#actually traumatized
before trauma: I love live music feeling the bass in my chest and the community and the feelings omg
after trauma: there’s way too many people here and if I stay I will have a panic attack it’s worth the ticket price to not be there
.•° .·:·. Boy’s Abyss .·:·. °•.
Maybe this is a controversial take, but I don’t think we should be telling survivors about the “benefits” of their trauma. I don’t think they should be told that “at least your trauma made you kind,” or that it “built character.”
My trauma didn’t make me kind. My trauma didn’t build my character. I made me kind. I built my character. I made myself who I am today.
I think what we should be telling survivors is that they didn’t deserve what happened to them and it should have never happened. You’d be amazed at what validating someone’s experiences can do for them.
Dude one thing I never hear people talk about trauma is that it can rob you of your discretion and individual decision making skills. I’m so afraid to trust myself making life choices that I have a crew of people I ask and legit many of them are idiots who always make me doubt my instincts. Someone gaslights you and you learn how to doubt your own mind. This goes quintuple for those who have experienced mania, psychosis, disassociation or any other mental illness mind alternated state. I am getting very tired of the feeling of asking others for permission and advice. It’s taken a million years to get to this point but I know my own mind and I know what I need from my life.
being afraid that someone’s only talking to you to use you, make fun of you behind your back, or blackmail you
always feeling usless and unwanted or needed
praying someone sees your bruises and marks and notices how you go to the nurse every day for icepacks and helps you. please take me away.
always feeling like you’re in danger
paralyzing anxiety through your entire body when anything bad happens. you seize. you can’t move. am i too scared or just unable?
anxiety making your body heavy and slow. fear making you speak slowly, quietly, and carefully.
talking quickly out of fear of being cut off before you can finish your sentence, even if who you’re talking to has never cut you off before
flinching. all the time.
(It’s October and I’m still hurting)
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that some people develop after experiencing an extremely traumatic event consisting of actual or threatened death, serious injury, or physical or sexual violence. Many people who experience these types of events do not go on to develop PTSD. Events that cause PTSD:
- directly experiencing or witnessing firsthand: violent personal assaults, such as sexual assault, mugging or robbery, prolonged sexual abuse, prolonged domestic violence or severe neglect, military combat (includes being a prisoner of war), being held hostage and/or tortured, terrorist attacks, natural or man-made disasters
- learning of an unexpected and severely violent injury, assault, suicide, or death of a close family member or friend.
- in professional settings- repeated or extreme exposure to violent details of traumatic events, such as first responders collecting human remains, or police officers repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse (an important note:doesnotinclude exposure via electronic media unless work related)
For a diagnosis of PTSD according to the DSM V, the following symptoms must be present for at least one month (Acute Stress Disorder has similar symptoms but they last for less than one month). and impair social or occupational functioning, cause great distress, and aren’t accounted for by any other factor:
- two forms of recurrent involuntary intrusive re-experiencing of the events: disassociative flashbacks where upon exposure to triggers, the person feels\acts as if the trauma is actually occurring, intense recurrent nightmares directly associated with traumatic event, recurrent involuntarydistressing memories of the event (not rumination)
- alwaysor almost always avoiding: memories, activities, people, places, or events that provoke distressing memories\thoughts\feelings associated with the event
- two hyper-arousal or reactivity symptoms: hyper vigilance, intense startle response, concentration issues, reckless or self destructive behavior, irritability, sleep issues due to heightened arousal, concentration issues, angry outbursts
- two memory or mood symptoms: inability to remember important aspects of trauma (not due to intoxication or head injury), self-blaming, inability to feel positive emotions, diminished interest in significant activities, feelings of detachment, distorted negative thinking about the future,
Risk factors for developing PTSD include:lack of emotional support following the event, childhood trauma and pre-existing PTSD, mental illness, and other stressors following the traumatic event. Factors that decrease chances of PTSD include:emotional support, lack of guilt and initial healthy coping mechanisms. There’s a correlation between PTSD & suicide, and many people with PTSD have reported suicidal thoughts. There’s also a link between PTSD and depression, addiction, panic disorders and personality disorders. Successful treatments include Cognitive Behavioral Therapies: Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing, Exposure therapy, & Cognitive Restructuring. Medications used to treat PTSD include SSRI anti-depressants and anxiety medications.
i have it too among others and my 30 yrs have been painful
Post link
It just pisses me off that my parents purposely screwed me over, never teaching me any valuable life skills & abusing & neglecting me until I was scared of everything, all because they wanted a perfectly obedient live-in servant. And when I finally started to advocate for myself, they realized they’d failed and tried to kill me.
