I started off today with a plan on how my day was going to go, and like most days lately, it didn’t go that way. I know I talked a lot before about how hard it is to change your routine when you move, but there are just so many challenges to navigate. Living with new people is a lot about learning each others personalities and quirks, but it is also about figuring out where you fit into the fabric of the household. Everyone has different personalities and sometimes those personalities don’t meld, and people still have to figure out how to live with each other.
However, there are extra hurdles with living in a new environment around new people when you have CPTSD, or a similar anxiety disorder. In this post I want to talk about some of them, and maybe one of you has advice on them. This article looks to have some good tips.
New Experiences with Old Triggers
One of the most common symptoms of CPTSD and other types of PTSD is triggers which lead to physical or emotional flashbacks. With CPTSD, the flashbacks are often felt rather than seen, and many times the sufferer doesn’t realize they’re having one, but that they are suddenly angry, tense, scared, or a similar feeling. Over time we can get used to an environment and begin to feel secure in it again so that these triggers don’t happen so often from just day to day noise, but in my experience it takes a while.
Doors slamming appears to be a very common trigger in those with CPTSD, and it has greatly impacted me in many places I have lived. I have realized I cannot live in an appartment because of constant doors slamming, which always puts me on edge. Another common trigger is yelling, and stomping. When you’ve lived through childhood trauma you can’t always put a finger on to why certain triggers happen, but with these triggers it is pretty easy to identify that it is because this is the behavior that was displayed when it felt like you were in danger as a child. Our instinct is to run and hide, lock doors, and take up as little space as possible. When it is quiet and we think it may be safe, maybe we’ll come back out, but more than likely, our nervous systems will keep us in panic mode for a while.
Using A Shared Kitchen With CPTSD
Up until today I thought I might just have weird habbits, but apparently it is not an uncommmon experience for people with CPTSD to have difficulty keeping a regular healthy diet when sharing a kitchen. There are many reasons people may develop a phobia about making food in a kitchen when someone else is in there, or using it but it mainly seems to revolve around the fear of “getting in trouble” or the awkwardness of being watched while you make food.
Many of those with CPTSD struggle with disorderd eating; a term that describes an array of tendencies a person displays towards food, or cooking habits, which is not iteself an eating disorder, but often a symptom considered when diagnosing a person with an eating disorder. Many who have grown up with trauma, or lived in trauma later in life, have experienced difficulty in deciding what to eat, and feeling safe in the kitchen if there are others in the room or sometimes even in the house.
Common Food-Related Boundary Violations in Dysfunctional Family Systems
- Criticizing children for expressing hunger or normal appetite cues
- Interpreting positive emotions around food (excitement, enjoyment) as defiance or inappropriate behavior
- Creating impossible standards around meal preparation, including unclear communication followed by criticism
- Publicly shaming family members for not sharing personal food purchases, especially when they’ve already contributed labor or resources
- Restricting access to household food while expecting financial or domestic contributions
- Micromanaging basic household tasks through condescending instruction of capable adults
- Controlling kitchen access and cooking activities regardless of actual scheduling conflicts
- Giving contradictory permission and restrictions around food consumption, followed by punishment regardless of compliance
Impact on Adult Relationships with Food
These patterns create lasting confusion around food autonomy, appropriate boundaries, and self-care. Adults who experienced these dynamics often struggle with:
- Guilt around eating or enjoying food
- Difficulty advocating for their nutritional needs
- Hypervigilance around food-related conflicts
- Challenges establishing healthy boundaries in shared living spaces
Other Concerns
I also have to be careful with my diet as well and stay away from eating too many foods that are highly processed, hard on digestion, and I can’t eat a lot of red meat. Because of this, I need to make my own food, and often I can’t eat things that other people, or rather, I shouldn’t eat things other people make. This means that I have to strategically plan when I’m going to get meals, or plan to meal prep at strategic times, so other people aren’t using the kitchen. It also means, potentially hurting peoples feelings by not eating their food, and it’s an unfortuante consequence.
Not Everyone Understands CPTSD
Some of the best advice I ever got was from my brother, and while he has given me a lot of sage advice, one that sticks with me is “Other peoples opinions of me is none of my business.”
As lovely as this advice is, in practice, it is hard to follow especially if you live with people who may not have a good opinion of you. Not everyone understands how much Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) impacts your life. They do not understand the struggles that you face in doing every day things such as eating, and feeling safe enough to go into the common areas of the house. They won’t see you sleeping in as trying to get any sleep at all because you didn’t fall asleep until 5 am due to your disorder.
It is never the things that you know you’ve personally overcome that make up other peoples opinions of you, but how they perceive your actions. Having CPTSD also means that your brain is wired different, and it doesn’t function so well sometimes when you are in a heightened state of awareness. We often forget to close cabinets, lose focus in the middle of a conversation, and burn out faster on energy during the day. However, it is these very same symptoms of the disorder that make people judge us for being lazy.
