Undiagnosed Childhood Abuse, Severe Detachment

[TheSeeker]

Hi, I am a 34 year old female pretty scared to write this.

As a young child I was neglected a great deal. As a teenager looking desperately to be loved I fell in with the wrong boy. A sexually abusive relationship began and I started to fall apart mentally. I would not eat, lost weight, and began cutting myself badly on the arms and sometimes face. Usually arms so I could hide it.

I told my mother what was happening and she thought I was lying, and put me in a psych ward. I don't remember most of it, but was put there repeatedly until I was old enough to leave home. They put so many drugs in me. At some point in all this my liver almost failed.

I also ended up getting violently ill, vomiting for the greater extent of at least 8 months, during which I also had hallucinations probably because I could not eat. A doctor told me it was called Drug-induced Lupus(not lupus but mimics the symptoms). I'm not sure and can't remember most of that either.

I have never dealt with any of it, like I cut my heart out at some point and only now and realizing I need to find my missing parts. I dissociate by trancing a lot, I feel light and I see visions. There are voices I hear, not aduitory voices but a "mind's eye" or "mind's ear" kind of way. See and hear so very much when I listen and watch. I also sleep a lot and do not remember very large pieces of the time i have been sleeping or trancing..I have trouble telling what is real and usually believe I will wake up in the hospital.


I am not sure how to deal with all this and am terrified of talking to a Dr and getting put in a hospital again. Please help me, please.

The Seeker

 

[Nicolette]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[nimkekaa]

I have received a lot of support and information from this forum. I hope you do too.

Welcome!

 

[JustBe]

Welcome :)

 

[KP the nut]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

[Sailorgal]

Welcome Seeker!

Sounds like you need a proper diagnosis. You're experiencing a lot right now. Have you looked at seeing a counselor?

Best of luck to you!

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

Welcome to the forum. :)

 

[Resilientbibliophile]

Hello and welcome to the forum,

(...a caveat here, in that I am not professional help but rather a sufferer)

It's quite common for many of us to protectively dissociate for experience of hostile and seemingly inescapable environments. At a basic level and in keeping with our need to protect ourselves from overpowering recall of the specifics of what we've suffered, many of us black out whole sections of lived experience. Too frequently I feel an alien in the presence of those who led comparatively normal existences who recollect with unsettling accuracy and detail aspects of their childhoods of which I cannot tap. Yes, this is the stuff of P.T.S.D. and the multitude of trauma legacies that commonly lead to it.

Furthermore, there exist quite a literature in relation to cutting, and surely many caring and considerate voices that can relate to you via and through it. Although bewildering and overwhelming in total, with application and time it is possible to understand upsetting aspects of behaviors that nevertheless are aspects of our respective evolution towards a better circumstance. Materials that deconstruct what it is to dissociate; i.e. effectively insulating ourselves from overwhelming realities can afford concepts that may in time help. All of it is work, but naming aspects of the experience and demonstrating assertion to flesh out understanding of the dynamic is something.

Likewise, hostile and disbelieving family given to minimizing what is told to them, or those who actively engaged in shifting the blame is familiar territory for a great many of us, hence please take what solace you can from analogous tales of power imbalances on view across many a thread. Reclaiming memories, establishing coherent motives concerning abusers and spectators present within our environments, etc. is the stuff of assertive identity development. I appreciate that you've been denied identity and right personal agency for so long that claiming such may in the moment seem impossible - but this is one moment and there is a future when this will not be the case. In some way or fashion this community represents individuals attempting by fits and starts to do just this, helping others if they can, but claiming it for themselves most of all. Welcome...


M.

 

[Fia]

A big hug from me. Not to be believed is so shit. To sit down and write the things you did you have taken the first steps to getting better.

My mother was very strange just like yours.

My stepdaughter was cutting herself to snap out of anxiety attacks. She is getting better. only I who had them myself could fully understand and that why I think this forum is so helpful full of people with the same experiences..

 

[TheSeeker]

Thank you, for the welcomes and the support. It means more than I can say.