For me if things go well, I sometimes keep on looking where the bad in it is. I keep thinking: Okay, this seems good, so what am I missing here? And if people are nice to me and I feel I can trust them, I get scared and want to flee and be by myself. The more I feel there is genuine contact, the more scary it is.
I was diagnosed with cPTSD as well, by the way.
My sister has passed away a couple of years ago. She still has an in memoriam account on Facebook. I am afraid to request to remove it as I am not sure whether someone is still looking at it sometimes for comfort. I do want to keep an eye on it in case someone posts something on her wall, so I still have an account myself to check it. That is the only reason. I never do anything else with it and I ditched Instagram.
Yes. I always say that it seems like my mind just does not have the program to process good situations and respond. It just does not know what to do with it and starts looping and responding as if it were a bad situation but it cannot find the danger.
Much (not all) of my trauma is due to emotional neglect and psychological abuse. Someone literally baked me a cake a week ago and now part of me never wants to see them again because it feels too dangerous. :-( It takes so much effort to go back and act like everything is okay. If someone hurts me, I do not like it, but at least I know how to deal with that. It feels less dangerous.
I am sorry to hear you have experienced so much you are in the same boat. I wish it wasn't the case. I am a good responder in crisis as well. I immediately get energy and feel like I know what to do! Although in some cases I tend to underrespond.
A couple of years ago I saw some people fighting in the street. It was a typical situation where people seemed to be feeling the bystander effect and did nothing. So, I thought I should probably do something and I went calmly to the police station nearby to get them. Looking back and discussing with others that were there, in hindsight, this was a situation to run and get the police, not walk calmly. But I just thought it wasn't that big of a deal. At least I did something.
Another time the fire alarm went of at my work. I started to search the building for people that needed help to get outside or did not hear the alarm instead of going outside myself. This was not my job. We had dedicated people for that. I should have just gone outside, but my automatic behaviour was starting to try and save people. It was a false alarm, by the way, but apparently it still triggered some kind of trauma response or something. My boss was angry with me as they could not account for me outside of the building.
I think you are right. I was 'trained' to always put others first even if it harms me. So that is what I do when the alarm goes off.
Have you found stuff that works? I write a lot of letters to express what I cannot say. This helps a bit. Also, some forms of massage help me. People touching me also triggers me, but I have found a message therapist that I somewhat got used to now. EMDR only worked for some of the more recent trauma's, not for the more structural earlier ones. I recently started doing somatic experiencing as well, not sure yet whether that helps. I still have a long way to go before I start functioning normal again. (I did for a long time until suddenly I did not a couple of years ago.)