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Poll Do You Re-create Your Trauma?

How you re-create your trauma? (Select no if you don't). Please discuss below if comfortable.

  • No - I dont re-create my trauma.

    Votes: 19 17.1%
  • I seek out many partners to have sex with.

    Votes: 20 18.0%
  • I sexual want to be hurt by partner (sexual harm).

    Votes: 42 37.8%
  • I sexual self harm (gentials).

    Votes: 19 17.1%
  • I tend to cheat on my spouce/partner, with or without knowing why.

    Votes: 17 15.3%
  • I have once or more than once sexually touched a child (as a child or an adult).

    Votes: 4 3.6%
  • I tend to have regular risk seeking behaviors (life threatening or very close to).

    Votes: 35 31.5%
  • I tend to anger easily and tend to scream and/or lash out at others on a regular basis.

    Votes: 30 27.0%
  • I tend to put others down all, or a lot, of the time.

    Votes: 9 8.1%
  • Other - please explain below.

    Votes: 28 25.2%

  • Total voters
    111
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For the first three months after my initial trauma I had to bury my feelings. For the first six weeks, there was additional ongoing trauma which only made it worse. Because I buried everything I could, it took a couple of years before anything started coming out. But when it did, I started having sex with anyone I could. I couldn't say no to anything, I don't think I wanted to say no. I was having sex with guys who worked for me, while at work, without using condoms and I wasn't looking for pleasure. I kept looking for someone who would hurt me sexually. In my head I was hurting so bad that I thought I could only find relief by making my body hurt in the same way. I wanted to make the pain in my head and body match. In a way I was lucky because none of the guys I found took advantage of me. And that frustrated me because I wanted them to. I was definitely trying to recreate my trauma and I never could.
I wanted to lash out at people, to physically attack them even but I nearly always managed to keep that suppressed because I worked in a leadership position. I constantly struggle with running people down, but that may be a learned behavior from my childhood. I have spent a lot of time hiking in back country/wilderness areas off-trail and by myself, sometimes in the winter and often without telling anyone where I am going or even that I am going. While hiking I have, at different times, gotten hypothermia and nearly fallen off a 800' cliff and none of it really mattered to me. I don't know if the lashing out/attacking others and the risky hiking is necessarily recreating my trauma, but it definitely comes from it.
Today, nearly 10 years later, I still think about all the above, but I don't engage in much of it. I actually crave sexual harm, and, when I'm being honest with myself, I would still like to find that elusive someone who would make me hurt physically the same way I hurt in my head. I keep thinking that if I can ever find that then maybe I'll finally be able to put it all behind me, but I know that is probably not true. I think the reason I am able to control it as much as I do is partially because I am so strong-willed, partially because I've literally had years of practice, and partially a lack of opportunity. I certainly don't have any answers for anyone else on how to do it.
 
I am pretty sure I don't recreate intentionally but somehow things keep repeating specifically
1, Housemate murdered by ex spouse -
2. Brought on to support a lady who was killed by terrorists-the week before I joined
3. came into next job - person who was acting in my role and I directly supervised was killed in terrorist attack on area office along with 6 other people
4. Decided to stay for four years in organisation that itself was not coping with its disaster and left when I collapsed due to death threats mainly against women foreigners or men who supported gender equality goals in office
None of these were my creation but it keeps happening- since I stopped work - no more events
 
I get attached to abusive authoritarian figures before I realise what I am doing. Went through the whole sexual abusive relationship thing but always tempted to cheat etc to hurt myself but have learned to avoid these impulses out of respect for my partner. Life doesn't feel real without a level of harm
 
Life doesn't feel real without a level of harm

I hear ya on that. I have never and would never cheat on someone but I seek out sexual harm and harm in general and I also dole out punishments on myself. There is always self harm in my life even if it is indirectly.
 
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Wow this topic jumped out at me. Excellent!
Through decades of personal experience, reading, YouTube, MyPTSD and a few therapy sessions here and there, with age comes the realization I will always naturally lean towards reenacting. I also have to look at where my responsibility lies. Own the truth. From where I see now, romantic relationships are unhealthy for me. I don't do well in any relationships actually. Learning to trust is very difficult for me.
Being taught saying "no" is not an option while at the same time learning from my mother and then my older sister that to be a woman is to flirt, can create someone like myself who loves the flirting and dressing like a whore but not the putting out. I could create a book of all the different creative ways with indignant anger and the hint of a whine men have rightfully called me a cock tease. Shame on them. I was 15 and they were at least 30. Reenacting is a choice, it's not a wise choice. Hell, I'm still a flirt. I'm not frigid. My problem is, at the beginning when nothing but lust exists I was free to enjoy sex with abandon and my sexuality radiated. As soon as feelings start to become established, something in me shifts and every step towards commitment stirs a bit of libido lowering anger caused by feelings of losing control. I'm not me anymore when I'm reenacting. It is unfair to the other person too but they have their own shit to deal with.
There is the freedom of other choices. Break the insanity of Groundhog Day.
Another reenactment is not taking care of myself or surroundings. I have to make different choices to get different outcomes. I can't just say, "let's avoid that" like I do with sex. Avoidance makes it worse. I know that for sure. I'm living it right now.
I deserve to look and feel good. I want to look around my space and have it reflect my creative being.
 
