A toxic work environment/being abruptly fired from your job.
also, having to leave your job and look for another because of a toxic work environment, despite loving the job itself :/
This! I love my job right now but I’m in the process of leaving because my manager is so toxic. It’s not worth it. I’ve had to go back to therapy because of the things I deal with at work.
being abruptly fired from my first job years ago has made me feel unstable in every job I've ever had. I know that I work hard - I am always early, get along with everyone, and go above and beyond even if it wears me out. but whenever anything goes wrong I start looking for other options in case I need to bail. I'm not even 25 yet and I've had 14 jobs because of this fear.
Omg the podcast Proxy with Yowei Shaw touches on this exactly in the first couple episodes! I’ve never had a corporate job, so I can only imagine living with the trauma and fear of random lay-offs that upend your entire world and sense of self.
Toxic work environments are crazy in how they effect you. I wouldn't eat around other people (not "safe"), I was afraid to bring up problems or suggestions. My confidence was through the floor. Sudden bouts of anxiety and crying. I had used to use my hands a lot when I spoke, but that stopped nearly completely. My wardrobe changed to make me less noticeable. It took over a year of a new healthy job for me to feel safe enough to take a break with other people. Much happier now. I can't imagine the person I was. I like to think I'd leave that kind of situation immediately now, but I guess it depends on how badly I need the job.
Dude seriously! I only realized how toxic my last job was the first day of my current one. I’m in the elevator and was like,
“…I’m not anxious. Huh.”
I was about to quit my job because the other ladies in the shared office were so toxic, my boss got wind of it and moved me to my own office in another building. Everything is great now. Most of the time when I leave a job, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the actual work. It has to do with the environment.
Having an emotionally immature parent.
Or be your parents emotional therapist dumping ground at a young age.
Yes emotionally immature parents are more likely to have poor boundaries. I was my mom’s free therapist my whole life. When I decided to put boundaries in place she threw a fit and blacksheeped me after years of being the golden child. She had kids out of boredom sadly.
lol that’s exactly what my dad did to me! I had my own children and realized how screwed up it was for him to tell me about his suicidal ideations and struggles with alcohol and whatnot when I was like 10. I told him to stop calling me about his emotional troubles and see an actual therapist. He got mad and we’ve been no contact.
His loss, he’ll never get to be a grandpa since he refused to be a dad. My kids aren’t missing out on anything, he is.
This is something I am quickly coming to terms with. The after effects are weird. Like yesterday my husband and I had a weird convo right before he left for work and then he was super busy so didn’t respond to my texts. I spent all day worried he was so mad at me and what can I do to make him happy when he gets home. And when he got home, everything was fine. He’d legit just been super busy all day. But in my mind, I’m in trouble and bracing for impact. It’s so awful
Edit to add: thank you all for your comments and stories. Makes a girl feel less alone in this world. I see you all, appreciate you all and send my love
I fully believe hypervigilance is the single most exhausting thing in life. Never being able to turn "off". Always aware, always on the lookout, always anticipating, always taking precautionary measures, always coming up with plans and multiple redundancies. All just to feel "safe". Not good, not well, not rested, just "safe".
It's hard to grow when all your energy is spent on keeping your head above water.
Never getting the benefit of the doubt will do that. Have to have an answer to everything that might possibly happen or come up because if I don't then I'll never hear the end of it and it will never ever be dropped. If it was genuinely my own mistake, it will still come up years later after it was corrected.
I relate to this 100%. To the point I will make myself physically ill over it.
Or an emotionally unavailable parent. They’re there, providing for you, but they’re never there for you. They hurt your feelings, and then leave you. Never support you.
I got my house renovated, invited him over to have a look and for a cup of tea.
He commented nothing on whether the work looked good or not. I don't understand how he's got through 65 years without having any situational awareness or care for our lives.
She's nearly 70 and when I ask her to not say something offensive, I still get the reply of "Fine! Guess I won't speak ever again then!" Followed by a couple of weeks of blissful silence.
At least you get silence. Mine never learnt to shut up.
Yes its like they weren't physically abusive for it to seem bad enough to othe people but its so insidious it affects children greatly
Hello, children! Today we will learn about emotions, specifically how to hide them away and pretend not to deal with them.
Tomorrow we're going to learn to lie reflexively! What fun!
Next week’s lesson is about how to meet all of your parents’ emotional needs while learning to ignore your own.
Or an emotionally immature spouse.
My god!! Both of these. Nobody seems to understand how painful it is.
Do you think you married an emotionally immature spouse because you had emotionally immature parents?
I realised that I've only ever been in unhealthy relationships because I never knew what a healthy one looked like, due to my parents toxic as fuck mariage... 😑
Nah, I married a covert narcissist because of my emotionally immature parents. I divorced him after 15 years of abuse, 15 years ago, and my mom still thinks he wasn't "that bad."
