Did you know that mirrors hide our deep, dark secrets?

I was driving through East Texas one sunny morning in January for my tiny home retreat. (A tiny home was my spontaneous idea to minimize distractions and focus on myself to kickstart my healing journey.) I stopped at a quaint little coffee shop. As I walked in, I saw a group of about eight townspeople singing folk and worship music amongst the beautiful sounds of harmonicas, guitars, and a harp. 

I started walking to the back of the coffee shop to order, and I looked over at a community table with three friends catching up with each other and casually said, “Do they always play music in here?! It’s so nice!” 

“Oh, you have PTSD, too?”

I got my drink, and soon simple small talk sparked introductions as they invited me to sit at their table. Almost immediately the conversation turned personal, and someone asked me, “Oh, you have PTSD, too?” I’m not really sure how it happened that way, but it did, and, these people almost immediately became some of my biggest cheerleaders. It turned out I was sitting with veterans who had survived the horrors of combat, and although my trauma looked different from their trauma, healing from PTSD was not foreign to them.  

It was interesting that this happened because—even before that morning—I had been desperately searching for people outside of the medical system to understand my C-PTSD as I didn’t see much progress through westernized care. I had already been thinking to myself: “If there’s any community that would understand PTSD, it would be the veteran community,” and had even downloaded some books to read up on their experiences. 

Making a New Friend

I quickly poured my heart out to one of the guys at the table, and we ended up spending most of the day together, and we talked about the deepest, craziest topics. It was so refreshing coming from the superficiality of a big city. I learned that he was a couple of years into his healing journey from some pretty intense PTSD, and I saw him as someone who had gotten to a place where I wanted to be. He had a light and calmness about him that I wanted for myself. I wanted to know everything he did to get to the healing place he now was because I had heard him talk about some of the gruesomely traumatic experiences that affected him for many years. 

I ended up extending my stay in the area, and we kept hanging out all week. He started pointing out everything that I was doing to myself that was hurting me and making my PTSD worse. This was not because he was an abusive friend but because I actually asked him to do this for me. And I dealt with and processed the emotions that came up when he pointed these things out to me. Looking back, I don’t think I would have made such a great amount of progress if I hadn’t asked him to do this for me. 

Calling Out My Tendencies to Check My Reflection

One of the things he noticed was that I was obsessed with looking at myself in the mirror. Not in the way where I was admiring myself because I actually thought I was atrocious. I was checking mirrors for every single flaw and blemish on my body. Whether it was staring at the pimples on my face in the mirror in my bathroom, checking my body in the window reflection of a shop or restaurant as I passed by, peeking up my head to check in the rearview mirror in my car at a stoplight, or opening up my camera on my iPhone and checking my face in selfie mode, I couldn’t escape it. I didn’t even realize how much I was doing it. It was even to the point where when I was working and on my Zoom calls, I was checking my little Zoom box for my face there, making sure that no one could see the blemishes that I could see. I critiqued every flaw on my face, each pimple that popped up, that my teeth had gotten pretty yellow because of all the tea I was drinking, that the scar that I had from when I scratched myself as a baby was, of course, still there, and people could obviously see on my face that I didn’t get but a couple of hours of sleep. 

“It’s just vanity,” he told me.

B.S., I thought. I was so angry to hear that. I’m not vain, I thought to myself.  

I looked up the definition of vanity and it said: vanity is inflated pride in oneself or one’s appearance. That made me even angrier. Was he calling me cocky? Was he saying that I think of myself too highly? If only he knew that I’m looking at myself because I hate myself and I’m trying to fix all my flaws. Maybe it was a bad idea to ask him to point out these kinds of things I’m doing. These are the kinds of emotions I had to process. 

My Love/Hate Relationship with Mirrors

Mirrors were always the absolute death of me. Growing up as a dancer, the mirror was my best friend and my worst enemy all at the same time. Mirrors were the way that I noticed my flaws and mistakes in dance and worked to fix them, and it became a habit throughout my life to check my personal appearance in mirrors as well. Over time, I began to have extreme body dysmorphia. Standing next to girls who were not as curvy or muscular as me, I always felt like the heavy one, and I really internalized the criticism I received from teachers who told me I didn’t have the body type to be a professional. I was used to my dancing being looked over because I didn’t fit the body type.  One of my most vivid memories was of being one of about 15 finalists at a dance audition in college where we had to stand in a horizontal line in front of the mirror while the coach slowly walked down the line inspecting our thighs, and I automatically knew that I would not make the team as I looked in the mirror at the thigh gaps on the other girls, knowing that my body type didn’t fit the bill. 

