Intelligent people are OBSERVANT. They read people quickly but pretend they didn’t notice. They let you talk, reveal yourself, cross lines, and expose your intentions. Then they act once they know exactly who you are.
being a high functioning stoner is WILD because I’m not trying to “escape reality” - I simply want to soften the sharp edges of existing inside a brain that never stops fucking thinking.
ptsd: something terrible happened to you.
complex ptsd: something terrible WAS your entire environment and you had to just live in it. there was no escape.
@Favwontmiss@bigg_naeto The hardest part for many survivors isn’t remembering what happened. It’s realizing that the confusion, anxiety, hypervigilance, and self-doubt they carried for years were often the memory showing up before the actual memories did.
This is why many CPTSD survivors had no conscious awareness of their abuse during childhood.
The not-knowing was the protection. The knowing comes later, when survival no longer depends on maintaining the ignorance.
There is a documented phenomenon in
CPTSD research called "betrayal trauma theory," developed by psychologist Jennifer Freyd. It proposes that trauma caused by people on whom the victim depends for survival produces a specific kind of cognitive adaptation. The child cannot afford to know what is being done to them because knowing would threaten the attachment they require to survive. So the knowing gets blocked. Not as a choice. As a survival mechanism.