While getting pictures taken by the police after having him arrested for DV, my mom asked where I planned to go because I couldn’t go to her house and asked what I did to make him mad.
My mother did the same after a man beat me up, choked me, and threatened to murder me. She accused me of instigating it, when all I did was quietly explain that his temper was making me nervous lately and that’s why I didn’t want to go out and party with him. Internalized misogyny is a real head-scratcher.
After my ex threw my dog across the room, I had had it. Packed a bag, grabbed my dog, and went to Mom's. She told me I was married now and I had to go back and make it right. The next two years was hell on earth culminating in a suicide attempt that put me in the hospital for three days. She never did put two and two together. Wtf??
I still to this day go between "Eh it wasn't that bad" and "Oh god they fucked me up so bad"
People don't realize how damaging it is because it's so covert
Also a lot of emotionally immature parents can be really great at providing for physical needs so why are you complaining? Growing up we always had food in the house, were never in danger of being homeless, or had our utilities shut off. Hell, My parents worked hard enough to put my brothers and I through private school!
But they could never deal with anything stressful and there were big things from my parent’s past that I didn’t hear about until I was well into adulthood because they had “moved on and dealt with it” so why bring it up? I’m 33 years old and still struggle big time with stress and anxiety because the message I got was that bad things happen but you just have to move on as quick as you can to avoid feeling bad feelings.
i had (and still have) these. when i was in my 20's, i had an uncontrolled temper and did the whole wall-punching type of shit i saw dad do when i was a child. looking back on it, i cringe so hard because these were nothing less than absolutely childish tantrums and this uncontrollable temper was a major part of me losing my first marriage, completely missing my kids growing up, and a significant impediment to my personal growth.
change came, seemingly on its own; i don't recall any conscious effort on my part to improve, but i am much better now. i rarely become angry at anything anymore. perhaps it was due to the challenges that followed all of the above, changes of environment, etc.
a more recent and salient example of this came a few years ago; i was driving my parents and we were going to dinner. we drove past a park with a pond, and there was a duck crossing the road. i stopped, but someone in the oncoming lane didn't and killed this duck. it was mildly upsetting to me in an expected, "these things happen" sort of way, but for my dad, it was absolutely horrifying and he couldn't control himself for hours.
i'm 45 and i do not, and will probably never know the details of my dad's childhood (i do know it was atypical), but i suspect he has some unresolved stuff. he would never, ever seek therapy, though.
sorry for the word vomit. i don't get to talk about this often.
what kind of psychopath just runs over a duck like that
I've seen people swerve to hit an animal. People can be horrible
I recently read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and realized how messed up I am. And pretty much everyone I know.
When parents call their children 'old souls' they just mean that you should raise yourself so I don't have to.
I clicked on the comments to find this comment, and it was the first comment. Apparently emotionally immature parents are more popular than I thought.
I'm a therapist, and the vast majority of my clients had emotionally incompetent parents. In my experience so far, it's the chief cause of issues that send people to therapy. Like, even people with trauma usually have trauma and parents with poor emotional functioning. Because if your parents are competent at handling their own emotions, they're going to be competent at handling your emotions, and you're going to grow up having greater resilience to hardships.
People need to get their emotional functioning squared away before they have kids, because from the moment a kid exits the womb, they are learning to have emotions, and they learn it through interacting with and observing their primary caregivers. You can be a loving parent and engage in no behaviors that are commonly considered abusive but still really fuck their shit up.
Growing up in a household where you constantly had to “manage” other people’s emotions. It teaches you to ignore your own needs, and that love is something you have to earn by walking on eggshells.
I have never been yelled at more in my life than the 4 years I was in foster care. I learned to navigate around it by being compliant and quiet to keep my foster parent and their child from screaming at me as best I could. I’m 36 now and I’m still more mentally wrecked from those 4 years than any other period of my life.
I never experienced this as a child, thankfully. I have, however, experienced this in a relationship. It's no way to live. I lost friends, hobbies, pushed family away, all to try and manage my partner's expectations. Fuck ever doing that again.
I'm sorry you went through this.
I had this life. Don't say or do anything that will cause a temper tantrum. My father was thought to be a swell guy outside the house, but when it's just us, he was a gaslighting, racist, bipolar, hoarder who overmedicated and went crazy whenever he gets called out by mom on how he treats us. The argument usually ended there as mom and I both retreat to our rooms to "wait out the storm."
Video games kept me sane. I don't think mom coped so well, as she started having bouts of delirium near the end of her life. Hard to watch. I was to blame for being lazy and not helping them out more, according to my dad. Mom died in April 2nd 2018. Dad died the same day, two years later, of Covid. He made sure his attorney knew it was my fault this happened to the family. Other than dad's life insurance money, which they had to give me, I never saw a dime neither from the sale of the house or from the lawsuit of the nursing home where mom had been kept in her final months (they were neglectful, and she had bumps and bruises when I would visit from falling out of her bed).
