> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://cptsd-insights.ghost.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# About me / why this blog?
- URL: https://cptsd-insights.ghost.io/about-me-why-this-blog/
- Published: 2026-08-12T15:35:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T17:42:39.000Z
- Author: CoreKintsugi

To the public, I’m a father of two daughters, a husband, and a successful IT Business Relationship Manager (albeit currently looking for a new opportunity). But what the public doesn't know is that I live with severe CPTSD, Complex PTSD...or whatever term one chooses to use.

I live in Western Europe, where roughly 50% of the population suffers from a diagnosable mental health condition during their lifetime, and more than 1 in 20 people purposefully hurt themselves in desperation, overwhelmed by emotional agony and the feeling of not being seen or understood.

I have seen the inside of clinics multiple times, for months at a time. Over the years, I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, ADHD, GAD, and chronic depression... yet none of the specialists could ever agree on what was actually driving my episodes. This went on for the best part of 20 years without true progress, despite constant therapy sessions and trial after trial of different medications.

What neither I nor anyone else picked up on was my childhood. If asked, I always stated I had a great upbringing, that my parents were wonderful, and that my birth family was supportive. My current specialist has a name for this specific blindness: she calls it a **"brutally normal"** childhood. It happens when parents provide for all the physical needs of their children, but there is zero emotional connection, no attunement, or where children are openly treated as a burden, left to raise themselves emotionally with no guidance. It turns out I had also experienced physical abuse pre-verbally. By the time my explicit memories began, I was already terrified of being seen as a burden, and even more terrified of the consequences.

Emotional neglect, anger as a parenting tool, and unattuned caregiving are visible everywhere in our modern world. I fear there are hundreds of thousands of people out there suffering from severe distress, diagnosed with depression (a symptom) or anxiety disorders, who remain entirely unaware that their pain stems from chronic interpersonal trauma. The constant fear of being a burden, of not being good enough, or of failing.

I only discovered complex trauma when I began endlessly Googling my symptoms. After stumbling across RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria), I clicked a link about CPTSD. I knew instantly. For the first time in my life, I was reading a text that explained *me* back to me. Only then did I begin to question my parents' emotional maturity, recognize their permanent coping mechanisms, and see their allergic reaction to vulnerability...and how they used anger to shield themselves from it.

No specialist in my immediate sphere had ever heard of CPTSD at that point, so I embarked on an ill-fated attempt to educate them. Ultimately, it took another severe crisis and a long, exhausting search to build a new support team, one that understood the crucial difference between shock trauma ("Big T") and developmental trauma ("little t"). It was a difficult journey; many professionals claim to treat trauma, but they only know shock trauma. I am profoundly grateful that my search for an attuned therapist was, in the end, a success.

My hope with **CoreKintsugi** (the journey I am on, to at least try and put together a functioning sense of self, a core, a feeling of safety) is to reach others and help at least one person avoid the long, agonizing path I had to tread. If this blog helps even one reader pause and say, *"What I am being told only explains my symptoms, not the cause,"* encouraging them to ask the difficult questions about their inner world and seek out trauma-informed care, then this space is an overwhelming success.