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

[Mayday]

what will remain or should, or could, I put in its place?

I think that's where therapy has been helping me so much, because on my own, I would have no idea about what adaptive stuff is useful or beneficial to me now. But my therapist can look at it fairly objectively, so that is a good, healthy "mirror" for me, seeing as I don't have a healthy past to compare to, or supportive family or friends that I can ask.

I like the creativity side of it. For me, a lot of it is about being aware, or staying aware of how I feel. Which is very hard to do a lot of the time as I primarily would dissociate or detach myself emotionally. But when I have started to look at how I feel, then I can see connections that I didn't see before. Such as after being around certain people, I will feel fine, then after being around other people, I will feel bad. So I have learnt a little about the type of people I like to be around, by noticing how I feel afterwards.

Edit: And I guess as I start noticing what or who I like or don't like, it starts to show me a bit more about myself.

 

[Echo]

Over the years, I've done a lot of personal development work and have healed myself from CFS, but it is only now with the emerging memories of childhood abuse and the CPTSD that I feel I am getting finally to root of some of the things that were getting in my way. This time I have had to start working with a rape trauma psychologist, and although it is very early days, I agree that having someone to mirror back objectively to me is really helpful. But it is, as @Ms Spock says, strange to think that there was never an unabused self, even if all of us are the product to some large degree of our parenting, whether good or bad. I find the prospect of creating a new self exciting, even though daunting and some way off. Creativity is what I am all about in other arenas of my life, so maybe it comes naturally to me. I hope so.

 

[Abstract]

how you build up a self

how do you find out who you are?

Ms Spock.

I think it may be helpful to look at what you think a self would be? . How would you recognise that you had developed a self? I didn't have an idea of that for me before but I do now in an imperfect messy way.

 

[Mercy]

Coming from early trauma, I agree with this thought. Our authentic self can never be robbed from us, thank goodness, (even though it may feel like it can be).

This is true for me too although it took me a long time to get there. My abuse started as a baby. My mother tried to burn me by setting my crib on fire. I still am traumatized by the smell of nail polish remover. My grandmother told me this so I know it was true.

I was used periodically by an organization that catered to men with a taste for children. I worked out the probable history with a forensic psychologist. We went for the least likely number of preplanned entertainments. She figured if I was available for 1/2 the year and used 1/2 that time, it comes out to 90 incidents a year, if I was used by only one man per scenario. One is not the usual number of gentleman callers per incident. I learned their story lines, virgin bride(until I became too stretched to fake it anymore), prince and princess(It is in the thread Poems, The title is Happily Ever After. With each new senario a fragment of a personality was formed. When that senario came up again, she knew what to do. Sometimes it was too much for one persona to bare. Then, another persona took the space the former girl disassociated away from. Disassociation meant death. I count not have lived by simply opting out. I had to know the story so I could meet their expectations

For all that and the tortures, I found after several years in therapy that they had not made my soul captive. So yes, I have a being and a number of selves. I feel judged by that as if extreme dissociation cannot create different modes of being for different situations. I have distinct children 'frozen in time.' I am not a singleton. I feel shamed by that at times on the forum. I have kept mostly silent about it. When my experience is denied, I feel shunned, forced to keep it out of forum discussions. This makes me so sad and rejected- a trigger, yes a trigger. I will be very stressed by an object like the bulbs used to clear babies noses but for me they were a size of stretcher and off we go into a series of flashbacks that verify my experience. This thread's topic seemed like the right place to add this to the discussion.

 

[rightkindofme]

Oh Mercy. I'm glad you are here and that you can work through this stuff.

 

[Echo]

@Mercy, no-one has the right to deny your experiences. I also feel that each time I was abused (I don't know how many times), there is a corresponding terrified, stuck part of me that I need to address separately. My therapist told me this was normal. I see parallels in what you say. I am no expert at all; I am new to therapy and to the forums, so I don't know what has happened to make you feel shunned, but I hope you don't feel like the only one. What has happened to you is way beyond dreadful enough without you being further isolated by incomprehension. I hope you have good therapeutic help and supportive friends around you.

 

[ms spock]

For myself, at some point I decided attempt self parenting and personal development... because I figured I couldn't botch it up a whole lot more than my bio family did. It is not an easy way, but there are small incremental gains and improvements.

Ah Alba you made me smile and laugh. It is true we can't botch it up a whole lot more than our bio families did.

