Article recommendations Personality vs. Trauma Response
So, I don't really know who I am.
When I was supposed to be developing a personality, my mom became sick, cancer, and this was a journey that lasted about 5 years and I lost not only my mother but my grandma on my father's side and my father.
I was about 15/16 when she became sick and all my time was devoted to thinking if she would be ok. I left school early just to be there when she woke up, skipped classes, and when in vlass, I could not pay attention for the life of me.
I didn't have time to think about who I was, what I liked or even who I wanted to be. In that moment, I just wanted to be a girl whos mom wasn't dying.
Now I'm 29, I have never had any kind of romantic relationship, I have HORRIBLE problems with my body, the lowest self esteem I've ever seen and no clue of how a person is supposed to act bc when do you learn that??
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and GAD which makes A LOT of sense, but I can't help to wonder how much of me is GAD and how much is just trauma response.
I don't have resources for therapy right now, so the next best thing is to read about it and try to find some kind of clue to wtf am I supposed to do.
I specifically want recs on articles or books on this subject focused on my kind of problem: traumatic event at a pivotal point in development that makes you not sure about what is just personality and what is trauma response.
Also, if anyone has a better subreddit fot me to post this, pls let me know.
Thanks in advance.
Posted Jul 25, 2026, 11:41 PM UTC