Hello,
Do you have any idea of what to do to cope with major injustice and repulsive behavior of others towards yourself? People getting what they want from transgression and moral cheating?
Thank You,
Wyge
IMO this is where boundary setting comes in, in this case letting those people know you will NOT be treated that way. You may have to step away from them for a time or in some cases forever because some people will not respect your boundaries.
Welcome to OOTS by the way, glad you found your way here. :heythere: Perhaps you could tell us a bit about yourself and the trauma you suffered.
Well thank you so much for greeting me in this way. I was a bit triggered when I wrote my first post, glad I found my way here as well. My triggered states often involve feeling transgressed for having been abused precisely, that's why the seeking of what to think of agressors philosophically speaking. I find solace in understanding.
I read on this site a little before typing this here text; as you know reading on the subject can be a trigger in itself. I'll do my best to reply in this state. Actually I think I'm in just the perfect state for writing, being connected to myself, but not too mad to type either. Intellectual work is rendered difficult by the trauma. It's contextual and technical. Always. Principles and the essence of things hardly have their way and it sucks.
I'm a single man in my thirties. I grew up alone, one child, with my mother who was a social worker and her boyfriend, who would turn out to be my secret bully, being animalistic to me as the archetype of the agressor-type step dad. No sexual violence though, but mental, psychological, physical, emotional and moral torture nonetheless. Chronic, incessant, solid transgressions and intrusions in my personal space, threats, insidious berating, violations of my integrity and dignity, bullying, unnecessary punishing or excessive and unrealistic task giving, generally making my existence a martyrdom, etc etc you get the idea. It's like the guy was phycically incapable of leaving me alone, makes you wonder if he was even aware of what his body was doing. Let's just say it wasn't an interesting position for me. I was seen as a territorial threat by someone in a position of power. The damage is non-neglectable, as my life is, I say, not a life so to speak. I got stuck in that gear. It hurt a lot folks.
I am not dead.
In short, I grew up with a dangerous animal in my enclosure, and here I am, monkey trying to cope in a jungle I sometimes perceive as being hostile to me. The last five years of my life, I had a metamorphosis, a huge developmental phase, reading daily, all kinds of books, non-fiction - by need not by discipline - acquiring many skills, if only the vocabulary and the efficiency of communication required to signify my thoughts already.
I won't even go through all the episodes and varieties of anecdotes that happened throughout the years (the meditating and screaming alone in the rainy forest; the reading my philosophers to myself out loud at the park, pretending I was addressing a crowd as a natural substitute for lack of being understood by physically present people; the being banned of some venues for having been mean to some employee; the cosmic pain associated with incidental reminders of my assessment, taking metaphysical proportions, etc we all have our story I know) Looks like I had to let the fog (the storm?...) of my 20s pass, after which I could find the way back to where I was at as a precocious child: learning, self-educating myself.
I am unable to keep a job. Need medication I think. That is yet another issue. Well, here I am.
That's it for today I wrote a lot. Have to make sense of this life, I'm incomplete and change goals all the time. As a man made for action, it sucks to not have a direction obviously. Am I seeing a semblance of a base emerging, being capable to tell my story at least? See, there is progress, but I feel that I need a click somewhere.
When the very prospect of finding your purpose is in itself your purpose, there's a feeling of entrapment. Sort of.
Thanks for reading,
Georges
Canada
That is a lot Wyge, thank you for sharing about yourself and I'm so sorry for all that you have gone through and are struggling with currently. It does sound like you've made a lot of progress albeit painful and somewhat lonely. The nice thing about being here is you're not alone anymore and everyone gets it, at least that's what I find. For me it makes it less about me and the ways in which I thought I was weak, defective, crazy, etc., and more about what happened to me, how and why I did what I did to survive.
There are tons of resources including members who may have gone through similar experiences so please post more when you are ready.
Group hug if that's OK :grouphug:
Thank You for the kind response Kizzie,
Indeed, not alone anymore, that is key. I have counselors and docs that really do want to help me now too. I will read.
Truly Yours,
Wyge
:grouphug:
:thumbup: :)
I am looking for ways to unleash the frozen emotions. For long, writing was impossible, it would trigger me. Now I can write, but I just don't really feel the traumatic memory fall apart. I can only see that it does, with time. It's like I would like to cry or fell any kind of relief, but I cannot reach that point; I know it doesn't come up instantly, but what work needs to be done?