I still have trauma, according to my therapist, because I have days where I feel like everyone is mad at me and I'm in trouble, even though I can't remember what I did wrong.
Unfortunately, I recognise the part about a father being popular outside the home, but a nightmare to live with...
Unfortunately, same.
I recall specifically how loved he was walking into our local church, lots of hugs, telling my mother how lucky she is when not even 5 minutes before he was yelling in the car at my mother and me for things he wouldn't do himself.
I wish the floor was made of lava instead of eggshells growing up.
It also really damages self-confidence and can lead to constant people pleasing and fearful of any type of authority figures.
Or marrying someone around whom you have to walk on eggshells and whose emotions you have to manage. When all you know is being exhausted and that you'll be wrong no matter what you say, what you ask, how you ask, what you like, who you are, etc, it's easy to fall back into that. You know no other type of man.
Or so I've heard.
It's hard to explain why, as an adult, you react the same way to things as you did a child, especially to people who have never experienced it. I'm constantly being triggered by people's change in moods at work and I just pretend like it doesn't fk me up, then cry on my break and vent in therapy. Everyone else is oblivious, unbothered or inconvenienced by it, and I'm stuck in some variation of trauma response and trying to get through each moment as best as I can.
Parentification is the first word that came to mind for me when I read the title of this post
Being the "peacekeeper" in a toxic or dysfunctional family. You grow up thinking it's normal to suppress your needs to keep everyone else calm and it messes with your sense of self more than you realize.
And then as soon as you finally stand up for yourself and establish boundaries, suddenly you're the bad guy...
I needed to hear this today. A couple of years ago, something in my head just flipped, and I was like, "I'm almost 30- why do I still allow people to treat me like this?" We don't talk anymore, and they think I've 'lost it,' but I love myself more than I ever have.
I've been that person as the middle child. But it's also traumatizing to look back as an adult and realize how much an older sibling was protecting me, and jumping in front of bullets. During summer break from school there were days when my sister would tell me to go outside and play. And she meant NOW. I could see it on her face and hear it in her voice. Soon after that I would hear my mother start screaming at my sister so loud we could hear it at the other end of the block. My friends would look at me and I was so embarrassed I would just look down at whatever toys we were playing with. My sister made herself the target of my mother's abuse and protected me.
I hope your sister is well and I wish her a long, healthy and happy life.
Emotional neglect.
It's so hard to explain what silence does.
Or parents putting their emotional needs on their child and above the emotional needs of their children.
My dad has been telling me “you are my son, I don’t have to listen to you” for the last almost decade. He tells me I fucked my life up even though he’s let me down every single time I needed him since I left home and has truly only made my life harder.
He texted me last Christmas that he hopes I’ll visit him before he dies and I fucking went off on him. Basically told him I could give a fuck if he dies among a bunch of other extremely hurtful but harsh truths about his shitty performance. Felt pretty great and I should have done it sooner when his mind was sharper.
Still feels horrible that I basically don’t have parents. Makes everything I do feel kinda pointless because there’s no one to feel proud of my achievements. I feel proud of myself but even that feels pretty hollow. My mom was great but she died of cancer when I was 14. I’m sure she would be quite disappointed in him for failing me.
Emotional neglect is the ghost that haunts your adult relationships. You crave love but flinch at it. That sh*t runs deep
Not only love, but other positive emotions—any time my therapist expresses any kind of pride in my progress, e.g., it makes me overwhelmingly uncomfortable. It’s so hard to break out of old patterns when success feels as bad as failure does.
I once had a boss praise me and I burst into tears—as an adult in their 30s. Explaining that was a challenge.
This. You want so much to be in a healthy, loving relationship- but don’t know how. Then when in a relationship that’s going well, you get weirded out and self-sabotage- often unknowingly.
My last relationship I remember making a conscious decision to trust and be vulnerable, and when it failed because I picked a partner with more issues than me, I fell apart. Haven’t been in anything serious since because of the fear and lack of confidence. But I want one.
“Crave love but flinch at it” perfectly stated
I didn't even realise I had been emotionally neglected as a child until last year (I'm 37).
That's how messed up it is.
So much makes sense now.
Same. Didn't realize till my early 30s and suddenly my chronic, aching loneliness made sense for the first time.
Being constantly ignored as a kid — teaches you to shrink.
Yep, I’m 31 now and I barely do or say anything
Same, even with friends its like thanks for the invite but if I show up please don't perceive me.
I came across a very small creator on Tiktok who said they were making videos to overcome their fear of being perceived. I hadn't really heard it put like that before, and it really resonated with me. I don't think I was ignored, but I have always had a lot of insecurities. I don't really care if people insult me or point out my flaws to me; what I don't like is being in public and wondering what people might be thinking or saying about me. Recently, I overheard some little girls making fun of my son and laughing, and it seriously struck a chord with me. I did speak up about it, and while I wish I'd said more, little me was proud for saying something, but it made me feel so small inside, and I cried for myself and my son. That's exactly the kind of thing I feel so insecure about.
Same here. There’s a character in one of the fire emblem game where the joke is he is huge but quiet and basic looking, and people literally don’t even notice he’s in the room until the rare occasion he speaks.
Me, basically
The amount of years it's taken me to build my self image is wild. I wondered why I couldn't put myself out there and was so stunted, but it makes perfect sense when you look back
Betrayal.. Never knew how painful it was until i experienced it and my entire life got flipped upside down because of it.
The feeling of your trust in someone being broken hits on a physical level. Both times it happened to me I felt like I was dying (later after being diagnosed with anxiety and CPTSD, I realized I was having lots of panic attacks).
The worst part of betrayal trauma is that it robs you of your ability to trust your own judgment. Having experienced it firsthand, I’m here to say it can be overcome, but damn, it takes a lot of time and effort.
Betrayal from someone you never thought would hurt you is unbelievably hard to move on from. Someone I considered one of my best friends absolutely destroyed me to the point I could barely eat for over a month, I basically lived off of smoothies. The constant and extreme anxiety was the worst I have ever experienced. Still haven’t moved past it and don’t know if I ever will…
I was looking for this. I think a lot of people don’t understand what being betrayed by someone you thought you can trust is like. I experienced it about a year ago and my life hasn’t been the same since. I feel like the no one understands
Bedbugs. People kill themselves over infestations for a reason. It’s actual psychological torture.
Anything moving in the corner of your eye draws a reaction. It's most often nothing, but it shakes you up.
Also, that little tickle you feel on your skin somewhere... was actually a bug one time... so now any unusual sensation on your skin shakes you up. Could be a light breeze or a hair moving.
My family had bedbugs for a bit, and for years afterward I'd wake up with a jolt thinking I felt something crawl on my leg.
Anything moving in the corner of your eye draws a reaction.
I worked in pest control for a decade. Saw the worst infestations of every pest there is. No issues.
Then I lived in an apartment with roaches for one year. To this day I still see roaches out of the corner of my eye, or when I turn on the light.
My cousins lived in Nicaragua for a while and their house was infested. The kicker was they never realized it because they were all immune to bites. When my sister and i visited we got eaten alive for days. Ended up covered in hundreds of them and it turned a fun trip agonizing. Fuck those little things from hell.
I find that I can resign myself to sleeping in my vehicle at a rest stop much easier than a hotel, but never in an Airbnb. Hotels are reported on bedbug websites and held to health and welfare standards, private residences aren't.
And the fact that they pose a minimal threat to your health [relative to other pests, anyway] is another slap in the face. It truly is psychological torture.
friendships ending. when relationships end badly there is more of an acknowledgment of the impacts, but I’ve been way more impacted by close friendships ending
It's awful when it ends ugly, when you know why, but I'm not sure whether it's worse than it ending quietly with someone just blocking and ghosting you out of nowhere. I've lost sleep trying to go back through every little thing and trying to figure out what I've done.
Quietly is definitely worse.
I had a friend who used to text me daily suddenly tell me she didn’t want to hang out anymore. No conversation or explanation. I tried to reconnect after a year of no contact and she rejected me while acting like we’d never been close friends anyway. Oof.
Growing up and not showed love by your parents no hugs no kisses no good job I’m proud of you nothing. My parents never touched showed affection to each other either it’s hard
You are going to change that family tradition right now. I believe in you
Absolutely trying my best at it! Both of my kids are super affectionate some days I feel overwhelmed because I just don’t know how to but I am trying my best those two kids taught me love
Not being able to find a diagnosis when your doctor has tried almost everything. Just had another test not show anything conclusive and honestly. I’m so tired and trying not to cry in the hospital rn. Makes me feel like maybe I’m just being dramatic and people actually always feel this way
I hear you. I feel I need to tell this, not to worry you, but to say it is ok to keep pushing to get something diagnosed, or at least explained.
My wife had been experiencing various pains, and was routinely fobbed off by doctors who failed to understand pain in women. She had asked many times to be tested for cancer, and was told at 32 she was too young to be worrying about that.
A year later she was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer. By this time it had spread basically everywhere, and chemo was never going to stop it. She passed a year later. I don't know how much better things would have been if they tested earlier, but it does make me angry sometimes. She forgave the doctors who apologised after she was diagnosed, but the whole experience of hospitals, tests, diagnoses, chemo, really opened my eyes to how poorly women are treated by the whole health system.
And I am ashamed to admit that I also minimised her pain, before the diagnosis. I wish I had listened to her, and defended/supported her position regarding her body and how it felt to her. I know better now.
