How Complex Is Too Complex?

[Kas_Can_Fly]

At what point do you just give up trying to wrap your head around your trauma(s), what issues stem from each individual trauma and how many issues stem from multiple traumas? How do you rationalise that you are in fact likable and good when so many people have told and shown you that the opposite is true, people who would never hurt anyone else but don't see hurting you as a problem. How do you separate triggers out from micro-traumas and above all, how do you continue to function?

My traumas are wide ranging, I'm 24. I've experienced a lot of emotional and physical abuse from my mother's mother who's extremely narcissistic and a bully. I've experienced extreme school bullying multiple times- not just name or pushing and shoving, but death threats and an attempt on my life. As well as abuse from a teacher who encouraged bullying and abuse towards me. A car crash on the motorway. Sexual abuse - initially only from my father (coincidentally also narcissistic), but then also from a group of people he was involved with but mostly his dealer. Work place bullying which resulted in me being cornered in the work place and screamed at much to the horror of everyone else around me before I left and never went back . A stalker. My mum's ex stood over me with his face red and his fists shaking and screaming at me.

So many people have said that what I've experienced was wrong, especially when they witnessed it first hand but then go on to say the person would never do that to anyone else and isn't violent/aggressive and despite the fact that I've always been shy and incredibly submissive. In all of these situations haven't provoked them or these responses (also acknowledged by witnesses). Which leads me to believe it may just be me.

I've cut so many ties and keep myself so hidden so not to draw in any more people who hate me for no reason and who I seem to turn into horrible monsters that otherwise they would not be. My family alone has decreased from over 30 to being 4 and I only have one friend.

Therapy is kind of helping, but sometimes I just feel like there are just too many traumas that are all too complex and tangled and knotted into an impossible web and I wonder where do I exist in all of that kno,what is it about me that draws out the evil in others when I seek only to give pure kindness, am I just being too naive and when is complex too complex?

 

[Meadowsweet]

There's no such thing as too complex. Complex is what it says, complex. It is complex because of all those knots - that is kind of what complex is.

If I speak about my life, if you relate to it, you relate to it, if you don't then you can ignore it. I have grown up with my best coping mechanisms being dissociation, minimisation to the point of denial, and adapting to the view of those closest to me, whether that's good or bad.

People who need to gain control over others are, from what I can see, insecure, fearful, and have got used to (or addicted to) the power feeling of being successful in people submitting to them in some way. I also seek to be 'good', but i get confused with that 'good' is. Good to me, is more intuitive that getting compliments. A bully gets pleasurable satisfaction out of seeing the fear and hurt of the person they are bullying. An ex of mine, in the earlier days of abuse, would twist my arms and push my head down to make me cower. Eventually I learned to go into the cowering position as soon as the violence started, and it worked, he was satisfied. But in time that wasn't giving him pleasure anymore, and he wanted to see me feeling that way again.

Another woman maybe wouldn't have given him that pleasure. It's not that I drew the badness out of him, but more that, because of my own issues, on many levels I just didn't have the mental capacity or skills to recognise that.or to know how to react in a way that might stop it. But my naivety or lack of skills enabled his 'badness' to come out.

 

[anthony]

At what point do you just give up trying to wrap your head around your trauma(s), what issues stem from each individual trauma and how many issues stem from multiple traumas?

There's a good reason why I tell people who have struggled so much, to take a time of toughen right up, take on their worst trauma and accept and deal with the ramifications for a short period of time, thus gives them the most relief to take on the rest, and then life, with greater ease.

Yes, it is the harder way to do it. Yes, it is the more dangerous way to do. Yes, it does really work, but therapists won't do it because it would breach nearly every one of their guidelines for client safety and they wouldn't have the time required for just that one clients needs during the process.

I guess you could say... its complex!

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

Thank you both for your replies. Meadowsweet - yes I do relate, thank you. Sometimes I think though that I'm more deeply affected by less bad trauma such as my Nan telling me as a very young child that I was weak and not as good as other people because my father was poor breeding stock and that my mum was an idiot and other such sayings has had a more negative affect on my life than being sexually abused by my father/others. I know this isn't the case really, but I am to this day more separated from the most horrific traumas and am not able to feel anything towards them. Also I've cut my father out of my life, however my Nan seems to have remained.

@anthony Yes in therapy the way I chose to start was with one of a number of what I deem to be my hardest memories. The problem is I managed to get through it fully eventually with my T, but now I don't want to revisit it. I know essentially I have to. I actually don't want to revisit it more than I didn't want to share in the first place. The thing is it's still totally beyond me and I was incredibly detached when I told her and between our sessions. As I said in the previous paragraph - I seem to be unable to talk or feel about it as if it actually happened - all the emotions are on the other side of a wall that I can't break through and constantly reinforce with minimization and denial - though I can and do rationalise against these, I fear it's to no avail.

I did reach a roof where I had to finish it working on it quick and I had to take a break. Then after that, I've had more crap going on at home and I'm now almost instantly overwhelmed with intense anxiety on multiple times daily. Also I had some (possibly?) negative transference towards my T and I need to broach it with her, but I'm experiencing pretty intense avoidance everywhere right now, let alone for this - but I will try to bring it up in my next session because I'm aware it's a big issue for me. For me even at my worst coming here and reading through posts (even if I don't reply) is ok, but for the first time ever reading posts is too much, sometimes I'm able to go back and try a different thread, but for no reason a lot of threads are a problem for me - it's all to much, I can't cope with this, I have to stop - and then often need to shut down and not sleep but lie down and dissociate.

