The Strange Transition of Feeling

It’s a strange transition to spend your life feeling everything but burying it because feeling it fully would hurt more than going numb. Then you heal and let yourself feel again, and suddenly you wonder if you feel too much. Because sometimes… it really feels that way.

Learning to Regulate

Now you’re not just learning to feel, you’re learning to regulate. To sit with emotions instead of stuffing them down or drowning in them. You’re trying to figure out where the line is between being deeply sensitive and being completely overwhelmed. And that line moves constantly.

There are days you feel happy because of how much you do feel. That you are allowing your empathy to shine through, then there are other days where it feels like there is too much noise going on in your own chest.

Today, it’s one of those days where I am feeling too much. Which isn’t a bad thing, as it reminds me I am not some mechanical robot who is simply going through the motions.

When Feelings and CPTSD Collide

But, and yes, there is a but. Feelings and CPTSD don’t mix very well.

Living with CPTSD is like trying to move through life with your emotional volume knob snapped off. There isn’t a gentle “medium” setting; it’s either a small whisper or a loud bellow, and both are tiresome in their own way.

The Invisible Work of Healing

You see, you don’t just feel things. You process them, scan them, and analyze them. You try to figure out what’s real and what’s old trauma moving through your nervous system. And importantly, what’s safe to let in. It’s that constant internal work that nobody else can see.

It becomes tiresome to have to teach your body, repeatedly, that you are no longer in danger. To continuously remind yourself that it’s okay to rest. That you don’t have to be hyper-alert, hyper-aware, and hyper-ready every minute of every day. You carry the weight of old survival patterns while trying to build new, softer ones.

Feeling Too Much Is Exhausting

The frustrating part is that sometimes you’re tired not because you did too much, but because you felt too much. And the hardest part is that you don’t get to opt out of it. You just have to keep living inside your own nervous system, even when it feels impossible.

So when you remember being told you were “too emotional,” it wiggles its way back in. It makes you wonder if you’re doing this wrong. If you’re feeling wrong. Or if you’re somehow failing at healing.

Truth is, we aren’t.

Old Rules That Stick Around

Yes, those old conditions don’t vanish overnight. They remain somewhere in the background, quietly reminding us to not feel so much, to not be so loud, and to certainly not be so sensitive.

It’s one of the many invisible battles of living with CPTSD, not just learning how to feel but unlearning the shame that came with it. And we aren’t only surviving our past trauma; we are having to negotiate all the rules that got left behind with it.

Choosing to Feel Anyway

It’s hard, and even though I am struggling today, I would rather be here where I am now, able to feel, even when it hurts or it’s confusing. To experience the world with softness instead of numbness. And to sit with my own heart instead of running from it.

Feeling deeply can be exhausting. But numbness was slowly erasing me as a person, and all I had inside to give.

So I choose this.

Even on these heavy days.

Especially on days like this.

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash