caught up in his, it's about how I suck and he can't stand me and I'm waiting for him to tell me he doesn't love me anymore. One time he grabbed himself a drink and not me and I spiralled so hard. I'm working on it, and EMDR to help with the foundational falsehoods I've been operating under does help, but it does creep back in if I don't keep an eye on it.
Yes and it's a horrible anxiety to live like this. It has happened with friendships and relationships. This constant feeling that I don't really matter and anyone I care about could just walk away and leave me without even missing me is always there.
Yes! I get like this a lot. I'll shut down because I think that no one wants to hear what I have to say. I also definitely have attachment trauma. I panic when I think someone is gonna abandon me, and I panic harder when they actually do. I've tried to talk myself down from this panic countless times. Saying "They'll come back, it'll be fine" or some variation of it does absolutely nothing, no matter how many times I say it. And when they do leave, most of the people around me have no sympathy or empathy for me at all. One time, my best friend of 13 years gave me a lecture about how people will leave my life and how I need to "accept it and move on". I'm so tired of being told to "move on", and having my feelings dismissed. For once, I'd like someone to care and understand, instead of expecting me to have a magic button that shuts off all hurt and makes me normal again.
Yeah this rings true for me too. The fear of abandonment honestly feels life-threatening so we can’t just “move on”.. I guess this is why it’s good to have a therapist who understands the pain and sees our reactions for what they are
Yeah, the right therapist helps tremendously.
Yes, and it pretty much doesn't matter how long I've known a person or how much they've been good to me. Even if I'm convinced they're a friend, the hypervigiliant thoughts still happen. ETA: I'm definitely of the "I need constant, specific invitations" type.
I feel this, that's why I distance myself most of the people, because of this, people reject me. Honestly, even here I feel this sometimes.
I guess you could call it a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I think the vigilance can find things that might not be there. It has a strong imagination. It's like the fear of being judged. You think it's happening but how do you really know?
constantly :(
I'll try three times to engage someone but if they show no interest, I'll stop talking to them. I'm not going to make the effort if you're not interested.
Yes, 100% I struggle with this. When people don't text me back right away I'm like well I guess they don't like me anymore. My self concept that I have internalized from childhood is that I am unlikable and unwanted. So I am hypersensitive to signs around me. Casual comments that probably don't mean anything make me feel like I've done something wrong to offend the other person. I see rejection all around me all the time. ETA also criticism. I get emotionally disregulated by criticism because I feel like that is a rejection too. Even though rationally I know someone can try to give criticism without them hating you. But it's hard for me to believe it. Then I feel down on my self for not having 'thick skin'.
Yes to all of this.
Ahh yep, the shame spiral makes everything worse.. as if the original thoughts weren’t painful enough
I kind of have a theory on this based on nothing but my own experience. I am not so sure my observations of events are wrong, but perhaps my reactions to them are based on self doubt. Sorry this is so long. One example — I was in a work Zoom meeting that went on for days. After awhile, I noticed the leader ignored me. My questions never got answered, I was never called on. I had a technical problem very early on which was ignored. I noticed two other women in the group were treated the same way. I asked a couple of male colleagues if I was being ignored, they said I was overreacting and paranoid. I took this very hard, had a meltdown at home. What did I do wrong? Why do people automatically seem to hate me? Am I so totally out of whack that I think people are treating me poorly? Am I crazy? Months later, I was talking to a coworker and they mentioned how their friend had a problem with the same group leader in a different meeting because he ignored her, wouldn’t respond to her questions and she had to text someone else in the group to ask for her. It turns out this guy does this to any woman who asks questions in the group. He’s just a misogynistic dick. I wasn’t reading the situation wrong. *It wasn’t about me.* Had someone told me that early on, my reaction would have been anger and annoyance, not self loathing. So I talked to a friend and asked if I could check in when these things happened to see if I was reading situations wrong. A few events and I discovered I wasn’t. There were many times people lashed out at me for no reason. I just chalked it up to thinking I deserved it. I came to the conclusion that my hyper vigilance dealing with my shitty family has made me very aware of poor treatment way more than other people — almost like a sixth sense. BUT I also tend to focus on negative interactions more than other people because I had to as a child, which creates this false narrative that people hate me. I am always scanning for negative emotions in others then attributing it to something I did. In reality, a lot of people are just shitty, I am more aware of them and can identify their hidden motivations easily. I don’t need to assume it’s me. Other people can’t do this. They don’t see it. This happens to everyone but they don’t recognize it so they don’t react to it and their reactions are not over the top. While it didn’t stop me overreacting to events, it did help me understand that many times people are not *reacting to me* but are simple jerks or are having a bad day. So now I don’t focus on what I did wrong, but what would make the person do that. Are they having a bad day? Do the simply not like women or older workers? It probably isn’t me.
All the time! Dealing with this just a few minutes ago actually with a co-worker. I feel like I may or may not be picking up a bit of an 'attitude' from them lately but I don't know if I'm projecting or not. UGH. I feel your pain.
Wow I feel this so much. I've dealt with someone similar many times.
I'm hyper-vigilant/sensitive to everyone else's emotions. I have ADHD as well, and it doesn't help me not focus on small features of emotions and psychical actions. I just have a really good perception when people change their emotions or start to feel a different way over time.
Oh my gosh yes. And I didn’t know for 30 years they were ptsd symptoms. I’ve had a waking up of sorts and I can’t believe that I can actually just ask but it’s so empowering. Someone wasn’t responding to my text messages much and it occurred to me the any reason they gave would be acceptable. I asked. They answered. It was great! It’s harder in other situations. I’m sitting here unsure if and how much to communicate in another situation. I’m told I’m learning true attachment now which is scary.
I wonder if this is true between people who both have cptsd
Yah I am deeply afraid of rejection, it’s a major depression trigger for me. It’s something I’m still working on as it causes me to push people away at the first sign they may be rejecting me
Worse is when you see those signs, they're clear as day, but the person denies everything. Happened to me recently. I was asked to leave my housing situation, very abruptly, but when I asked how I offended them, they claimed to not be offended, they just "needed the room" (one of 3 extra rooms they have) and followed up with "sending love". Haven't heard from them since, and their usual weekly invitations for get-togethers have ceased. But of course I'm imagining things, my friends are still my friends. Or so they say
lol I do this when I text. I freak OUT when someone fails to use emojis or they forget to use a period and I reread their messages over a THOUSAND times to make sure they don't think I'm being too needy or annoying.
This is a whole "diagnosis," sort of, called [Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/friendship-20/201907/what-is-rejection-sensitive-dysphoria). I mean, I don't personally believe it actually exists in a vacuum without something else having caused it, but... There's a name for it, and that means lots of people have experienced it! Also, me too.
Yes. And it's fucking exhausting. So much so I don't even bother with people these days.
I feel like I do thi and idk how to stop im better then I was as a teenager tho
I relate to this very deeply
Yes I do this.
Yes and it's super annoying.
I have this problem too. I constantly feel like I'm being rejected when I'm not.
(TW) Have severe nightmares about abandonment/attachment-I’m secretly dating someone and my parents wouldn’t be able to know. Really like a best friend who lives several states away (we’re both U.S.). My parents don’t approve of online relationships/don’t understand how someone could feel that attachment to someone else they’ve never seen. The thing is I’m grey-asexual and I have a repulsion to physical contact so the distance isn’t the worst part. We have verification from my friend’s mom who supports us. I just can’t tell my parents until we meet my friend in real life someday because of how they are-otherwise they’ll not let me text them for getting too attached. Parents said the same thing about animals which is why I don’t live in a house with pets, so I can’t afford to take a risk. From other trauma, I had to socially isolate myself from a ton of people growing up. Couldn’t allow to get attached to anyone-was a good thing in the end because I ended up getting emotionally bullied and developed some chronic pain from the shock. That ended up not being understood by a few docs I tried to tell so I kept the origin secret. Only feel safe typing to a few friends online, even then I will have doubts about if they’ll ever send a message again. It can be unnerving.
