Dear Maida,

I hear you and feel your pain. I can relate to crying non-stop and not seeing a way out. But let me say right away: there is a way out! Don’t lose hope! Let me try to explain…

What I think happened to you is that your childhood trauma got triggered in 2010, when you experienced all those losses. You say you had a traumatic childhood, but you had been recovering well in your early adulthood:

I had a healthy/normal level of confidence – I hadn’t always per a traumatic childhood, but had been recovering well in my early adulthood.

That’s actually quite common – that we find enough strength in our early adulthood to get away from the painful conditions we grew up in, and start a life of our own. We hope that life from then on will be better and more hopeful, with more opportunities. We are doing well, we’re pleased with ourselves. But then something happens – a crisis, a sudden loss – and our childhood trauma gets triggered. And then we sort of enter a downward spiral, where everything starts falling part.

It could be that something like that happened to you too? That losing your job caused a major emotional/self-confidence crisis in you, from which you couldn’t just bounce back so easily. Maybe you couldn’t find another job so quickly, and you ended up losing your car and your home too?

If so, that was a turning point – the point where you childhood trauma got triggered and entered your life again. And then I guess you started behaving differently too: you couldn’t any more be the warm, kind and self-confident person you used to be (I used to genuinely like people and had a warm personality).

Also, it seems you were the kind of person who liked helping people (you said you volunteered at a suicide hotline). All this changed after the sudden loss in 2010. Instead of feeling confident and capable of helping others, to be there for them – you probably became worried, anxious, insecure, and possibly needy.

You needed help and support – which is completely natural in the time of crisis – but your friends, as it seems, didn’t know what to do with that. Maybe you did become too difficult to be around, but maybe also those friends of yours were people who in the past needed your help. But when it was you who suddenly needed help, they just didn’t have the capacity to support you?

So it could be both – both that you changed, and that they were more of the “taking” types, not really capable of giving help when you needed it?

What do you say?

If this sounds plausible, there are ways to heal childhood trauma (which is also called Complex PTSD). There is plenty of free materials on youtube and a lot of self-help resources if you cannot afford a therapist at the moment. (I can point you at some of those resources, if you’d like to). But the key is to know: you’re not doomed, there is a way out!

Let me know what you think…