Having severe anxiety as a child. Not knowing why you're terrified all the time and being afraid to tell anyone because you're afraid people will think you're crazy or a pussy. Being too shy to talk to people so making friends is hard and other idiot children deeming you a weirdo loser. So school becomes a nightmare that you're legally forced into 7 hours a day 5 days a week. The amount I wish I could go back in time and tell my parents I needed help is ridiculous.
Yes. The feeling that you're suffering so much, and on one notices. If they do, they give less than a shit, because you're a child and your feelings just don't matter.
Did it start at school or at home? For me it started at home… I even told my parents and my teachers even mentioned it to them and yet my parents didn’t give a crap.
I feel like parents who actually care for their children would be able to notice severe anxiety or if somethings wrong. Caring parents would also help navigate through it.
I've had this exact same experience. It was so bad I was selectively mute. I had no friends from elementary to high school. I dont understand how my parents or any teachers didn't do anything. I remember only being sent to the counselor one time and I remember telling them I was always scared of my family dying or something bad going to happen. Nothing came of that. I clearly had severe anxiety and ocd. Its straight up neglect
Sudden layoffs
Yup. My old team and I survived a round of layoffs 3 years ago and we naively thought we would be safe, and then a year later it was our turn (the whole finance department in fact).
Luckily I had the good sense to hit the ground running and start looking for a new job straight away, and I was able to go straight into my next (and current) job as soon as my old one ended, but it was a horrible experience to go through.
Severe General Anxiety Disorder.
An emotion birthed from the depths of Hell.
I’m one of those assholes who didn’t really believe in anxiety as a disorder, rather than an emotion.
Then I got severe post-partum anxiety and let me tell you, I was sooooo wrong.
Most people have no idea. The worst emotion a person can feel.
Same here, but for me it turns out I was just in denial. My anxiety manifests differently than others I've seen. For example, I had a roommate with severe anxiety that would make her hide in her room crying. Mine manifested as anger and depression leading me to lash out at others when anxious. I just figured I was an asshole.
I’ve been struggling for a couple months now and it’s not only causing trauma. It’s also causing my health to deteriorate.
For me.. It came on instantly. I was fine, and felt a painless “tiiing” in my brain one late evening. I was never the same again. That was October 2018. It wasn’t until May 2024 that I felt like the old me again. I sank into suicidal depression while the anxiety controlled my life. The healing process is painfully slow.
It was soo bad at its peak that I would wake up and have a very noticeable 5 seconds of relief from it, before it physically washed over my body. Every. Single. Day. Anxiety so strong I physically felt it.
Nearly cost me my relationship. My kids. My business. My life.
Traumatic isn’t even a strong enough word for that kind of hell, and I’m sorry you and anyone suffers from anxiety.
Suffering from it since high school, or right at the end of high school. Now I’ve seen my daughter grow up with it, and that was painful to watch.
Lately it’s returned to my life. Everyday feels difficult to me. Getting harder to leave the house every morning. I am slightly worried about where this is headed again.
I would say all those "little" insults thrown your way when you were younger. Oh, they didnt mean anything, dont be so sensitive, etc. Decades later, you have not forgotten the words said to you, and you are still hurt by them. Words can hurt for life.
Yeah my 13 yo just brought something up that happened 9 months ago that still bothered him. He thought I was making fun of him for something he didn’t know but was just a misunderstanding. I couldn’t even remember what the situation was be he certainly did because of how it made him feel. As a parent you have to be conscious of how you say things and how it might impact your child. I felt pretty bad when he told me that, I had no idea.
At least you listened to your child and acknowledged your role in how he felt. You felt bad about it. An emotionally immature parent would have gotten defensive, blamed the kid, acted like nothing ever happened, like you could do no wrong and that the kid is wrong for even bringing it up. It sounds like you handled it much better than that.
You know what though, it's pretty significant that he felt safe coming to you with that. So good job.
I would never dream of doing that with my parents.
The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.
Childhood bullying. It sticks with you.
47 and was bullied hard from 1st grade through 7th and mostly ignored or laughed at through high school.
I’m doing ok in life now but I often wonder what I might be like if I had any real self confidence or sense of self worth, the lack of which I can trace right back to those early years.
This one ,it alters your entire perception of life tbh.
Being bullied as an adult.
Yep, I'm a shell of my former self because of that
I'm ashamed for not having the guts/fortitude/whatever to stand up for myself.
Guilt being the go-to teaching method as a kid. I’m 33 years old and only in recent years of therapy am I realizing the effect that had on me. As a kid, I was guilted for being mad at my bullies, having depression, setting boundaries, for feeling out of place, and for having other emotions that I later found out were perfectly normal. And now I’m still trying to unravel the deep seated dread I feel when I step out of line with anything or am not 100% grateful for every shortcoming in my life
Isolation from 12 to 18
Moving often. I had to leave so many childhood friends behind, never to be seen again. And being the new kid so often has given me crippling social anxiety.