Regards,
Wyge
Unleashing frozen emotions? Go carefully and slowly. Really slowly. I wouldn't do it without a trauma-informed T myself. But that is just my opinion and experience in a country where health care pays that kind of thing.
I've been re-traumatised ad nauseam by either trying to go too fast myself or being pushed by therapists who weren't adequately trauma-informed and then who couldn't deal with the fall-out of Blueberry being rather loud.
Seeing in time that traumatic memories fall apart is making progress, to my mind. I also wish it would go way faster, but it doesn't seem to.
As I slowly start to understand CPTSD and feel a bit safer it seems the memories and the feelings attached to those memories are coming. For me it comes in bits and pieces. I find reading others posts on this forum helps me relate and that that in itself brings feelings forth for me. I often am blocked off from feelings about my own experiences but when I feel a strong emotion reading someone else's story it's often a clue that the strong emotion is about my story, my experience. Once I've connected the parts of my story I'm relating to I actually tell myself that the feelings I experienced reading someone else's story I transfer over to feeling for myself. Hope that makes some sense.
I'm with Blueberry - the slower the better - even though I may want the end result right away.
As you continue to write and process it all I believe it will come to you, the feelings will start to come forth. Hopefully you have a trauma informed T to help you process it all. I couldn't imagine doing it on my own. It's just too much for me - each of us are different though - what works for one may not for another. :)
It's like peeling an onion or flower - there are many layers to peel in healing.
Hope this is helpful a little bit.
Moondance and Blueberry,
Your responses reassure me.
Yes I have heard of titration - going one drop at a time - otherwise it can be explosive.
But also, each time I try to do some work, physical or intellectual, it doesn't take much time for the trauma to manifest itself: feeling overwhelmed by memories, by how it is nonsensical to leave a dangerous adult such as my stepfather with a kid, how harmless I was anyway, etc. etc. and there is no way I can keep up with the said work. It's like a handicap. Even reading can have that effect sometimes, studying, or having a job of course. My dream is to be freed from this, aiming at that end result - indeed it is hard and dangerous to do this alone. I need to tell my social worker (he studies on trauma to help me) that I need to dig (slowly) each memory that comes to mind that day, with him. I think it has a lot to do with relating and being understood by others.
Moondance, reading someone else's story can be efficient to dig in my own emotions, thinking about it, thanks for the cue.
I have some acceptance work to do, wishing it would unlock itself. The problem is it does, only with looooots time...
Hi Wyge,
You will hear "baby steps" a lot in this platform and it is very important with CPTSD and healing. As much as we all want to heal right away and as soon as possible, it can be very difficult if we try to speed up the process. I have also made this mistake where I try to write down as many things/memories/emotions i can remember from my CSA. I faced CSA from a very young age (approx 5~6yrs maybe) and it went on till I was around 15~16. Imagine trying to sit down and write all the memories in one go!! I would drive myself crazy, breaking down and crying and getting angry and pretty much everything negative. My body would literally run out of energy and then I would ruin the rest of my day; sometimes the whole week.
For me, reading other people's stories can be very assuring (especially if my experiences can relate). It definitely makes me feel sad that someone else had to live similar horror but it is also good to know that I'm not the only one and that I am not crazy to feel certain things. Sometimes watching movies with happy ending (like a child being rescued from their perpetrator) can also make me feel much better even though I know it's fictional.
I think the trick is trying any activity that feels good to you. And experimenting with them. With time, we start realising which ones help and which ones don't.
Hope you find your thing soon.
:grouphug:
Hello, Wyge.
I agree with the others that dealing with buried memories should be undertaken carefully. They are buried for a reason.
When I started working with my T I blurted out a lot of memories to her. But they were not buried memories. They were things I chose not to dwell on, but I knew about them all. The big thing was telling them to someone else.
Once I had blurted out as much as I wanted to she did not ask me to try to find more, expect on one occasion where I said I have no real memories of the first 6 years of my life except for a couple of incidents. I don't even remember my mother as a person really, just as an entity. My T suggested I might try to remember things, maybe by looking at any old photos I have etc. And I did, but there was nothing. My T then said not to push it. More may surface with time but it may not. In any event I don't think remembering things explicitly will necessarily help you deal with current trauma. I am beset with EFs and trauma brain reactions. So when I get an excessive emotional reaction my T will help me consider where that reaction comes from. I know enough about the generality of my upbringing to work through the emotions with her and think about how I can explain to myself why that reaction might once have been protective to me as a child but is now damaging. Memories of specific incidents are not necessary for that in my case.
