If a certain family relationship repeatedly leaves you anxious, ashamed, confused, or emotionally depleted, you do not have to prove that the other person is “toxic” before you are allowed to protect yourself.

The more useful question is often simpler:

What happens to me in this relationship, and what do I need in order to feel safe enough and well enough to continue it?

Sometimes the answer is a clearer boundary. Sometimes it is less contact. Sometimes it is changing what you share, avoiding certain subjects, or spending time together only under specific conditions. In some situations, no contact may be the safest option.

There is no universal rule for family relationships.

What matters is whether the relationship, as it actually exists—not as you wish it could be—allows enough respect, emotional safety, and choice for you to participate without repeatedly abandoning yourself.

For adults who grew up in emotionally difficult families, reaching this conclusion can be surprisingly complicated. You may know that something hurts, yet still question whether you are being unfair. You may recognize a pattern, but immediately think of all the reasons you should tolerate it.

That conflict does not mean you are confused, or incapable of making decisions.

It may mean you learned, very early, that keeping a relationship intact sometimes required ignoring your own experience.

Why Family Relationships Can Be So Difficult to Evaluate

It is easier to recognize an unhealthy relationship when you have emotional distance from it.

Family relationships rarely offer that distance.

Your family may be connected to your earliest memories, your sense of belonging, your identity, and your understanding of what love is supposed to look like. Even when a relationship is painful, there may also be genuine affection, loyalty, shared history, financial ties, cultural expectations, or memories of good times.

Two things can be true at the same time:

You can love someone and still be hurt by your relationship with them.

You can also understand why someone behaves the way they do without deciding that their behavior is acceptable.

This distinction is important because healing does not require you to turn a family member into a villain.

You do not need to decide that someone is narcissistic, abusive, disordered, or fundamentally bad before you are allowed to notice that contact with them is harmful to you.

Behavior matters.

Patterns matter.

Your experience matters.

And the impact of a relationship matters even when you cannot establish exactly why the other person behaves as they do.

Trauma-informed approaches to boundaries recognize that people who have experienced trauma may have particular difficulty identifying and expressing their needs. When survival once depended on anticipating other people’s reactions, saying what you want can feel risky rather, than ordinary.

That can make family decisions especially difficult.

The Nervous System Can Complicate the Picture

When you have spent years in an unpredictable or emotionally unsafe environment, your nervous system may become highly attentive to changes in other people.

A tone of voice.

A pause before someone answers.

A particular facial expression.

A text message that ends differently than usual.

A question that sounds innocent but has historically been followed by criticism.

Your body may notice these things before your conscious mind has put them together.

This does not mean every uncomfortable feeling proves that another person is dangerous. Our nervous systems can respond to reminders of earlier experiences, and trauma recovery often involves learning to distinguish present circumstances from old patterns.

But the opposite mistake can also happen.

You may become so accustomed to overriding your own signals that you dismiss every uncomfortable response as “just my trauma.”

Neither extreme is particularly helpful.

Instead, curiosity can be more useful than certainty.

You might ask:

• What happened immediately before I felt this way?
• Is this reaction connected to something that has happened repeatedly?
• Does this person respond differently when I express a reasonable need?
• Can I say no without being punished, mocked, threatened, or manipulated?
• Do I feel more like myself around this person, or less like myself?
• What happens after I set a boundary?
• Is there room for repair when something goes wrong?

These questions move you away from labels and toward observable information.

And observable information can help you make decisions.

Look at the Pattern, Not Just the Apology

One difficult family interaction does not necessarily define an entire relationship.

People lose their patience. They misunderstand one another. They say things they regret. Healthy relationships include conflict.

The more revealing question is often what happens after something goes wrong.

Is there accountability?

Can the person hear that you were hurt without immediately turning the conversation toward how hurt they are?

Can they acknowledge your perspective even if they remember the event differently?

Do they make meaningful changes?

Or does the same pattern happen again and again?

A relationship can become difficult when repair is consistently replaced by denial, blame, ridicule, minimization, retaliation, or pressure to “move on.”

This is one reason boundaries are more than rules about what other people are allowed to do.

A boundary also gives you information.

You might say:

“I don’t want to discuss my relationship with you.”

The other person’s response tells you something.

They may respect it.

They may ask a question and then accept your answer.

Or they may become angry, mock you, demand an explanation, involve other relatives, or continue pushing until you give in.

The boundary itself did not create the problem.

It revealed how the relationship responds when your autonomy becomes visible.

A Boundary Is Not a Way to Control Someone

This distinction can be especially important for people recovering from emotionally difficult family systems.

A boundary is not:

“You are not allowed to criticize me.”

You cannot control whether another person criticizes you.

A boundary is closer to:

“If the conversation becomes insulting, I will end the conversation.”

The first statement attempts to control another person’s behavior.

The second describes your own choice.

This can sound simple, but it is often emotionally difficult.

If you learned that other people’s disappointment was your responsibility, making a boundary may trigger guilt. You may feel selfish for leaving a conversation, uncomfortable for not answering immediately, or cruel for declining an invitation.

The presence of guilt does not necessarily mean you are doing something wrong.

Sometimes guilt is simply the emotional cost of doing something unfamiliar.

CPTSD Foundation’s trauma-informed writing similarly emphasizes that healthy boundaries can be difficult for trauma survivors precisely because earlier survival may have involved putting other people’s needs first.

This is why boundary work is often less about becoming tougher and more about becoming more willing to remain connected to your own experience.

You Do Not Have to Choose Between “Everything” and “Nothing”

Family discussions can sometimes become overly binary:

Stay or leave.

Forgive or cut them off.

Be loving or be selfish.

Have contact or have no contact.

Real life is usually more complicated.

There can be many forms of distance.

You might continue seeing someone but stop discussing vulnerable subjects.

You might communicate by text rather than phone.

You might attend family gatherings but arrange your own transportation so you can leave when you want.

