Living with CPTSD is a Never-Ending Checklist
Living with CPTSD, for me, is like living with a checklist that I’m constantly trying to check things off. The symptoms, the feelings, the actions.
It’s like I’m carrying around this invisible clipboard. I’ll look at it and think: okay, did I manage my triggers today? Check. Did I remember to self-soothe when the anxiety spiked? Check. Did I avoid isolating too much? Half a check.
The frustrating part is that even when I’ve worked on myself, done the therapy, practiced the grounding, and actually made progress, there’s still this nagging sense that the list will never be done. Healing isn’t like graduation. You don’t get to throw the clipboard in the air and walk away free.
Editing the List, Not Finishing It
Instead, I’ve realized that healing isn’t about finishing the list, it’s about editing it. Figuring out which boxes actually matter, which ones don’t, and which ones I can just cross out because they were never mine to begin with. It’s messy. It’s imperfect. But it’s real.
Even after all these years of work, there’s still one box that refuses to leave the clipboard: the need to be truly seen. To be accepted for who I really am. The real me. Battle scars, weird edges, the whole messy package. Not the me that performs, hides, or contorts to keep the peace. Just me. Plain, unapologetic, real.
And at the end of the day, all the other check marks? They don’t mean nearly as much as that one.
The One Box That Never Gets Checked
The need to be seen feels like the one box I can never quite check off. And maybe that’s the cruel trick of CPTSD: no matter how much progress you make, there’s always this lingering ache to be recognized, understood, and accepted, something most people take for granted.
It didn’t help that for so long, I was terrified to show the real me. Hiding felt safer. Blending in felt necessary. I thought if people saw the truth, they’d walk away, or worse, use it against me. So I built masks. Layers. Versions of myself that were easier to swallow. Those masks protected me, but they also kept me invisible, which only fed my CPTSD.
Carrying the Weight of “Fixing Things”
And now, as I peel those layers back, there’s a nagging feeling knowing I broke things by hiding, and that it’s on me to somehow fix them. That’s another heavy box on the clipboard, and it still weighs me down. I keep circling back to this notion, and I know that I can’t fix everything. I even wrote about it here, but the feeling still lingers, and yes I am still stumbling.
I think part of it comes from the years of being invisible. When you grow up in environments where your feelings weren’t safe, where your truth didn’t matter, or where love was conditional, you learn to contort yourself into shapes that fit. You become who you think people want you to be. That mask earns survival, but it costs authenticity.
Daring to See Myself
So here I am, clipboard in hand, realizing that “being seen” isn’t about waiting for someone else to check that box for me. It’s about daring to check it myself. To say: I see me. I accept me. I believe the real me deserves to exist, scars and all.
It doesn’t erase the ache. It doesn’t make the longing disappear. But it does soften it. And on good days, that feels like progress worth circling, highlighting, and maybe even giving myself a gold star for.
Learning to Let It Be Enough
I’m learning that I need to let it be enough, to stop piling more boxes onto the clipboard, and to actually sit with the fact that some things, no matter how much I want to, I just can’t fix. I also need to quit beating myself up for feeling this way. Even accepting that just a little feels like progress, and that, in itself, is part of the healing.
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