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Is This Adding To My Ptsd, Even If It's Not Abuse?

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TheSpydah

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After developing PTSD, I have also started recalling a lot of memories unconnected with the event itself, or at least very indirectly connected with it. Although all unpleasant, none of them are as bad as they could be, or as they sadly are for others. But while my rational mind has pushed them away, I still have a lot of discomfort around people, especially being touched, even if I crave just being held peacefully, And I don't manage to say these things aloud. Should I talk about these with my therapist, even if they do not qualify as abuse? They seem to have crammed back up to the surface after the funeral for mt fiance (I witnessed his death in a car crash caused my my father, which is why I am here).

The husband of one of my mother's cousins was in the habit of touching me for "play" when I was about 7 or 8. I hated it. Never told my parents. At least he was such a weirdo on so many levels that my family ended up soon having no contacts with him on account of how he treated his wife and don. So I guess it wasn't too bad. But I could never shake that sense of disgust off me. To this day, I would have the same chilling recoil if I were to see him. And it bothers me that it still bothers me so much. It came around the time I was being bullied in school (from age 7 to age 11). Some of the boys hated me because I was "a cripple" and I liked to read, and so they mocked how I looked and hit me. I had lots of bruises on me at the time, and on a couple of occasions I passed out. I felt ashamed of my pathology. And thought it was a fitting punishment.

There were other people like that when I was around 12 to 15. Someone who went to college with my brother Enrico, and whom I ended up showing he was enough of an idiot that they didn't hang out together anymore. Eventually everyone realized he was a douche (at least my whiplash tongue served me in one case), but I never told anyone that he groped me while I was watching anime on tv... I was 12 or 13.

I was 12 the first time someone made a rape threat while looking at me straight in the eyes, because of the way I laughed at him. He was more than twice my age, and I was just having a kid's day at the beach. My concerns at the time were learning how to make a French twist, being crappy at volleyball, and when the next issue of my favourite comic was going to be at the shop. Not THAT. I didn't even fully understand what the hell that meant, I only remember locking myself in my grandmother's bedroom when I got to her house and crying frantically and feeling horrified and disgusted at myself, and praying "just please don't let any man ever look at me again. Never again."

I started hanging out with a teenage sweetheart when I was 13, and that was a terrible mistake. I realized that the first time he started touching me and I was horrified and asked him not to do it ever again, and then he started being very passive aggressive with me and telling me that I was just bigoted. So I started thinking that myself. He was always surly and never said what was wrong, and I felt bad about leaving him because I thought - I've made this mistake, I have to stay in it. He hated that I was passionate about human rights and thought he could slap the politics out of me. Worst 5 years of my life. It didn't feel like being a teenager. I just hated every day of that time.

And then it became just a pattern, to the point I felt in some ways resigned that that's how things were going to be for me. Like the army officer who pinned me to a wall amd tried to pull me into his bedroom when I was on holiday and I was 15, or this other scumbag, around the same time, who used to grab me when I went to baseball games and for a while would follow me around in his car if he knew I was out on a walk, or constantly call me on the telephone because he wanted to hear my voice when he was touching himself. I did not have the guts to tell people because I felt ashamed at the thought, and ended up just hating myself, and developing a lot of hatred towards my body. As well as my automatic recoil even at the mere thought of being touched, even as an adult, because it always felt like something painful or disgusting to endure.

Stuff keeps coming up at random these days, and it's overwhelming. When I was with my ex, the one before my fiance', whose death , I was downtrodden because he showed me off at official times and then ignored me for days and told me I was a bit crazy because I should not have left his behaviour affect me. I was scared of sleeping in his bed because one night he woke me up by kicking me and then said it was because he was having a nightmare caused by my accidentally touching him while I was asleep, and that I should never do that. So I would spend the nights wide awake in a corner of the bed so I would not fall asleep, terrified that it would happen again.