You might reduce the frequency of contact.

You might stop responding immediately.

You might choose not to discuss certain aspects of your personal life.

You might meet in public rather than in a private home.

You might take a temporary break while you think.

And sometimes, after careful consideration, you may decide that no contact is necessary.

None of these choices automatically represents healing or failure.

The question is whether the level of contact supports your wellbeing and reflects your actual circumstances.

There is no prize for maintaining the maximum amount of contact with a person who repeatedly disregards your boundaries.

There is also no requirement to end a relationship simply because someone on the internet says you should.

Your job is not to follow the most dramatic solution. Your job is to find the safest and most sustainable one available to you.

What If You Still Love Them?

This is where many people become stuck.

They assume that if they truly need distance, they should stop loving the person.

Human emotions rarely work that neatly.

You can miss someone you cannot safely be close to.

You can remember someone’s kindness and still recognize their harmful behavior.

You can feel grief about what happened and still choose not to recreate it.

You can wish your parent had been different without spending the rest of your life trying to convince them to become the parent you needed.

And you can maintain compassion without offering unlimited access to yourself.

Compassion and proximity are not the same thing.

Understanding someone is not the same as trusting them.

Forgiving someone is not the same as reconciling with them.

Loving someone is not the same as being available to them.

These distinctions can create more room for honest decisions.

Pay Attention to What Happens Inside You

When evaluating a difficult family relationship, it can help to look beyond the question, “Is this person bad?”

Try asking what the relationship repeatedly does to your internal world.

Before contact, do you feel dread?

During contact, do you become unusually quiet, vigilant, defensive, or disconnected from yourself?

Afterward, do you need hours or days to recover?

Do you repeatedly replay conversations and wonder whether you said something wrong?

Do you feel responsible for regulating the other person’s emotions?

Do you find yourself hiding ordinary parts of your life because sharing them feels unsafe?

Do you become smaller around them?

These experiences are not automatically proof of abuse or trauma. They are information.

And information deserves attention.

One recent CPTSD Foundation article describes safety as something that becomes meaningful through repeated evidence: a person respecting a boundary, responding steadily to disagreement, or allowing you to leave without punishment.

That idea can be useful here.

Instead of asking only, “Does my family member love me?”

You might also ask:

What evidence do I have that this relationship is emotionally safe enough for me?

What Does Emotional Safety Actually Look Like?

Emotional safety does not mean that nobody ever disagrees with you.

It does not mean every interaction feels comfortable.

And it does not mean the other person always understands you.

A reasonably safe relationship can include conflict, disappointment, and different opinions.

What makes the difference is how those experiences are handled.

There may be room to say:

“I disagree.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“That hurt me.”

“I need some time.”

“I see it differently.”

“No.”

In a healthy enough relationship, these statements do not automatically threaten the relationship.

The other person may dislike your decision. They may feel disappointed. They may need time to process.

But your autonomy remains intact.

This is an important distinction for people who grew up believing that another person’s emotional reaction meant they had done something wrong.

Someone can be disappointed with your boundary without your boundary being wrong.

Someone can be angry with you without you being responsible for fixing their anger.

Someone can disagree with your experience without gaining authority over it.

When You Start Doubting Yourself

Self-doubt is common when you are making a decision that conflicts with longstanding family expectations.

You may hear an internal voice saying:

“Maybe I’m exaggerating.”

“Other people have it worse.”

“They did the best they could.”

“They’re family.”

“I’ll regret this.”

“Maybe I should just tolerate it.”

Some of these thoughts may contain truth.

Your family member may indeed have had a difficult childhood.

They may have done the best they knew how.

You may indeed have experienced good moments together.

None of those facts automatically answers the question of what you need now.

Context can explain behavior without requiring you to accept its impact indefinitely.

You can hold compassion for someone’s limitations while acknowledging your own.

That is not cruelty.

It is differentiation.

Try Making the Decision Smaller

Sometimes the pressure to make one permanent decision creates even more anxiety.

You may not need to decide today whether you will have this relationship for the rest of your life.

You may only need to decide what is appropriate right now.

For example:

“I’m not discussing this subject today.”

“I will answer when I have the capacity.”

“I am going to leave if the conversation becomes insulting.”

“I need some distance while I figure out what I want.”

“I am comfortable seeing them for an hour, but not staying overnight.”

These are smaller decisions.

Smaller decisions can give you something important: evidence.

You can observe what happens when you stop automatically accommodating everyone else.

You can notice how your body feels.

You can see whether the other person respects your limits.

You can learn what amount of contact is sustainable.

You can adjust.

Healing does not require getting every decision right the first time.

If You Choose More Distance, Grief May Follow

People sometimes expect relief to be the only emotion that follows a boundary or a reduction in contact.

It may not be.

You might feel relieved and devastated.

Strong and guilty.

Certain and sad.

Angry and loving.

Free and lonely.

These contradictions do not mean your decision was wrong.

They mean the relationship mattered.

Even when a relationship was harmful, you may still be grieving the childhood you wanted, the parent you needed, the sibling relationship you hoped for, or the version of the family you imagined you would eventually have.

Grief is not necessarily an argument for returning.

Sometimes grief is simply part of accepting reality.

A More Useful Question Than “What Should I Do?”

When family relationships are complicated, there is often an intense desire for someone to provide the correct answer.

Should I stay?

Should I leave?

Should I forgive?

Should I confront them?

Should I go no contact?

But a trauma-informed approach can make room for a different question:

What choice allows me to remain most connected to myself while taking the reality of this relationship seriously?

That question puts your agency back where it belongs.

You may need outside support to answer it.

A therapist can help you distinguish present-day circumstances from trauma responses, examine patterns, and think through consequences. Trusted friends, support groups, or other people who understand complex family dynamics can also provide perspective.

You do not have to make these decisions in isolation.

And you do not have to make them while someone else is pressuring you toward a particular outcome.