 

[Mercy]

@Echo Thank you. Every kindness renews me.

 

[ms spock]

I really appreciate all the thought and care that has gone into the answers and discussions in this thread.

 

[ms spock]

It's a really good question Ms Spock, and one I'm thinking about at the moment too.

It is an interesting question.

I didn't start learning how to interact until I went to school aged 6. It was painfully obvious I didn't know how to act and that the behaviour of my family at home wasn't how other people behaved, so from that point onwards I calculatedly watched people and practised what they did that seemed to work. For example, memorising things that people said and referring to them the next time I saw them. Asking questions to get to know people. Talking enough about myself. Not talking too much about myself.

You had enough to be able to watch and adjust yourself. I have often been so spaced out that I haven't managed that. And I throw myself in to things gung ho thinking I am doing what is the right thing to do, but not always picking up the social cues, I go over the boundaries in enthusiasm or in thinking I am doing the right thing.

But am I that person, or did I just invent myself that way? When my denial and amnesia broke down four years ago, I became the complete opposite - sullen, withdrawn, isolating - and I didn't have the energy to turn on the sociable version of me that takes so much effort.

I know what you mean and I am not sure whether that is really me anyway.

Now I'm trying to find a new equilibrium that's right for me (the actual me) I wonder if I can tell what's me, what's trauma, and what I adopted for social survival.

I am kind of trying to work out what is me, what is trauma and what is social survival. I am not sure and it a question and/ or conundrum.

I have to think that there must be something essentially sociable about me, or I wouldn't have identified those particular traits to copy, and I couldn't have achieved them well. I might have focussed instead on my peers who were quietly academic, or religious. I could have modelled myself on the girls whose ambition was to marry and have children the instant they left school.

I have never thought about it before like that.

think our true selves do find expression in some way, even if not fully or freely. @Ms Spock would you say for example that you love birds, or nature?

I am not sure if that is me or is a me that I created to fit in.

If so, then that's part of your true self and you've found it, despite your history. For myself, I've realised that I've always escaped in books but never in scenery. I've always been physically active but not in competitive sports. If there's a pet in the room I ignore it. If there's a picture in the room I immediately go over and look at it. I like reading, activity, art. I have no interest in nature, competition, animals. If I hold those ideas up against the other things I do and don't do, they ring true. The little things can tell us a lot about who we are.

That is very helpful and insightful way of thinking about it.

Some things are distorted or get slammed down. I think they do cross our paths again though, and at some point we connect with them as we were "meant" to. My religious upbringing put me off spirituality completely, but a kind of spirituality has still managed to find me in the end.

That is interesting to note.

I'm another person who finds thinking about values very helpful in understanding who I am. In my case, working with archetypes has also helped (similar to the idea of sub-personalities in psychology). It's working with archetypes that has taught me to see patterns in the little things I like, or say, or do. Those patterns are the clues to who I am. (One of my archetypes is the Detective, lol.)

Interesting. I have noticed a few people do this on the forum.

 

[ms spock]

I just want to say something about a topic that is discussed on the board all the time and that I think causes people unnecessary further distress.

You know it might not be worth exploring and putting a lot of time into that is true. But for some reason I am drawn to this over and over again. I think about how people have overcome great adversity and most have had some great parenting or a half decent parent to call on as part of their back up. So I am very curious about your development and other people's development that arises after not getting that "stuff" in childhood.

Experiences are part of our life story and as much as we want to magic them away that is never ever going to happen.

This is true and I think my dissociation, derealisation and depersonalisation means I don't connect with a lot of stuff a lot of the time. I am trying to do a little better with this.

The idea that any discovery of self or any type of recovery relies on going to a time before the first trauma is particularly unhelpful in my book.

I guess if it became an obsession or point of focus that could be true. I just imagine if you had been able to do things for 20 or 30 years or even 10 years it would give you a point of reference.

I will follow this line of inquiry for a while and see where it leads me.

I appreciate your opinions.

The difficulty is finding those aspects of ourselves underneath the trauma symptoms etc.

That is what I am interested in knowing. I would really like to know this.

 

[ms spock]

You are a self!!! You're shaped by difficult events as well as others. We are all shaped by our histories, and our reaction to trauma has positive and negative aspects:

I realise that we are shaped by difficult events as well as positive effects.

It might be that if I work on the dissociation, derealisation and depersonalistion that I will be able to work this stuff out more.

It might be that I am so disconnected that I am not noticing what is already there.