More landscapes from Week17 / Limburg : glimmers of joy !
#traumarecovery — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #traumarecovery, aggregated by home.social.
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CW: Housing Update (Neutral)
on the waitlist for a disability community a friend here sent me an application for. more waiting is still horrendous and scary but at least theres more avenues of escape. Thank you for supporting me
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𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐬 𝐏𝐓𝐒𝐃? 𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝟗/𝟏𝟏 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝟐𝟓 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬.
PTSD can make the past feel present—through intrusive memories, fear, sleeplessness and a constant sense of danger.
Forgetting 9/11 explores what trauma can take from a survivor, what treatment can restore and why healing remains possible.
Watch at https://preview.ablechannel.com/forgetting-9-11-broadcast-version
#Forgetting911 #WhatIsPTSD #September11 #TraumaRecovery #AbleChannel
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DATE: September 14, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: MDMA-enhanced couples therapy shows promise for treating PTSD and relationship distress
New research suggests that pairing a brief form of couples therapy with MDMA can lead to large improvements in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and relationship satisfaction for veterans and their partners. The preliminary findings, published in Journal of Traumatic Stress, provide evidence that these benefits occur even when only the diagnosed veteran receives the medication.
Posttraumatic stress disorder, commonly known as PTSD, is a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. Symptoms tend to include flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety. Beyond the individual, PTSD often strains close relationships, undermining communication and a sense of safety between partners.
Veterans are particularly at risk for PTSD due to the stressors of military deployment. Their intimate partners frequently experience secondary effects, leading to elevated rates of relationship distress. To address both the individual symptoms and the relational strain, psychologists developed cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy. This is a type of talk therapy where the person with PTSD and their partner attend sessions together to learn how trauma impacts relationships, how to communicate better, and how to challenge unhelpful trauma-related thoughts.
While this therapy is effective at reducing PTSD symptoms, its ability to improve overall relationship satisfaction tends to be moderate. The brief, eight-session version of this therapy is similarly effective for PTSD but produces even smaller relationship gains.
To boost the relationship benefits, researchers have been looking into MDMA, a psychoactive drug that alters mood and perception. In a clinical setting, MDMA is thought to promote empathy, social connection, and a reduction in fear. For instance, a 2026 trial analysis found that MDMA combined with psychotherapy helps relieve chronic PTSD symptoms, with patients experiencing positive mood changes that aid in their recovery.
A previous study tested the full cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy protocol paired with MDMA, but it gave the medication to both partners. The research team behind the new study, led by Leslie A. Morland at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD, recognized that prescribing MDMA to a partner who does not have PTSD is likely impractical under future medical and insurance guidelines. They designed their study to see if providing a brief version of the therapy, and giving MDMA solely to the veteran diagnosed with PTSD, could still yield both individual and relational benefits.
The researchers recruited eight couples from the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. In each couple, the veteran met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, while the partner did not. The veterans had an average age of about 46, and the partners had an average age of roughly 43.
The treatment program lasted about seven weeks. It involved the eight-session brief cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy protocol, but added two day-long MDMA dosing sessions for the veteran. Before the first MDMA session, the couples attended an introductory preparation session.
During the first MDMA session, the veteran was administered an initial dose of 80 milligrams of MDMA, with an optional 40-milligram supplemental dose a few hours later. The second session involved a higher initial dose of 100 milligrams, also with an optional 40-milligram supplement. The partner was invited to join the room for the final one to two hours of these MDMA sessions to connect and share, though they did not receive the drug themselves.
On the morning following each MDMA session, the couple attended an integration session. During these meetings, the veteran shared their experiences and insights from the medication session, and the partner shared their emotional responses. The therapists incorporated strategies from another evidence-based practice, integrative behavioral couple therapy, to help the partners build empathy and shift out of rigid conflict patterns.
The researchers measured outcomes using clinical interviews for PTSD severity and self-report questionnaires for relationship satisfaction. They tracked scores at the start of the study, during the treatment, at the end of the treatment, and at three and six months afterward. When analyzing the results, the researchers controlled for the initial baseline levels of the outcome variables to better isolate the effects of the treatment.
The veterans began the study with an average PTSD severity score of 39.1 on a standard clinical assessment scale, which ranges from 0 to 80. By the end of the treatment, the veterans showed a large drop in symptom severity, with an average decrease of 16.1 points.
Five of the eight veterans demonstrated a clinically meaningful treatment response. Among those five, three no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, and two achieved full symptom remission by the end of the study.
Relationship satisfaction also improved for both members of the couple. Veterans saw their relationship satisfaction scores increase by an average of 27.9 points on a questionnaire that measures relationship happiness and quality. The partners experienced an average score increase of 19.8 points.
Out of the six veterans and six partners who started the study with scores indicating clinical relationship distress, four veterans and four partners reached the non-distressed range by the end of treatment. One partner who started in the non-distressed range did experience a decline in relationship satisfaction over the course of the study.
In the follow-up period three and six months later, the researchers noted a slight rebound in PTSD symptoms, with average scores creeping up by about 6.3 points. Relationship satisfaction scores also retreated moderately during this time, though they remained better than the initial baseline scores.
The treatment was generally well-tolerated. No serious adverse events were reported. The most common side effects from the MDMA sessions included headaches, feeling warm, temporary increases in blood pressure, and nausea. All couples completed the full course of treatment, suggesting the program was acceptable and manageable for the participants.
As with all research, there are a few caveats to consider. The study was a pilot trial with a very small sample of only eight couples. Because there was no control group that received the therapy without MDMA or with a placebo, it is difficult to know exactly how much of the improvement was due directly to the medication versus the intensive therapy itself.
The study participants were predominantly white, heterosexual, and highly educated. This means the findings might not apply to couples with different demographic backgrounds or those with less access to resources.
The partial return of symptoms and relationship distress during the follow-up months indicates that an eight-session therapy model might not be enough to produce permanent changes for everyone. Veterans with complex psychiatric histories might need longer treatment or extended integration support to maintain their initial gains.
The study, “Healing together: Results from a pilot trial of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-enhanced cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder,” was authored by Leslie A. Morland, Chandra E. Khalifian, Dimitri Perivoliotis, Bettye Chargin, Al Alam, Tamara R. Wachsman, Dhakshin Ramanathan, Andrew W. Bismark, Christopher Stauffer, Anne C. Wagner, Abigail C. Angkaw, and Kayla C. Knopp.
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PTSD #MDMAtherapy #couplestherapy #traumarecovery #veteranshealth #psychotherapy #relationshipgrowth #mentalhealthresearch #CBCT #PTSDresearch
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I am currently reading Controlling People by Patricia Evans and it is AMAZING.
A bit annoying in the way it is structured, because it starts by just teasing what will be in the book, and talks about things that influence people without explaining what those things are and giving them mysterious names - until near the end of the book, when the questions are answered and terminology gets explained. I'm not quite through, though at 80% and it does seem like she follows through and does give the answers and does explain the terminology.
Anyway, apart from that slight annoyance, the book is just... amazing. It offers a perspective that actually explains why people control others and how they do it and what to do about it. How to escape the spirals of ever-increasing disconnectedness and upset and anxiety and feeling dislodged from yourself and/or reality and retaliating against such attacks only to have the attackers feel like they were attacked and need to retaliate... without resorting to both-side-ism and equating those who at least try to live in the real world with those who make a lifestyle out of "being besides themselves" and trying to live through other people instead by controlling them.
#BookRecommendation #NonFiction #Psychology #Abuse #AbuseSurvivor #AbuseCulture #Cults #cultRecovery #Trauma #TraumaRecovery #DomesticViolence #DomesticAbuse
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Never argue with someone who is in need of therapy. They are not arguing with you. They are arguing with their trauma or past.
#trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #traumainformed #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #ymhc -
When trauma destroys your sense of belonging, your faith in yourself, your trust in a meaningful universe — interventions focused solely on fear extinction leave the deepest wounds untouched.
Read more 👉 https://bit.ly/4xjQRp7
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Your trauma experience is important, even if....
#trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #traumainformed #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #ymhc -
The last few days have been hard. I won't go into detail, but studying while dealing with CPTSD really sucks.
Pushing myself through essay after essay, trying so hard to do well, and getting next to no feedback with bearly a pass mark to show for it. It wears you down.
How do you keep going when the effort feels invisible? Whether you're studying with CPTSD, navigating trauma recovery, or just running on empty this week, tell me what gets you through. I'd like to know.
#cptsd #studyingwithtrauma #studentlife #chronicpain #traumarecovery #neurodivergent #disabledstudent #actuallydisabled #neurodivergentstudent #ptsd #mentalhealth #studygram #burnout #disabledandstudying #studentwellbeing #chronicillness #traumahealing
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"I made myself stronger, by dragging myself out of a dark place and dealing with consequences that weren't my fault."
#trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #traumainformed #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #ymhc -
Trauma teaches us how to survive the world we encountered. Healing does not erase that knowledge; it gently reveals that the world - and our place within it - may still be capable of becoming something more.
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Challenge;
Watch everything you know and love burn and then start life. Construct a conception of the future after the experience has exposed reasons to believe there may be no future worth inhabiting? That's our job
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@eff3rvecenteden/117134860585940398
We all have the option of giving up. We also have the mystery of what happens if we don't.
What happens if you've already experienced the worst ?
Every explored alternative becomes a pilgrimage to hope. Extraordinary misery only has 2 exits. You burn in the fire , or you build with the ashes
#trauma #traumarecovery #mutualaid #solarpunk #hopecore #politics #genz #quotes #climatechange #bloomscrolling
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5 positive affirmations for ptsd. "I am healing, even if it takes time" "What happened to me is not my fault" "I am allowed to feel my feelings" "I can take things at my own pace" "I am safe"
#trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #mentalhealth #ymhc -
From FB, and so relatable. The Self There is a particular kind of shame that comes from looking around one day and feeling like everybody else got a head start on being a person.
They built careers while you were learning how not to panic. They formed healthy relationships while you were still mistaking familiar pain for love. They saved money, took risks, travelled, studied, made plans and developed confidence while enormous parts of your energy were being spent simply trying to feel safe inside your own life.
But nobody sees time that way.
They see the age.
By thirty you should have this. By forty you should know that. By fifty surely you should be further along. There are invisible milestones everywhere, and when your life doesn’t match them it can feel like evidence that you’ve somehow failed at adulthood.
So you compare your chapter to somebody else’s without accounting for what it cost you just to reach the page you’re on.
You forget the years spent recovering from things you didn’t cause. The relationships you had to unlearn. The beliefs about yourself you had to dismantle. The energy lost to anxiety, hypervigilance, grief, dissociation, people-pleasing or simply getting through days that looked completely ordinary to everybody else.
That time wasn’t empty.
You were doing work.
It just wasn’t the kind of work society knows how to put on a résumé.
You were learning that love shouldn’t frighten you. You were learning that saying no doesn’t make you cruel. You were discovering which parts of your personality were actually yours and which were adaptations. You were learning how to make decisions without asking what would upset everyone else first.
Some people got to spend their early years building a life.
Others had to spend part of adulthood rebuilding the person who was supposed to live it.
Of course those timelines look different.
This doesn’t mean trauma should become the explanation for everything that hasn’t happened yet, or that we have no agency over where we go from here. But shame is a terrible starting line.
Maybe you aren’t lazy. Maybe you aren’t immature. Maybe you haven’t “wasted your potential.”
Maybe you’ve been measuring yourself against people whose energy wasn’t being spent fighting battles you couldn’t see.
There is no prize for arriving at somebody else’s version of life on time.
And perhaps I’m not behind at all.
Perhaps this is simply what my life looks like after taking the long way back to myself.
