Nate Postlethwait

No one will tell you to stop dwelling on the past quicker than a person who doesn’t want you to remember the things they’ve never apologized for.

Sending compassion to every complex trauma survivor who remains in a freeze state due to the news, the world, the inundation with constant triggering information that your mind and body is trying to navigate. Do what you have to do to respect that response.

You will know you’ve found your people when you experience them in difficult moments and realize honesty doesn’t have to be brutal and love doesn’t have to be tough.

If they support the people who’ve traumatized you, they don’t need to know anything about your life. Let them guess.

You are supposed to be triggered when someone mistreats, lies to, or disrespects you. You can heal to lessen the intensity of that trigger, but having a reaction to poor treatment means your body is alive, alert, and reminding you that you deserve better.

The people who cause you the most hurt, will then create false narratives around you, your experiences, and your character. They do this because in order to be honest about who you are, they would have to be honest about what they’ve done.

Dysfunctional families can’t survive without denial and a scapegoat. So, when one person begins to speak up about the dysfunction, those who survive by and benefit from the dysfunction will eagerly blame that person to keep their survival and security in tact.

The people who choose to heal from a dysfunctional family, are trusting themselves to be an example of someone they've never had. Brave as hell.

I wish people understood that when someone seems to overexplain, it’s often because of how much they’ve been misunderstood. They’re trying to give you information that they assume is hard to understand based on how they’ve been treated. This deserves compassion, not criticism.

Please stop spending your time trying to be understood by people who have contributed to your trauma, but never to your healing.

“You’re still hurt by that? That was a long time ago!”

Not to a nervous system. Abusive behavior puts a brain on constant alert to send warning so it doesn’t happen again. It was a long time ago for the perpetrators, but survivors remember & experience it like it was yesterday.

To understand the life of a person with cPTSD, is to understand they’ve experienced multiple traumas and after each one, people taught them how to adapt to that pain, rather than making the traumas stop.

It’s typical of dysfunctional families to blame a person for speaking up about the dysfunction, rather than address it. That’s called scapegoating. The scapegoat is often a bright light and no one hates that more than those willing to remain in the dark.

An honest child will pay a significant price in a family or home where truths are hidden.

There’s nothing normal about expecting family members to be in the same room when one has abused the other. This is abnormal. This is harmful. This is perpetuating more abusive patterns. When you elevate family traditions over protecting the abused, you are re-creating the abuse

You will be disrespected by people who envy your ability to be authentic. You will be dismissed by people who fear your strength in how you address your pain. You will be critiqued by oppressors as you find the things that set you free. It’s your life. Don’t slow down for them.

The scapegoat is often the empath or highly sensitive person who expresses an authentic hunger for better treatment, truth, and/or change. This is the most threatening temperament to a toxic system-familial or other.

I hope you heal from all the things your family denied happening to you.

To those who've felt unlovable:

This is often a painful aftermath of not having support when you needed it most. I hope you find ways to love all parts of you, but especially the parts that felt rejected or like they they didn't belong.

Be kind to people-pleasers. Many of them were taught the only way to be accepted was to give others what they want without getting anything back. They were taught this by people that were supposed to keep them safe and teach them about love. Seriously, be kind.

There are people that would rather lose you than be honest about what they’ve done to you. Let them go.

A haunted house for people with cPTSD, but it's just a room full of people saying "Everything happens for a reason."

cPTSD is a result of not having the freedom (or access) to acknowledge and process trauma. The complex part is because the trauma was ongoing. PTSD represents specific traumatic memories. Complex PTSD presents those memories and experiences having no end.

Abuse survivors are heavily triggered by dishonest people. When you’ve sacrificed your time and security in order to figure out the truth, people who lack truth will feel like they’re pulling you back to your darkest days.

“Family is everything.”

No, healing is. And if the family is who caused the trauma, they don’t always get to participate in the healing.

An enabler will listen to you share the most harmful things someone has done to you, and then tell you you’re misunderstanding what happened. When I say enablers are just as dangerous as perpetrators, this is what I’m talking about.

We’re too quick to tell a traumatized person that it’s their responsibility to heal without considering what has been taken from them.

When a person chooses their dysfunction and denial over a healthy connection, they’re helping you make choices too.

“But forgiveness is for you!”

So is justice. So is accountability for those who hurt them. So is the anger that must be heard for them to find peace. Stop using forgiveness to shame people for healing on their own terms. If it’s for them, let them decide. Stay out of their way.

People have a hard time detecting red flags when they grow up being taught to normalize the way they were being hurt by people who were supposed to protect them.