Messages

How strange/socially unacceptable would it be to leave a note near my door saying "Knock Gently"? Maintenance in my apartment complex hammers on the front door, as have a few others, and every time it terrifies me. A note seems like an easy fix, but I can't tell if it's bad for some reason. I already taped over the doorbell for the same reason, but that just looks like it doesn't work.

I have experienced the same thing. I've had emotional flashbacks since childhood, but this stuff started after I left a long-term DV situation. If I was startled or caused unexpected pain or even got enough into the same scared and submissive mindset I had back then, I would sort of segue into seeing stuff around me like it was in a particularly scary scene from before. Sometimes it'd be like I had one foot in the past and one in the present. In my case, I think it's the kind of flashback one gets from regular PTSD, where there's imagery and space/time confusion stuff.

Anyway, it does feel just like hallucinating and it's very scary. I'm sorry you've been experiencing it. I've noticed I can sometimes cut it off before it really gets started by repeatedly reminding myself where I am with proof and questioning (look at a calendar, ask what year stuff happened, look at a plant, ask when I got it, ask what year stuff happened).

absolutely...and i definitely have a voice in the back of my head that tells me it's *literally too many*. like i must have been making some of them up, or exaggerating them, or something, because this story just strains one's suspension of disbelief.

miaoue, I just wanted to let you know that I feel like this all the time too and I'm sorry. That was actually one of the points of this thread, that I feel like I must have imagined some or all of it because it's just too much stuff. It is extremely difficult to take oneself seriously...but it would no doubt be possible if it was someone else's story.

Yes, I agree and feel the same way. It feels like I just skipped my whole childhood for an unpaid internship taking care of an abusive adult and I'll never get it back, and I wasn't even allowed to admit that I was being abused so I had no explanation for why I couldn't cope with anything or function normally. 

Obviously one is enough, but I mean that the amount of trauma types one can build up in a life feels...crazy.

emotionally abusive dad
domestic violence in childhood home
parental abandonment
emotionally abusive mom + emotional incest
bullying and COCSA
dating an adult when I was a child
medical trauma from psychiatric treatment
domestic violence
physical disability

It seems unbelievable to me sometimes that this stuff could happen again and again. I can see how it's related but it seems ridiculous that it happening. Does anyone else have this experience, and keep bouncing from one abuse situation to another?

"No real gay man would ever love you."
-my mom, after I was outed as trans (gay FTM) to her

"I'm killing myself to support you and you don't care. You probably wish I were dead because all you care about is money."
-mom again

"I don't care about your feelings. You're just a toy to me and I can do whatever I want to you."
-my ex

I do think I have BPD (as a manifestation of, or in addition to, CPTSD) but I've never abused anyone (as far as I know). I also think my mom has BPD but she has abused people. People are different even within diagnostic categories, and there's nothing in the BPD criteria that says you lie, manipulate, or abuse people.

Honestly, I've had people use my BPD diagnosis as an excuse to abuse me much more than I've ever used it as an excuse for my own actions. It's such a stigmatized diagnosis that my mom could use it to hospitalize me when she felt like it and my ex could use it to claim my disagreement with him was pathological and I deserved to be physically abused as a result. Perhaps worst of all is the judgment one gets in abuse survivor spaces. I've had fellow abuse survivors tell me I must have misunderstood my abusers or been partially responsible in a way I didn't mention. It really hurts.