Mid twenties, diagnosed CPTSD

So I’ve had medical trauma in the past, and as a result have a fear of going to the doctor. I’ve been working on this a lot lately. This week, I had a foot injury which got infected, and I got up the courage to go to urgent care to get it looked at (sorry, gross I know, but relevant to the story).

To my relief everything went well, the doctor was friendly, I got great medical advice and was told I wouldn’t need antibiotics.

A lot has been going wrong this week financially, and this medical thing was just another stressor, and I felt the need to call someone just to talk to, so I called my mom (Lol not sure why I still think this is a good idea).

Instead of empathizing with me, she told me I was being ridiculous, and heavily implied that I was wasting this doctor’s time when he probably had more critical patients.

After hanging up I got really insecure and felt guilty, so my next instinct was to call my partner to get reassurance. However, I stopped myself - If I knew this was a good decision, why did I care what my mom thought? She’s almost never given me good advice, so why do I give what she said any value?

Instead, I started blasting Lizzo songs. In the song “Soulmate” the line “True love finally happens when you’re by yourself” resonated with me. I know I made a good decision, and I was proud of myself: I got over my fear of the doctor, stayed calm while navigating the health insurance bureaucracy to find somewhere that was covered, and then advocated for my needs and asked for help when I needed it (and shut down the negative self talk of “My needs don’t matter and I’m a burden”). That’s huge for me.

I’ve told myself “You should love yourself” for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve truly been able to implement that until today. I’m proud of myself. I make good decisions for the most part. And I don’t need someone else to say that any longer: I trust my judgement and I think I’m right to be proud of myself.

Hope this was encouraging to someone. It’s really hard not to hate yourself when your parents tell you you should feel guilty for taking care of yourself. It’s possible though, it might just take a lot of practice :) hopefully I can start practicing this more, too.