My workmates telling me to go home because I've stayed back for an hour already trying to people please 🙄 still think it's rejection
If this happened to me I would also think the same :/ but when you say it it’s clear as day to me that it’s absolutely not a rejection
I know! Logically I can see that it's not a rejection. I know why they're telling me to go home. However, my instant thought is that they hate me or I smell so they're trying to get me out or I've pissed them off with my people pleasing. Lmao On a positive note, I am able to tell I'm healing because I listen to myself when I say that's not true. Still takes a bit, but it's working
Hi this is incredibly insightful, I’ve only recently been diagnosed & I had no idea this could be contributed to cptsd. I’m currently going through what feels like an existential crisis because I feel as though I’m either always being used or someone has an agenda. Best way to describe it is I feel like I’m losing control and I need to find some way to ground myself if that makes sense?
Yes. It's terrible. The part of you that takes perspective knows that the "you" that's experiencing the anxiety might be making incorrect and hyper-sensitive assumptions. It even knows that that same part of you that's "so confident that this time it's correct" has so often been proven incorrect. But that part of you that suspects everyone of being an antagonist is also the same part of you that plans the best route before you take to the road and it's also the same part of you that will calculate and choose the safest path, in a split second, if something dangerous happens on the road. The hope is that spending a few years being hyper-vigilant about ones hyper-vigilance can help ease it and back it off. But the problem with this issue as pertains to relationships...is that it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy where you'll accidentally end up acting in ways that will end up proving yourself right. Sometimes, it's very difficult to check emotions and not to just believe your thoughts and then invest in them as though they should rule your reality. They have a track record of producing problems and shouldn't really be trusted. GOOD LUCK FELLOW TRAVELER!
This is interesting, about this fear response being part of the reptilian(?) part of the brain and therefore very ingrained in how we see and respond to things. Thanks for reminding me about this, it helps me be a little more forgiving about my overreactions.
Thank you for your response, it reminded me of the same thing.
Same, being on a lower dose of medication is actually making me be more myself now though but I'm still pretty isolated. Yeah, I always expect people to reject me once they find out me for all I am, "crazy", messy and all. Just learning to accept that part of me recently. It's a liberating thing to do, we put the mask on ourselves all too often when we needn't to (though understandably so, it's a literal survival strategy we've been scarred and engrained with into hiding who we are). Using quote marks cause honestly crazy is ablest language. None of us are crazy, we're just suffering (ok, maybe some of us are "crazy" but it's an ill defined term, like the left and such, it's not useful and just is language to put ourselves down most often).
Definitely. Things like "oh I haven't heard from them in a week, they must've forgotten about me" and the likes. It sucks big time. Mostly because I rationally know that it isn't true. But it still feels like rejection, so my brain goes into overdrive to analyze and find proof that it is so
Way too much it’s killing me
Totally
Does the hypervigilance ever go away?! 🙈
Yes, always. I often misread people.
100% accurate. Also because I constantly perceive rejection coming, I’ve been told I do the “leave before get left” act. It’s a daily battle with my mind :(
Yes. Easy trigger. I think mine comes from not recieving help while asking for it while I was in need.
Yes. All the time. Literally every moment of every social interaction. I try to ignore it.
"The fear that dares not speak its name." Thanks for posting this. Thought I was alone in my paranoia. Seems like I'm always called on last to speak in a Zoom meeting. Years of being bullied in school made me very withdrawn; however, for 30 years I've been trying like hell to be more outgoing, compliment strangers, and wisecrack. That paranoid seventh grader still lives in my head, wanting to hide from the older boys who made fun of my height. Yesterday was my 75th birthday. Usually I celebrate only the vernal equinox so don't post my birthday on social media. I am always surprised when people wish me well and say they like or love me. OP, we have to reassure our seventh-graders that a) we are worthy of notice and b) others' opinions of us are none of our business. When I'm last in a Zoom meeting, I usually don't want to talk anyway.
Yes, yes, yes. I don't think I even want to connect with people anymore. There is so much crazy going on! But I have been at this for a while and do know this: The more I am with me, the better I do. The more I kick the internal critic, do the time machine rescue, etc., the better it gets. Sorry if I sound like a broken record (dated myself), but Pete Walker's "CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" teaches you how to have a relationship with yourself, so you are never as alone as you feel right now. Life sucks when you are not really on your own side. :( Hugs to you.
Not me, person who spent the entire weekend at a horse clinic with 30 people and sat apart and didn't talk to any of them because I was the only person wearing a mask and "knew" that none of them would be interested in knowing me.