This. At one point I went to 7 different schools in one school year. I eventually stopped trying to make friends and honestly stopped trying in the classes because there was no point.
Never having a childhood because of parentification. Having to take care of your parents opposed to vice versa.
Having health tests done for the scary stuff and waiting for the results but not telling anyone.
loneliness
Being pregnant/giving birth. I realize that people recognize that giving birth can be traumatic, but pregnancy and birth can permanently alter your body in a lot of ways, including tripping autoimmune disorders that lay dormant in your body.
Yes! After finding the whole thing very traumatic even though I didn’t have any “serious issues” I wish that people were more transparent about this
Came here to say pregnancy and birth. My hormones during pregnancy made my eczema break out like never before. And PPD is no joke, even with meds.
"Oh, just give the baby up for adoption! You'll never have to think about it again!" "Oh, childbirth is wonderful, you won't die!"
You might.
And you might have lifelong consequences, regardless of if you "kept" your baby or not.
We have a great OB at my job that will counsel women before birth that pregnancy, labor, and delivery are inherently traumatic. I think it’s great because it manages the expectation that is perpetuated on social media that birth is “beautiful” if you do it the “exact right way, buy my product, don’t go to a hospital, blah blah blah.”
She says something like “birth is beautiful, but it’s common for it to tie as the best and worst day of your life. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong, it just means that if you find it more traumatic than you thought it would be, that’s a normal feeling.”
Pregnancy and birth are one of the most taxing experiences on the body. It messes with so many things, ranging from physical to psychological to hormonal.
Like can you imagine growing a huge parasite in your body for 9 months, then having to rip your body open to get it out, then have to care for a newborn baby and not sleep for more than 2 hours at time when you’re supposed to be healing?
Another thing no one ever discusses regarding pregnancy? The #1 cause of death for pregnant women isn’t medical related. It’s homicide, via intimate partner violence.
Being in a friend group but not being treated like a friend
In one group, my "friends" only kept me around so that they could make fun of me and put me down regularly
In many others I was basically left on the periphery of the group and was only called to hang out when they needed extra people or if someone called out last minute and they needed a replacement
Really doesn't make me feel like I'm valued by anyone
Or losing an entire friend group just because things got awkward between you and one friend and all friends have their back more than yours.
Neglect.
Death of a pet
Agreed, I've been made to feel bad for taking the day off after spending the night in the emergency vet, leading to their death.
All of my pets that have died, it happened quite suddenly. My cat popped a lethal blood clot. my senior dog was his normal self one day with no signs of issues, dead the next.
But we're expected to just carry on as if a huge part of our lives isn't just gone.
Our Best Friends deserve the honor of us needing to take time off from work and life to mourn their passing and really feel our loss. For me, it's been the most traumatic event I've had to face in life and I am older, lived through a lot of loss and difficulty in my life including suicides.
It has been found that people are far less likely to comply with evacuation orders during, for example, forrest fires when they aren't allowed to take their pets. It's like telling someone to leave their kids or elderly parents behind.
I am going to be such a wrecked puddle of shit when my cat dies. I fucking love that little turd.
I have anticipatory grief with my current dog, due to the emotional toll of losing my last dog. I cry pretty frequently at the knowledge I’m going to go through it again.
Emotional neglect. A parent/spouse doesn’t have to be outwardly hurtful, physically abusive, violent, loud, etc in order for deep mental scars to form. Simply ignoring you is enough. You could have all your physical needs technically met and never suffer one ounce of physical harm, but there’s nothing that makes up for being treated like you’re just…there.
Non physical abuse in a relationship
Verbal/emotional abuse is more painful than anything I’ve ever felt physically.
Psychosis
Being neglected not only as a person but as a young girl who had no one willing to teach me about anything.
Spontaneously loud mood changes in adults around kids. Anger, sadness, whatever.
A mouse or other pest infestation.
The trauma from this is so so underrated, especially if you have a phobia of mice and rats. Living through an infestation affects every part of your life (sleeping with the lights on, never being in a room and closing the door = so you have an easy escape).
And then moving on from that home, being hyper aware about every noise, and speck of dirt on the floor wondering if it is droppings. Avoiding rentals just because they’re older and ‘look’ like they might attract mice.
My sibling gets itchy for hours after hearing the word "bed bugs" they are for sure traumatized by their experience with them
Living in a household where emotions aren’t valued, or even mental health in general.
Never being praised or encouraged in any way.
Growing up, nothing was good enough for my dad. I could always have done more. If I got poor grades, I was ridiculed. If I got good grades, I was told I must have cheated. Any drawing I was proud of was traced. Any sport I wanted to do, any instrument I wanted to play, any class I wanted to take, I would fail. He would complain that I was a picky eater, then get angry when I wanted to try something new because I would hate it and it would be a waste of money. He would complain that I didn't "just know" what chores to do, then get angry when I tried to do them anyway with no guidance because I was doing them wrong.