Your Relationship With Yourself Matters Too

There is another relationship involved in every family decision: the relationship you have with yourself.

If you repeatedly ignore your own discomfort to preserve peace, what message does that send internally?

If you continually explain away behavior that hurts you, what happens to your trust in your own perception?

If every boundary is followed by self-punishment, how easy will it be to maintain that boundary?

Healing often involves rebuilding trust with yourself in small ways.

Notice what you feel.

Take your discomfort seriously without automatically treating it as proof.

Check the facts.

Look for patterns.

Give yourself time.

Ask for help when you need it.

And then make the best decision you can with the information available to you.

You are allowed to change your mind as circumstances change.

You are allowed to discover that more contact is possible.

You are allowed to discover that less contact is necessary.

You are allowed to want reconciliation while requiring accountability.

You are allowed to love someone and still protect yourself from them.

Most importantly, you do not have to earn the right to have boundaries by proving that your pain is severe enough.

A Steadier Way Forward

Difficult family relationships rarely resolve through one perfect conversation or one perfectly worded boundary.

Sometimes healing is much quieter.

It is noticing that you no longer explain yourself for twenty minutes when “no” would have been enough.

It is recognizing the difference between someone’s disappointment and your responsibility.

It is realizing that an apology without changed behavior does not necessarily create safety.

It is allowing yourself to leave a conversation before you are completely overwhelmed.

It is noticing that you can tolerate someone being unhappy with you without immediately abandoning yourself.

And sometimes it is accepting that a relationship may need more distance than you once hoped.

None of this requires hatred.

None of it requires certainty.

It requires attention.

You do not have to decide whether someone is good or bad before deciding what is healthy for you.

Start with what you can observe.

What happens when you express a need?

What happens when you say no?

What happens when you disagree?

What happens when you stop over-functioning for the relationship?

What happens when you protect something private?

Over time, these answers can tell you more than a label ever could.

Your history matters.

Your feelings matter.

The other person’s circumstances may matter too.

But your wellbeing belongs in the equation.

And learning to include yourself in that equation is not selfish.

It is part of healing.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

I sound like a horrible daughter, don’t I? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m one of three daughters who don’t talk to or only very rarely talk to my mom. I won’t speak for my sisters, but I have many reasons for hoarding my words and time. As the eldest, and only 18 years younger than my mom, I filled her “best friend” role for most of my life.  As an adult, that role sometimes translated to positive experiences together, but other times, in not-so-healthy ways, like becoming drinking buddies.

When I was a kid, Mom most often called me her best friend when she sobbed in my arms. I remember one time, when I was about 12 or 13 years old, wrapping her in my arms on the kitchen floor. She cried heavy, barking sobs into my chest. As I sat on the floor in the middle of the night, helpless and confused, Mom insisted again that I was her best friend. I’d just wrestled a kitchen knife out of her hands that she’d threatened to stab herself with. (This might explain why I also long struggled in the friendship department–it took me a while to learn what true friendship looks like.)

Now, at only 61 years old, my mom has been put into assisted living. She can’t take care of herself anymore. In my opinion, she never has…taken care of herself, I mean. Despite this, I feel profound grief for her situation. All our situations, really. Because my mom is more than alcoholism, mental illness, and a disease ultimately created through the combination of those things. My mom was also one of the smartest, sharpest, and most tenacious people I’ve ever met. Many of the good things I value in myself wouldn’t have flourished if not for her. In some ways, those things grew in me because she planted and nurtured the seeds in ways she could. In other ways, I thrived just to prove I could, and because I was determined to never need anyone the way she needed me. I didn’t want to drain anyone of their vitality the way I felt stripped of mine.

I’m writing this article because it really pisses me off when people assume that children who cut off parents do so with ease and callousness. There is nothing easy about this. I love my mom. I care about her. I have compassion for her. And…I just can’t do it anymore. As I heal, the emotion that rises to the top again and again and again is grief.  I’ve mourned my mom from many angles, many times, in many ways. I’ve mourned for a childhood where I felt safe and loved without conditions. I mourned for a relationship with my mom where I didn’t have to also calculate the cost of her affection and attention.

I’ve mourned on her behalf for all the things she missed out on because she couldn’t be present in the ways we–and she—deserved. Now I mourn a future she will never have because the chains of the past have permanently bound her.

Like me, Mom grew up in someone else’s nightmare. She never escaped but instead created new scenes. Not all of them were horrific or tragic. Some of them were heroic. She got her GED a few years after dropping out of high school, pregnant with me. In her early twenties, with four kids under the age of seven, she started college. She was the first in her family to earn a college degree. She did it with honors.

In some ways, she set solid examples and, at times, I truly did feel her love in strong and powerful ways. In other moments where I offered consolation and comfort, I felt a profound sadness and the deepest well of hopelessness one can imagine emanating from her. I know my mom did not want these things for herself. Or her kids.

She always said, “I want to do better for you than was done for me.” I think she succeeded and failed because here we are, repeating the same cycle. Throughout most of my childhood, my mom didn’t talk to her mom. When we mentioned Grandma, Mom shut us down and couldn’t conceal her strong negative feelings. Eventually, they reconciled, but Mom rejected her mom throughout most of her adult life. I wish it were not this way, but I feel like the only way I can make sure that this isn’t repeated with my daughter is for me to heal. I can’t heal when I’m locked in caretaker mode. My mom doesn’t know how to see me any other way. The only way to resign from that role was to walk away completely. So, I did.

I’m afraid to watch someone I once saw such tenacity and intelligence in flounder to perform basic daily functions. I don’t want to see her that way, which is interesting because, in some ways, that intelligence and willpower allowed her to manipulate me and situations in ways that crushed me. I don’t know who she is without them in her arsenal. As much as those parts of her hurt me, I’m sad that she lost the things that gave her some sense of control in a chaotic life. I understand why she wielded them; they were self-protective. And…they tended to hurt those in her wake, me included.