The truth is that people only see what they want to see, and if they want to see someone as lazy and good for nothing they will find reasons. It is always best to find a way to communicate your concerns with the people you live with rather than hiding as we are so good at doing.
Not Everyone Values What You Do
When we follow our passions we aren’t always doing it because there is immediate monetary benefit. This blog did not start out with the intention of becoming a cash cow, and as much as I would like it to become one, I can’t create something when I am putting all of my energy into working jobs to pay the bills, and keeping up with housework and other tasks we need to do to keep ourselves alive. I am also contending with the tides of an anxiety disorder, after all, that zaps away all of my energy and attention on bad days.
As a result this blog has remained a passion, and has not come to bear real, monetary, fruit. I keep writing it anyway, though, because the other benefit of this blog is that I may help others, I may help myself, and maybe I can find community with it. I have also learned a lot of new skills that can be used towards other future job prospects in the process. I am really proud to show new people I meet my accomplishment, and tell them that I write a blog about mental health because I built this busted tower from the ground up, and it is my beautiful, broken baby.
However, not everyone sees value in what I do. I have been asked a few times if I make money doing it, and when I have to say no, well that’s the end of conversation. It just doesn’t have any other value to them. It was the same way when I was actively writing and playing music. My aunt, who I no longer talk to, used to tell me I was wasting my life, and she especially like to say this right before I had a show. I wish I could say it didn’t effect me, but in truth, it really hurts when people who are supposed to love you won’t support or appreciate something that brings you joy. I have struggled for a decade with choking every time I get on stage and singing off key, or forgetting how to play guitar because the many hurtful things said to me about my musical ability always echo in my head.
My experiences with criticism of my passions in the cases that traumatised me were just tendences in a long pattern of abuse. These patterns of abuse make me incredibly sensitive to the opinions of others about my passions, and I fight with sharing them with others. It is also a big reason why I started this blog anonymously, and only in recent years have I attached my name to it. Sometimes if we want to follow our dreams, we have to play our cards close to the chest until we get into the right space phsycially or mentally to bring them out into the open.
Difficulty Trusting Your Perception
Often, those with CPTSD have trouble discerning when they are in a safe space or not due to traumatic events or patterns teaching us that we cannot trust our own perceptions. Frequently, we are unable to speak up for ourselves, or communicate our needs out of fear of retaliation in the form of rejection, or judgment. In my case, the hurtful things said to me in the past about my passions, and scolding looks recieved or other bad interactions that occured to me when I ventured into the kitchen to get food, keep me from being able to feel comfortable in shared kitchens or being able to talk to others about things I enjoy doing.
Much of the work that I have done in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) has focused around learning to trust myself again, and see situations for what they are. The more I read about the changes in the brain that occur because of long term trauma, the more I realize that this difficulty often occurs because of the way trauma has rewired it; more of this in the future when I have compiled more information, but for now I just want to say, that in some ways our brains are broken, but it isn’t permanent. We can learn, grow, transform, and become whole again.
In Conclusion
Living with CPTSD provides many challenges in all aspects of our lives. We have to learn how be happy and satisfied with work, remain productive, like ourselves, take care of ourselves, and build meaningful relationships. This is not the life we would have chosen for ourselves, but we have to play with the hands we are delt. While you are stumbling your way through a normal life just remember, you can win a poker game with any hand if you play your cards right.
Edited by: Timothy Gonzales
Interesting Resources
Abuse Refuge Org. (n.d.). Weaponizing nourishment: Abuse through food. Abuse Refuge Org. https://abuserefuge.org
American Psychiatric Association. (n.d.). What are eating disorders? Psychiatry.org. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/eating-disorders/what-are-eating-disorders
CPTSD Foundation. (2023, May 15). CPTSD and a lack of self-trust. CPTSD Foundation. https://cptsdfoundation.org/2023/05/15/cptsd-and-a-lack-of-self-trust/
Footsteps and Food. (n.d.). Living with someone with CPTSD. Footsteps and Food. https://footstepsandfood.com/living-with-someone-with-cptsd/
Mayo Clinic Press. (n.d.). What is disordered eating and when does it become an eating disorder? Mayo Clinic Press. https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/nutrition-fitness/what-is-disordered-eating-and-when-does-it-become-an-eating-disorder/
The Diary Of A Flopping Fish and any posts or articles published on Diaryofafloppingfish.com are not reviewed by a therapist or medical or mental health professional. Resources are cited and opinion is opinion. No advice or opinions in any articles replace professional advice from a doctor, therapist, or any other kind of health professional. The author is not a licensed professional of any kind.
I would love to hear what you think or your experiences with new living situations! Comment below or find me on social media!
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