Does Complex Trauma Mean I Am A Target For Nasty People?

[Queen Boudica]

Like, is there something about the way I look, walk, behave that makes me an automatic target for horrible people?

I seem to have a gift for finding really horrible people who somehow recognise I am vulnerable and then "lay into me"

Do other's have the same feeling?

 

[Anna]

Yes. I refer to it as being the "Weirdo" magnet. You have to learn to respect love and protect yourself. See these people for who they really are and keep well away from them. You need to become confident in yourself. I started working out and doing martial arts. It boosted my confidence a lot and made me feel safer.

 

[Tinyflame]

I think sometimes being angry is a form of protection, in a way, but when you can't muster it up and feel stripped and or feel vulnerable, the weirdos know it. Maybe good people know it, too, but it's just the creeps who play off of it. JMHO anyway but seems to me because of that it makes me feel anyway like just avoiding everyone. Idk this isn't very well expressed. Just that you (well I) don't have the defenses I need, -the 'energy' or the means. For 'life' in general, sometimes I feel (fear). Others may not know it about me but I do.
Plus I hate conflict. :(

 

[The Albatross]

When I recognized my innate ability to attract riff raff... I became a whole lot more involved in where I worked, what my activities were, and who had "access" to me. I hang around a gym, work for a not for profit or with the elderly, and the most face time I get these days are the people in my church or a lunchdate with one of my two 3D friends. And I'm a whole lot happier.

 

[Kim]

I seem to attract bullies and weirdos no matter where I go. I can relate.

 

[Ted Moen]

I like the term self-nominating target. Once some people realize we will react emotionally instead of logically to stuff it's kind of like a kitten with a ball of yarn. They just play with us until they're tired and move on. The challenge is to not be a self-nominating target. To do that we need to sort out the feelings that are related to old stuff and the behavior that is appropriate in our current situation and learn to do the latter while the former is raging in the background. A good therapist helps :)

Ted

 

[Queen Boudica]

Plus I hate conflict. :(

Me too. Do everything I possibly can to avoid it.

So that means the bastards out there can take advantage and they know I won't defend myself.

Even when I try I just muck it up because I so lack that strength and communication skills and whatever else it takes to be a normal functioning person.

 

[Tinyflame]

Ya, after today I wish I could disappear. :(

 

[Queen Boudica]

(((((( Junebug ))))))

 

[anthony]

Many people who have endured complex trauma actually say the same thing. There actually is something that can be targeted, its called low self-esteem. Predators know a person with low self-esteem, it carries in how a person walks, talks, interacts in general.

Predators don't typically do well with a person who is assertive and confident... it happens, but its not the majority.

 

[Kb3]

For most of my life I could not be assertive and attracted bullies, particularly male bullies. To be bullied for me was a familiar pattern, my normal, and I absorbed and believed that I was less than and unimportant. I would take the abuse and swallow my feelings of anger until I would blow up under pressure. This caused me a great deal of trouble on more than a few occasions, and I learned to repress my feelings of anger more and more.

This inability to express my anger appropriately made me depressed and anxious and found me a new abuser - psychiatrists. Because I believed that I was deeply flawed, I bought into diagnoses that were blatantly wrong and harmful to me. All I wanted was a pill or pills that would make me better, and as I became more immersed in that system, I lost myself. Lost myself emotionally, spiritually, physically. I was anyone's victim and experienced ridicule and abuse almost every day from people I knew, as well as from strangers. I remember a period of years in which it felt like everyday was punishment for a crime that I could not remember committing.

I was as robbed of a persona as one could be when the most severe trauma of my life happened, and when it did, I lost everything and ceased to be human. It was what an alcoholic would call hitting bottom. I simply could go no lower.

It took an incident as severe as what happened to me to begin to understand what had been happening in my life. Like an alcoholic, once I admitted the problem, things began to change for me. I learned to love myself and accept myself for who I was, as well as to accept all the things that happened to me. No longer in denial, I resolved to learn from my experiences, so that I could teach my children how to protect themselves and live their lives with dignity and a true sense of self esteem.

It is still a struggle for me on a daily basis, and on those occasions that I cannot muster enough love for myself, I remember God's love for me and press on. I don't know if I am succeeding in my goal to help my kids have different lives, but I will never stop trying.

I wish everyone else who is living that struggle peace, strength and the ability to love themselves too.

 

[Queen Boudica]

Oh Eat I am so sorry all of those things had to happen to you. And I am so happy for you that things have changed for the better.

Keep loving yourself