Does Anyone Else Have Trouble Believing Their Own Story?

[sandy]

Still fairly new here and have been reluctant to post anything. I have read so much of what all of you have written and have found some comfort in that. I’m wondering if anyone else has trouble “believing” their own story. I mean, I can hardly believe that the man I chose to marry actually seemed to enjoy raping and torturing me. I hear myself talk to my T about the many events that have taken place and it sounds like someone else’s life. It can’t be mine. Can it?? But then, why would I make this stuff up?? Sexually, he did so much to me for so long I don’t even know what “normal” is anymore. I can’t even imagine EVER being intimate again, it scares me to death. I’m afraid of men touching me, hugging me and I can’t even look at their hands!!
I guess I “know” it all happened, but somehow I just can’t get it from my head to the place where it makes sense. Maybe I just don’t want to believe it.
Thanks for listening
Sandy

 

[UmightKnowMe]

I WISH I didn't believe my story. I can't make sense of it either. How can people be so evil? I can't figure out WHY....and I think that is what makes it hard. There is no answer to the why question. When I get real real real upset and no words will form it seems that is the one that pops up first and agand and again. WHY WHY WHY? It's like if someone could explain that to me maybe I could move on. But thats whats so awful about it. No reason anyone can give me would be reason enough for what happened to happen, but it did. I can't get my head around that either. And it makes me view the world as a very dangerous place to live in....but hopefully this therapy will help me to feel like I can be strong enough to protect myself in it? I don't know...I am a REAL beginner at all this.:dontknow:

 

[2quilt]

Yep

Oh, yes, it's hard to believe my own story because it's unconsconable for normal humans to treat each other the ways we have been treated. Then there's the part about the shame of being the victim of a crime or event such as those that cause PTSD, and if it's a childhood trauma, the secretiveness of the trauma and the natural way children see the world as 'all about them' and so they believe that they somehow caused the trauma to happen to them.

It can be a variety of factors that can make it hard to believe ourselves. Then add the icing on the cake when other adults don't believe us, and there you have it.

I also think that since trauma is so very hard to talk about and examine, we stuff the details away and tell ourselves that it didn't happen so that it's not in the forefront of our minds all the time, causing us pain. If we do that often enough and for years and years, then try to bring out the painful details, they seem skewed, and so we disbelieve the facts ourselves.

There are people who believe that the Jewish Holocaust never happened, even with all the proof. It's silly, I know, but that may be some people's way of denying to themselves that humans could actually, physically perform such acts to another human being. Those people simply can't accept the fact that such acts of cruelty happened with the whole world watching pretty much silently.

 

[kers]

For me a big part of it is denial, which is part of the very nature of PTSD. I have a lot of trouble believing that I have PTSD, let alone believing that what happened was traumatic. Sure, I have nightmares and flashbacks and dissociation and avoidance, but that's just me overreacting!

Accepting what happened--really believing it and feeling the effects--means acknowledging how random and unsafe the world can be, how cruel humans can be towards others. No wonder our minds try to shield us from that.

 

[Jet]

With a very few exceptions I can tell my story from beginning to end without batting an eye...never mind shedding a tear. It feels just like that...a story. I have a more emotional response to a lifetime movie (which I don't watch cause they mess with my head).

One of those exceptions is the part where I gave my girls up for adoption...that is excruciating. Yet there are times when even they do not feel real (or like they ever were) and I have to look at proof of their existence in order to feel anything.

Although I rarely feel any connection to my past I know that I do feel pain, it is simply buried very, very deep within me. There are times when I feel overwhelmed with it, almost like I am choking on it. And yet, when I try to connect it to something in my past there is no link.

 

[Marlene]

For the longest time thinking or, on rare occasions, talking about my story did have an unreal feeling. Not like it happened to somene else, but just that it wasn't that important. I had all of the emotion of reading a newspaper headline. I felt like, 'Yeah, it happened. So what?'

It's only been in the past two years (mainly the last year) that it's become more believable to me. I've been able to connect my emotions to the memories I do have (one big blank spot and a lot of jumbled memories). I still find my mind wandering back to the old way of feeling like I'm making too big a deal out of nothing. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Lisa

 

[linasmom]

I actually fear telling anyone about my traumas for fear that they won't believe me, because to me, they seem unbelievable.

I, too, talk about my traumas as if they were "newspaper headlines" - very unattached. Of course, this is because I had to distance myself from the traumas when they were happening (on almost a daily basis) in order for me to survive. It's a very, very hard habit to break.

 

[Rivergirl]

My mother constantly screamed at me "YOU BRING THIS ALL ON YOURSELF" (I can hear her voice exactly, thirty five years later), and told me that I was to blame for everything, that if I hadn't done (fill in the blank) that everything would be fine. Makes it hard to sort out that it really was abuse, and that it was her behaviour that was abusive.

Rivergirl

 

[void]

:hello:Well done Sandy!!!:clap:

As you can see many of us relate and I am one of them. There are other women on this site who were raped and tortured by their husbands as well and I hope you can connect with them.

:smile:Void:smile:

 

[lrs]

My dad was a sadist, often beat the living crap out of me, with objects ranging to open hand, feet, fists, belt and big sticks. Sometimes I had to take my clothes off. He was a large man, and very powerfull. Sometimes, not always, it would meet any criteria you would care to list, for torture. I do not state this lightly, as not to diminish or minimize the horrible torture that does happen in this world. I really do mean torture. I also saw him to this to other family members, and that was just as bad. Once, in the 5th grade, I thought he was going to beat me to death. Later that night, when I was in bed, he crashed though the bedroom door, pointed his index finger at me, and told me he would make a man out of me, or put a bullet between my goddam eyes. That day, I crossed over a point from which I did not come back from, for more than 30 years. The physical pain from that experience was something no human should ever be subjected to.
In addition, this was my father, the man I idolized, and wanted more than anything, to be like. I totally believe it happened. Even today though, I do not understand HOW a human can do this to another living being. There is even more to this story, that gets even more unbelievable in its cruelty.
I think he was punished in this life, and is probably being punished in the next life as well.

 

[pandora]

Have said this many times, my life seems like a fiction story!

 

[sandy]

Thank You

Thank you all so much for the support and sharing your stuff with me. It is, as you all know, so nice to finally tell someone who really knows. People who can handle it. You don't shrink away, you don't think I'm crazy and you don't dismiss me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've truly found a safe place.

Sandy