My mom’s mental decline happened to coincide with the long-overdue resurrection of myself. I’ve been in therapy for over two years, and sometimes, between individual, couples, and group therapy, I attend up to five hours of therapy a week. I work hard between sessions to practice new coping strategies, assert boundaries, and engage in self-care. It’s working because I’m working so hard to heal. Sometimes it pisses me off that I have to bust my ass to come out the other end of this thing and that I can’t have the kind of relationship with my mom that I longed for.  I’m enraged that I have to work this hard to feel safe, secure, and happy.

This self-restoration has brought piping red, long-submerged anger to the surface, but there’s more than that.  I’m devastated for her. As much as I know it was out of her control–essentially two diseases, alcoholism and mental illness, paved the way to another disease, WKS–I’m so angry that it took her down. I’m furious with her for not fighting harder. I’m pissed at myself for not “saving” her. Sometimes I don’t know where to put all that anger.

I don’t want to fight my mom because it’s not a fair battle. Once again, there’s an unbalanced power dynamic. This time I’m in “power.” I could potentially use it to pulverize the final shreds of her. I don’t want to. Not even a little bit. So, I’m going to keep walking the other way. The anger, for now, keeps me safe.

Beyond the anger, though, I’m so damn sad. I don’t want to see my mom suffer. That young child in me, who soothed her so many times, wishes she could save Mom just one more time. But that little girl in me can’t. I can’t. So, my mom’s house stands vacant and for sale. I never visited. Not once. Now, she lives somewhere where strangers will do the things that I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I just can’t. Not anymore. This choice doesn’t feel like a choice at all, but it’s what I must do for now. I must continue to move on.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Countless African households teach their children, from a very young age, to refrain from speaking. Phrases like “Just keep quiet,” or “Don’t cause trouble” echo through our lives, passed down as wisdom from those who came before us. On the surface, this advice seems mature and prudent.

Your quietness might damage your spirit instead of preserving love.

What if the very behaviors you learned to preserve calm (remaining silent, burying your emotions, and steering clear of conflict) are causing you to lose yourself?

People often misunderstand this route as a path to true tranquility. Over time, this lack of noise does not bring harmony; it breeds fear, resentment, rejection, and a deep, simmering anger.

Sometimes you observe yourself shrinking, evolving into a smaller version of who you were meant to be.

Your voice grows weaker until one day you wonder if you even have one.

This creeping feeling of inadequacy could cause you to distance from your true self, leading you to conclude that you’re not deserving of your own kindness and attention.

In many toxic homes, children grow into experts at appeasing their parents, sacrificing their own dreams, and even their happiness, just to feel accepted.

Guardians, especially mothers and wives, can become so consumed with caring for their families that their own ambitions and well-being slip away.

No matter where this people-pleasing or codependency begins, one truth remains: you cannot pour from an empty cup. One cannot share what one does not possess.

If you learned to swallow your feelings, and equate love with silence or relentless effort to win affection as a child, you set yourself on a path far from self-love.

We, as adults seeking love, often fall into cycles of codependency and people-pleasing, wherein we give, adapt, and sacrifice until our own identities become obscured.

This series will explore why so many of us become lost in our relationships, uncover the damaging habits forged in childhood, and examine how relying on others for validation traps us in harmful, normal cycles.

Suppositions and myths that lead to codependency.

My journey of recovering from childhood trauma led me to uncover a seldom-voiced truth:

So many of us stay in toxic relationships, sacrificing our true selves, because one persistent fear haunts us:

• What will people say?
• How will they see me?
• What will they think of me?

On the surface, you may appear cheerful and put together, but this silent fear eats away at us from the inside out.

Losing yourself in a relationship is never a sudden event. It’s a slow unraveling, thread by thread, until one day you barely recognize who you’ve become.

It seeps in through your self-perception, what you learned about love, and the patterns you witnessed as a child.

The way your caregivers expressed love during your childhood matters. The language you experienced as a child plays an important role.

The examples set by those around you– the words they spoke–these moments leave lasting imprints.

Many of us grew up with beliefs like:

“You have to endure in a relationship.”

“All men cheat” or “Women are not trustworthy.”

“One person must lead, the other must submit.”

“Two captains cannot be on one ship.”

These repeated messages, so common they feel like truth, become beliefs that shape our entire approach to love and connection.

Instead of teaching us that love is rooted in self-respect and boundaries, they condition us to see love as endless sacrifice.

My Personal Realization: When Love Meant Losing Myself

There was a chapter in my life when I truly believed that silence equaled love.
I thought that putting everyone else’s needs before my own was the highest form of love. My happiness, I thought, should be a reflection of everyone else’s contentment.

I felt responsible for everyone–except myself.

I became the fixer, the peacekeeper, always trying to make things work. It was the only way I knew to feel needed, valued, and loved.

But as I walked the long road to healing, I discovered something that changed everything:

Those were not acts of love at all.
They were trauma responses, survival patterns etched deep by years of emotional wounds.

That realization hurt, but it was also a turning point. It was the first time I began to see what true self-love could look like.

Many believe self-love is about occasional pampering, buying nice things, taking selfies, or treating yourself.

But real self-love runs much deeper; it’s about how we show up for ourselves every single day.

So What Is Codependency? (Simple Explanation)

Let’s break this down in a real, honest way, because so many are living it, even if they don’t yet have the word.

Codependency is when your sense of identity, worth, and emotional stability becomes tethered to someone else. You feel responsible for healing or fixing them, even when it breaks you in the process.

It means:

• You depend on others to feel okay about yourself.
• Your happiness is based on how they feel about you.
• You feel responsible for their emotions.
• You prioritize their needs above your own

You say words like:

“If they are happy, then I am okay.”

“If they are upset, I feel like I have done something wrong.”

“I need to fix things so everything can be okay again.”

“If I don’t do anything, things will fall apart.”

“I have to be there for them; I cannot fail them.”

“I am not enough; I need to get them to love me.”

Your life begins to revolve around someone else’s emotions, fulfilling their needs, fixing their problems, helping them, and seeking their approval to feel fulfilled.

You go the extra mile to make them happy, even if it means sacrificing your own happiness, your dreams, or even your identity.

You may dim your light so theirs can shine.

At that point, you no longer feel good enough on your own; you need their approval to feel secure.

It’s like walking through life uncovered, giving your last coat to everyone else, satisfied because they are warm, even as you shiver in the cold.

In simple terms:
Codependency is this: losing yourself, piece by piece, in your desperate attempt to hold on to someone else.

What Is People-Pleasing?

People-pleasing is the behavior that keeps codependency going.

It is when you constantly try to make others happy, even at your own expense.

It looks like:

• Saying “yes” when you want to say “no.”
• Keeping quiet to avoid conflict
• Ignoring your own needs so others can feel comfortable.
• Feeling guilty for putting yourself first
• Trying to be “good” so people will accept or love you.

In simple terms:
People-pleasing is what happens when you abandon your own needs, just to feel accepted by others.

What Is True Self-Love?

Self-love is not just pampering, taking pictures, or buying things.

Self-love is how you treat yourself on a daily basis.

It means:

• You respect your own feelings and needs.
• You don’t ignore yourself to please others.
• You speak up for yourself, even when it’s uncomfortable.
• You protect your peace without guilt.
• You choose what is healthy for you, not just what makes others happy.

In simple terms:
Self-love is choosing yourself, wholly and unapologetically, without shame or guilt.

How Codependency Makes You Lose Yourself in Relationships

No one wakes up and decides to lose themselves. It’s a slow process, rooted in what we were taught about love and worthiness.

1. Perhaps you were taught that love means enduring; no matter the cost.

You learned to tolerate instead of express.
To stay silent instead of speaking.

• You Start Living for Approval.

Your focus shifts from “Who am I?” to “How can I be accepted?” due to past painful experiences.

Maybe someone left you in the past, you grew up in a home where love was inconsistent, or someone hurt you deeply, and you still carry that wound or memory in your heart.

These old wounds shape how you see yourself, making you live for approval instead of embracing who you truly are.

• You feel responsible for everyone but yourself.

You carry everyone’s emotions, but neglect your own. You feel responsible for making everyone happy and for everything running smoothly, and that without you, they cannot be happy or okay.

Children who grew up taking adult responsibilities at a younger age are prone to this. So, in a relationship, they believe it is their responsibility to change every weakness and negative thing they see in their partner.

They become the parent in the relationship rather than a partner. They scold, complain, cry, and nag.

They stay in a toxic relationship, enduring, praying when they ought to walk away, and loving themselves.

Many will say, “Maybe if I behaved better, he or she would change.”

• You Confuse Being Needed with Being Loved.

You start to believe your value lies only in how much you can help, fix, or sacrifice for others.

Many struggle to break free from this cycle because the approval feels like a drug, without it, they don’t feel whole or enough. At the root of it all are unhealed trauma wounds, waiting to be faced.

• You Stop Listening to Yourself.

You stop asking what you feel, need, or want, and focus only on others.

What Is True Self-Love?

People pleasing is what you do.

Codependency is the pattern you are stuck in

Lack of self-love is the root of it all.

When you lack self-love, you:

• Seek validation from others.
• Struggle with boundaries
• Feel responsible for people’s emotions.

And so, the cycle repeats until you decide to break it.

You Don’t Have to Lose Yourself to Be Loved: A New Way Forward

Losing yourself in a relationship is not love, it’s a pattern called codependency. And you are not alone in it.

It is something many people learned from their upbringing, environment, and experiences.

But here’s the good news: you can unlearn these patterns.

• You can learn to love without losing yourself.
  You can learn to speak without fear.
  You can learn to exist fully in your relationships.

Start small today:

Speak up in one situation.

Say “no” without guilt.

Choose yourself in one decision.

Because the moment you choose to stop abandoning yourself…
That’s when you reclaim your power, and your healing truly begins.
This is Part 1 of the Codependency Series.

Let this be your first step toward becoming your most authentic, empowered self. Your best days are ahead!

In the next article, we’ll go deeper into codependency, childhood trauma, and narcissistic relationships, how they are all connected, and why many people find themselves repeating the same painful patterns.

Stay with me on this journey; understanding is the very first step toward healing.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Three little letters, two little words.

It’s the simplest part of the day.

But there’s nothing simple about the things that will remain unsaid.

I do means I do know I could be hurt. But I’m ready to be healed with you.

It means I do want to try.

Even when the fear of failure holds me back.

And I do not know the future, but I’m ready to be surprised along the way.

And I do means I do want your love and I do give you mine.

And nothing we do will ever be the same.

Because you and I will be doing it all together.

Poem written by Dean Batali. Writer of the Final Episode in TV Series Good Witch, Season 3, 2017.

When I think of weddings, I think back to this poem written by Dean Batali for the final episode of Good Witch. These words have since gone viral online, but there isn’t much credit to Dean Batali for his beautiful words.

A wedding day is a day of joy and happiness for most families. It’s the day of the union of two families. A day to celebrate the love between two human beings.

I was once a bride, but my wedding was a mixed bag of emotions. I’m a trauma survivor, and therefore, no family was sitting in half of the room — the bride’s half.

My husband’s side was packed full to the point of bursting, and our friends didn’t know which side to pick. You can imagine how I felt about that. I experienced a pain so great my heart could almost not take it as I looked back into that room. My side was empty. I was alone. Nobody was there to have my back.

Did I want to go through with this day alone? This wasn’t how I had envisioned my happiest day, celebrating with the love of my life next to me.

After a few awkward minutes, a brave older couple decided to stand in as “my parents,” for the ceremony. Within a minute, people shuffled across to even out the seats between the sides. With a lone tear streaking down my face and blurring my vision, I saw them. One by one, moving across to my side, until the room was evenly filled.

