Does anyone else with #CPTSD *and* #neurodivergent #ADHD (as opposed to trouble focusing and/or agitation due to trauma) feel like they just completely and totally suck, pretty much all of the time? Especially in your romantic relationships? Like, for me, because I have ADHD and CPTSD together, and they aren’t caused by eachother…although they do exacerbate eachother for sure…I cannot grasp the concept of object permanence. I learned about it in a psych class and then a few years later my pastor told me totally out of the blue that I never learned that concept. For me it is a complex trauma thing primarily but also probably a neurodivergent thing…I’ve heard several people with ADHD talk about literally forgetting that their friends exist when they aren’t right there. For me, between both issues, I literally cannot grasp that my boyfriend loves me if he has not told me in the past 10-15 minutes. I don’t do the clingy thing usually (although sometimes, to be fair, so usually I just withdraw and my #Depression and #Anxiety and feeling #worthless and #Unlovable get worse, until eventually I text him and tell him that I’m worried he doesn’t love me anymore. The thing is he has the same two “disorders”. CPTSD and ADHD, so he goes through the exact same thing. If I had to guess, I’d say we’re both the #disorganizedattachment aka #fearfulavoidant attachment type. I have taken a bunch of assessments and I know I am, and he basically has my brain in a male body with different but complementary likes, dislikes, and interests. Except his “toxic inner critic” manifests as “hearing voices” outside of his head, and mine manifests as several different silent “voices” of various abusers inside my head. He seems to be way more successful at tuning them out than I am though. How do I turn the enormous self hatred off? Nearly every time he tries to show me he loves me, this is a weird image but go with it…it’s like my brain pulls up some kind of drawbridge and he has to swim through this moat full of alligators to get to where I’ve withdrawn to. And I’m stuck on the dang island and I can’t get out and get to him, even though all I want is a hug. And he’s the exact same way when it comes to me. We just alternate who’s insecure when and who’s reassuring who. I just don’t know how much longer he’s going to be willing to swim through mental alligators to pull me out of my #Trauma vortex, as my SE therapist calls it.