Things have been ok for the last few months in respect to mental health. My mother had been on pretty good behavior, at least for her anyway.
Though around the holidays she had a meltdown while driving and purposely tried to crash the car b/c we’d disagreed on something. Clearly that was terrifying but it’s not like it was the 1st time she’d done that. And thankfully she did not succeed.
It scares me that I can write that out with a straight face.
The last week she’s been acting like a complete gremlin. I know it’s because my birthday is coming up b/c she does this every year. She’s wicked for weeks and then enters all-out torture mode on my bday.
But I won’t give her the satisfaction. I have simply elected to no longer have a birthday. Or–at least not one I will tell anyone about.
And i don’t mean a party. I mean the actual date. It’s become a trigger for me. I have so many trauma anniversaries on or around it, that the whole month of February is something of a psychological mine field.
I get stressed out by seeing the days count down on the calendar. So I have decided that it’s just any other day and I will move my birthday, a day for celebrating being alive, elsewhere.
Just a reminder, you are NOT required to accept gifts and cards from people you’ve gone no-contact with, even if it’s your parents.
I just slapped ‘return to sender’ on a Christmas card from an abuser.
I’m not gonna let it ruin my day.
Since the holidays are upon us, just remember to take care of yourself.
I know the holidays are hard. I know some families act worse than monsters.
I know a lot of people don’t have anyone to rely on.
But if you can’t do anything else, please be kind to yourself.
They treat you inhumanely and convince you everyone else has worse intentions.
Theyare the devil you know.
Once you’re finally able to go out into the world, you’ve been trained to see everything & everyone as a potential danger. You know nothing else.
& When you’re always silent & shaking like a leaf people are less likely to want to be your friend.
Because your fear is visible, you look scary to everyone else.
So you continue to be alone.
I’ve been making a lot of progress in the last couple of months. I’m not in therapy because of finances but reading books has been helping. Not even self-help books though atm, just straight up fiction.
I’ve been taking a long look at the different kinds of relationships I’ve had in my life as a parallel to how I was raised & kind of micro analyzing them. A lot of things are finally making sense; About the way I treat myself & the way I let other people treat me. Reading fiction has helped because I get to look at lots of different character’s perspectives.
Even thought I’ve always been able to read people pretty well, interpersonal relationships have always been hard for me because of the abuse that started early in my life. It made me scared of other people and caused extreme anxiety.
Over the last year I’ve been working really hard to squelch my anxiety by getting a hold on my tendency to over-think everything & panic. A year ago I was having daily panic attacks. For the time being I’m not even experiencing them on a weekly basis.
Had family visit this weekend. And It got me thinking even more. I’m not the person I was a year ago. I’ve changed a lot. I’ve matured so much. More so than in any other period of my life. I’ve faced some things I’ve been purposely ignoring about myself. I’ve chilled out a lot. My mind isn’t always on over drive. I’m in no way cured, but I don’t think I ever knew what it meant to be calm before.
Seeing family reminded me of this because my family is a mess. Most of them are much older than me & their behavior is so self centered and abusive. It’s awkward because they really don’t care about other people.
They like hurting people for fun, and they don’t think their actions should have consequences.
They taught their children to be seen & not heard & granted them no autonomy, no self esteem. Now they don’t understand why their kids are cutting them out or having behavioral issues.
Had an aunt lose her cool with me because she said something really awful about how she treats others & I calmly called her on it. She was FURIOUS.
I don’t care if these older family members have been getting away acting like this for decades. I’m not going to sit quietly any more. They don’t scare me.
