So What Does A Bit Of Trauma Matter?

[ihateusernames]

My take on this is more or less Scout's response above^. I'm wondering if it may be that your family situation from infancy is your big underlying, or original trauma.

On the other hand, I kind of feel the same way you do. I don't have a diagnosis to argue with. I still haven't even told my new therapist my "big stuff." And I'm constantly debating whether I need to. She went through a core beliefs exercise and we only came up with pretty horrible, negative things. My worldview is f*cked. I feel like those things are more than enough to explain every ounce of anxiety or spell of depression or self defeating thing that I do. So I feel like those are the things that need to be fixed, not constantly rehashing bad things that have happened.

And yet, I also have some problems with flashing back and persistent bad memories and a lot of blanking out during certain situations. So maybe those things do need to be worked on, too. It's all so complicated and frustrating. Why the hell do I have to fix me? Why couldn't I come un- broken to begin with?!

 

[scout86]

My worldview is f*cked. I feel like those things are more than enough to explain every ounce of anxiety or spell of depression or self defeating thing that I do.

The question is, "How did your world view get to be what it is?" isn't it? Because I really, truly don't think children are BORN with a world view. I think they learn/acquire one as they go along. That's what "growing up" IS.

Why couldn't I come un- broken to begin with?!

I suppose there are some kinds of mental illnesses that are genetic and you're born with them. Maybe a lot of them are. Maybe the course of things can be influenced by environment, but maybe some people are really "born broken", PTSD does not seem to be that kind of issue. More than likely you WERE born just fine and those bits of memories you have are related to how you acquired your world view. I think it's all interconnected and that's why you have to work on all of it.

 

[ihateusernames]

More than likely you WERE born just fine and those bits of memories you have are related to how you acquired your world view. I think it's all interconnected and that's why you have to work on all of it.

Yeah, I think ultimately you are right. If only there was just a magic switch to set it all right.

 

[Ronin]

@stenni,

Honestly I'm not all that sure that having different beliefs would have changed anything. Maybe the aftermath. But 'allowed it to happen'? Please don't kid yourself. Meant in a kind way, not the harsh judgment English makes it sound.

After all, you're not doing wrong by having those beliefs; they keep you able to evaluate, and discern what's what. That itself can be rather survival supporting; your emotions may be getting in the way, but they're still something yours to return to. They're still a kind of a ground that doesn't shake when everything else does.

I guess I'd look first at what those coping beliefs bring as coping, /why/ be returning to them after all.

So, even if we assumed they've 'always been there' - what do they bring, how are they useful, and what of them can you try to change (don't focus on how fast, things'll come in their own time)?

 

[Sandstone]

your "complicated" childhood probably WAS a trauma,

But I truly don't think it is allowed to count as a PTSD Trauma. I'm stuck on the word violent "The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence"

But maybe it is just definitional. The forthcoming ICD 11 is likely to include "exposure to an event or series of events of an extreme and prolonged or repetitive nature that is experienced as extremely threatening or horrific and from which escape is difficult or impossible (e.g., torture, slavery, genocide campaigns, prolonged domestic violence, repeated childhood sexual or physical abuse)." My bold.

I do think it matters to define it right, in order to get the treatment right

 

[scout86]

"The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence"

I guess I've been rethinking this for awhile, because of my own situation. NOW, as an adult, I look back and might think "She wouldn't have REALLY killed me." And most likely I'm right, although plenty of infants die every year because some adult lost their temper and shook them too long and too hard. The thing is, at the time, in the moment, do you think a child can actually KNOW that their life isn't in danger? When an infant cries, because it is pre-programed that that is the way to get the attention it needs and it doesn't get the attention. Maybe no attention, maybe negative attention? Either way, it doesn't get "taken care of", what goes on in the brain of that infant? Don't you suppose that might be perceived as a life threatening situation?

I work with horses for a living. It's fairly common to run into a horse who has issues and be told that it was "abused". I rarely know the real background. Sometimes it was probably deliberately abused. More often, it was badly treated by a well intentioned person who had no idea the damage their behavior was causing. They didn't MEAN to cause damage, but they caused it just the same. The horse doesn't know the difference between it's life actually being in literal danger or just the perception that that's the case. It reacts to the situation exactly the same way. I'm pretty sure children are the same way. I'm pretty sure that rewiring of the human brain comes as a result of the PERCEPTION of danger, rather than the literal certainty of it.

I also get that it's a little hard to wrap your mind around the idea that your childhood could actually have been "that bad". I don't think it matters all that much exactly how you got to where you are. I think what matters is where you are, how that's working for you, and where you want to go from here.