It was a gesture of compassion, for me and for my husband. It was them saying that they accept me for who I am. They showed me they understood my decision to live my life alone, without my family. Until that moment in the ceremony, when they claimed me as one of them. When I was officially married.

Marriage is not something to go into lightly. It takes a lot of patience and learning to work together. To give and take, while being prepared to compromise sometimes.

True love doesn’t turn away when you’re angry. Love is patient, and waiting to heal and comfort when you are in pain.

As a trauma survivor, I had never experienced true love. I had no idea what love meant, and I didn’t know what it was like to live in a normal family. My husband showed me the way when I was lost. He guided me back on the right path when I had nightmares. He has been my rock throughout the years, where we have flourished together. That is love.

I started my wedding day alone, and I gained a new family. From that moment, I have not been alone.

My name is Lizzy. I’m a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

If you like reading my posts, then please follow me.

For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

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Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

In seventh grade, the children at my middle school traded their Nintendos and Polly Pocket dolls for iPhones and Barbie dolls–in the form of minions for their social cliques. Soon after the school year began, CHABELCK was established, and the name might as well have been trademarked.

So, what was CHABELCK? It was the official name of the “friend group” composed of all the popular girls in our class. I look back and chuckle at the name. They could have worked harder to come up with something catchier; to me, it sounds like the remnants of something a dog threw up! They simply took the initials of their first names and combined them into one word. Almost immediately after the group was created, the term CHABELCK and the girls who held that title loomed over the school, feared by all who encountered them. I took an observer’s perspective, watching in bewilderment as many of my innocent friends neglected our friendship to join CHABELCK–and consequently morphed into power-hungry monsters. 

CHABELCK’s presence at school was boisterous. The group’s name was plastered on binders, folders, and whiteboards. They took over online forums, cyberbullying other students whom they deemed unworthy of a spot in their cool kids’ club. A few members of CHABELCK were ultimately expelled from school, while others were disciplined. 

Groupthink, peer pressure, and tribalism throughout human history

I’ll never forget CHABELCK. It was my first exposure to the aggressive presence of tribalism and groupthink in our society. 

Why does the cacophony of the groups I’ve encountered throughout my life ring louder than the whisper of my own conscience? Humans are social creatures, and tribalism originated as a survival mechanism. We hunted and gathered to protect our own. He who strayed from the tribe vanished into the jaws of the enemy. To be excluded was to die. 

The battle between my internal desires and external expectations

Although tribalism is ingrained in my human DNA, I’m very much a free spirit. From a young age, conformity felt like an internal death sentence. I fought a daily battle between my disdain for Western civilization’s obsession with fortune and fame and my desire to escape into solitude. In environments filled with materialism and superficiality, I felt pressured to be someone I was not in order to be liked and accepted. The seduction of the herd was enticing. 

With every group I tried to join, I was eventually ostracized or, in some cases, viciously bullied out of them. Starting at a new school when I was thirteen, I quickly became the target of a situation of large-group interpersonal cruelty–the first of several such instances. This was the first time I came home from school expressing to my parents that I had thoughts of suicide. I switched schools, but the bullying continued as I navigated new peer environments. I tried hard to fit in, so that I wouldn’t be seen as an antisocial loser. Some mental health providers even pathologized the fact that I didn’t have friends. 

But even if I disregarded others’ opinions, I didn’t need a tyrant to criminalize me as a friendless outcast. Whenever I changed myself to fit in, I became my own jailer. Even when I was initially accepted into social groups, I felt like I had betrayed myself. I hated being like everyone else. The tug-of-war between my authentic self and my desire for acceptance was more painful than the rejection from those whose approval I craved. 

The anatomy of groupthink

I have developed intellectual friendships with social psychologists and philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and Solomon Asch, whose research and observations suggest that societal expectations of conformity can strip individuals of their freedom. As I reflected on my personal experiences with groupthink, I noticed some recurring patterns.

While these groups seemed powerful at the time (there is power in numbers, as they say!), they were actually quite weak. Much like the structure of a cult, these groups typically had a leader (or multiple leaders), with followers obediently trailing behind and idolizing them. When I interacted with these group members on an individual level, I noticed they were often insecure and relied on the group for validation. They frequently spoke poorly of other group members and revealed their secrets to me, indicating that their friendships were not genuine and that the group was performative. I recognized that if they spoke about their “friends” in this way to me, they were likely doing the same thing to me behind my back. 

My final straw before rejecting it all

I’ve learned the hard way that the petty high school behavior doesn’t stop after high school. When I moved to the countryside to begin my healing journey, I found myself isolated in a retirement town in the middle of nowhere, with a population of 1,942. I got to know a group of friends there, and was initially invited to their breakfasts and bonfires. I thought I had finally found my people. 

From the get-go, I had an internal inkling that, like with past groups, I would eventually be kicked to the curb. I found myself trying very hard to gain their approval. I changed my personality and overextended my generosity, spending money I didn’t even have in order to remain relevant to them. 

Unfortunately, my gut instincts turned out to be right. After the initial “love-bombing” phase, I was soon deemed unworthy of being in their presence. Around town, they went out of their way to make me feel inferior–snubbing me, humiliating me in front of others, and playing mind games with hot-and-cold behavior. It was bizarre! For months, I ruminated, trying to figure out what I could do to be good enough for this group and to coexist with them in the tiny town without tension. But nothing I did was good enough. 

After a few months of continuous rejection and their attempts to stifle success in my healing, the stress finally took its toll on me. One night, I woke up with itchy legs. My entire body had broken out in hives! Over the next two weeks, I visited the emergency room four times. Each time the ER managed to control the hives, they returned again within 48 hours. I wondered if I had an allergy, and ended up driving to the big city to consult with an allergist. 