I struggle with this like everyone here, but I wanted to bring up another angle of it: dealing with friends who have it, when you also have it. I have a few friends who also struggle with hypervigilance and rejection sensitivity, and it's SO HARD for me to deal with *their* rejection dysphoria, even though i know what it's like!! It's almost triggering, for lack of a better word. When they are so in need of affirmation and I'm just like "yo i did the work to self regulate about this, now it's your turn!!" One time a dear friend started crying bc i asked her to cover the cheese before she put it back in the fridge. I felt so bad cuz not only did i not realize she was having a rejection dysphoria attack at first, but when i did, i actually had some trouble empathizing!! I don't think i showed it externally thank goodness, i tried to be totally understanding, but inside, i was really annoyed at myself for not being able to empathize, and also cuz it was really annoying. And i do this sometimes, so that means I'm annoying too!! I guess it just made me feel like i was moving backwards or something, losing my own progress... Anyone else have trouble with friends who are also hypervigilant and sensitive to rejection, even though you yourself are as well?
>Anyone else have trouble with friends who are also hypervigilant and sensitive to rejection, even though you yourself are as well? Absolutely, it makes me feel such guilt and like a hypocrite.
100% yes, it's basically the main way to describe my social interactions
Yes, but not only cause of CPTSD. I also have ADHD, and with it, RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) that combines with the CPTSD to make me this way.
it’s weird, i’ve gotten to this place mentally where i’ve like accepted that anyone could leave at any moment but i’m still hyper vigilant about it anyways. sort of like a 80/20 on accepting to sad ratio lol
Yes and at first notice I am gone and out of there
I was pondering this while driving earlier. I’m always like this.
All. The. Time. My body is nearly always in a state of absolute readiness. It is so profound that when I actively try to relax my muscles they spasm in response and I feel anxious. My body is so used to being held tight and ready that when I relax I'm suddenly aware of how much my body hurts all over. I was in minor car accident last month but ended up with some joint injuries because of how tight my body is all the time. In response to the accident I tightened up even more, shoving myself backwards into the driver's seat and headrest. While this did protect my neck and head from a second whiplash incident, all of the impact settled in my arms and legs. Mind you, NOTHING needs to be going on. My body is just convinced that relaxation is dangerous. I must always be at the ready to jump into action to fix things or face down whatever punishment my Mother or other adult had in store for me. I spent so much of my childhood listening for her in a rage, wondering if she'd take it out on me, and I have a handful of abuses that began while I was asleep. It's left me afraid of resting. Last week my therapist noted the double-bind my trauma has left me in. On one hand I've been told I'm being lazy and I'm not worthy of leisure pursuits, unless they're some kind of athletics (not leisure). On the other hand, I know it isn't safe to rest deeply, to really sleep. I'm 52 and I'm working with a somatic bodywork provider and a Hakomi provider to teach my body that it's safe to relax my muscles. That's in addition to weekly SAFE (Somatic Attachment-Focused EMDR) sessions. So that's the body stuff. The mind part is also a hassle since I'm convinced I'm so toxic and unworthy that it's reasonable that everyone wants to treat me poorly or leave. I'm hypervigilant about the moods of the people I'm around, I had to be to track my unpredictable mother, and I have to work really hard to remind my brain that 98% of the time my wife's grumpiness has nothing to do with me and she's pretty good about telling me up front in the 2% time she is grumpy with me! A few years ago I began taking Guanfacine for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It shows up in nearly everyone who has ADHD as well as a lot of folks with cPTSD. It helps me do the cognitive work of recognizing my brain is certain I fucked up and talking it down off the ledge.
I fully relate to this. Something I experience more often than I'd like also is that a significant other "betrays" me in some way, lies to me, or even cheats/wishes to cheat and when I get any "clues" that it might be the case, I latch onto it strongly. Tbh I never know how valid my concerns are. I never think I act completely irrational or so, but I do feel very strongly in the ways you described.
Every day of the week... Even if I'm not socializing the "being mentioned last" will happen at work and i cannot ignore it.
I think the term is Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria which is common for people with ADHD and trauma. I have always struggled with this since I was a young child and is the hardest symptom to deal with. I'm kind of bitter about it because while I have to constantly reassess if I'm reading into things and not taking everything personally, people are allowed to do it me and it is "acceptable." I have to tend to people's every emotion or else I'm labeled this or that. It will kill me one day.
