If You Didn't Have A Chance To Build A Self Before Complex Trauma

[ms spock]

Thanks @Ursula.

My problem is I can't connect with my gut or intuition. I am so dissociated, and disconnected from myself, that I don't know what is going on with me a lot of the time. I have hurt myself seriously and not known that I had done that until later on - until I came into my body. I have been trying to do what you are saying to do since I was 15, but I got abused and retraumatised by some psychologists. I was exploited financially, emotionally, had my teeth knocked out etc etc. I grew up comfort eating and binge eating, and that was my love, food was my parents, food was my ability to exist - they couldn't take away the ability to taste food. They could attack everything else.

I have been trying to get access to my intuition and gut for almost three decades, but I would get traumatised, or beaten, or abused, or attacked and I could disappear for two years. So that is really unsettling. I am getting better at being more here, but I experience severe corrosive self doubt. I don't know how to trust myself, because I don't have access to what I feel, or think or what is important to me. I also don't have access to memory. I was working on a project and I found another document that I wrote about the project, but I have no memory or inkling of me even thinking about doing it on the computer, nevertheless actually having done the work on it. So I am never quite sure if I am really here or I am not really here. So dissociation, depersonalisation and derealisation are big ones for me. I also somatise a lot - because I wasn't allowed to have needs, wants, feelings, desires, my own thoughts, or my own opinions. I knew to say what my Mother and Father wanted me to say because that made the pain end much sooner.

I don't know what my values are, I believe in social justice, and I have done a lot around that. I have done a lot for the environment at times. I have done quite a lot of things. They wanted to publish my book of poetry but I didn't do it because of the fear of being seen, of being committed. To come out of hypervigilance is really, really, really hard for me.

I can't contact myself. I do what I think other people want me to do, which they may or may not want from me. But I do it any way. So I am stuck in maladaptive daydreaming, freeze/fawn, sometimes fight. I am disappeared. I disappear whilst hiding in plain sight. It is hard to explain.

If I could hear myself or connect to myself, then I could do what you suggest, but I can't. I can't connect to myself the majority of the time. I am nothing. I am not here. I am kind of here, but not really here. There is a big disconnect within me.

I will do a project and find a letter asking to publish my digital project and put it in the world competition for that digital art form, but I have no recollection of having done that course or having done that work or even what I did. It is really weird sometimes.

However I am more here than I have ever been.

I am more than aware of the fact that the self continues to grow if you don't have trauma. I wrote on that at university a couple of decades ago and I engaged extensively with the contempory critical theories of the time. I am aware that there are multiple selves in all people. I am aware of the developmental phases of development of infants, children, adolescents and adults. I have never really been able to explain this to people well - the people that did understand are no longer alive anymore, so I don't really have anyone to talk to about it either. If you don't have something you can contact. If you cannot feel your own body. If you can't connect with yourself. If you are so dissociated you see people from above, then you have no gut to listen to or instinct to develop or develop a relationship with over time. If you can't feel the broken bones in your body you won't get treatment or tend to those broken bones in a way that heals them. I can't contact myself. I can't have a relationship with myself. I am around people, but no one really knows me. I have all these defences and walls, and I am the absence which is presence and presence that is absence - I made a series of artworks about that last year but I couldn't keep going with that. I can't make art because I can't contact myself and what it is I am thinking and feeling. I can't even explain it that well either.

What you write is great in theory, and I have been aware of that theory for three decades but there is no structure in there. I am not embodied enough to have contact with myself.

I am also not connected to other people, or doubt the connection that I do have. I have no place from which to connect, unless it is out of anger. I don't do that as much anymore. So I feel so alone and on my own. I have severe reactive attachment disorder on top of everything else

I am not really explaining it that well. Any maybe there is nothing that anyone else can do or say. It might just be it is up to me to find away.

I appreciate the effort and the comment - but it is something else that I am struggling with. If I could get to where you are talking about I would be overjoyed.

 

[The Albatross]

Seems to me Disco... that coming out/away from disconnection/disassociation is more the issue these days. How to cope/develop skillsets and tools to manage being present?

 

[ms spock]

I think I understand what they impetus was to write this thread now. Why I put up with so much abuse from that psychologist for over ten years. It was a touch deprivation thing. The psychologist did some body work and massage on me and that activated this deep, deep, deep need for physical touch and connection and those seeds of hope for some affection and touch kept me hooked into her for more than a decade. It was the promise of that that suckered me in. I was only 15, and on the run from a violent Father, who has particular skills.

 

[ms spock]

that coming out/away from disconnection/disassociation is more the issue these days. How to cope/develop skillsets and tools to manage being present?

