For me, going to work feels like being SA'd again

Hi. I have CPTSD from many events throughout my life. With CPTSD I have emotional flashbacks. An emotional flashback is the feeling you had while being abused that comes back with no memory attached to it, just an overwhelming sense of anxiety, fear, sadness grief, panic, etc. In the current moment.

I (28F) had a very abusive ex fiancé(now 32M). We met a month after my mom died, in March 2021. I was just looking for comfort in somebody else. Someone to care for me. My life was a mess. My dad had died a year and 7 months earlier. My grandma (mom's mom) had died 4 months before. One of my high school best friends would take his own life 2 months later. He would come over and cook for me, clean my house, FaceTime me every night and say he loved me pretty early. He had just moved back to our city after a couple years down south. He was living with his parents at the time. I was 23 and he was 28. He came over one day, no warning, with a big duffel bag of all his stuff. He just moved into my parents' home. We moved out that November into my first apartment. Once we moved he would yell at me and make me cry just like my dad used to. I would tell him that does not work with me to get things through. He didn't care. He said that's how he was raised and that's what he'll do. He had already hit a woman in the past, but I was young and very naive. I believed his story. Reactive abuse from her verbal abuse. But he pushed her down the stairs....

He would stand by the one exit in our apartment and not let me go on a walk when I was overstimulated. Said the neighborhood was too dangerous. But our street had mostly families on one end and abandoned houses on the other. Mind you, I had come from the suburbs to the north side of our city. There were some dangerous neighborhoods a couple miles north and then a 15 minute walk away. But if I just wanted to walk to the little park 2 blocks away and calm down, he wouldn't let me. He thought I was too soft. He wanted me to be tougher, that's why he said he yelled at me. I never had a problem in the neighborhood though.

We only had one door in the apartment. It was a 1 bed 1 bath but didn't have a bedroom door, so we used it like a studio with a walk in closet. Put up a tapestry as the door. The only door was the bathroom door, which he figured out quickly how to unlock with his nail, a coin, a screwdriver....

He wouldn't let me close the door when I needed space. He would unlock it and stand there and talk to me like I was stupid. Mind you, the front door was directly outside of the bathroom door to the right, so when he would stand there and yell at me, not let me get space, talk to me like I was dumb, he was also blocking the only exit. And soon enough he was breaking my things in anger. It ended with him hitting me and I told him if he ever did I would leave him. And I did.

To get to the title of this post, this man also sexually abused me. He would always pinch my nipples when I told him repeatedly, over and over for years that I didn't like that. He would say "i like doing it though" and I would say "but consent" and eventually I told him if he did it again I would leave him. He said "are you serious? It's that real?" Like yes, you're sexually assaulting me every time I tell you to stop and that I dont like it, but you keep doing it. He would also force me to go down on him to completion. Even when I didnt want to. Even though he wouldn't go down on me for more than a minute. My jaw would lock quickly and he would tell me to just use my hand instead. He would be watching adult content while I did this. So basically I was just a human fl\*shlight to him. He could tell I didn't want to be doing that. He didn't care. He would get upset when I wouldn't do things I did with other partners in the past. He'd say "keep that same sexual energy" but I was self harming with those people, I didn't want to be doing all that. I don't think he understood, at his big age, that sexual energy is a mutual exchange. Why would I want to be sexual with someone who abuses me?

Anyways, I had gotten a new job the August before we broke up in early November 2024. I still have that job now, but I'm in a different position in the same store. They've been very accommodating about my mental health struggles, but lately I keep feeling like every time I have to go in, the assaults are happening again. I get flashbacks, both mental images and emotional devastation. It's been happening very regularly since January of this year. In a few days it'll be 2 years I've been here, and I cannot handle it anymore. Even two days a week is too much. After an hour I start getting that sinking feeling. I am currently in an IOP program to help me deal with how much my mental health has been affecting me. I can see my progress in naming and identifying my extremes in thought, but I am still having a very rough time just going to work. That is where the flashbacks happen the most. I think I need to get a new job, start selling my art. Be proactive in my new community. I've moved twice since the break up so he can't find me.

I just get so horrified thinking about being at work. I have fidget toys to try and help me regulate, and i even had the thought today, "you are okay, you are in this moment and nothing bad is happening to you." But the flashbacks won and I ended up breaking down in the backroom. I tried to regulate myself but it doesnt seem to be working.

A few months ago I had a dream where I had a PTSD flashback in a grocery store frozen aisle from trauma that had happened in a previous dream. Now it seems that's coming to fruition. I think I need to get a new job.