I feel as though I'm moving through each day without really interacting with it. I do the things I have to do. On "good" days, I'll maybe explore something new but I mostly go through the motions of what's expected in all my various roles in life (partner, employee, friend, etc). I try to keep my life very orderly to facilitate doing this, and iff the order is disturbed I spiral.

I've seen several counsellors over the years for various events in my life that have triggered PTSD. The term "complex PTSD" has been tossed around a few times. Some clinicians have referred to it as "compounded". All have been very struck, at least one seemed extremely concerned, by how flippantly I discuss things from my past, such as parental abuse, partner abuse, medical trauma, sudden loss, among others. Many of these events came back to back within an 18 month period, others in childhood. This seems to be the main hurdle in any meaningful treatment.

I've gone through extensive talk therapy, but every time we move toward deeper therapy I hit a wall. I can talk all day long about the things that have happened in a very detached way. I can't seem to really process them and attach emotion without falling apart. There's a huge buffer between the thing that happened and how that thing affected me. Some days, I feel like I've built up too much mental scar tissue around the trauma and I'm never going to be really living my life again.