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

[Beans]

Oooo. glad this thread was bumped. Just started reading a book, Your Life After Trauma by Michele Rosenthal and she speaks about this a lot. How we have freedom to build ourselves from scratch or from that vague feeling of who we could've been if the trauma began before we had a self. Very validating. Good book so far! Def recommend!

 

[Deleted member 44394]

Please go back and read what I wrote to you - wow, if you react this way to everyone who tries to help you? ... All I said was, we have a heart inside us that guides us towards what's right.


Please take of that, what you will.

 

[ms spock]

Sorry I was abrupt @Erics but I have had too much religious stuff shoved down my throat recently in this forum. I have had too much of some other stuff shoved down my throat recently as well. Often when I get a post in one of my threads that I don't jump on when people are totally off the mark the thread goes south. It has happend one time too many, and now I will be forthright, and upfront immediately, so people know exactly where they stand with me. It was disrepectful to make such comments in a thread such as this one.

I am the opening poster of that thread, so I set the parameters, and one thing I clearly stated was those romantic notions of the self to return to, a pre trauma self to return to or a feeling of trust for your own experiences and thoughts or having feelings that you know what is right for you - is not my experience. That is the point of this thread.

So as the point of starting this thread was that I don't have anything to return to, and when I return to what my heart wants (which is to either be not here dissociated, or dead, or in a food coma) - following what my heart knows is best which is to be frozen and out of sight. That is in no way helpful for me. It invalidates my whole lived experience of what I have been struggling with for such a long time.

If I follow my heart then I hide in bed under the doona, binge watching TV and eating myself silly. So I am trying to train myself to do other things. Or alternatively if I follow my heart then I end up in an endless cycle of rescuing other people, and trying to be helpful so I don't get severely hurt. If I follow my heart then I am derealised and depersonalised and I come back and I don't know really where I have been for two years. If I follow my heart I end up in abusive situations. When as a teenager I followed my heart I ended being taken advantage of and being exploited my psychologists, emotionally, physically, sexually, financially. I followed my desparate heart when I was a teenager and I got sucked in by a person who was even more destructive to me than my parents. So no following my heart is not a good idea for me. This is why I doubt myself, because I followed the yearning of my heart for belonging and I got completely done over. It is a romantic notion that has no application to this thread or my life.

You can offer help and assistance and I am allowed to say "No this is not at all useful for me". That was one thing was I followed my heart being "nice" to everyone and I got completely done over.

 

[Deleted member 44394]

No. The heart that's telling you that you shouldn't eat yourself to death or hide under the bed- that's your heart you should follow...that's what I'm talking about aka your heart. Your inner guide/instinct, that's all heart is. It doesnt' mean reading some shitty romance novel, or rescuing people, or whatever else as your heart is already telling you that's wrong.

So follow your heart inside. ... No one said it's going to be easy. But your inner heart will always guide you to what's right.

 

[ms spock]

I don't have what you are talking about @Erics.

 

[7Cs]

I don't quite know who my real self is. I have several "ways of being" and one in particular that I like to be and normally am. I think I've created it based on my ideal... molding my"self" from people I admired and respected, social expectations, the idea of being a "good" person. That's who I am most of the time. Evidently all of my ways of being are/ is myself. Evidently it's supposed to come together to create one whole self but I don't know how that will work since some are opposing. I can't see how they could mesh.

I don't really have a pre-trauma self either. I do agree that it would be easier to feel whole again and like "myself" if I had had that to begin with. It's one thing to model yourself after what you see in others to try to be whole and a totally different thing to know how it feels to be whole in the 1st place.

 

[ms spock]

That all pervasive not being able to trust yourself is really back again, and it is shredding me up inside. There was nothing I could do/ could have done, but I can't let it go. It feels real, and it is so in my unconscious self, so it is so hard to deal with. It is a type of grooming - to make you freeze and fawn - to have no connection with your self - so you have nothing of a self.

 

[biaaw677]

That has been the whole crux of the problem.

Thinking about this dilemma. Perhaps writing a diary, is one way of recognising these different personalities we've created, particularly if your writing style changes. Then its a case of bringing them together and balancing them. Otherwise our we just grieving the loss of never having developed a self.

 

[ms spock]

I don't know any of the answers on this one @biaaw677, to be honest I don't even know if I have the right questions or even strategy of enquiry, but it is what it is. I have spent my whole life waiting for things to be safe, or something to be in place, before I could start to live life - it wasn't that easily identified as a conscious thing - it was unconscious so this is what I have been doing The Be Good Tanyas - Waiting Around to Die

Finally, after five years, we have gotten rid of all the dodgy guys that was attached to this house, but there are other considerations, when I have the strength to look at that have to be considered.

So now I am doing different things, and it is really hard going.

 

[ms spock]

Otherwise our we just grieving the loss of never having developed a self.

I guess one day I will get to this. I am trying to do Self Compassion Breaks around this now.

 

[ms spock]

Even having had a feeling of what it is like to be in your own body would be of big assistance.

 

[biaaw677]

@Disco Dancing Queen You say "I don't even know if I have the right questions or even strategy of enquiry, but it is what it is. I have spent my whole life waiting for things to be safe, or something to be in place, before I could start to live life", I can identify with this.
I think it is a case of wanting the perpetrators of the tortures to acknowlege their wrongs before we can move on. In my case this is an imperative because I have no choice but to still rely on those who abused me and treated me badly.
Perhaps writing a diary (and it does not have to be a regular one, such as giving one daily entry each day) will help you?
My guess is that sometimes it can be easier to feel sorry for ourselves, live in a continuation of our symptoms as victims, rather than try to set forth on a path of becoming a survivor.
Perhaps you need to identify whethercthe negative survival strategies you created to survive continuing abuse are holding you: either in an active ongoing trauma suffering, where the perpetrator is still actively abusing you; or whether the trauma has in reality past, bur you are holding yourself in a state of reliving the trauma in the way we perceive ourselves and behave. Pethaps you need to try to recognise the schemas you created in the survival strategies and ask yourself if you our brave enough to step-toe outside of them to see if you are in fact now in a safe place. Only you know the reality of whether your perpetrators are no longer able to hurt you again, if they are gone, then it follows that you are free to try to build a real life.
Yes, the world does include other people who are in need of help, but when we are still so much in need ourselves it is not necessarily us who should allow ourselves to support others. Knowing when to help somebody else and when to hold back needs boundaries, you cannot help others fully when you still do not know yourself and are not living a balanced life. To allow ourselves to be somebody else's support when we do not know who we are ourselves understandably will likely leave both parties feeling abused. Perhaps the first need is to find out how we can build safe relationships with others?