I was reading this today and thought I'd share if anyone else might relate. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24881-cptsd-complex-ptsd We know from research and personal experience that LGBTQ+ people who feel hostility toward our existence and worse treatment, mental health conditions of all sorts are more abundant among us. Being a sensitive boy in a dysfunctional and somewhat neglectful family didn't work well for me and caused cptsd I think. It's also hard as a guy in a world that still expects us to be tough and not have mental health struggles or admit them. Goes right along with the culture of not admitting being turned on and having feelings for guys, or only doing it secretly, which keeps the status quo of our discrimination in place and personal closeted suffering. It's all related to nonsense like never show vulnerability, being a "real man" and it has caused so much damage we don't even know. Unhappy people raising kids and passing on the same shame and unhealthy expectations to try to live up to, while ruining our mental health. It's a self-damaging and self-sustaining cycle that has to be broken on a large enough scale or we keep doing....this...
TW: mention of trauma but I don’t say what it is. I’m so sorry you feel like this, it’s so tough I have an idea of how you feel because I am diagnosed with BPD and have had admissions to psychiatric hospitals because of it. I don’t have C-PTSD but I am being assessed for PTSD due to trauma from my childhood and adulthood (the childhood trauma was also the root cause of my BPD), I won’t mention it in this thread because it may trigger some people as it is of a sexual nature. If you would like to discuss how you are feeling, we can continue in our PMs if you would like? I am obviously not a man but I have friends who have felt the same as you. Also struggling doesn’t mean you aren’t a “real man”, you are a very strong person from what I know from speaking to you!
The stigma of mental health diagnoses needs to go away. Mental health does not know gender, age, social status, or anything like that. But it is true that LGBT+ people suffer from these issues more based on what I've read. They have mentioned C-PTSD and BPD being related. I'm referring to Borderline Personality Disorder and not bipolar disorder. The main thing about BPD is having a shaky and unstable sense of self. They mention that BPD folks can be violent. Not all of them are, and I don't know if verbally going off is considered violence. There's another misconception. Women are assigned the BPD diagnosis way more than men. It's probably that men aren't diagnosed or they are given a different diagnosis. BPD is one of the harder PDs to treat. It has that enduring feature just like C-PTSD, where the onslaught of bad things had to have gone on for a long time. The longer they go on, the deeper they take root. PTSD can come from mostly one horrible chapter, like being in combat or jailed or locked away and abused, and it can be just as bad. C-PSTD seems to be like a book, with several chapters. I notice the use of the word sensitive. It's sad that society has come to see that word negatively. When I hear it or read it, I just think that it's someone whose scanning and interpreting functions are working overtime, and this can be hard on a person. I'm not sure if hypersensitivity and pushing toward paranoia are related. I try not to look at sensitivity as a necessarily negative thing.
Yes, I thought sensitive was about being fragile and wimpy and not okay for guys. I didn't learn like you said, high sensitivity being about scanning and noticing with all your senses and the brain wants to process it all and feel things strongly. It is tiring. I'm sure I was taught to suppress feelings which was much harder for me than "normal" children. The book about highly sensitive personality trait was helpful to me and the world needs more HSP guys to be visible and leaders to offset the aggressive behavior. I figure being sensitive made me more susceptible to getting damaged by stuff that wouldn't bother non-hsp. Then turns out I was gay on top of it all lol!
