#with some trauma and possible cptsd splashed in

[ofbeetlesandbees]

I should go to bed... I am having the Mental Illness and it is making me feel like everyone tolerates me at best and I have brought nothing of value to anyone's life Ever.

[angstmonsterwrites]

After a lot of therapy and research (15+ years combined), I think it's better to say that trauma sabotages how you're able to express your personality. It does not become your personality, and it's certainly not something you consciously chose.

The behaviors described above are fear reactions, not personality traits. You feel stressed and like it's your job to make others feel better because at some point, it was drilled into your head that others' bad moods were a type of threat. (And indeed, for a while, they probably were.) Meanwhile, you're unable to accept support because life has taught you that vulnerability is dangerous--that it's going to be used against you somehow, or even that your mood has some kind of inherent moral quality that isn't so great. Even what's meant as sincere compassion or empathy toward you can easily feel like a sort of backhanded condemnation.

(And that's all before we get into how trauma fucks with your sense of personhood and autonomy, but suffice it to say that childhood and/or protracted CPTSD flavored trauma touches everything.)

However, many survivors are so preoccupied with managing those reactions that they lose sight of their personality and may even begin to doubt they have one beneath all the coping and suffering.

You're not responsible for managing and processing anyone's emotions but your own. It's one thing to be considerate of others, but quite another to struggle with the belief that it's your responsibility to predict and regulate everyone else around you. And if you have people around you who seem to think that it is? They're either seriously failing to manage their own issues and harming you via emotional splash damage in the process, or they're just plain assholes you'd probably be better off without if at all possible.

Anyone else have that thing where you get stressed out when someone else is in a bad mood because now it's your responsibility to make them feel better, but if you're in a bad mood and someone tries to cheer you up you get stressed out because now it's your responsibility to pretend that it's helping to make them feel better.