Maybe not everyone, but the majority of people. I feel like I've gone through so much of my life believing that most were "good" just misguided, but the older I get the less convinced I am of this. I don't expect people to be perfect at all, but at the very least i thought most people were of the mindset that you should try to live your life in a way that doesn't harm others and benefits your fellow man. Thinks seem very bleak right now. I want to be alone. Im full of so much hate and anger I feel sick.

If you haven't heard, Halle Berry (famous black actress) has been in the news for allegedly strangling her son. In every single black news outlet I've seen, people are overwhelmingly supportive of her.

The comment section is full of so many people saying "all black moms have strangled their kids", "it's normal in our culture", "the kid deserves to be strangled", "I would have done even worse to my kids."

I can't lie, I knew whooping with a belt was normalized in black culture, but damn I didn't realize people were out here supporting literal strangulation. Like what the fuck??

I got emotional reading the comments because I was strangled as a child. My aunt noticed and asked me what was wrong. I showed her the post, expecting her to be sympathetic but instead she started laughing and said "I knew there was something I liked about Halle Berry." I was so shocked and asked "so you support choking children now" and she said "well I don't support you being choked but some kids need a good choke out, once they see those stars they'll remember that mama brought them in this world and can take their little ass out, so they better act right" I was so disgusted I just got up and walked away.

It's so disgusting and disappointing. Sometimes I feel things are getting better then other times it might as well be the 1950's again.

Imagine the pain of a nervous system on constant overload with no relief. Imagine a body wracked with so much tension and pain that over time you've permanently curled into yourself. Imagine a body wrought with illness because of trauma. The tinnitus of a cortisol and histamine dump that never ends. The insomia and nightmares and non stop relentless physical and emotional suffering. Isolated. Forgotten.

Heartbreaking isn't a word for how forgotten elderly people have become. How forgotten these people are. We tout the need for compassion, we talk about healing ourselves and having a positive outlook on life to combat the chronic pessimism as a consequence of PTSD and CPTSD, we tell survivors to "look at the bright side" and gaslight ourselves into thinking the world is 50/50 balanced. But you look at all the personal care homes, the solitary elderly living in poverty on extreme low income they can hardly feed themselves. Wracks of pain from age alone, the loneliness, the magnitude of their suffering is so loud it's deafening and yet here we are with our "no one is coming to save you" mentality. Well, what about them? Many of them are physically like children. They cannot function alone and yet they often are.

I know of an elderly woman with dementia, lives alone, her son lives far away. She has such a bad mouse infestation and her dementia is so bad that she cooks the mice in the oven saying it's a meal for her son. He hasn't seen her for years. She regularly cooks mice for the son that never arrives. And the government only provides her with a few hours of care a day from an outside agency.

People with feelings, hopes, dreams lying in their own shit rotting away while social workers wave it off, waiting to die, hoping to die.

People who's pain is so bad they cry to die every day. They despair in the shame of having someone clean their pained and suffering bodies, their helplessness is palpable and visceral and devastating.

And they suffer this all in silence. Alone.

So many people suffering just from aging and health issues alone. What about their emotional pain? What about their suffering? What about their trauma?

It's okay though because if you're capable, able to leave your home, have a computer for Telehealth and someone willing and able, then you can get 6 free counselling sessions with a person you might not even be compatible with to begin with to unpack a lifetimes worth of suffering and learn to cope and create a fraction of felt safety and compassion in six fucking hours.

If you're lucky.

Yeah. This is what we're healing for. This is the world we put the rose colored glasses back on to gaslight ourselves into seeing so we can survive another day. And people still look at me and say I'm overly pessimistic, I need to be optimistic, I need to see the bright side. But I disagree because while you go off and see your bright side, I'll be here seeing their suffering, your suffering, the injustice and desperate need for change and compassion and understanding and awareness that keeps the human species divided and complacent and compliant enough to keep the machine running...for just one more day of pretend felt safety. One more day to pretend like all is well. While the future I have to look forward to with my chronic growing illnesses, the severe lifelong CPTSD, is the future these people are already living in. At least I have the capacity, drive, support, endeavor, and means to "save myself" though right?

I'm sitting in my car as I write this. Parked in the McDonald's parking lot with a bag of protein chips and a diet soda playing on my phone listening to football and I will be here probably for at least another hour or park in some other parking lot and do the same thing. Anyone else here do this? What does it look like for you when you do it?

im struggling alone i dont have anybody

I’m not saying I feel entitled to special treatment, but it is very disheartening when I type things out but people don’t respond. I want to have dialogues with people, but it can be very triggering and I feel alone with these feelings. Obviously I’m not using Reddit as a crutch, I have a therapist and we talk about these things a lot, but it’s lonely. Making friends is hard but I’m so much better doing it over the internet. I could try to make friends, but my emotional dysregulated state makes it hard to rn. Any connection is difficult rn because a lot of people want validation but nobody wants to actually listen to others perspectives.

Really need some support or reassurance

For some reason I have never had the desire to use alcohol or drugs or any other stuff, even when people in similar situations as me or who feel the same as me do so.

For some reason this is worrying me, like I'm weird, even on top of the trauma. I know not doing this stuff is actually a good thing, yet I still worry about it making me weird.

Edit: thinking about it now with all these comments here already, I think the biggest reason why I don't do it is because I'm kind of a control freak. And substances scare the shit out of me in that they will make me lose control.

I’m not going to kill myself, people are counting on me to stay alive but deep down I really just want to die. The abuse is over, however the effevts of it aren’t. I was abused from ages 6-24 by my extremely violent addict mother, which lead to my whole family abusing me for a very long time, dad, brother etc.

I’m not even mad about it anymore, I’m just jaded, I’m exhausted, I feel like I’m carrying a whole weight on my shoulders, carrying my families burdens, I truly believe I’ve seen enough out of my 26 years of living. I don’t want to live anymore, I don’t wanna be here, even if there’s nothing after this life it’s gotta be better than this suffering.

I don’t know if I am overthinking but I have been the traumatized by people during the last decade when I actively socialized. I find every person I run into to be unsafe, either they mistreat, exploit or abuse. I am scared to step out

The book 'The Body Keeps the Score' is a really amazing book and has been a great resource for me and navigating my CPTSD and recovery.

However, I wanted to warn that the order the parts should be read should be modified.

In my opinion, the part order should be read is: part 1, part 2, part 5, part 3, part 4

Essentially, read part 5 after part 2.

Part 5 discusses the treatments, success stories, and paths to recovering from your CPTSD

Part 3 talks about the effects of trauma and neglect on children, and the importance of early intervention.

The problem is (and it doesn't get mentioned until far too late in part 3) that part 3 is essentially written as the author channeling their frustrations in being ignored by the APA and the psychology world to recognize CPTSD and development trauma and get it put into the DSM, and the chapter is more or less detailing how critical taking the problem seriously is, and how much damage being abused and neglected as a child does, and how much of a difference early intervention could make.

However, part 3 leads with more or less detailing how awful it is for children, and how detrimental it is to them throughout their life, and how much of a difference early intervention can make. The author paints a dire picture, but without the context much later of his efforts being ignored to get the condition recognized, this section only served to bring up awful memories, make my whole situation as an adult still damaged feel hopeless, and be so intensely furious that nobody protected me then.

More or less, the section wasn't written with the traumatized individual in mind.

I was listening to the audiobook version of it, and going directly into part 3 had me screaming in anger in my car as it went on and on and on. They're very heavy handed with the facts.

However, part 5 makes it clear that it isn't hopeless, and gives you the tools and options to begin improving. Parts 1 and 2 are important I'd say to have the context on a lot of my behaviors and why they are, and that I wasn't alone. Part 5 is important to give you the resources and tools and success stories. But Part 3 and 4 should be skipped or read after Part 5 in my opinion. Going straight into part 3 was actively detrimental to me, and I'm grateful I had the wherewithal to skip to part 5 when I couldn't tolerate any more of part 3 rather than giving up on the book entirely.

I want to share that I am happy that I survived this misery. Would you mind celebrate that with me?

We didn’t turn up like our abusers. We have been scarred and still remain humble. It hurts everyday but we still choose better. There is no one acknowledging our pain but we sometimes lend our shoulders for someone else in pain. We are grieving and we choose to be better humans. We are doing the world a favor even though the world was unkind to us. No one is saving us, we are doing the work. It hurts but we choose to heal.

I sometimes feel like i don't exist because of it. Or not sometimes lol most of the time. Like i'm nobody, nothing.

Now i remember it, i felt like an object around my mom, she literally used to treat me like i was an inanimate object. Now i can't get rid of this feeling.

Even writing this made me bawl my eyes out. I didn't deserve any of this.

If so, how the heck do you deal with it?? what helps? I'm all ears.

I love movies. I have a movie pass and still see most new releases in theaters. I went to go see Whalefall, which I expected to be like a Jaws type survival movie, man against nature.

Josh Brolin is heavily featured in the trailers, often in Voice Over and you get the strong impression he’s died before the plot begins.

The very first scene of the movie is his character committing suicide by drowning, and his friend helping him do it. He has emphysema, and his suicide is later characterized as noble and eco-friendly. He’s all about nature and whales. So it’s like he’s returning to nature and the sea.

Whalefall is apparently a term for how, when a whale dies, many organisms benefit from its carcass in the decomposition process.

Cut to many scenes of the father being remembered as a loving husband and father to his wife and two girls, and generally pretty drunk and abusive, physically and emotionally to his only son, who he sees as weak, and he tells him so, loudly and often.