You mention you would like the traumatic memory to fall apart but I don't see how it can, although I may misunderstand what you are getting at. If you have suffered an abusive childhood then the abuse remains abuse. There is never going to be a time when you can say X did this to me, but you know what, it is OK. Because it is NOT OK. You might choose not to dwell on it, heck, you might even choose to forgive X, but it will NEVER make what X did to you OK. I think what needs to fall apart is your trauma reaction to things that happen now which might actually be OK but which trigger you. I think it is a question of cutting those trigger threads. Frozen emotions should be able to unfreeze when you can safely feel them. But first you have to allow yourself to feel safe. I have managed to get a feeling of safety through therapy. I feel safe with my T. Now I am trying to learn how to feel safe with other people and accept that, while nobody is perfect, any mistakes safe others make are just mistakes and not some evil narc machination designed to hurt me.
I wish you all the best as you navigate this.
''There is never going to be a time when you can say X did this to me, but you know what, it is OK. Because it is NOT OK. You might choose not to dwell on it, heck, you might even choose to forgive X, but it will NEVER make what X did to you OK. I think what needs to fall apart is your trauma reaction to things that happen now which might actually be OK but which trigger you.''
Yes, I meant the traumatic reaction itself falling apart, not the phenomenon that caused it, that's right.
As for cutting the trigger threads, I would like know more about it, I'll see to it as much as I can, it's still kind of vague to me knowing what to do exactly. It's when I get up in the morning and when I eat, or when I do work, are normally the moments when I am more vulnerable to intrusive thoughts. Surely it has to do with the fact that the body is in a protection mode during those moments, so predators and predatory behavior from others, are what naturally come to mind, since I had a predator in my home when I grew up.
In regards to allowing myself to feel safe: I understand, it's just a little vague for me too. Those moments of reaching a truly relaxed state with friends, not thinking about being misunderstood or attacked, are absolutely priceless to me, and are rather rare, even though the setting - the conditions for them to happen - are not. They still sort of come up incidentally, while I do not really know how I brought myself to those moments. It's like I don't really believe I deserve to be relaxed and in a humurous mood, even though I am made like that in the first place, being naturally sociable; because of the tauma those moments feel weird, out of my comfort zone. As crazy as this might seem; but I think it's normal with trauma. Anyway feeling safe is the core of my goals for now, indeed.
Again, baby steps, but in which direction? Finding myself a good T, looks like a good goal for now.
Thanks a lot guys, reading you helps a lot. Have a nice day!
Awful day today. My neighbors are scared of me, I've been in crisis since this morning. The danger that is the human animal won't leave my mind. They really did break me. I could have been the one. I was He. An absolutely great man, I was going to be. Accidence broke that. Look, it's not the end of the world, it's my end that's all. I screamed in the streets. I talk to myself and I exude a lot of aggressiveness in a general way.
I went to a lawyer this morning, to file a lawsuit against my aggressors. To what good, I don't know. What can I do? A friend told me to keep my composure.
I had the thrill of life as a youngster, now it's inaccessible or gone. That flame, that creative excitment you get when life awaits you. I had it. Now I'll just get older. When you're broken, you might not have access to yourself. It's a technical problem. It's where I am.
This is not venting, it is an attempt at finding solace in reporting what it's like. I did not make it. Stuck in the old paradox; it is precisely the state in which I find myself that prevents me from reporting on it, and if I were not in that state, I would not need to talk about it. Probably not the first one to mention this trap. The story of mental illness is a story of paradoxes. You might as well not even thake this seriously.
I wonder if I should be living. The average and low-IQs they are happy and destroyed my life without even noticing. They win because they don't think, they just do. What am I to do?
I often have felt like this when I am at my lowest Wyge. It is so incredibly difficult to think of what we could have been, what wanted to be if not for the trauma that dragged us down. We have suffered a huge loss and that's so hard to feel, harder still to accept. I get it and I'm sorry you are feeling all of this right now.
