A personal reflection on overthinking, emotional shutdown, and slowly understanding the patterns behind CPTSD.
The other day, I sat there for way too long trying to decide what to eat. It sounds small, but it didn’t feel that way in the moment.
I kept going back and forth—opening the fridge, closing it, just standing there like the answer was going to magically show up. I thought about cooking something, but even that felt like too many steps. Too many decisions stacked on top of each other. And the longer I stood there, the more irritated I got.
Not at anything specific. Just… everything. At myself. At the situation. And at being stuck in something so simple that I couldn’t get through it.
It felt like my brain just shut off over something that should’ve been easy. I ended up closing the fridge and going back upstairs because I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I went to bed hungry, irritated, and completely drained over something that shouldn’t have taken anything out of me.
And moments like that happen more than I like to admit.
It’s not just food.
It’s the same feeling when I’m writing and I keep re-reading the same paragraph over and over, changing things, changing them back, getting stuck in it instead of just moving forward.
My mind does this a lot. I replay conversations, pick apart tone, wording, timing—trying to figure out if I said too much, if I said the wrong thing, if I missed something. It’s exhausting.
Lately I’ve also been sitting with a decision I made recently. I don’t want to get into specifics, but I keep thinking about how I handled it, whether I went too far, whether my emotional state played a role. And it’s brought up a lot—especially around rejection, criticism, and feeling misunderstood.
And then I spiral into old thoughts about myself. Everything starts feeling personal. Everything feels like it says something about who I am.
I’ve noticed how quickly I turn things inward—how I blame myself even when it’s more complicated than that. How I apologize for things I wasn’t fully responsible for. How I carry things that were never all mine to hold.
For a long time, I thought this was just me.
So I pushed through it. Minimized it. Told myself to “get it together” even when I was clearly overwhelmed underneath everything.
But it wasn’t helping.
That’s when I came across Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).
I don’t say that like I fully understand it. I really don’t. But when I started reading about it, something about it felt uncomfortably familiar—like it was describing patterns I’ve been living in without having the language for them.
When people talk about trauma, it’s usually tied to something big and singular. That’s how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is usually understood.
But CPTSD didn’t feel like that to me.
It felt quieter. Less like one defining moment, and more like patterns that build over time.
Not what happened once—but what kept happening. The environments. The emotional tone. The way you learn to read everything and adjust yourself without even realizing it.
Over time, your body just starts living in that state.
And I think that’s the part I never really understood about myself.
There’s a way I move through the world where I’m always slightly on. Always scanning. Always thinking ahead before anything even happens. Even when things are calm, there’s still this tension in me that doesn’t fully go away.
On the outside I function. I get things done. But internally, it’s a different story.
It’s overthinking that doesn’t stop. It’s feeling like I need to get everything right even when no one is asking me to.
And I didn’t really understand why I was like that for a long time.
What I’ve started to realize is that CPTSD doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it just looks like patterns you think are normal because you’ve always lived inside them.
For me it’s decision fatigue that turns into irritability, then shutdown. It’s something as small as choosing food becoming overwhelming. Simply saying yes when I actually want to say no, and only realizing after how drained I feel.
It’s feeling disconnected sometimes—like I’m there, but not fully there.
It’s being hyper-aware of people’s energy. Tone shifts. Small changes. Things that aren’t said out loud but still feel loud to me anyway.
And it’s wanting connection, but also feeling unsure once it’s there.
It’s exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain because nothing about it looks big from the outside. But inside, it is.
I think this is where things overlap for me in a way I’m still trying to figure out.
Growing up I was always a little out of sync. Quiet. Observant. In my head a lot. I learned early how to read everything around me—people, moods, reactions—just to figure out how to exist in it.
I adapted without even realizing I was doing it.
But that doesn’t just go away. It stays with you. It becomes how you move through everything—always adjusting, always thinking ahead, always trying not to get it wrong or take up too much space.
And then even simple things start to feel heavy.
Even standing in front of a fridge, trying to decide what to eat.
What I’m slowly learning is that these aren’t just random reactions or personality flaws. They’re responses. Things my mind and body learned over time just to get through stuff.
It doesn’t fix everything. It doesn’t stop the overthinking or the overwhelm. But it does change how I see it.
Instead of immediately turning on myself, I’m starting—slowly—to pause and ask something different.
Not what’s wrong with me… but what is this connected to?
And I don’t really have a perfect answer for that yet. I don’t think I need one right now.
But I am starting to understand myself in a way that feels a little less harsh. A little less like I’m the problem. And more like I’ve just been carrying things I didn’t really have words for. Maybe I’ve just been reacting to things that my body never learned how to let go of.
When do your “small” moments actually feel like something much heavier happening underneath?
“Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” — Gabor Maté
#MentalHealth #ADHD #Autism #AutismSpectrum #Neurodiversity #PTSD #MightyTogether
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