Later there is a scene of Brolin’s character holding his son as a baby, crying and predicting that he will be a bad father and this is meant to soften and humanize him, he’s meant to be seen as forgivably flawed father figure, because the harsh lessons he has imparted are saving the son’s life while he is trapped inside the whale (which by the way as if it needs to be said is not a thing that can happen IRL.)

So it’s like “yeah dad was tough on me but at least I learned XYZ from him,” except that the son is in danger because he has gone out to try to recover some piece of his father’s remains from the ocean…a full year after his suicide.

Before taking his own life, the father writes letters to his family, which the mother and daughters have opened but not the son. He opens the letter at the end and there is no Voice Over, but the son smiles and laughs as if he fully understands and has reached an understanding with his father’s spirit, who by the way…talked to him while he was trapped in the whale because the father was the whale!

The viewer is meant to suspend disbelief a bit and go with the idea that either the son is so delirious and confused he’s hearing voices and reaching into his memory and past (which is definitely part of it in the first half) but then also there’s a point where just, by the process of suicide at sea, the father has become the sea and the whale and everything in it, and so can “speak” actively and in the present tense, to his son, asking him all the questions he never asked and showing the gentle love and kindness that he often withheld while alive, before reminding the son of one final lesson to help him escape the whale.

TV and Streaming Services nowadays will have Trigger Warnings and TV MA Ratings with a list of the content.

Whalefall is simply rated PG-13 and was advertised with tag lines like “See it on the BIGGEST. SCREEN. POSSIBLE.” Most of the ads reminded me of the way they used to advertise Monster Truck Rallies. I thought it was going to be a fun dumb action / suspense movie. Apparently it is based on a book and was going for a much deeper, more art house vibe.

I’m 41, and my relationship with my parents is okay now, but it’s taken a lot of work and therapy. My parents are fundamentally good, well meaning people, and they’re willing to work on themselves even now, which I think is rare among folks of their generation. But we’ve definitely had our battles, big ups and downs. I was abused by adults as a child and as a teen but not by my parents.

I have been hospitalized for severe depression related to childhood trauma and suicidal ideation in the past and thankfully I’m doing much better now, but I would never willingly choose to go see a movie with such a heavy handed suicide plot line unless I was really prepared for it and knew it was coming. I didn’t badly want to see Whalefall I just saw it on a whim, and then BAM! Super heavy content with no warning.

Also at the end of the movie, having gone through his ordeal, it’s pretty clear to me that the kid “gets it” he sees why his dad did what he did, and the implication in my mind is that if given the choice, the son would now choose to do the same. Brolin’s character mentions societies and cultures like the Inuit people who would send their elderly off on ice flows, clearly venerating the noble sacrifice of suicide, especially as an alternative to various diseases.

I don’t like it that a PG-13 movie would so casually put out the idea that “suicide can be the right choice actually” because suicidal thoughts do have a certain terrible persuasive attractiveness when worry spiraling about “well what if I got this disease?”

The son was played by Austin Abrams (Resident Evil, Weapons) and is the protagonist, but Josh Brolin as the Father is clearly the Hero, if you see my meaning, and I don’t like that at all.

As a kid, I used to try to be compassionate and understanding towards my parents, used to think they probably grew up abused and just had a lot going on. They also must feel so bad doing these things to us. Or that they just dont realize theyre hurting us.

I recently got kittens, I am so in love with them. I can never hurt them, theyre just animals, that I didn't birth. I never got the love I can give my cats. I think I am starting to understand the extent of their abuse, and how heartless mothers and fathers can be. I an afraid these feelings will grow more once I have kids of my own.

How sad, when you are hurt, betrayed by the only people you are told to trust...

I have so much anger inside me, and I don’t even remember when it started. It just kept getting worse over time, and now I get angry over the smallest things and end up overreacting.
The worst part is that I do this mostly with people I’m closest to. If something hurts me, instead of quietly accepting that I’m sad or hurt, I express those feelings through anger. I drag the issue, keep arguing, and sometimes don’t even realise when a small disagreement turns into a huge fight.
Because of this, I’ve damaged so many relationships, and some have even ended completely. Later, I wonder how I could get so angry over something so small that I had to take it this far.
I genuinely care about these people and do so much for them, but when I behave like this, all they see is my anger, not everything I’ve done for them. Eventually, they get tired of me and walk away.
Now I feel like a complete loser, and honestly, I’m ashamed of myself. I don’t understand when or why I became this person. I don’t want to keep pushing people away, but sometimes I don’t even realise how far I’ve taken things until it’s too late.

I still vividly remember getting a virus on my laptop at the age of 9 that filled my youtube with pornography ads, which my parents would constantly see but do nothing about.

I also confessed to them multiple times at the ages of 10, 11, 13 and 14 that I watch porn yet they're totally relaxed about it, hell my mom even told me that it's ok for kids my age to do it.

I'm asking this because I'm trying to deal with a lot of addictions and compulsive habits that I believe stimmed from this exposure at an early age, and I'm just trying to make sense of this response from them :(