I hope so much that your lawyer is able to hold your aggressor accountable in some way. So often perpetrators get away with their abusive behaviour and I hate that this is so. It's why I have become an advocate for survivors, my tribe if you will. If nothing else my pain and loss will count by being a part of a movement to make it harder for abusers to abuse, and for us to be heard, and gain some dignity and power back, and a sense of purpose. I want to become a mighty survivor so all of what I lived counts in some way.
Hi,
I think of my position, that it is a very dire one: I have gifts but I cannot make use of them, thanks to this condition of C-PTSD, the one affliction that makes all the rest unusable.
Of course I've had the psychological reflex of telling myself ''yes but it confers me with other attributes'', which ones I don't know and this mentality kind of fades off anyway when I'm honest with myself, facing the fact that it's probably just for psychological survival. I probably will have to find something to fall back on, something creative like becoming a giver of hope to others, but I have to master the game first, meaning knowing what to do. And the truth of the matter is: is it really worth it? Especially when I think about the current world situation, everything that is happening: nothing to boost optimism, let's just put it this way.
Everytime I want to do something to distract myself, my abuser comes into my mind to remind me - in a way - that he can snatch even that away from me. I do not feel confident and for that I probably don't deserve my life back.
I'll read and re-read a bit of what is written on this forum. Thanks for reading.
Sorry Kizzie I just saw that you had replied before!
Well I praise you and your movement, for sure it has a lot to bring us, the tribe. It is absolutely unfair that we have to live with such a condition while others have nice lives, and often don't do much with it. I am in mourning.
Thank you for your though, and for the hopes :)
:hug:
Better day today. I saw some girl friends lately, expanding my social network. One of them (she works in the mental health field) told me I have to accept what has happened to me. She says she knows it's easier said than done of course. But I will take back my confidence. The thing is really, my rational brains knows it wasn't my fault having been violated as a child, but my subconscious part still thinks I'm a loser for not having been capable of defending myself. I have to integrate that nothing, nothing could have been done.
I see in what way what I have is not completely unrelated to mental health, in a sense: some part of me won't make the difference between an instance (safety) and another (danger). Even when safe, meaning 100% of the time now and it's been that way for years too, some part of my mind is uncertain of being safe. The way I see it as for now.
This morning, meditating on this:
The mere fact that my aggressor had me overlapping between safety and hazard - committing an agression to my person, and than the same day, acting normal to others and ACTUALLY wonder why I have a hard time staying polite with him, or what makes me nervous - we got quite a specimen as a study subject here folks. This overlapping alone is disturbing.
My home predator (aggressor) seemed to think I have time for this. The primitive, the low, seem to think we got time for them. They need to think that way, to optimize their chances of having themselves taken care of, to increase survival chances. Bullying is a sign of weakness, just as cruelty is.
Animals everywhere.
Kizzie,
You talked about getting our dignity back. I already imagine the primitive laughing at that, and it makes me sick. In a crumbling civilization we get a lot of that kind of injustice, it's the lowest and the ugly that has the system arranged for them. So the noble and the humble are exposed to the danger they represent.
This is the one question that bugs me now though: how does one get one's dignity back? I feel this whole trauma problem, this whole suffering, falls back to that one question.
Establish feeling of safety. Once I'm in control of my self as a whole, I won't be bothered by those intrusive thoughts of my step-father intimidating me anymore.
Cold turkeying. No cigarettes, no medication, nothing. It will be * I know. Nothing to lose. Time to set myself free. I got no money anyways, I'll go to a hospital if things get to chaotic. I'm nuts.
Wish me luck!
Wishing you success Wyge - from a die hard smoker.
You got this 👍
:cheer: :cheer:
Thank You Moondance!
In fact I was referring to cold turkeying my C-PTSD, foolishly believing it can cure itself by just flat out facing it with no supervision. No cigarettes (my only drug, my only fleeing), no medication etc.
Oh geez I missed the mark entirely on that one Wyge.
Well I'm still wanting to wish you well!
Wyge, I'm sorry you went through all of that, and are seemingly still going through some of it.
As for me, I don't think I'll ever forgive my parents. I don't see any reason to forgive them. It won't fix things, and it won't help me to forgive them for things they didn't see as wrong.
I have a hard time with the word "accept," too. I know bad things happen to me. If that's what "acceptance" looks like, I guess I "accept" it, too. But to me, that word has connotations of forgiveness, and I'm just not in a place to do that. I would suggest that if you have a similar reaction that you don't push yourself to accept anything.