 

[Friday]

I'm saying that the issues listed in the "formulation" are much bigger than, and are the CAUSE of the abuse. It was the holding of those beliefs that allowed the abuses to happen - without them I would have been able to speak. With them, I was a passive and compliant victim. It's those beliefs that need to change

No. It wasn't those beliefs that allowed the abuses to happen. While I tend toward wanting GodMode, too... If it's my fault then I can fix it...

It doesn't matter how smart, strong, trained, careful, determined, loud, anything.

Anyone can be overpowered.
Anyone can be ignored.
Anyone can be gotten to.

You think if you had a voice you could have stopped it? I'm sorry to say, but you're wrong. Very, very wrong. If you were extremely lucky maybe speaking up would have mattered, and maybe it wouldn't have made things even worse. For all either of us know being compliant is why you're here today to beat yourself up and blame a 3 year old, a 6 yo, a 9yo, etc... For not having the God-like powers that not even adults have.

Blaming yourself for the evils others do?

Not useful. Tempting, the illusion of control, seductive even... but not useful. Outright harmful.

 

[Sandstone]

@FridayJones Sadly, you are simply wrong. To pretend that any sort of abusive relationship is solely under the control of the abuser is untrue. There are moments of choice, but if you believe you have no right to make a fuss, then you also believe that you have no right to make that choice. Meadowsweet said it better than me, and I recall has a whole thread on this.

the way I think or act in the world has attracted abusers, and then these ideas at the very core of me have been reinforced and affirmed by abuse.

To deny the impact of those core ideas is to remove the possibility of changing the way I interact with the world. Your approach seems overly simplistic - victim wholly good, assaulter wholly bad. What does it say to a teenager assaulted in a busy public place in the middle of the day, with people passing by within arms length? Not overpowered, not ignored, simply passive. To ask someone to believe something that is factually untrue isn't healing, it's destructive. Unquestionably, in two of my assaults I could have acted to end them, but I didn't, and addressing the reasons why is central to remaining safe and to healing now.
Maybe it's more about

And some of it is learning to forgive myself for my own culpability - not excuse myself, but forgive myself for judging myself so harshly.

You are probably talking to yourself when you say

It doesn't matter how smart, strong, trained, careful, determined, loud, anything.

I was never any of those things, I was someone who believed " I have no right to exist" " Don't make a fuss" " It's all my fault" And that brings me back full circle to the PTSD or not question. Those core beliefs dictate how I behave, and they were in place from infancy

 

[scout86]

Those core beliefs dictate how I behave, and they were in place from infancy

So, if we go back to the infant You, are you saying that you thought through all this, realized there were other ideas you could pick as core beliefs, but you deliberately decided to pick a set of core beliefs that would lead you to be abused again and again? If so, what do you think your reason was for making the choice? Was it because the core beliefs are true? Or because you believe they are true? Or because someone else wanted you to believe that they're true?

The point I've been trying to make is that you have/had those core beliefs because of your early environment. In a different home, with a different family, you would have had other beliefs. But you had NO part in choosing the home you were born into, and the beliefs they chose to foster in you were because of THEM, not you. Are you thinking that a better child would have been treated differently? Or that a better child would have been able to resist the indoctrination? Don't kid yourself.

The day I first asked my T if I'd be correct in thinking my mother was "crazy", he brought up the subject of abuse that would happen further down the road, growing up. He asked if I'd wondered how that would have gone if I'd "had a different mother?.....ANY mother?" (His words.) I had thought about it a little, but not to the degree he did. His point was, yes, sometimes the behavior of the victim does contribute to the situation. Predators tend to pick easy prey a lot of the time and my core beliefs made me both unlikely to turn him in AND unlikely to be able to find anyone who'd listen to me.But those core beliefs were handed to me and indoctrinated into me by my family, especially my mother. I was WAY to little to actually have a choice. Some kids get victimized anyway. Some don't report anyway. But when you've been raised to believe that you don't matter and you only exist to meet the needs of anyone who wants their needs met, you ARE a perfect target. The point we are all trying to make, I think, is that it's NOT YOUR FAULT if you have those beliefs. It's the fault of those who gave them to you, instead of teaching you that you have value. Because you do.

 

[The Albatross]

@stenni said, "I was never any of those things, I was someone who believed " I have no right to exist" " Don't make a fuss" " It's all my fault" And that brings me back full circle to the PTSD or not question. Those core beliefs dictate how I behave, and they were in place from infancy"

Infants, toddlers and pre schoolers (birth to 5) are not capable of such constructs. They may have been feelings/mental emotional... but can't be defined until the intellectual cognitive structures exist and then it is a retroactive interpretation to make sense of, understand or form a framework or world view which is based on life experience. In your case these became, "I have no right to exist" " Don't make a fuss" " It's all my fault".

Stenni, at three years old (the onset of your sexual abuse)... cognitively child development -wise you are not taking into account that young children (toddlers 2-3 and Pre Schoolers 3-5 years of age) are still not able to self direct "core beliefs" in the manner that you suggest. For instance, pause to consider the below and ask yourself if a 3 year old child would be able to independently construct core beliefs?


"Cognitive/intellectual development is about the way your 3 year old child's thinking changes as he grows.

It's about ways in which he makes arrangements for his thoughts and arrive at realizing his surrounding.
With a developed intellectual ability, your 3 year old child...

• Finishes a three piece puzzle
  • Copies a circle
  • Joins three colours
  • Understands primary colours… blue, red, yellow and green
  • Can name three shapes
  • Can count up to ten objects with help."

 

[The Albatross]

Okay. I know, in my own case I retroactively chose my own core belief set to rationalize/understand why I was treated the way I was treated "always" (meaning before I had the ability to understand). "Because I'm bad", "because I'm ugly", because "I made daddy or mommy angry", "because I'm a useless burden and not worth it"....

But those messages/beliefs did not precede the situations/traumas that created them. " I have no right to exist" " Don't make a fuss" " It's all my fault"d the experiences, they were formed in an attempt to understand pre-verbal/pre-cognitive experiences. They also shield from horror, fear, helplessness during the abuse.

By the time the abuse in my home of origin stopped... I accepted them as "core beliefs" though the impressions/ emotions that originated from a pre-toddler mind were formed later in my childhood development and I had accepted them as "facts" somewhere at or before my pre-teen mind.

@stenni - why the rigid insistence that your core beliefs formed before the traumas ??? What is underneath the resistance to accept that the pre school you, the toddler you, the infant "you" did not/could not possibly have formed these except retroactively in your case possibly from infancy (emotional impressions not withstanding)?

 

[The Albatross]

The six and a half just seem so trivial and unimportant against the formulation. I think those beliefs would have been there without any of the official Traumas, and they are the things that cripple me. Yet they seem to be the things that can't be defeated or managed. There is processing treatment for the six and a half, but what do I do with the rest?

"When we go through something as a child, on a subconscious level, we generate impressions of the world based on what has happened and how people treated us in that event. For example, a child who is raised by a father who continually explodes, shouts, and hits when he is angry might interpret this a few ways. Perhaps that child will become afraid of anyone having anger, including herself, or maybe she will start to believe that his anger is “her fault” (which is likely to happen if the dad says, “YOU make me so mad.”)

Children don’t have the ability to understand that an adult isn’t controlling himself or making bad choices, they see it as something they have caused. The generalizations that might get made in the subconscious of that child will lead to behaviors that support the beliefs. Maybe this girl with the aggressive dad will start watching her actions to avoid something that might set her dad off (and thereby not be herself). For this situation, the core belief messages that might grow are: Getting angry is bad. I’m a bad person for making him mad. I’m a bad girl.

Core beliefs can happen in both a positive or negative light. Positive core beliefs generally help us to succeed and feel the world is our oyster. Negative core beliefs generally hold us back from our highest potential. Negative (and positive) beliefs are the foundation for self-talk. [snip] Core beliefs also drive behavior (which we may, or may not feel in control of) and send out floods of feelings."

I think that this is the crux of the matter... you say "so trivial and unimportant against the formulation" yet you also say "and they are the things that cripple me" but "Beliefs can come from two sources: our own experience and reflections, or as a blind acceptance of what other people tell us (i.e. parental or other intrapersonal actions and messaging). These are very different methods and are often based on very different preferences and attitudes to the world and people around us."
The Formation of Belief, link: http://changingminds.org/explanations/belief/belief_formation.htm

Core beliefs can be questioned, changed with the adult mind. I've done it. But the first step is to recognize that factually, there is no way that a infant/toddler/mid pre schooler child mind's understanding of an event or world view is unshakeable fact or "gospel". It is laid down only with the cognitive ability available at the age in child development where the formation of core beliefs are able to do so. If it is a core belief that does not generally serve, it can be challenged and changed with the adult mind and the appropriate tools. There are many sources to guide the changing of negative core beliefs. But like I said... first step is to study child development and the formation of personality a bit and allow the idea that you are impeding your progress by clinging to the idea that your core beliefs were pre experience and/or trauma. "Impressions"??? Yes impressions can be formed and emotions. The core belief? They come during or after... not before. With respect at least to the child development stages of infancy through mid pre schooler.