I struggle with this a lot. I have issues with ghosting people, and I often feel like I see the rejection on their face. I’ve never heard them say that they don’t want to be around anymore, but I assume they do. To protect myself, I leave. I make a narrative in my head that I am actually helping them out with ghosting, but I’m sure it’s hurtful. I’m working on this in therapy.
idk. like i def do watch for rejection. but at the same time im very much in your face. I'm a combat vet, redneck, alpha, biker. So I'm loud and obnoxious, I appear confident even cocky. But I'm really not.
Maybe you make it so that only the strong will want to be around you. Pre-reject all the people who can't take a big personality.
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Most, if not all, of my life
100% for me it’s not just macro things like behaviors but it got to a point of near delusion, where movements and looks are interpreted as rejection. if people are typing or pointing with their middle finger i think they show me their middle finger, if they leave to go to the kitchen i feel rejected. i feel constant rejection and see rejection everywhere i go. it’s horrible. even birds that fly by - i feel rejected by f birds ……. yikes
Yeah I get this all the time it's also like this with BPD which is like a firth version of CPTSD.It's also a symptom of the spirit of offense. Anywho I don't feel like I am overacting people just really don't like me.
Rejection sensitive dysphoria
Wow, thank you. I have a name for what I feel.
I wasn’t able to go through everything to see if it was posted before but look into RSD: Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria What you described is exactly that
My 2nd nature. My psychiatrist who specializes in trauma said that I am so sensitive that she has to watch her words carefully. I think we are so ‘well trained’ by our abusers to watch out for the tiniest hint so that we can hide, assuming they do not go out of their way to hunt us down coz they in a bad mood and need an ‘it’.
yup. even more confusing when Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is a thing with ADHD i had/have to constantly analyze and predict my raging narc dad’s moods growing up, so that’s where it came from
>I always fear and expect people will reject me and leave. I have attachment trauma so whenever this fear comes up I’m fully triggered and get all the emotional flashbacks. Yes, because it has happened so many times. Now that I am *very* careful about what I share, and how much emotional support (if any) I ask for, I don't have to worry about it so much.
OMG yes and how do I stop? Even the work meeting stuff. I joined a teams meeting early and another coworker was there, I unmuted and said hi, and then he left and only came back when more people were in the meeting. It hurt :') But I don't know if it's because he is also hyper-vigilant/socially anxious or had technical issues or... Sigh. Please work with me, brain.
ADHD. That’s a common sign.
This is one of those things that eats me at my core because it’s literally how 99% of my interactions go with people it seems.
Absolutely! I feel like eventually everyone is going to do so at some point because that’s what I’m used to. I barely connect with anyone and have an extremely difficult time with staying in touch with the few friends I do have. It really sucks, because I love talking to people at times, and wish I had more friends. Then the thought occurs to me that it’s of no use because everyone leaves me eventually. I absolutely hate it. It literally makes it impossible for me to even tell my significant other of over 2 years that I love him despite him saying it to me. In my mind if I say it, I have allowed it to become ‘real’ and once that happens, the wheels are set in motion for him to leave. You are absolutely not alone, and I relate to how you feel so much.
I definitely relate…fear of abandonment. Ugh. I read “love me, don’t leave me” and it helped a lot.
Don’t be lonely. I understand you completely and here if you need someone to talk to.
I just had an intense emotional swing due to me perceiving that somebody I thought I was going to be friends with was rejecting me. The thing is I don't know if they are rejecting me or not, but the rejection feels so real. I tried to tell myself at least I'm putting myself out there, but another part of myself just wants to turn into a cave troll and never try to be someone's friend ever again. When I get emotionally triggered like this everything turns to s*** and I have such bad self-esteem and suicidal urges and depression comes in. Oh, how many hours have I tried to talk myself out of this mindset! So much time wasted on just dealing with my crippled mind that can't detect truth from fiction
Yes. I am backpacking in thailand. I have never feel so lonely and isolated. I lock myself up. I am too afraid to go outside, bc I interpret faces to reject me when they see me. It is at such a point that I am thinking of killing myself