This is discussed a lot in Bessel van der Kolk’s book. When your nervous system is constantly aroused to a fight or flight state, such as due to anxiety, trauma-based reactions to situations, the parts of your brain responsible for creativity, imagination, sense of self shut down as the parts of your brain responsible for self preservation drive the ship. This can become chronic and you end up just feeling numb.
CPTSD
A place to talk about CPTSD.
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No diagnosis checking is allowed, If someone says they have it, they have it. It's not your job to dig through someone's medical history. It's invalidating.
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None of the very basic isms and phobias. Includes but not limited to racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia.
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CW your post if it contains triggering topics. If you have to ask, just use a CW.
I figured, in my case it is, I subconsciously shut down happiness, actually all positive feelings, because I can't deal with the feelings that come with being positively vulnerable – sensory emotions of I am going to be exploited now
, etc
Thus I don't have real friends, really, because I just hang around with people I dislike, because I don't feel like I am going to be robbed by them, because I can't lose myself with them as I didn't REALLY gave myself into the relationship.
And I keep people at distance, afar from me so that they can't hurt me … wtf I hate this survival mechanism so much 🙊 🤦