My new friend challenged me to stop looking at myself in the mirror, and he even said that I needed to cover the mirrors in my apartment somehow. He told me to get a bed sheet and drape it over each mirror or get some of that fake snow stuff and spray it all over each one. No way was I about to do that, I thought. He also told me to get a sticky note to put over my face on Zoom calls so that I don’t look at myself. I just laughed at him.

After about three weeks of thinking these ideas were ludicrous, I began to notice even more that he was right. I was obsessed with looking at myself in the mirror, doing that was only hurting me. So, I begrudgingly trekked to Walmart, got some of that fake snow stuff, and bought some pink sticky notes. I took one last look in my bathroom mirror and sprayed the snow all over it, watching my face disappear behind the white flurries.

I did not have an avenue in my home to look at my overall appearance

Thankfully, I stopped wearing makeup on a daily basis many years ago, so I didn’t have to worry about not having a mirror for that, but as of that moment, I did not have an avenue in my home to look at my overall appearance. There was no more checking myself for what I looked like before I left the house. There was no more making sure my jeans fit me just right and flattered me in all the right ways. There was no more looking at the pimples that I despised. Each time I jumped on a Zoom call, I had my sticky note ready to place over my face on my computer screen, and, rather than looking at myself, I looked at others and paid better attention to the conversations that were going on. 

After I did all of the above — and I finally stopped looking in mirrors so often and became more confident in my appearance and just accepted it for what it was — I finally admitted to myself that I was pretty vain. Though not in the sense that I thought of myself super highly, because I obviously hated the way I looked. It was in the sense that I thought the people around me noticed all the same flaws I was noticing in myself. My appearance was so important to them that where they absolutely noticed every flaw about me that I noticed. When, in reality, they didn’t. I was just another person in the crowd. 

Letting Go of the Constant Self-Loathing

In the past, when people commented on my beauty, I always felt there was an ulterior motive. When people told me that I had a nice body, I thought it was a jab at the fact that I obviously didn’t look like the other girls, and I was just a unique change. This is just where my mind went previously. But that was never the case. People were actually genuinely complimenting me. People actually saw the complete opposite of what I saw in myself. 

Even though overcoming my ingrained vanity was a tough process, I’m thankful my friend pointed it out to me. He helped me confront the fact that my insecurity was holding me back and taking away from the true beauty that everyone else saw in me. I was the only one that didn’t see it. 

If I hadn’t covered up my mirrors, I wouldn’t have realized that there is really nothing to be afraid of when I look at myself in the mirror. I wouldn’t have realized that all my “flaws” that I thought were flaws were never really flaws in the first place. 

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

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Natalie Rose

For the longest time, I thought I was inherently “messed up” and broken beyond repair. I spent about a decade running around in circles in the medical system trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me and how to “fix” it, managing all this while attending school and holding full-time jobs. I thought the way I felt in my body was “normal” because I had no sense of what the other side was. My complex trauma symptoms manifested as crippling anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive symptoms (in the form of religious and moral scrupulosity), extreme dissociative symptoms, insomnia, sleep paralysis, night terrors, and narcolepsy. My symptoms began at age 13 and continued into my mid-twenties. In general, I endured multiple types of traumas throughout my formative years, including numerous situations of both individual and large-group interpersonal cruelty, some of which caused me to have to switch environments. Due to what I was going through, my body couldn’t fathom what was happening, and my nervous system shut down. I felt guilty for simply existing. I saw danger everywhere, operated in a panicked survival mode, and lived in fear, anxiety, and isolation. I did my best to appear “normal” on the outside, keep a smile on my face, and control what was happening on the inside, distracting myself with extreme workaholism and doing nice things to serve others. I took active steps to keep branching out in confidence again, but these traumas kept piling onto each other and overlapping, so I couldn’t fathom what was going on. I wasn’t ready to give up yet, though, because I knew my family and friends would be distraught if I did. The most difficult and heartbreaking part of my story is that the two communities I set out to seek healing in—religion and the medical system—caused further trauma when some religious leaders, congregation members, and medical professionals chose to take advantage of my vulnerability for their own motives. In most of these situations, I didn’t even realize I was a victim until outsiders pointed it out for me and that my vulnerability made me a target of malicious people. Each future situation of being targeted was just salt on the wound of the original incident. As an extreme empath, I absorbed the negative emotions of others as if they were my own, and I did not know how to release them from my body. In my solo healing process, I had to quite literally disappear from everyone and everything to protect my vulnerability and allow myself to process what I had been through during my formative years using my own mind and body without the persuasion or invasion of others.

