Category: Blog
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Navigating Life’s Challenges: My Journey with Writing
Today I’d like to write a bit of an update and to reassure everyone that I’m not gone. Diary of a Flopping Fish is still moving along, thought it is going quite slowly. As I have written about before, it if very hard to balance other obligations and expectations while still have enough left in…
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How CPTSD Survivors Can Protect Their Dreams From Other People’s Expectations
CPTSD, boundaries, and breaking free from control.
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Navigating CPTSD: Impact on Daily Lives and New Living Situations
New homes, old triggers: How CPTSD survivors navigate the challenges of moving, from hypervigilance to food trauma in shared living spaces.
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Homelessness, Mental Health, and the 2025 Executive Order: An Opinion On Why Forced Treatment Isn’t the Answer
Explore how the 2025 Executive Order on homelessness overlooks mental health, PTSD, and workplace barriers while pushing forced treatment.
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Yoga for CPTSD: How Trauma Survivors Can Use Yoga to Manage Symptoms
Managing symptoms of CPTSD can be difficult, especially since medications have such a low success rate and the symptoms are so pervasive. Trying to regulate ourselves and manage our various symptoms leads to self-isolation, which often keeps us stationary indoors. Because of physical trauma, many who live with CPTSD feel uncomfortable and disconnected from their…
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Coping With Moving Anxiety and CPTSD: Why Change Feels So Hard
Moving is hard, but if you suffer from anxiety or CPTSD it can be even more taxing. How do you cope with moving and managing mental chaos?
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The Traverse City Walmart Attack: An Opinion on America’s Failing Mental Health System
Traverse City Walmart Stabbing: Could This Attack Have Been Prevented? Michigan is reeling from an attack at the Traverse City, Michigan Walmart on July 26, 2025 where a 42-year-old man “allegedly” stabbed 11 people at random with a folding knife. Luckily, though there were serious injuries, none of the stabbings were fatal, and bystanders helped…
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Nine Years of Blogging: A Look Back at Diary of a Flopping Fish
Well, I can’t believe it’s been nine years since I signed up with WordPress and launched this blog. I’d love to say time flies when you’re having fun, but honestly, it’s more accurate to say that sometimes, time just flies. The Beginning When I started this blog, I wasn’t sure what it would become—I was…
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Speaking Truth in Toxic Families and Breaking The Cycle of Abuse
Often our abusers keep us under their thumbs, not by action, but by the threat of action. When those abusers are ingrained as a part of a larger system, such as work or family, it makes it even harder to speak out against them or against the system.
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The Cost of Change: Leaving, Living, and Letting Go
Surrounded by Boxes Today I write surrounded by boxes full of things that are all attached to memories and events that occurred throughout my boyfriend and I’s lives. It is amazing how many things we can collect, and memories that come flooding back from them. What’s even more amazing is that all these memories attached…
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Dysfunctional Family Dynamics: When “Blood Is Thicker Than Water” Hurts
For many of us, the subject of family is a loaded one. I’m sure I’m not the only one whose blood family is large and diverse, and not everyone in a large family gets along. It’s fine not to get along with everyone, but it is dangerous to think you still have to associate with…
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Setting Boundaries: Why It Feels Wrong—And Why It’s Crucial for Healing
The difficulty of setting boundaries goes beyond the need to please others. It affects people from all walks of life, including those in addiction recovery, those re-entering society after incarceration, and survivors of toxic relationships.
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From Struggle to High Honors: Reflections on My Journey to an Associate’s Degree with CPTSD
How I went from burnout and CPTSD to graduating college online with high honors — and what I learned along the way.
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Life is Messy
Many of us have had to get all the naysayers out of our lives only to find out that they made such an imprint on us that now they live in our heads and how do we kick ourselves out of our lives? Well, we don’t. We change. We shrink the voice in our head…
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Daring To Dream: Thoughts on following your dreams when healing from trauma
Much of what keeps humans motivated to heal and improve their lives is trying to reach a goal. When we are suffering, and being held back by dysfunctional people in our lives, it is daring to dream that often brings us out of the darkness.
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Mental Health Awareness and Domestic Violence: Two sides of the same fight
My fight for mental health awareness is strongly tied to my fight against domestic violence because we do not wake up one morning and have an anxiety disorder, or a mood disorder that developed completely on its’ own without any help from our living situation. That, to me, is truly crazy.
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Not All Mental Health Professionals Are Good : Tips On Recognizing Bad Therapists
At the very basic level those services are that your boundaries are respected, and your thoughts are heard. If there is no respect for boundaires, and poor listening then there is no kind of therapy happening.
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The Art of Rolling With The Punches
We never really know what we’re capable of until we’re in the situation. Sometimes it’s great to still be surprised with yourself, but if you’re someone living with high anxiety there is nothing worse than the unknown.
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A Mental Disorder Is Not An Identity
CPTSD is just something that is in my way, and every day I chip at it a little bit more because I will not let it control me and dictate the course of my life.
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Holiday Stress: Unpopular opinions and preparing for the new year
I hate to be a drag, and I know that it’s supposed to be a cheery time, but honestly it is stressful and sad. As we all do, I try to hold on to the good things about the holidays and let them make up for all the bad.
Diary of a Flopping Fish 