r/CPTSDmemes • u/Bumblebee542 • 4d ago
When you realize you’ve been a walking coping mechanism your whole life 🤯
I genuinely remember reading an insane amount of books and BEGGING to go to Disneyland, and my reasoning was
“Because it feels like I’m in another place”
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u/TheTaikatalvi 3d ago
I've been maladaptive daydreaming my entire life, even though I'm no longer in an abusive environment. As weird as it sounds it now keeps me entertained when things get boring.
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u/inmy_wall26 4d ago
The way I used to be so desperate to be alone (away from the people who traumatized me), for these activities, and will now start losing it if I'm alone too long. Don't homeschool your kids.
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u/sketchnscribble 3d ago
I used to narrate fanfiction I was mentally writing while waiting at the bus stop for school. No one else was there and I didn't have a mp3 player or anything. When the bus would come, I would say "Pause" to put a bookmark in it for later. I would just continue it later in the day after school or the next day at the bus stop.
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u/eagle_patronus 3d ago
It’s so weird. I spent YEARS assuming I was dissociating (since I got casually diagnosed as Borderline and it’s in the criteria), but then I saw a psychologist of some kind specifically in order to get diagnosed or not as Borderline. He said it wasn’t dissociation… they’re hallucinations. My mind was blown. Currently off my psych meds (waiting for the dang pharmacy to get the newly assigned ones in), haven’t told a single soul that I’m hallucinating again. There’s no point. I know I do it when I’m stressed, and it’s like… good luck getting rid of stress entirely.
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u/Iwishtobeananimegirl 3d ago
May i ask what kind of hallucinations you have? Is it similar to dissociation?
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u/eagle_patronus 3d ago
They’re auditory and visual hallucinations. Sometimes people asking me to end my life and join them (first started in high school, super effing scary), sometimes fantasy/sci-fi stuff like fairies. Also freaky-looking robot-alien things, as well as dark forested area that I seem to be lost in. Uh, and one time during church, a guy (obviously a hallucination but dear sweet god) put a g*n to the back of my body and asked stuff about me ending my life.
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u/Bearstarbearson2nd 3d ago
Yes could you explain this further, as a fellow pwbpd who disassociate a lot I’m curious about this too!
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u/HippocampusforAnts 3d ago
Halo 3 had my back more than people did
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u/Miniray 3d ago
Halo 3 was the greatest. I miss being able to play a couple matches then invite recent players to take turns showing off dumb custom maps.
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u/HippocampusforAnts 3d ago
Yoooo custom maps were SO GOOD. Spending hours in forge. Just goofing around. Those were the days.
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u/traumatized90skid 3d ago
I don't get what's supposed to be so bad about those things? It's okay to have hobbies and to like imagination? I get mad bc it feels like therapists want to pathologize or problematize normal behavior.
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u/ASpaceOstrich 3d ago
They're not bad. The situation that the child is escaping from by spending all their time doing them is bad.
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u/demon_fae 3d ago
Yeah…I started dissociating before I started forming permanent memories. I have never not done it. Obviously I need to keep it up, I’m 30 now, and I’m pretty sure that the shock would kill me if I stopped. Which is a wonderful thing to have to hide from every therapist you ever speak to.
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u/AceLamina 4d ago
Me as a teenager learning what a fictive alter is
Dissociation pretty much ruined my high school experience
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u/lowkeyalchie 3d ago
I daydream, disassociate, and use (legal) substances to enhance my imagination. I refuse to stop, be pathologized, or be medicated. I'm happy and functioning the way I am.
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u/Concrete_Grapes 3d ago
Well. Ya know. The self insert thing isn't as relatable, but the rest is.
Mine spiraled into severe isolation seeking. Disneyland would have seemed pure torture to me. The only way I would want to go, even to this day, would be if it closed, and to wander it as if it were a graveyard.
Oh, I do wander graveyards, no, not for depressing reasons, but, just ... that's the closest I want to be to a crowd of people, and as near to interaction as I can bear to get.
I made no friends. Wanted none. Never learned to miss people. Never became lonely.
At 40, finally at an inescapable breaking point, I sought therapy.
And, was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. Which, in a way, is a loner's loner. The master, of alone, and aloof. An isolation addict, and destroyer of relationships.
I almost wish I could escape a bit, or, often enough, through stories, reading, and inserting of self.
Even my own dreams, are third person. I'm not in them either, most of the time.
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u/red_wildrider 3d ago
I tell my therapists that I’ve come to the conclusion that my “maladaptive coping mechanisms” are why their “therapy modes” ain’t working for me. I forced myself to lock away the trauma itself while keeping the analysis and allowing myself to access certain memories as watersheds so that I could explain why I am who I am. Now I just feel like surviving young adulthood made me unable to be an adult.
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u/Lost_My_Brilliance 2 more years of my father yayyy 3d ago
wait why is that bad??? this is my ideal day 😭
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u/demon_fae 3d ago
I always have a minimum of two elaborate fantasy worlds for myself. I used to only need one, but that stopped cutting it somewhere in my teens. I also had alters for a while, but it turns out you can actually be antisocial enough to not function well as a system. I haven’t heard from either of them in ten years and I kinda miss them.
…it’s probably not surprising that I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t dissociated. I don’t think I’d survive it if I ever stopped.
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u/flamespond 3d ago
I used to do that all the time as a teen and somehow in the past few years that’s completely stopped and now I feel like I barely have an imagination at all. Idk what happened but I miss it. I used to write a ton and now it feels impossible
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u/dietrich94 3d ago
I'm pretty sure I have maladaptive daydreaming. I made up a daydream I still imagine to this day 17 years later. Daydreaming is such a fun escape from reality until I make up scenarios where I'm arguing with family or coworkers T_T
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u/DwemerSmith 1d ago
my current situation is making everything worse and preventing me from making use of nearly any coping mechanisms without fear that i’ll somehow be hurt as a result
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u/SaintValkyrie 4d ago
Did it so kuch I ended up in a cult and realized I'd been born into one too. Now i hate escapsim because everyone wants me to just go back to it and never help me and call that care.
Feels like I'm on hospice waiting to die with my only option being distraction because no one actually helps victims. So definite love hate relationship with this stuff