What I went through all those years was so severe, and my symptoms and physical body reactions as a result were so excruciating that I went as far as to see a neurologist, concerned that my symptoms were the result of some sort of nervous system disorder. However, he returned with no paperwork in his hands to inform me that there was nothing wrong with me but that I was simply completely traumatized, and my body reacted accordingly. I finally realized that my symptoms were not the result of an inherent mental or physical illness and began to take a trauma-based approach to my healing after many years of believing that I was “sick” for the rest of my life. My true progress began when I finally rejected the lies that were told to me that I would have to “manage my symptoms” for the rest of my life and made the decision to believe for myself that I was fully capable of healing from my excruciating pain, even if others did not believe in me. I still do have tough days and moments, but I have gotten to a place where I am consistently living a quality of life that provides peace and comfort in my mind and body since I have given myself the tools to overcome my tough moments when they return. 

Many C-PTSD survivors receive numerous diagnoses before ever hearing anything about complex trauma, and some are overmedicated to try and “fix” their symptoms, usually to no avail and with further side effects. I was told I would need to “manage my symptoms” and be on medication for the rest of my life. It was all lies. Today, I am on zero medications (including sleep medications) and am completely divorced from the disease management system. 

I am excited to share many tips for natural, somatic, and holistic healing that have helped me overcome my complex trauma symptoms, such as extreme dissociation, excruciatingly painful flashbacks, severe sleep challenges, anxiety, hypervigilance, worthlessness, and more. I began to pursue unique methods of healing after many years of not seeing much progress through westernized care, and this was the catalyst for fast-tracking my healing. I have so many exciting tips to share related to grounding, nervous system regulation, somatic healing, and more to offer survivors other ways they can learn to regulate their nervous systems on their own without spending any money. I aim to help survivors overcome their feelings of self-guilt, blame, and humiliation and help them realize that their bodies had normal reactions to abnormal situations. 

I am on a journey of rediscovering who I am at my core after letting so many other people infiltrate my mind for far too long. The five most important things to me in my life (in order of importance!) are: my health, my happiness, my family, my friends, and my creativity. My parents, my sisters, and my friends are my absolute rock and biggest cheerleaders. They were cheering me on all those years, fully believing that I was capable of overcoming my excruciating pain, even when I did not believe so myself. While I was repeatedly able to forgive others and extend the olive branch, I was never able to forgive myself. My loved ones kept telling me that there is nothing I need to feel humiliated about and that I should be able to see what everyone else sees in me. I have finally given that kindness to myself and have started to see what other people saw in me all along. 

I am so glad I didn’t give up when my pain felt unbearable. I know what I’ve survived. I know the work I’ve put in to overcome it. I know that I still chose to keep a smile on my face and be kind in the face of it all. In reality, it’s because I didn’t want another person to go through even one ounce of the suffering I was in. I am finally living a life of consistent peace and contentment, and I am sharing my story from the other side. My story is not a story of defeat but a story of victory.

I have enjoyed embracing the free spirit I always was and adopting a simpler life to focus on the things that are meaningful to me. I am still healing every day. I believe our healing is a lifelong process. I made the decision to escape my version of the rat race (big city life) and move to my happy place. I am catching up on many hours of much-needed rest and spending lots of time outdoors. I am reconnecting with the people I lost while I was in isolation. I invited the passion that saved my life growing up—dance—back into my life. I am passionate about fighting for other survivors in any way I can.

I hope that by sharing my story, I can convince other survivors that there was never anything wrong with them to begin with and that they are capable of living healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did not become a voice for the voiceless and share how I overcame it. I aim to live my life in love of both others and myself, understanding that everyone has a story of their own. I am grateful to the CPTSD Foundation for giving me an opportunity to share my story. 

“My story isn’t sweet and harmonious like invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment. Of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” ~ Hermann Hesse