I deserve to look and feel good. I want to look around my space and have it reflect my creative being.
I am one of the few that like me my wife was abused as kid as was my late step-daughter and so the ability to trust was reinstored. I have always needed secrets but have learned which secrets are healthy for me and which aren't. For me I don't judge. Looking at the Human Rights web sites flirting ain't against the law and neither is saying "no", nor is adultery. Abuse in a sense can give freedom from moral norms as long as we do what is healthy for us. I just hate it when others take advantage of this. My wife knew that I flirted with my supervisor but then when I wouldn't put out this created huge hassles and then I realised that I was re-enacting the abuse all over again by flirting with someone who has power over me. That is when re-enacting is unhealthy and I wish I could break the habit
 
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Reenacting is a choice, it's not a wise choice. Hell

Maybe but how one chooses the right choice when that pull is so strong that it's like the choice to breath or not. Or its how that pull feels like to me.

I had to stop dating and seeking men all together to stop the very dangerous reenacting I was doing (in that respect anyway. I reenact many different ways). Being the child prostitute (in my head) requires at least one other to seduce and pounce like a lion and then to become the most submissive possible once in bed allowing them, and begging them, to do the most harmful things.

I couldn't of taken myself out of that world without my therapist's help, I don't think. We spent time, a good amount of time, discussing sex and how "healthy sex" should look like verses what I was doing. He did bring up himself and his wife but not telling me about their sex life (that would be crossing a boundry he has) but just more general hypothetical type of stuff. He has used his family and their dynamic for a comparison of how I was taught. It's hard cause its all I know from age 6 on.

Anyway, I was able to stop that reenacting and then was able to stop the rituals by changing one of them but the rituals is what I keep getting pulled back to. It's frustrating as I feel I have beat it then end up doing one again. But, a maraton, right? That also doesn't feel like a choice. I get that everything we do is a choice and I get that concept but its this pull stronger then any other I have felt before. Certianly stronger then a addiction pull. It is impossible to fight. When I do I end up in a much worse spot.

Anyway, its an ongoing battle for sure.
 
@lostforgottensoul I totally can empathize with your above post. I understand it is a choice too but, it has become very ritualistic for me as well and hard to break that cycle. In my head I thought I was past that but, then in my first serious relationship in years and boom I was back to doing what I know best- seducing and submitting. It is such ingrained behavior and it's like I become a different person and go through the motions. It is very hard because at this time I don't know what is normal, what are normal requests, what shouldn't I be willing to do? It is very frustrating because, I feel like I am going to be so prone to doing the same thing and letting guys abuse me sexually because, I don't know what is normal, so used to it, just don't know how to say no...
 
it has become very ritualistic for me

I hear you! You can call seduce/submitting ritualistic for me. It is. But, just so it doesn't get confusing, I grew up in a cult and so when I talk about rituals its the cult's rituals that I brought into adulthood. But, sex was part of all of the rituals and the seduce/submissing was also a ritual.

Rituals are f*cking hard to get past or stop doing. They are like completely different animal then anything else. That's for sure!
 
I fear abandonment so I push everyone away.

I don't know how to stop.

Not fully true.

I have been making strides in not pushing away the guy. Ok, baby steps. I do love him and value him. He has taught me much. Deals with my pushing but never goes away for good. Just stays at a distance. I know I must stabilize in order to move forward with him. Perfectly reasonable.

Please help me.
 
@lostforgottensoul Wow that must have been so hard! I am not sure why I started this behavior in the first place..i didn't have any CSA but, I definitely started sleeping around at around 18 and idk something got turned on in my head that this is the only thing I'm good at. I worked on perfecting it and would disassociate during parts that were painful or hard for me to deal with...idk for the longest time I thought I might have been abused because, my behavior and emotional disconnect to sex from the very beginning is kind of abnormal. Now I am realizing however that a lot of things can play into sexual behavior/boundary issues...Growing up my boundaries were always kind of ignored like if I didn't like something I was always told I was being too sensitive or overdramatic and in a weird way I think this played into me ignoring my sexual boundaries as well. Sex is also a way for me to gain control- it seems to be the only thing I can have control of and predictability with. Everything else is very out of control and very unpredictable.
 
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