I did like 20 things to do this today. I am working my butt off to do the hardest things for me. Instead of avoiding today. I walked straight to the hardest things to do. The anxiety was so high I woke up at 1am in the morning. I still just kept going. I am really working hard on this stuff.

 

[ms spock]

I will go to join a website and then find out I have been a member for a couple of years. I don't have memory of joining up.

I have to fight to keep it all in this now.

 

[Bubblegirl]

I will go to join a website and then find out I have been a member for a couple of years. I...

I have done that a few times, and gotten quite triggered when I try to sign up, then find that I have a whole blog there.....but for me it became part of getting to know the parts of myself who were present when I was not, even though I found it frightening.

 

[ms spock]

I think I can let this go now. I am needing to move on. Good to acknowledge but there are more things to focus on.

One thing is that if I acknowledge it for 15 seconds to 2 minutes then I can tear up - it releases pressure - and I can move on with my day.

 

[ms spock]

.but for me it became part of getting to know the parts of myself who were present when I was not, even though I found it frightening.

That is a really positive take on it!

 

[Higgins]

All my memories are 3rd person. Seriously. Literally no 1st person ,even from yesterday. I will remember...

Beans, all of your suggestions are totally amazing. I followed your lead and binge watched Van der Kolk (I have read so much of his stuff, I can't believe it never occurred to me to look him up on youtube) and more layers of it all are coming clear.

I thought there were some amazing points on synchronicity. and being out of sync socially. Which I've felt, palpably since I was a kid. I didn't understand why I was different, or why I was so socially awkward (and self-conscious of it), let alone how it grew over time. I just knew I was different... weird. This forum, his videos, have brought me a sense of emotional relief. For the first time in, maybe ever, I feel like I'm with my people. I understand you guys. I understand him. I feel like we're all speaking the same language. I am so grateful for this forum. Thank you.

 

[cherryblossomgirl]

If you didn't have a chance to build a self before the trauma/s then how do you find out who...

"No one is exactly their pre PTSD self, even if their trauma/s happens in their 20s, 30s 40s etc.

Just to be a little clearer if your trauma takes place in your mid twenties or thirties or even when you are 15 then you have a whole lot of stuff to draw on including relationships, friends, schooling, jobs, networks, ability to be present in the world, ability to be present in your body, hobbies, likes and dislikes, routines, exercise, family, eating habits, managing money skills, sleeping habits, personal hygiene habits, body image, that you don't have if your traumas start when you are a small child.
What I am interested in is how, if you are a small child when your complex trauma begins, how you build up a self and a life."

I don't know if I have complex trauma but I do know that I have trauma. It might happen during my childhood but in my midtwenties I experienced another one and another in my thirties. So, my trauma related to family, love, friendship and violence. All of them are abuse.

I knew who I was. I knew my likes and dislikes, I took care of my body and health, I have hobbies, I exercised, I spent time with relatives, friends, my eating habits are fine, personal hygiene no problem, I accepted my body image in my twenties (never had a problem with it even though I'm very body conscious). I had a very strong sense of self although I dealt with lots of stress at home but I had a great support system. Friends were awesome.

Until, I lost when I was 27 (relationship issues/love). It took years to get to this place and I figured how much time has wasted. And I'm still finding out how to manage the triggers. What I've found out now is that it all starts from home, if your home is a "mess", things outside will get affected. I think most people here who experience trauma are also dying to know how to stop the flashbacks and how to build a life if you live with the symptoms after the incidents happened?

 

[ms spock]

Going through this process of trying to work this all out has been very useful to my recovery process, because dealing with the intrusive thoughts around this really helped me learn Self Compassion Breaks and a whole lot of other skills that I really needed to learn to make progress. It has been a useful process. I don't tend to focus on it too much anymore, but I also don't tend to attack myself as much anymore for all my perceived mistakes. The truth was that I didn't have any choices for so much of the journey after I was born and in those early 8 years. That all had a flow on effect that cascaded through to my teens and twenties, and being gotten of by unethical and unprofessional psychologists mean I had my trauma compounded by the people who were meant to try and get me to recover from all that who then physically, emotionally, sexually and financially exploited me from ages 15-30 years old. I didn't have the skills to identify their craziness and their exploitations, sometimes I knew what they were doing was wrong but I was so emotionally deprived, so suggestible and so not wanting to end up like my parents that I kept at it because I had read recovery was hard. Well recovery is impossible when you are still being traumatised. I feel so ashamed to have been used like that, but it was just like Mum and Dad, so it was familiar and it was like home. I wanted to have a home. Unfortunately one of them moved into my home, and then it was no home for me anymore, just another place that I was violated. So I have made great progress with all this. Radical Acceptance, and some fine tuning from time to time is what is required now.

 

[ms spock]

More and more is clicking into place, and it is really great. I am understanding a lot more now.