My Main Struggle: CPTSD and Crippling Loneliness

I want to start on a positive note with what I’m currently doing to combat this:

• Weekly therapy: Starting additional group therapy soon after being apprehensive about it for a year.
• Healthy habits: Eating healthy, exercise at least once a week, supplements, meditation
• Authentic self: I’m going after what excites me and not settling in relationships. More distance from uninterested people and in some cases ending relationships. Putting myself in discomfort by getting closer to those who are aligned and demonstrate safety and mutual interest in me.

My mental health is at the top of my priority list.

I’m settled in my first full-time job now, having started about a year ago.

Loneliness is a pervasive theme throughout my life.

Since I can remember, I have fallen in and out of feeling like an outsider looking in.

And as time passes and I grow older, I come across hope time and time again that I will be able to create and find a chosen family.

At the very least, that I will be content with the connections in my life and cultivate real friendships.

And yet, the frustration and sadness is overwhelming every time I feel alone again.

These days, I’m feeling overwhelmed. Excited by life, yet extremely lonely.

I’m crying a few times a week from it.

I have a few friends, only one who lives in the same city.

But none of them are genuine, intimate friendships.

I am thankful to have the minimal social interaction from my job.

I came to this city not knowing anybody.

I know that this blog and what I create will be focused around productivity and self-improvement.

And I don’t want the truth of my mental health struggles to be erased or minimized as a part of that.

It’s easy to hide the emotional side of the journey.

Especially when it involves shameful topics like inescapable loneliness.

The first step is always coming back to realizing that the “in-escape” is an illusion.

Breathing into my heart.

And letting the cage walls fall down.

How do I want to live?

Will I have the courage to keep trying?

A life where I am thriving, and not just surviving is one with real friendships.

A life where I am free and safe to love and be loved.

Where I don’t need to perform to a certain caliber in order to be loved. Where I can be accepted for where I’m at. Where my gifts are recognized and championed and nurtured.

I’ve been healing my treatment resistant existential depression since around the age of 16. I’m 24 now.

8 years of healing for 16 years of life.

It’s been a bumpy road.

I suspect CPTSD is the best categorization of my struggles.

Complex-PTSD is the result of repeated traumas over time, especially during childhood.

As a kid, I was subject to my dad’s rage episodes. One day he would be a sweet and loving father, and the next, anything I said could trigger a landmine.

My dad would rage at me, threaten me, and my mom would silently leave the situation and go upstairs.

Emotions and crying was not properly acknowledged in my household, and I’d be punished with put-downs for inappropriate displays of emotion. Play time was reduced and instead, I was forced to study math, violin, and other “useful” topics.

My dad never hit me. However, there were times when he smashed and threw things. Times when I thought he may hit me or punch me. A time when he grabbed me by the collar.

Not uncommon to the experience of many other Chinese-American children, I was constantly compared to other kids.

My identity was stripped from me.

I know none of this was intentional on my parents’ part.

And unfortunately that does not change how it affected me.

Unawareness is the most dangerous.

Nobody is to blame, and yet the results are catastrophic.

My sensitivity, combined with these experiences growing up have made connecting with others and forming real friendships a challenge.

Where others may have family or siblings to turn to, for my own sake, my relationship with my family is transactional. It is difficult to kill the hope that they are something they are not.

And every time I go into loving them with that hope, I am disappointed and hurt. Reminded of the past.

I know that my thirst for answers, my search for a better life, and my dedication to chasing my dreams is linked to the emptiness I have in my heart.

Sometimes I get caught up in chasing after these dreams and forget that the whole point of all this is love.

Chase my Dreams with LOVE and CONNECTION.

This post will be my reminder.

Thanks for reading.

This is a vulnerable subject for me and I appreciate your time.

Through writing and making videos I can express myself fully. This is my safe way of sharing and connecting.

And I know I’m not the only one who has gone through this and faces these struggles.

I know that I can overcome this challenge.

I felt similarly hopeless about finding a fulfilling job and being able to move out.

It was emotionally taxing and I fought through it, put in the work and did not give up.

And I am in a far better place now.

Much happier and more appreciative of life.

It’s easier to find the joy in life when you are in a nice environment and have personal freedom.

The remaining big dragon to slay in my life is this loneliness.

That’s the main thing that keeps me from my truth these days.

Resources on CPTSD and Loneliness I have found helpful. Not affiliated: