CPTSD AND HOLIDAY TRIGGERS

This video explores the relationship between Complex PTSD (CPTSD) and the triggers we can experience during the holiday season. Suggestions around prioritizing your mental health and relationships are also provided.

xo

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(*This course is designed specifically for you if you were raised by parents who had Narcissistic, Borderline or significantly Emotionally Immature parents.)

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(***This course is designed to help you learn to heal your inner child AND your inner parent if you experienced a complicated childhood or challenging relational wounds).

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CHECKLIST IS INCLUDED IN ALL 3 COURSES!!

xo

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[ashleighmiller]

Thank you, I really needed this. It's hard being in college and seeing everyone go back home to their families. I'm here alone. I could've gone home, but it probably wouldn't be any more pleasant than staying by myself. Either way, I'll feel extremely lonely.

[heyitsme]

Great video! I recently realized that I am triggered around gift giving. When I was growing up, my mother went all out on the Christmas gifts. The dissonance was crazy-making because the rest of the year she was emotionally abusive and has many BPD traits. I loved the gifts at the time, and would think, oh maybe she's not that bad, oh maybe she really does love me, or she's turning over a new leaf, but no, she'd be right back to her old self on Boxing Day. As an adult, I used to get so stressed out feeling the pressure of gift giving, trying to buy thoughtful gifts for abusive family, and going into debt doing it, and it felt like such a betrayal to myself. Then add in to the mix that I am now estranged from my one sibling and her partner, and that is viewed as "ridiculous" by the parents. So I've chosen not to endure any of those dynamics and we are staying home this year. And I have stopped the gift giving - I no longer buy for my siblings and make a donation to a charity in my parent's names. It feels peaceful. But I can absolutely relate to the grief that you spoke of. Thank you for the video!

[rosyloveslearning]

You are such a precious gift. The way you capture and express my experience and that of many others is so precise. It offers so much relief. ❤.

[hippieatheart]

Hope your daughter is better and your family stay healthy.

[lilcherryblossom]

I remember the first Christmas my sister was living away from home and my mom invited herself and her now husband to dinner. After being paranoid all week about the visit, then singing in church the night before and all morning, I had to prepare a dinner and sit awkwardly with them for a few hours. I especially hated present time because mom had to ask why I wanted the thing I had asked for and what I was going to do with it (it was a tripod, btw. I had bought myself a fancy camera for documenting my costumes and cosplay…but I didn’t want to explain it to her for fear of being mocked or ridiculed).
After they had left I just sat on the couch and cried, relieved it was finally over.
I prefer to be alone on Christmas now. No hosting, no dinners, no craziness, just me and the Lord.

[immortalscapegoat]

Thank you for your video. I really want to implement these strategies. I want to create memories for My daughter and maybe enjoy the holidays again.. i can't let my trauma effect her.. we never have money for christmas gifts and give them late.. I feel awful about it.. it's just hard because I dread holidays. I feel like an imposter with my husband's family, feeling like I cant just get close to people even when I want to. We had drama last week with the stepkids and don't even want to go because I'm already on edge. .
ill try to be short with my back story. My sister and I were taken by cps, foster care, adopted and it was traumatic in a way, they were always in the hospital for major things. My adoptive mom died suddenly when we were 14 and my dad was extremely unwell, speech was taken almost completely by a stroke.
We went to live with a narcissist. She made the holidays so dramatic and threw gifts at me when she was mad and almost made a huge dramatic scene every holiday. When I was 18 my dad died the day after christmas. At one point she kicked me out of our own house our dad left us and I lived with the "pastors family" and my narcissistic guardian knew I was afraid of driving and told me that if I couldn't meet her in saratoga she wasn't getting me for Thanksgiving. I was all alone. I can't stand that woman.

I ran away from my home in NY, realizing in the process I was in a cult for years because of her and she had exploited our inheritance. I just feel nothing around the holidays. It's been reframed into dread and abandonment.

[angelabeck]

Thank You Dr Sage- You Get Me and i finally have Hope at 77years old🙌🏼🤟‼️

[TheDutchessOfCornville]

Oh my gosh, thank you for this. Easter is coming and I have 3 little kids. This past year has been so hard because the holiday mental labor is getting to be too much for me. I have a great husband who has no damn clue what goes into special occasions in our home. The decorations magically appear. The yard becomes a decorated wonderland. Gifts, baskets, treats, feasts… Everything just appears in front of everyone, including the grandparents. I do it all by myself unless I prepare a detailed list of EXACTLY what is needed to be done. But, thinking of every single thing that needs to be done, from lugging totes of decorations up from the basement to just vacuuming the living room needs to be bullet pointed or else no one else will be doing it.

I’m so tired. I’m tired of other moms moving the bar EVERY SINGLE HOLIDAY, so that my kid has a new “tradition” that they just have to try now.

I’m just whining because I’ve expressed this to my family a million times and nothing changes.

And I’m finding myself more bitter and anxious about stupid holidays. Hell, Mother’s Day is coming up and if I don’t tell them exactly what I’d like, I’ll get something from CVS a mile away, or something in an Amazon box. It’s really hurtful because I work so hard to give my kids the holidays I dreamed of as a kid, but it’s getting more difficult every year.

[seahorse]

A difficult time with play and joy-yes around my birthday.

[kaylamorgan]

I’ve been really torn this week about whether to go to my grandma’s house for thanksgiving. This is the first year I haven’t lived at my parents house for the holidays, and it’s the first year I can choose what to do for myself. I think I’ve already decided, I was just trying to convince myself of the opposite. I wonder if that’s where most of my indecision comes from.

[hippieatheart]

What if you know something was horribly wrong but you have no clue why