I don't know if it's because I was so detached when sharing and in between session, but it doesn't feel like it's been helpful. I mean I'm glad I told her in a way because my brain keeps telling me at least that's that over and done with - even though I don't feel I've processed it in any way - just forced the words/implications out. I don't feel any better, in fact I feel worse. Though my meds are doing their job for depression and I'm so, so glad that they are, anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks, dissociation, migraines - I had a seizure about a week ago that I presume was dissociative (but I have to check) that I ended up in the emergency room with.

 

[scout86]

Here's a slightly different perspective for you to consider.

At earlier points in my life, I trained horses for a living. It seemed like I often ended up working with horses that people described as "being problems". (Personally, I think a "problem is something you HAVE, not something you ARE, even if you're a horse.) Sometimes I knew how they got to be the way they were, often I didn't. A lot of times people assumed they'd been "abused", sometimes they just assumed they were "bad". Sometimes they really had been deliberately abused. Sometimes they'd been poorly handled by people who meant well but were clueless. (If you're on the receiving end of that, it still is experienced as "abuse", whether you walk on 2 legs or 4.)

The thing is, I rarely knew for sure how things got to where they were. I found that knowing what the individual "traumas" had been wasn't real important. What WAS important was sorting out what things they had problems with NOW, and what could we do to solve those problems, so that their lives would be better going forward? What mattered wasn't so much where they had been, but where they were NOW and where we wanted to go from there.

Can you see how that might apply to a person too? I know that there are lots of standard approaches to trauma therapy that involve dealing with individual traumas in some kind of order. I don't have enough knowledge to say that that isn't important, it probably is. It still seems to me that what really matters the most is where are you at NOW and what's keeping you from being/doing what you want to be and do? There are a lot of things we can't change about our lives. We can't change the past and we can't change other people. We can change how we react to it and what we do going forward. So, maybe it's not vitally important that you know what the specific result of each specific trauma was.

BTW, the way I understand "exposure therapy" is that you have to keep going back over stuff until it's NOT something you feel you need to avoid. Having gone through that work once is a big accomplishment, but it's probably just the first step. Hang in there and take small, manageable steps!

what is it about me that draws out the evil in others

There's nothing about you that draws out the evil in others. The evil is there and they chose to express it. They might, for some reason think you're an easy target, but the evil is there, they own it and they are the only ones who can control it, and they should.

 

[Tinyflame]

I really agree with that @scout86 . Thank you. :) :hug:

 

[KwanYingirl]

Scout86 has an excellent analogy. My struggle with CPTSD is time traveling. I try to stay HERE and NOW, I have had to redirect my entire life due to a chemical exposure and having that goal helped me look forward instead of snapping into the past.

I've had a lot of traumas over my lifespan. All the childhood abuse was due to the failure of my parents to parent. I simply was not protected from anything. As an adult I had no sense or intuition and put myself in dangerous situations. But I also suffered abuse at work where I had been named employee of the year, but suddenly lost my career and all my status to to the chemical contamination that made me really sick.

I am hyper vigilant because my brain is conditioned to be, I have to redirect my brain and I believe that is an outcome of EMDR. I am being patient with myself. I cannot just 'get over it' nor do I think that's the goal of my therapy. I want to be a part of the living and thriving but I have a history of self destructive behaviors that need to be redirected too. I choose healing now.

 

[Definitely..maybe]

@Kas_Can_Fly I'm sorry this is such a late response but I was just reading through your post and can relate so much. I'm considered 'complex-ptsd' because of all the childhood abuse and then the adult domestic violence and assaults, but I'm also young like you. Sometimes I don't actually know who I am or who I want to get back to by working through all this because there isn't much of a pre-trauma me that developed. Sometimes I just feel permanently messed up.

I'm not trying to be a downer, I just really understand. I still think all the pain of counseling and working on myself though is going to be worth it!

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

Thank you definitely maybe, that helps! :)

 

[ms spock]

I've cut so many ties and keep myself so hidden so not to draw in any more people who hate me for no reason and who I seem to turn into horrible monsters that otherwise they would not be.

People who don't abuse people, just don't abuse people.

People who you thought were safe might turn out to be monsters or users and abusers, but that doesn't mean you turned them or brought that out of them, it was that you couldn't see it and thus you got into an untenable position of being abused.

There is a lot of distorted thinking caught up in the fantasy that you make people abusers. As a child we blame ourselves to survive, we can't see the abusers in our families as they really are, and that helps us get through.

As an adult keeping that thinking that somehow it is your fault is not a helpful way to think, in my opinion.

And I agree with @Meadowsweet there is no such thing as too complex.

What I am looking at learning is not getting into situations where I might be abused. So I have to learn a whole range of self protection behaviours and appropriate boundaries.

 

[Tinyflame]

Maybe people end up always calling 'me' ('us'?) complex because all of this stuff is complex? :(

I think keeping it simple, or simple choices helps.

 

[Anarchy]

deleted the post - I'm not happy with the way it came out

a big hug to you Kas