#theself #knowthyself #feelingbehind #complextrauma #cptsd #childhoodtrauma #traumarecovery #healingjourney #selfworth #selfcomparison #selfawareness #psychology #mentalhealth #survivalmode #latebloomer
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I'm optimistic but it can be a struggle to reject the fearful vibes from my peers and country
I've already experienced the bottom of the well and have been climbing out for 9 years. I've been split open and I grieve.
I've scratched my way out of the grave and what I have to say about fear is that the only failure is not getting back up everytime you fall.
#mentalhealth #cptsd #traumarecovery #genz #badvibes #memes #darkhumor #nihilism #optimisticnihilism #philosophy
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Working on a zine for one of my prose #poem s I was silent for a long time as a victim of #childneglect and #abuse and the experience energizes my commitment to #animalwelfare . Everytime someone fell through an animal stepped up for me and it mattered.
I dont know how to live with what I have seen but I know that spending my time giving back to those who helped me in my hardship will never be the wrong answer #mentalhealth #cptsd #traumarecovery #mutualaid #art #arttherapy
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"You deserve a clinician who understands that spiritual struggles are clinical concerns — not distractions from “real work.”" https://bit.ly/4xjQRp7
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Some people cannot see past their own blindspots. My peace does not depend on their apology, but in knowing that I deserve more.
#trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #traumainformed #ymhc -
If you are a survivor of childhood trauma working to restore your mental health, please know you are not alone.💜I wrote "The Unbroken Heart" as an honest account of my own journey with PTSD toward lasting inner peace and healing. It features soft, gentle practices that feel like a warm blanket for the soul on difficult days.
Discover the book
https://www.janehealingangels.com/book.html#Bookstodon #MentalHealth #TraumaRecovery #PTSD #CPTSD #ChildhoodTrauma #InnerPeace #HealingJourney #SelfHelpBooks #IndieAuthor
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Violence doesn't just leave marks on the body. It changes the brain itself, shaping how a person reacts, protects, and copes long after the danger has passed. The four responses below (fight, flight, freeze, and fawn) are the nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do: keep us alive. Understanding them is often the first step toward healing.
#domesticviolenceawareness #domesticviolencesurvior #domesticviolenceprevention #traumarecovery #traumainformed #mentalhealth #psychology -
How I’m Recovering From Being a People Pleaser
People-pleasing has real costs - in time, money, and mental health. Here's how to recognize the pattern and start recovering from it.https://virtuousimprovement.wordpress.com/2026/08/09/recovering-from-being-a-people-pleaser/
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Trauma isn’t always a single event. Sometimes it’s a car accident or a house fire, and sometimes it’s years of conditional love, silent treatment, walking on eggshells, or never feeling emotionally safe at home. Both leave marks. Both shape how we connect, trust, and cope as adults.
#mentalhealth #traumarecovery #traumainformed #trauma #domesticviolence -
This week has felt like being stretched thin between hope and heaviness, a kind of ache under the skin that refuses to be smoothed over. Scrolling through timelines and hashtags has been more like wandering in unfamiliar streets than finding a home, a restless motion through spaces that don’t quite know what to do with people like me. Every platform promises connection, yet so many conversations skate across the surface, too fast and polished for the slower, tangled reality of neurodivergent and disabled lives.
Community keeps tugging at my thoughts, demanding a deeper definition than follower counts, boosts or reach. Connection becomes real when someone else carries similar static in their head and is trying to carve out something gentler for themselves and others, without pretending it’s easy. Timelines feel different when posts about neurodiversity and disability emerge from lived experience rather than from branding or performance. Some days, those posts light up my screen and remind me that others are fighting the same internal battles. Other days, it feels like standing in a noisy room where our existence is discussed like a topic, not honoured as a lived reality.
Labour has become impossible to ignore. Emotional labour. Cognitive labour. Sensory labour. Curating feeds to protect fragile nervous systems, blocking harm before it embeds, tracking subtle ableism in replies and boosts, choosing between educating yet again and guarding limited energy. Social media carries a quiet toll when you are the one translating your experience into digestible fragments so others don’t turn away. That toll rarely appears in cheerful posts about community, but it weighs on the people whose identities are constantly explained and defended.
