Do you have documents/photos/writings/objects/etc. from the time of your trauma?

[Sweetleaf]

Self-care time?
That's what I'd need I think.

Yeah I think I need some of that. I have some other stuff that's really bothering me a lot right now, in addition. I can't even address it right now. Just makes me want to cry.

 

[Swift]

Ok. Here to chat if you need.

 

[Mach123]

I can't look at periods in my life where I was trying to get rid of part of me before it came out. Like I was the person you are talking about and I was doing it to me. My abuser is always here with me. : ( There is some evidence of those days around. I try and forget it. My wife came close to leaving me then. It was a dark time.)

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

I continuously fear people, and think they're out to get me, or question their motives, and have paranoias that they're doing things because they have ill intentions towards me. Everyone is a potential threat. My own mother, even.

I don't have paranoia I just fear uncertainty, If I don't have a hand in controlling/manipulating what is around me I can't function and can become unsafe. In my abuse I was trapped in uncertainty, and the people who were mandated to protect me did the opposite knowingly. So for me when uncertainty strikes, I can't process it, because its like I am back when I was being abused.

trap me in a confined space and yell at me

I can relate to this, I go to pieces if I am in a confined space I cannot get out of (trapped), I once got stuck in an elevator for half an hour. By the time they got me out i was so out of it, and hysterical I had to be taken to the ER.

 

[katz]

I'm glad that I found this subject as a thread.
I have often thought of throwing out my journal. (I had a T tell me that I "should start one". I didn't have the heart to tell her that I can take her back over 40 years in mine!)

It may sound funny, but I have held on to mine for my other relatives to find after I'm gone. I told my secret years ago to the family, and no one believed me. I know that when I pass away, someone will find it. I have always hoped that it will explain to them that I was just not some "crazy aunt" that they had.

I don't go back and read any of it - unless I need to reassure myself of what happened. I am always in a constant state of not believing myself. I just tuck it away, and know that it is there. It also gives me relieve to have a place to write the thoughts down, so that I can just forget them, and yet knowing that they are there if I want them.

Sometimes I wish that I did have a face for "those people" who hurt me. I often have a hard time seeing people in the public and not knowing if it could be "them." Because I will never know for sure.

 

[whiteraven]

So...I have kind of a weird thing going on with photos. My dad (one of my abusers) took hundreds of pictures when I was little. He died 10 years ago, but left 32 trays of slides and scores of photos. My brother has had those until very recently. I agreed to take them and digitize them, so we could get rid of them.

I've been going through these bit by bit - they are from the time I was born up until my sister was maybe 7 or 8. Some are super-triggering, but mostly I am bothered by how happy I seem.

I've been sharing pics with my therapist and he says he's not surprised at all. Says it's not unusual for kids to keep their feelings about bad stuff going on from everybody. But it still seriously bothers me.

I'm going to continue to go through these photos - even the really triggering ones - just like I've gone through all my old journals. And the documents that tell a different tale than what folks told me growing up. For me, it's helpful - albeit it painful - to sit with this stuff and allow it a space in my life. Makes it - gradually - easier to manage and not nearly as scary as it started out.

I hope @Sweetleaf that you get this ironed out in a way that keeps you safe and doesn't add to your pain.

 

[Mee]

Everytime I read @Swift posting about Internet safety I feel guilt and stupidity about my own lack of protection.

I should take a course. Do what to my pictures? I am still amazed my phone TAKES pictures I can send my friends.

Yes. I have stuff. My trigger incident was last year. A lot of it is on my phone. There is more stuff that might have been more incriminating, I cannot remember really what was said. Thinks like Skype conversations that predate the time before I reported. I have photos and emails and screen shots. All kind of things. And the feelings are so confusing. Sometimes I still open them reading for signs I missed. I don’t have the earlier ones though; which are the ones i’d Need to show me what I missed recognising.

 

[Sweetleaf]

Do what to my pictures? I am still amazed my phone TAKES pictures I can send my friends.

For one thing, scrubbing the exif data from photos.
Just google "exif scrubbing" for a more detailed and accurate explanation than I can give lol. Pretty much though every picture is tagged with all sorts of information, such as which device was used to take the picture, or edit it, and when, and possibly even -where-, like down to the exact longitude and latitude on the globe. Like take a picture in your house, and if it's recording the GPS data, that picture, if shared, will give people not only the picture, the visual info - but also the GPS coordinates of your house - or wherever you are when you take the picture. Some websites automatically scrub this information when you upload photos, others don't - one I used even would display it on mouseover.

You can set up your phone to automatically not record the GPS data, I did that with my phone.

I personally prefer to just share photos as little as possible. I don't show people any pictures of myself, that's for damn sure. I also scrub exif data and edit the photo before sharing, doing whatever cropping or whatever else I feel like doing.

 

[Swift]

@Mee - don't feel stupid.
As much as I hate to admit this, my abuser taught me a few tricks.
And then her and the other blokes began physically stalking me, and cyber-stalking me. There were threats. They weren't good.
I bought a CyberSecurity bundle off crackd, and then sat there with my computer and some uni textbooks and forced myself to learn.
It's not something I'm good at by nature.
I didn't even know how many ways it was possible to, if you'll pardon me, f*ck someone's shit up with technology.
So yeah. Not something you need to feel guilty or naive about.

 

[Fadeaway]

Not a damn thing. I am weird like that. I don't like to keep things I have written down nor pictures of myself. I don't want any pictures of myself to exist. Probably because cause my grandmother bitched about school photos and how no one would want a photo of me so she wouldn't buy them.

 

[Swift]

I'm so sorry, @Fadeaway .
It's sad that your grandmother did that.

 

[Changing4Best]

I have one photograph of me when I was around 3. I am crying in it. I remember when my father took the photo of me crying too. I was being made to sit in a lawn chair that was made of wood. Something about the chair was upsetting me, like it was hurting me somehow, but I cannot remember exactly how. I know that what I was sitting on was not comfortable, that is for sure! This was before I could speak, so my only way to communicate that something was wrong was to cry. However, crying did not get me to be able to move off the chair. I was forced to sit there for the photo and I don't recall how much longer. I doubt seriously that I had done anything to deserve being made upset or crying. My father was cruel sometimes. He would tease me and make fun of me and call me names. I did not get the feeling that he loved me until my teen years. That is for sure. He was not my abuser/ molester though. His father was. I have no doubt that he knew what was going on, however, and he did not care. This photo was taken during that time in my life. That much I do know. So it is a kind of testimony to the fact that I was being neglected by him, and abused/ molested by his father even though it does not show anything specifically to indicate those things. It shows that I was an unhappy child is all, which I certainly was!