Healing to Handle the Joy: What CPTSD Taught Me About Healthy Balance

When you grow up in chaos, it becomes the baseline. You don’t recognize it for the problem that it is because to you it feels like home. It feels like home in your body, nervous system and your relationships. 

 I live with CPTSD, which developed due to a chaotic childhood and early adulthood. My baseline for most of my life was a constant, manageable depression and anxiety that I didn’t see as abnormal because it was all I’ve ever known and it impacted how I showed up in the world. 

I was a high-achieving girl in the gifted and talented education program in elementary school who participated in class and loved being at school. School was the one place that reflected back a version of me I liked.

As an adult woman, unpacking my life to this point, I finally understood on a somatic level what it meant to handle joy. Not just tap into it here and there. Stay with it. Because for a long time, joy was not something I knew how to hold without bracing for it to be taken away. 

To show you where I’m at, let me tell you about where I’ve been.

This is the first time I’m translating this particular inner experience into words, so stay with me.

The Vigilance That Never Turned Off

A life of consistent disappointment will teach you to anticipate disappointment. It becomes a protection strategy. Things are good right now yeah, but it won't last. Watch and wait for the other shoe to drop. 

I was constantly vigilant. I didn’t trust the words and actions of the people around me and it strained relationships I actually valued deeply.

I would tell myself things like “It’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong”, “I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up”, “if I expect the worst, it won’t hurt as much when it happens”. I was constantly wrestling my own mind, trying to stay ready for impact at all times.

That is an exhausting  way to exist and eventually showed up in my body. My sleep was off, I had headaches that never fully went away, and stomach problems with no clear cause. I could never quite exhale all the way. I didn't understand at the time how directly connected these things were. 

I don't know for sure, but I don’t think you can experience joy in that state. Real joy. The kind that stays with you and doesn't slip through your grip.

I wanted it. Badly. I hated feeling this way and feeling powerless inside it. All the therapy I did and I still felt this way. Something had to give. 

What Finally Cracked It Open

It took microdosing psilocybin and undergoing ketamine assisted therapy for me to be able to access what I needed to step outside of myself and see myself clearly for the first time. 

I want to be clear that I am sharing my personal experience here and not prescribing a path. What worked for me required professional support and careful intention. It’s not a shortcut and it's not for everyone. But for me, it was the thing that made the other things finally make sense.

Prior to this, a lot of advice on healing didn't quite land. It was a few too many layers deep for me to access. Once I peeked behind the curtains, I better understood what those words meant and what it was going to take to get there.

I was constantly on edge, never feeling safe or being able to truly rest. Once I started on the path of cultivating safety in my body, I was able to feel things I wasn’t able to before. 

The Anger. Then the Grief.

At first there was a lot of anger.

I didn't expect so much anger. I feel like most conversations about healing skip past it or treat it as a brief waypoint on the road to the destination of healed. It might have been brief, but it was consuming and while in it, I didn't know how long I was going to be there. I had to surrender to the anger to truly move through it.

Then came the grief.

The grief sticks around for a while. It's still something I experience regularly. There’s grief in releasing the ideals I held about the people around me and about the life I thought I would have. 

There’s freedom in this. 

Being able to hold both realities at the same time is the joy. 

Learning To Handle the Joy.

Here's what I’ve come to understand.

Joy, for someone whose nervous system was wired for threat, doesn't feel the way you expect it to feel. The body doesn't recognize it so it won't feel safe right away. There were no warm and fuzzy feelings. Just fear and the familiar brace that came with the good.

Healing has been the process of learning to stay with the good moment and not letting the familiar take me away. To let something true and positive simply be what it is without the added layer of my fear.

Being able to be present with grief and loss alongside the beauty and fullness of life is where joy is at for me right now. It took a ton of work for me to get to this point and I’m proud of my body for persisting and making it this far. I stayed present with situations that felt risky and made me want to retreat. Small steps.

I couldn't have written any of this even a year ago. This is really challenging stuff and I want to make sure I reiterate that. If you aren't here yet, that's ok.

If you felt agitated by any part of my essay, listen to that. Treat yourself kindly and find ways to take small steps towards a more balanced version of you.

You are allowed to want more.

I can’t wait to see how you grow.