You stagnate very easily when there's no point to anything.
Food shaming when you're young. The juxtaposition of "should you really be eating all that?" And "you can't leave the table till you clean your plate" Fd up my relationship with food so bad im still struggling 20 years later.
Having 24/7 access to breaking news. It creates a false sense of narrative that everything is bad all the time and that major crime incidents are happening constantly.
Being pressured to move by your landlord.
Sudden layoffs.
Growing up dirt poor.
A miscarriage. Before my wife had one, I had always imagined it as super early, just a clump of cells.
But we had seen him moving around. We had heard his heartbeat. We had chosen a name.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Undiagnosed neurodivergence; dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia, autism etc.
Theory is that the vast majority of prison inmates have some form of undiagnosed neurodivergent issue, as well as adicts, and people with mental health problems. Growing up undiagnosed causes a tremendous amoput of trauma that often can never be repaired or overcome.
Working through this now as someone that was undiagnosed ADHD until 28. I came to believe so many negative things about myself that aren't true. I developed an anxiety disorder and a heart condition due to 28 years of putting myself under unneeded stress just to get anything done. I've been in therapy for a year and a half just trying to get my life together, unlearn unhealthy coping mechanisms that I've developed, and figure out how to take care of myself properly.
And that's a good case scenario with going undiagnosed, as like you said, many undiagnosed adults end up with serious mental health and/or substance abuse issues.
So parents, please. If you have a child that is getting feedback about being disruptive in class, or a "gifted kid" that is struggling with motivation and "applying themselves", get them assessed. There are so many more resources for children than adults. "I don't want my kid to feel different than other kids" is not an excuse. They will still feel different, they just won't understand why and will think it's a personal failing.
Second this. I got diagnosed around 35, I'm 37 now. I don't think I'll ever be remotely okay.
Yes. Diagnosed at 38 finally and man, the mourning of my entire life up to then was intense. What could I have done? What could i have been? Realizing you've hated yourself your whole life for something that's not just a "character flaw." Not to mention all the criticisms for things that were part of the ND that add up to make you believe you're a freak or a garbage person. The addiction.
Parents who stay in horrible marriages just for their children. It teaches your children that it's better to stay in a bad relationship than leaving and being on your own.
Facing every kind of abuse as a child and always being told it’s your fault. Then as an adult finding out everyone in the family knew about it and did nothing because I was a difficult kid and it wasn’t their business. Then being told I’m in my 30s and I just need to get over it already.
Teasing by family members. Parents generally not liking their kids because they’re different. Grew up in a family where I was the butt of a lot jokes and the family did a lot of unflattering impressions of me. Seems like society frowns upon this a lot more than when I was growing up. Which is good..
Being bullied by a sibling. People don’t take it seriously because it’s ’just kid stuff’, but when you’re a kid too, you’re being tormented by someone bigger than you, who lives in your house so there’s no escape.
I told my husband recently some of the stuff my sister used to do to me; I’d told him some stuff before, but I don’t think I’d gone into precise detail.
For days afterwards, he just kept hugging me and saying “You didn’t deserve that. It’s not normal.”
People need to realize that not every person is traumatized by the same things. Some are fine after an car accident. Others have sever trauma. We are not all the same. This is not a competition.
A life lived without self-confidence
Not being able to afford medical care so you have to put things off, knowing its gonna get worse but the need doesn't change that you cant afford it. There are a lot of people I know who have this particularly around dental care. Since it's so often categorized as its own thing rather than just part of medicine and health there are generally far less options for help even in emergency situations. At least in the USA. Here you can go to the emergency room, get told without immediate treatment this will kill you, then get sent home with instructions to see a dentist for treatment as soon as possible.
Living with mentally ill people.
Yeah I will never forget the feeling of being 14 living with a mentally ill adult on drugs and alcohol. They’re so good at seeming normal but you know from experience they could trip up and get dangerous in seconds.
I should say unregulated mental illness though. Particularly if someone is in denial or refuses to get help.
Losing a parent suddenly and unexpectedly in your early 20s
Childhood experiences. If it was as easy as "you're an adult now, it's been X amount of years, get over it", we would have done it by now.
Long-term (think decade or more) cancer treatments. Most people think you're either going to die or end up in remission. Then there are those of us who have such aggressive cancer that nothing works except something that pauses it. The thing is nobody knows how long the pause will last until it quits working. You're basically retired from being disabled from the damage this long of a fight has caused, You're trying to live a normal life around your health but there is literally an axe held over your head at all times. It's the trauma of a chronic illness on steroids.
Mental illness.
Living in a hoarder house. I’ve realised it really did mess me up a bit. It wasn’t full hoarder when I was a kid, just embarrassingly cluttered. Now it’s stuff stacked everywhere. And I’ll offer to try clearing it up or throwing things out and my mother will have some bullshit attachment to stuff that is just junk.