I ended up in the ER for some second degree burns this week. They had to give me morphine because the pain was not abating after three hours of ice and percocet and at that point. I never take painkillers, so I have no tolerance, or maybe I was just anxious being in an hospital alone, at night, after my beloved fiance' died, but I had a collapse after they gave me the injection. When they were monitoring me after they gave me the morphine and I was dozed off, there was this poor lady a bed over that was in pain and they were doing some kind of OBGYN test, and when I heard the nurse telling her to relax and open her legs, and I heard the patient cry I woke up all of a sudden.

I started weeping when I heard that lady. For her, but also because it reminded me of my ex telling me to stop clenching (he was hurting me but I was too scared to displease him to say anything) because by doing so I was making things too difficult for him, the first time I had sex. So yesterday I found myself laying on that bed like when they told me my fiance' had died, and had this other horrible memory on top whole I heard that lady crying and I could barely move from the morphine.

My ex, used to be one day super attached and even possessive and then vanish and ignore me for days, and he would say I was a bit crazy and that I should not be affected by his behaviour because that was a show of weakness. He hurt me mentally by being away, and sometimes hurt me physically by being close. I guess it could have been worse, after all, which is why I have always pushed it out of my head and moved on trying not to think about it. But I feel bad that I didn't have the courage to say "this hurts," or "I find this icky," or just "no, stop," instead of freezing like a big-eyed hunted animal and hope they will get the message. And now all of this is coming back with a vengeance.

I was very isolated in that time I was with my ex and so sad I tried anything, including going to church. Then the priests, when I sought advice, told me it was my fault if I was hurting in that relationship because I was not letting Martin be whom he was. And the person who was in charge of the chapel and saw me crying there every morning for weeks (I thought- no one is worried to see someone weep in a church, that will do) tried to kiss me one day that I was in pieces. I never went back, and became much less tolerant of religion since.

In general, men gave me the creeps. To an extent, they still do, but at least since meeting my fiance' my friends and family are allowed to hug me (unless they take me by surprise, or squeeze me too hard) and I manage to find it comforting rather than threatening. So I guess that's progress.

It was quite a feat to hug me before I met my fiance'. All of the above, and the time I was physically bullied in school, were the reasons why he remarked that I used to twitch a lot when we first met if I was sleeping next to him. I remember one night we were cooking together and he turned quickly to catch something and that startled me. I shrunk and covered my head with my forearms. Even if I knew he would never hit me. He looked at me in silence for a couple of seconds.

The earliest stuff I mostly have been pushing out of my memory. I only remembered it in recent years. What had remained with me throughout my life was my physical responses to anyone trying to touch me. Which were basically a combination of "freeze, and pretend this is not happening to you, you are not really here, just think about something else, Ok this is not stopping now I want to throw up, run away really really far and hide in a hole in the ground where no one can see me ever again."

I don't know. I thought I had gotten over it. But I'm not sure. And since my beloved died it creeps back, because he made me feel safe. I feel ashamed because I should have been able to predict the danger, and I didn't, and I feel ashamed because people had much worse things happen and they move on, and I'm being a fail at that.

Thank you...
 
I wish I had a link to a post Anthony made on what PTSD is, comparing it to a cup of water. That, I feel, would describe it well enough to help you figure out what you are facing.
My experience is that everything does, eventually, affect the PTSD I have.
 
A lot of the things you mentioned were abuse. Bullying, unwanted touch, rape threats. all of these things make you more vulnerable to developing PTSD. Even people without PTSD have things that negatively impact their lives and need therapy for. So to answer your question, I would say yes and that talking about them to your T would be a good thing to do.
 
Thank you... I feel like all this has come back to haunt me after I saw my fiancé die (which is the reason I have PTSD now) in the accident. He had helped me feel like I was "over" all of that, but since he has gone, even things I had forgotten have resurfaced to bother me.
 
There are many times when the actions of "bad people" will strike our minds. That is a big part of PTSD, I am trying EMDR to get better and I think it helps.
 
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