Facing the pain of rejection and uncovering subconscious memories

There was no allergy: the hives were stress-related. Yes, the rejection stung (and itched!) that deeply. The rejection didn’t hurt because these people were particularly special; in truth, they barely took the time to get to know me before they discarded me. If it had been strangers behaving this way, I would have brushed it off immediately, reminding myself that their actions stemmed from their own misery and insecurity. However, because I had met these people at the beginning of my cabin journey, they became my final hope of solidifying a friend group I could rely on for the rest of my life. When I was rejected, they became the symbol of all the interpersonal cruelty I had faced during my formative years.

It was painful to be ostracized by the people who promised me they would be on the other side of my success. Still, there was a silver lining: with each instance of being belittled by this group, I brought my feelings to my therapist. Together, we worked through the physical sensations I felt in response to these moments using a technique called brainspotting. During each session, subconscious memories connected to these emotions resurfaced–memories of the hurt I had experienced from groups in my peer environments and religious communities. Through brainspotting work, those buried memories were processed and healed. 

I will no longer participate in it

After years of chasing a dangling carrot held by various groups, I grew tired of hearing, “If you just do this… then you can finally sit with us.” I decided to stop trying to prove that I am “good enough” for these groups and instead realized that I am too good to participate in their infantile behavior. 

My entire life, I had questioned whether these kinds of people wanted to be friends with me. But things changed when I learned to ask myself, “Do I even want to be friends with them?” 

I refuse to march around in aggressive cults and pretend to have disdain for people and groups whose stories I know nothing about. I do not feel superior by making others feel inferior. I find no satisfaction in mocking or intimidating innocent people. I don’t enjoy latching onto narratives or rumors based on hearsay. I cannot bow in submission while my heart screams in protest. I refuse to trade my authenticity for acceptance. 

My path to true freedom

In a world where the crowd roars with confidence, my solitude felt like madness. But when I quieted my mind in the countryside, I discovered that my greatest fear as a radical nonconformist was not the herd itself: it was becoming like the herd. 

Today, I’m not a part of any friend groups, and I don’t want to be. I do almost everything alone, and I actually prefer it that way. Despite how medical providers pathologized my introversion in the past, I now know there is nothing wrong with wanting to be alone. Once I found freedom in my individuality, I no longer needed the approval of those I had previously put on a false pedestal. I’ve built authentic and easygoing friendships with people who have no agenda and do not require me to participate in activities that conflict with my values. 

I will not pretend to be someone I’m not just to feel like I belong. To me, true belonging means being at home within my own soul. I will continue to stand strong on my own two feet and keep my head held high, never surrendering to the crowd.  

Photo by Dibya Jyoti Ghosh on Unsplash

To my readers who have been following my journey: I am excited to share that I have created a personal blog called “Little Cabin Life.” This blog chronicles my healing journey, where I share my experiences and the things I am doing to support my recovery. You’ll also find tips that have been helpful to me along the way. If you’re interested in following my story, please feel free to visit www.littlecabinlife.com.

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.

What actually gets passed down

Trauma can alter the expression of genes. That is epigenetics. Stress, famine, displacement, and chronic fear can leave biochemical markers on DNA packaging that change gene function without changing the genetic code. What parents and grandparents endured not only shapes family habits. It can shape how a nervous system responds to threat, attachment, and safety many decades later. In a landmark study of Holocaust families, researchers documented shifts in methylation of FKBP5, a regulator of the cortisol system, in survivors and in their children who did not live through the original events. Comparable patterns show up in other contexts as well, including families affected by war, genocide, severe discrimination, natural disasters, and refugee flight. The point is simple. When people say trauma runs in a family, it is not just a figure of speech.

Inherited trauma rarely looks like a story

What passes forward is not always a narrative or a flashback. It often looks like a survival strategy that does not match the current environment. A child grows up in a safe home, yet cannot sleep unless every curtain is closed and every door is checked. A teenager treats disagreement like a death sentence, even in a respectful household. An adult keeps pushing away secure partners because the body has learned that calm usually comes before danger. These are not quirks. They are trained reflexes. They stay invisible until someone starts asking the right questions.

You do not inherit a diagnosis. You inherit the coping

CPTSD is not handed down like eye color. Defense patterns are. Silence is. Emotional constriction is. When trauma is not processed, it leaks into parenting through control, through chaos, or through inconsistency that leaves a child sensing danger without language to name it. Children repeat what works, even if it only worked in the old house. They pass it on not because they are broken, but because they were trained by example.

When pain gets ritualized

Trauma does not always announce itself. Sometimes it hides inside rules that are treated as virtues. Do not talk about feelings. Stay productive no matter what. Outsiders cannot be trusted. Keep the family’s business inside the house. Loyalty above all. The same mechanism hides domestic violence that nobody names. It hides animal abuse that neighbors avoid reporting. It hides generational child abuse that gets rebranded as strict parenting. In some families, stints in jail become a rite of passage rather than a warning sign. From the inside, these patterns sound like culture or tradition. Trace them backward and you usually find war, forced moves, addiction, shame, betrayal, or plain neglect. When trauma is not processed, it gets ritualized. It is repackaged as rules, reinforced as identity, and handed down as survival even when the danger is long gone. Dysfunction is often inherited pain on autopilot.

Breaking a pattern requires recognition, not avoidance

Moving on without naming the pattern does not change the pattern. It extends it. Real change starts with accurate labels. Name what happened in the family line, even if it was not your direct experience. Notice the default settings that make no sense in your current life. Choose deliberate counter-moves. Rest when the old rule says grind. Set a boundary where the old rule says keep secrets. Speak where the old rule says stay quiet. This is demanding work because you are not only adjusting your mood. You are rerouting generations of survival programming. That is heavy labor, not a slogan. It is also where the leverage sits. You are not obligated to carry the pain forward because it was handed to you. The future of the pattern is not fixed.

Final thoughts

If you feel like you were born carrying grief that did not start with you, or fear that does not match your lived history, you are not defective. You may be the first one who chose to hold up the mirror. You get to decide what continues and what ends.