It just makes me worry that when my folks pass I might have to argue with my sister over getting rid of this stuff, or be too old and weak myself to get rid of it all. It feels like mortality made into piles of real tangible objects stacked everywhere. Both sets of grandparents’ houses were the fucking same too.
Being told that you cannot leave the table until you finish everything on the plate. Now I struggle with saying no, managing portion sizes and eating mindfully because I’m scared of seeming rude and disrespectful.
Losing a close friendship especially without closure is often far more traumatic than most people realize
Cheating
Death of a parent.
Being neglected as a kid & growing up not knowing how to understand the world mentally & emotionally. No basic life skills. Makes things that are easy to everyone around you terrifying to even try.
Always being criticized by your family and never being understood. Being different from them and being treated as it's not ok to be you, just because you are different from them.
So many. But one that I’ve just been realizing is: the toll that autism masking takes on a person. Never knowing how you’re supposed to act, not understanding why people think you’re acting weird / angry / disengaged.
It’s the emotional equivalent of living in a place where you can never learn the language but nobody knows you’re not from there.
Rape when you are a man. I was 4 or 5 and i still remember everything and im 39. But the few peoples i have opened up just top me to get over it it was years ago.
Honestly with you the scary thing about stuff like this is the fact that many guys in the same situation will literally not remember it…like some men have absolutely cataclysmic amnesia before they turn 12-14
You ask them about their childhood they literally can not give an answer they don’t know…so the number of victims might be FAR,FAR higher then anyone thinks
I’m sorry friend, you deserve to be heard and acknowledged
Those people are disgusting. Its well known that childhood victims of abuse/sexual crimes may carry that for the rest of their lives. You dont tell anyone to "just get over" something because "it was so long ago." Thats disgusting and Im sorry those people said that to you
Putting your dog down. Just f'ing traumatizing.
Being affected by a natural disaster. People empathize in the moment but it stays with you forever.
"Boys will be boys"
All traumatized people will not deal with it as the public has speculated. It's entirely individual and a damn miracle if you're able to attain healing . I've been very blessed with mitigation by grandparents and others who ,by their struggle, gave me courage to face mine. Still, it took fifty five years at least to feel the lessons of the struggle ameliorated the pain of it. Ultimately, there's reason to be grateful I survived.
Millions never even disclose. Ninety percent. The public just cannot know how deep trauma is not appreciated nor understood in our country.
My heartfelt empathy and respect for all survivors of CSA and all other abuse.
y'all are gonna laugh at me for this, but working customer service. i still get intense nightmares about rush hours, abusive customers, understaffing, and unrelenting work that never feels fast enough even though you are doing everything that you can. it has me waking up in a cold sweat.
Maybe something people realize is traumatic but not how traumatic... being restrained in the hospital. Being physically restrained in a psych ward is one of the most dehumanizing and traumatic things a person can go through. It’s not just about being held down or tied up... it’s the complete loss of autonomy, the fear, the helplessness, and often the lack of explanation or consent. You’re treated like a danger instead of a person in crisis. Even if staff think they’re keeping you “safe,” it can feel like punishment or control, not care. The psychological damage doesn’t end when the restraints come off. For many people, it leaves lasting trauma, especially if you already have a history of abuse, PTSD, or difficulty trusting others. There absolutely needs to be more focus on trauma-informed care in psychiatric settings.
Dealing with a family member with dementia
Edit: just to be clear, I’m not referring to the sadness of losing a loved one, or being heartbroken when they can’t remember my name. I’m talking about what it does to your psyche and the trauma to your very own well being. The PTSD was something I wasn’t warned about. The panic attacks. The terror of going to sleep at night alone. My career didn’t survive, my marriage didn’t survive, and I almost didn’t survive. It’s better now, but it’s been a difficult road.
Yeah, and not just watching the awful things that happen to the person with dementia, but wondering if it will happen to you too (and who is going to look after you if it does).
Omg taking care of a family member with dementia - it’s so all-consuming and guilt ridden
This. My great-grandma had dementia and still lived for 5 or so years. My grandmother (her daughter) took care of her and didn't want anyone to help her. Now not even five years after my great-grandmothers death my grandfather (husband of the grandmother that took care of her) just got diagnosed with dementia. He's otherwise very healthy (just like my great-grandmother was) so dementia will have a fun time making him lose everything about himself. I'm mostly afraid of what it'll do to my grandmother. At first you watch your mother slowly fade away and then you watch your husband do the same thing. I can't imagine the harm that'll do to her mental health.
Definitely. When my mom had it, I was torn between respecting her as my mother and making decisions for her that she fought against because she didn’t think she needed help. It felt so disrespectful to have to treat her like a child. Luckily I had older siblings who were better at taking charge than I was because I always gave in and let her have her way.