What Did Your Trauma Look Like?

[Snowflake]

As I child I could have received an Oscar for my acting ability. (Covering up the true horrors of my family and childhood) However, I am sure there were signs that something was terribly wrong.

When growing up what were the signs that something was wrong?Were there signs others could have picked up on but didn't?

 

[EveHarrington]

There were signs-----but I didn't have textbook type signs that people are trained to look out for. It wasn't until I came here (and other sites) that I learned that my reactions were actually quite common. It kinda makes me mad because I was acting out, but not in the ways that teachers are trained to recognize in CSA.

I can't even act out in the right way! (Haha.)

 

[Friday]

My trauma wasn't in childhood but I can tell you some of my son's

- Petechial Hemorrhaging ... Can be mistaken for red eye, or marijuana use. Caused by strangling. This one drives me insane. On the upside, I frightened a school nurse badly enough that now she inspects the eyes of dazed & confused kids with red eyes with a magnifying glass before reporting drug use. She called to thank me last year. She said over half a dozen of the kids they had labeled as problem kids / drug users were getting beat up and choked out at home. :banghead: Yeah. No shit.
- Drug use. Drugs numb both psych & physical pain, and it's not like asshole parents are taking their kids in to get proper medical care for their injuries.
- Personality change.
- Automatic assumption of the worse case in anyone's motivation for anything. No matter who they are, and no matter history of best case motivation.
- No longer being able to take a joke. Because the things other people joke about? Aren't real? Extremes of behavior so far as to be ridiculous & therefore hilarious? Are real for him. They aren't ridiculous. They're very real possibilities.
- Hoarding food, hiding necessities, & refusing to become attached to "special" things. (All things which are taken away from him).
- Latching onto hate groups; places with both easy answers & where expressive anger/rage is encouraged.
- No Auto-Respect. Period. (Meaning no longer placing any adult or authority as "higher" than him or unchallengeable, nor is respect earned past tense, but is an ongoing state of affairs. The past means shit to him. Being worthy of respect yesterday does not infer respect today.)
- Acceptance of all things brutal.
- Untrusting of all things kind.
- 1,000 other things.

^^^
Wild variation of most of these, and others. His brain is still pretty damn plastic. Remove him from the trauma for awhile, and put in an entirely different set of circumstances and everything starts changing. Same token, mid-abuse, he's gone through phases of becoming abusive/aping his abuser, becoming a kicked dog, becoming a fighter, becoming a ghost,... Becoming many different versions of who he could be when he grows up. Nothing has settled, yet. I don't know who he'll be if/when he gets through this. He's not locked in, yet.

This is part of why I hate hope. I should just kill his abuser and be done with it. But I have no idea what that would do to him. I don't f*cking care about the consequences to me. Wouldn't be the first time I've been locked in a cage. But I don't know what it would do to him. There are too many ways it could just make things so much worse for him than they already are. So I sit back in the motherf*cking lap of luxury watching him go through hell all in the hope he'll still be himself, still be here, when he comes out the other side.

 

[Changing4Best]

I had no social skills. I smiled at my Pediatrician. He obviously thought this was different, because he remarked about it constantly that I was the only kid that smiled at him. I smiled at all men because my abuser made me smile at the men he brought to molest me! So I smiled at my Dr. That was in essence what I had been taught to do, just because he was a man!

 

[Snowflake]

My trauma wasn't in childhood but I can tell you some of my son's

- Petechial Hemorrhaging ... Can...

I am so sorry

 

[Ronin]

I was quiet. Off in my head, not present, except for violence, then I'm super present & matching gazillion details in a lightning speed.

I was also super bitchy at presented 'rights' when I judged the authority to be a moron & saying horseshit. Still the same set of issues; if I'm counting I'll die for it I don't give a f*ck, and if I'm surviving it, then what I said won't matter more than surviving it.

Don't remember the physical b/c I'm still at learning what I came through wasn't normal and a no big deal.

 

[Abstract]

Lacking in anger aka had the fight knocked out of me. Prone to drifting off to dreamland aka dissociating or going into freeze states. Sooo forgiving aka unable to have boundaries. Shy aka terrified and continually triggered by anger or aggression. Socially uncomfortable aka trying to manage triggers whilst appearing in control. A bit wild aka trying to drown feelings via alcohol and wild socialising. Flirtatious aka unable to tell guys and others to get lost. Adventurous aka so compartmentalised there is no sense of consequences. Other worldly aka removed from reality. Always happy aka keeping my self away from others.

The other things that were obvious were that I was unable to ask to go to the loo when starting school with obvious consequencees. I would apparently cower if someone shouted at me. They tested me for hearing issues as I sometimes wouldn't respond to others. If anyone had asked I had no ability to describe a timeline or flow of events in my life. I combined a total lack of having absorbed every day things; and sophisticated understanding of concepts. One day I would understand something completely and another have no sense or sign of ever having heard it before. I was also unable to look people in the eye.

 

[Snowflake]

that I was unable to ask to go to the loo when starting school with obvious consequencees. I would apparently cower if someone shouted at me. They tested me for hearing issues as I sometimes wouldn't respond to others. If anyone had asked I had no ability to describe a timeline or flow of eve

I never asked or went to bathroom as a child-in school. I wet a lot of my clothes. I was also tested in school for hearing , also reading and speech. I still cower if someone raises their voice. My therapist says my name, to start a sentence, and I hide. (Still trying to figure that out)

 

[sun seeker]

Too serious, didn't smile much, too tired to be plausible in a child, bad haircut and mismatched clothes in a child from a family that could easily afford better. Socially awkward, like I didn't know how to be a kid.

 

[Abstract]

I never asked or went to bathroom as a child-in school. I wet a lot of my clothes. I was also tested in school for hearing , also reading and speech. I still cower if someone raises their voice. My therapist says my name, to start a sentence, and I hide. (Still trying to figure that out)

Hi Snowflake,
Sorry to hear that. It's great you are going to therapy. I don't cower as much now but therapy really seems to set me off. Somethings said and I find myself with hands up protecting myself. I think its the interpersonal trust that's required that ups the anti. Does that happen to you out of therapy when someone says your name? I hope you figure it out.

As for the bathroom stuff: that year or two of my life is one of the only periods where I have childhood memories but I still don't feel much ownership of her. But I do know that it almost didn't occur to her that she could ask. Not only a fear of asking but also a sort of learned hopelessness I think. It was a daily thing for me. I was like a creature in some senses. I was living with an aunt and uncle and have a memory that does stand out. I dropped a saucer and broke it and reacted by curling up into a fetal position and cowering on the floor against a cupboard crying. The strong part of the memory was when I realised everyone was shocked and noone was angry or going to punish me. She was shocked and confused about that. I don't have memories of what prior to this period caused my behaviours but do remember the discord.

Do you have a sense of what the speech, reading and hearing issues were about?

I will add: too perfectly behaved and quiet in public places such as restaurants. When watching my very young niece and nephew in the same environment recently I had a flash of what it was like at that age. Me dead still and dead quiet with eyes down the whole time and struggling to eat.

 

[illusionist]

Wearing same clothes long enough to be smelly, being underweight, looking like a scared rabbit..a description someone gave of myself, as an adult, describing their memory of me as a kid, crippling lack of self esteem....anything I did in front of others was hindered and watchful, used to rock back and forth a lot...staring in front of me.

 

[Megyn]

I cried in elementary school All. The. Time.
I had no friends. I was painfully shy and socially awkward.
Overweight.

By 9th grade, I was smoking weed all day, every day.
Very promiscuous. Couldn't say no.
By 11th grade, I was anorexic and weighed 90lbs.