References

Yehuda R, Daskalakis NP, et al. Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation. Biological Psychiatry. 2016;80(5):372-380.
Dias BG, Ressler KJ. Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations. Nature Neuroscience. 2014;17(1):89-96.
Serpeloni F, Radtke KM, et al. Does prenatal stress shape postnatal resilience? Epigenetics and behavior in war-exposed Syrian refugees. Translational Psychiatry. 2017;7(7):e1185.

Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare 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.

The most misunderstood trait in trauma survivors isn’t volatility, mistrust, or emotional escalation. It’s the fact that many of them can’t tolerate peace. Not because they’re wired for chaos by choice—but because the traumatized body doesn’t recognize calm as safe.

For survivors of long-term relational trauma, especially those with complex post-traumatic stress strains, calm feels suspicious. Silence can register as danger. Something on a normal Tuesday afternoon might stir up the same physical warning signals as a life-or-death emergency. And when life gets too quiet, the nervous system doesn’t say, “Ah, finally!”—it says, “Brace yourself.”

This is not a personality quirk. It’s a biological glitch rooted in trauma adaptation and reinforced by an overstimulated digital environment that keeps survival patterns running on a loop.

Before smartphones, the system had natural limits.

We couldn’t talk 24/7. Long phone calls, handwritten letters, or occasional drop-ins served as the main outlets for emotional expression. There were enforced pauses: time gaps softened intensity. We had the chance to catch our breath.

Now, constant contact is normalized. One person’s panic can be offloaded onto someone else with a single swipe. Notifications hit like lightning strikes. The nervous system barely gets a second to recalibrate before another wave of adrenaline spikes. The result? We’re watching generations of trauma survivors stuck in a real-time panic loop with no built-in off switch.

Only, it doesn’t look like “doing the best we can” survival behavior from the outside. It looks like drama. Overreaction. Manipulation. People start using words like “toxic” or “high-maintenance.” And because it’s happening in group texts, comments, Discord servers, and encrypted messages, it creates the illusion of choice—like the survivor is selecting chaos, rather than reflexively reenacting it.

But chronic hypervigilance isn’t a lifestyle.

It’s the symptom of a system that has felt unsafe for so long that it doesn’t know how to stand down. 

Behavioral science and trauma research have already mapped the internal terrain.

A dysregulated amygdala—essentially the brain’s alarm system—fires prematurely and doesn’t shut off efficiently. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational judgment, gets overridden. Survivors are conditioned to feel like they’re responding to something life-threatening, even when nothing’s wrong. In clinical terms, the threat is gone, but the body doesn’t know that yet.

In these cases, the survivor doesn’t want drama.

But they don’t know how to trust the absence of it.

The brain, wired for pattern recognition, starts to correlate calm with the start of something worse. If the abuse always came after a good moment, that becomes the template. The body prepares itself, emotionally and physically to feel poisoned when things are nice and pleasant. It can’t relax, even though life got better. The wiring needs time—and structure—to rebuild.

That’s where things get even more complicated.

Some trauma survivors struggle with far more than stress symptoms. They also show clinical traits that resemble or overlap with personality disorders. This isn’t pathology in the traditional sense–it’s behavioral adaptation shaped by years of inconsistent attachment, emotional neglect, or outright abuse. Common overlaps occur with Borderline Personality Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder—both of which involve intense emotion, identity diffusion, and an unstable sense of relational security.

These traits, under strain, can look explosive in the digital world. The need for response, reassurance, and reactivity becomes relentless. Every pause feels like abandonment. Every comment feels like rejection. For the person on the receiving end, it can feel like emotional blackmail. But to the survivor, it feels like the edge of a giant cliff.

Add in technology—platforms designed to bypass patience and reward immediacy—and the entire situation escalates in a matter of minutes.

This is where compassion fatigue sets in.

Not because the supporter doesn’t care, but because their capacity gets exhausted. Every ping starts to feel like a threat. They go silent. The survivor feels abandoned. The cycle repeats. Emotional debt builds on both sides.

The solution isn’t cutting off the connection, though that’s often what happens. The actual fix is introducing digital boundaries that protect both parties. Not rigid rules disguised as punishments—but carefully defined limits that reduce reactivity and reintroduce appropriate pacing.

Mute is better than block. Scheduled responses help more than open-ended replies. Short, honest statements like “I can’t respond to everything, but I still care” preserve trust without sacrificing sanity. Most importantly, removing the guilt tied to these boundaries is essential. Real compassion isn’t measured by how fast someone replies. It’s measured by they can thoughtfully stay well in the relationship without burning out.

This isn’t just emotional hygiene–it’s ethical care. Survivors need time and repetition to rewire their survival responses. Supporters need respectful bandwidth to stay human. Technology, while useful, tends to make everything feel urgent when it’s not.

Understanding this doesn’t mean that we are excusing anyone’s behavior. Rather, we are promoting clarity. 

When someone constantly collapses under the weight of a good moment, they’re not trying to ruin it. They’re trying to prepare for loss. That’s not immaturity–it’s traumatic muscle memory.

And until the body learns that calm is safe and silence isn’t a setup, every good thing will feel like bait.

Final Thoughts

Chronic crisis behavior isn’t a personality issue. It’s a conditioned reflex amplified by the pace and permanence of modern communication. Not everyone feels peaceful when there is peace, and constant digital access can be extremely disruptive. What happens is that the line between survival and sabotage blurs. And while we know that boundaries don’t fix trauma, they do create the structure needed for something far better than survival: stability.

That’s not drama. That’s science.

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.

References:

Figley, C. R. (2002). Compassion fatigue: Psychotherapists’ chronic lack of self-care. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(11), 1433–1441.

McEwen, B. S., & Morrison, J. H. (2013). The brain on stress: Vulnerability and plasticity of the prefrontal cortex over the life course. Neuron, 79(1), 16–29.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Photo by Blake Cheek 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.