Under all the frustration, a tender strand keeps me from walking away. Care, stubborn and inconvenient, threads through everything. Care for strangers who cling to timelines because offline life hurts too much. Care for the possibility that one honest post about burnout, sensory overload, or faith in crisis might reach someone on a night when they’re wondering if they can keep going. Care for the dream that we are slowly cobbling together spaces where neurodivergent and disabled people don’t have to sand off their edges to be tolerated.
Resolution doesn’t appear, and maybe that’s honest. Exhaustion is real, yet presence continues. New platforms and instances are tested, different timelines explored, not out of a desire for novelty but out of a longing for places that can hold the complexity of living at the intersections of neurodivergence, disability, and spiritual fatigue. Quiet, uncompromising voices keep posting from the margins, refusing to dilute their truth to fit a neat narrative. Effort from those voices matters, even when algorithms barely notice. Void or no void, scattered or gathered, the fact that we keep speaking from these edges means our lives are more than background noise, and that conviction alone keeps me here.
#ActuallyAutistic #AutisticAndADHD #Neurodivergent #Disability #ChronicFatigue #MentalHealth #TraumaRecovery #SpiritualBurnout #Fediverse #Mastodon #DisabledAndNeurodivergent
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Overcoming serious conditions from your past starts with the courage to face what was left unhealed.
#HealingJourney #OvercomeYourPast #SelfCompassion #TraumaRecovery #InnerStrength #MindBodyWellness #ThinkandGrowEducation #RayBehan #Meditation -
CW: CW: Child abuse, family trauma
One thing that has always irritated me is how often films, books, and television treat reconciliation with abusive parents as the inevitable "happy ending."
No matter what happened, the story bends toward forgiveness. The parent sheds a single tear, offers a half-hearted apology (or even none at all) and suddenly decades of cruelty dissolve because family is family. Biology is elevated into something almost sacred, as though sharing DNA creates a moral obligation that overrides violence, neglect, humiliation, or terror.
It doesn't.
For many survivors, that narrative isn't heartwarming. It's isolating. It whispers that if you haven't reconciled, you must be the one who failed. That enduring abuse is somehow nobler than walking away. That preserving "the family" matters more than preserving yourself.
What about the child locked in a dark room while they cried? The child physically assaulted as "discipline"? The child touched in ways no child should ever be touched? The child who grew up under constant humiliation, ridicule, and belittling until they learned to apologize simply for existing? Are they expected to erase all of that because the credits need a sentimental ending?
And what of those who never got the chance? Those whose abuse ended only because their lives did?
Stories that insist every broken family can (and should) be repaired don't just ignore reality. They erase millions of people whose healthiest, bravest decision was to leave.
Sometimes the healthiest family is the one you build yourself, from friends, partners, neighbours, and kindred spirits who choose you every single day.
Not every story deserves reconciliation. Some deserve survival.
Disclosure: I have no contact with my parents, and I don't want any. For reasons. No, thank you. I am not sorry.
#ChosenFamily #BreakTheCycle #ChildAbuse #TraumaRecovery #NoContact #YouOweAbusersNothing
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That Time I Thought All Would Be Right With The World
It is common knowledge that I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. I write about the diagnosis a lot. I write about my history of, at times, crippling depression. I wrote ad nauseam about various traumas (though not all), mostly romantic in nature. So most people know I can get and have spent significant time depressed. And if we’ve known each other well for any length of time, you might know that the bipolar includes a sometimes difficult to control or mask variety of anger that I am ashamed […]https://carolineprice.com/2026/06/25/that-time-i-thought-all-would-be-right-with-the-world/
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Never underestimate a cycle breaker.
By Nate Postlethwait
#trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #traumainformed #generationaltrauma #lifetrauma #intersectionalmentalhealth #traumaaware #ymhc -
Post-traumatic stress disorder at school.
#trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #traumainformed #mentalhealth #mentalwellness #ymhc #studentmentalhealth #schoolmentalhealth #copingskills #emotionalhealth