Explore stories and strategies for healing after childhood sexual abuse. Find support, hope, and tools for coping with CPTSD and trauma.
Why Acceptance Feels Like Everything There are many things CPTSD makes harder than they should be. For me, one of the big ones is my need to be accepted, not necessarily liked. I get that people will either like me or not. What I really want is to be accepted for who I am, and […]
I’ve generally been a curious person. I just like learning things. Researching, asking questions, seeing how things work. There’s a satisfaction to be found in pulling apart the mess and trying to put it back together in a way that makes sense, even if it only makes sense to me. But trauma doesn’t always come […]
Let’s just get this out of the way: being a man who was sexually abused as a child can mess with your head in ways that are incredibly difficult to explain, and even harder to talk about. I’m not a therapist. I’m not a self-help guru. I’m just someone who has lived it. And if […]
Yesterday, I time-traveled. Not in the cool, H.G. Wells, steampunk kind of way, but the CPTSD way. The no warning, no mercy, full-body flashback kind of way. The time machine? A body spray. Specifically, the Old Spice Superman limited edition. Yeah. A superhero-branded deodorant did me in. But this wasn’t about smelling fresh. This was […]
For 40 years, I lived in constant survival mode, running on fear, stuck in fight-or-flight, exhausted but pushing forward anyway. I had no idea I was running myself into the ground. I thought I was just doing what I had to do to exist. Then, about a decade ago, I began therapy, and I started […]
Growing up with abuse and never being able to ask for help, the idea of speaking up felt completely foreign. I had nobody to turn to, and deep down, I didn’t think I’d be believed. For 40 years, I carried that secret. Looking back, desperation seemed to be the theme of my formative years. Desperate […]
