Did childhood trauma leave you feeling like you're a freak?

[Lionheart]

My trauma is from childhood. Personally it made me very confused as to my sexual orientation and preference. I am bi-sexual, though I am predominately (straight) heterosexual. It took me decades to find this out about myself. Before this, I did feel like an outcast. Like I didn't belong. I did feel a little bit oppressed because I could not come to terms with my bi-sexuality for the longest time. I was forever locked into the question, "was it due to abuse or was it a natural inclination".

PTSD made me think that I was wearing my insides on the outside for all to see. Then I guess you could say I felt like a freak. At any rate, I don't think it is uncommon for us to feel that way. I no longer feel that way, but it was an unpleasant experience to feel like a freak!!!

 

[Bristol]

A yes vote from me, so crippled by it that the only person in my life who knows about it is my T, i cant tell my partner of 10 years because (in my logic) he will leave as soon as he finds out, its not something i can ever see myself overcoming if im honest. It sucks

 

[Changing4Best]

I have thought not that long ago that I am a valuable contributing member of society now, because I have been helped by therapy and hospitalizations. Also, I have worked on myself in private with my own brand of meditation, if one can call it that. I have a part-time job. I used to be a 100% burden on society, so this is a marked improvement.

 

[jaccat]

Yes and no. I grew up in a disadvantaged area. The stuff I experienced was not the same as the kids I grew up with, but their lives were no more normal than mine. We none of us had stable home lives. At the same time the way I dealt with my stuff was completely unlike anyone else I knew, even my own siblings, and that made me feel like a total outsider. It's only in the last few years that I've begun to understand why I was so different.

Over time I came to embrace it. I got tagged with the nickname weirdo in school, but I chose to own it, and make it a positive thing. Now, I like being different, and if some people don't like it that's their problem, not mine.

 

[ms spock]

Yes

Totally and completely like a freak that everyone will abandon if they ever got to even know the tiniest little bit of the real me. I so relate to what you are writing about @Sophy. Every time I am with people I got over everything a zillion times to see if I could have done something better or I ask myself did I embarrass myself?

 

[Deleted member 47099]

@Living in the 70s :hug:

That sounds incredibly exhausting.

I agree with what someone in this thread wrote... this is a false core belief for so many of us... and it can and should be changed.

For me, this thread is actually just about realising and validating it first tho.

Because I think it can run so deep, that we just accept it as *fact* and don't even realise that others have this too and that it's a normal effect of childhood trauma - just an effect - and that it is change-able and heal-able.

I hope you and I and all the others find a way of deeply healing this aspect of childhood trauma and that it gives us a deep sense of inner peace :hug:

 

[Lucycat]

Just wondering if this is a common feeling for people who have experienced (especially childhood) trauma?

Oh yes!
And it doesn't help when you get told by a trusted person - to keep the abuse to yourself as 'people around here' don't understand things like that. No wonder we feel like a freak when others treat us like a freak:(

 

[KwanYingirl]

I change my skin when I think I’m about to be found out how damaged I am. First I excelled in school, then I became macrobiotic and ran a food coop, then I went back to my career, then I ran away to Europe for a year, then I got married and had two kids, so far the most rewarding me I’ve been. Then I became a horticulturist, then I went back to my medical career and started running, then I got poisoned and had to recover from that and that’s when my sexual abuse came back to me like a two ton boulder. Then I went back to college, then I changed careers twice, now I’m more settled after a lot of therapy but having a difficult time. So it’s that urge to change me so completely that it covers up my scars. Yep, I am a freak.

 

[zarae]

something fundamentally "wrong with me"

definitely this for me.

 

[Druidcat]

Yes..I do feel like that. My mom used to tell me that I was cursed. They even had some faith healer at church pray over me.
I've struggled to get out of that mind set my entire life, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm some anomaly of weirdness. I think I don't make friends very well because of it. I never feel like I'm a normal human. It's like the island of misfit toys.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Oh @Druidcat that's awful. Maybe you can turn it around in your head by saying "Pah! The only curse in my life is you, mom/ perps!"

It's your mom and perp/s that are cursed. It's your mum and perp/s that are the curse in your life.

But she got it nice and muddled up and said it back to front. Typical perp stuff, that.

 

[Mach123]

Not a freak though I understand the use of the word. I'd say rather someone in between. Not here or there.

I could go on but I'd just be giving you a list of polar opposites.

I thought always it was because I'm a Libra. You know, the scales thing, (which does exacerbate it.).

It's not though it's being taken out of what would have been (average, normal IDK) and being made into something else.

I don't see things like other people because I'm not like other people. But I see things they don't.

I'm not good or bad although I can be both or either. I'm beautiful and I'm not (see I always want to go back to the opposites because that's the most apt description or the only way I can explain how it feels/looks.)

I understand it more and more. I don't always like what occurs to me though, then sometimes I like it too much.