Feeling Alone

[Syd.vicious]

I guess I want to start at the begging so you know my situation a bit. I am a college junior and over a year ago I took a child abuse class as a part of my major. I thought nothing of it tbh it’s stuff I read about and study all the time in the criminology field. But we did a case study and something about it triggered this flood of memories to come back to me. Memories of a family member sexually abusing me for over six years. Which to me made no sense. I thought I was crazy and that my brain was making things up. So I didn’t tell anyone for the next several months. Well my mental health started declining very fast and I started having more and more (what I know now) severe cptsd symptoms. Looking back I had always had very obvious signs of trauma. I hate being touched have pretty bad anxiety and very wild mood changes sometimes. But mostly looking back I can’t believe someone didn’t notice. Any time I was not with my abuser I would be extremely violent and mean. But that is also the issue. I remember and my mom remembers me wanting to go over there every weekend. Why would I want that? Especially if it was so bad my brain blocked it for 10 years? I’m still working on accepting that part abs understanding it. Anyway after I remembered years worth of stuff and my mental health got to the lowest possible place I reached out. First just to my school’s free counselor. Then I eventually told my mom who said my siblings had said the same thing years ago. After talking to them I realized I wasn’t making it up. Which allowed me to truly begin accepting T and help. I now have been diagnosed and out on medications as well as am seeing a childhood trauma specialist. But honestly this just opened more questions I’ve never thought about. Why does it affect me so much? My siblings both said it doesn’t affect them anymore. They randomly remembered and then moved on. I can’t move on. I literally can’t go a day without thinking about it. So why? Why even remember it? A part of me knows I’ll never know the answer to those questions but it’s sucks. Anyways I’m just at the first several months of the T journey and I know it’s a long road but I don’t want it to be. I want my brain to forget again so I can go back to my normal life before. I guess I just wanted to share my story to see if anyone on here could relate in anyway at all. Because the people who went through this with me can’t relate at all. I know no one who also has ptsd and my friends I’ve told don’t understand they don’t see the flashbacks and the night terrors. I don’t know I just feel really alone in all this.

 

[intothelight]

Trauma effects every person differently, so don't compare yourself to your siblings. Each of us is an individual and how we interpret, react, internalize, etc. is different from someone else, but it doesn't make us any "more' or any "less", it just makes it an individual challenge.

 

[Huxley]

It was helpful to me to learn more about the neurological basis of trauma (Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, etc) and how trauma “hides” in the body, sometimes for years. One’s brain can be very good at cutting off damaging experiences. Perhaps others did not experience exactly what you did, or perhaps their personal trauma histories have not yet surfaced within them, or their method of defending against them has taken another form, such as by appearing more as physical symptoms rather than overtly emotional ones. Many therapy rooms are filled with apparently successful people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s whose internal defensive systems have finally broken down after years of constant activation and are failing them, allowing very old experiences to finally emerge and wreak havoc.

so comparing your experience with others’ is natural but isn’t really very helpful. Your feelings are valid and do not depend on anyone’s interpretation of events but your own.

 

[Syd.vicious]

It was helpful to me to learn more about the neurological basis of trauma (Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, etc) and how trauma “hides” in the body, sometimes for years. One’s brain can be very good at cutting off damaging experiences. Perhaps others did not experience exactly what you did, or perhaps their personal trauma histories have not yet surfaced within them, or their method of defending against them has taken another form, such as by appearing more as physical symptoms rather than overtly emotional ones. Many therapy rooms are filled with apparently successful people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s whose internal defensive systems have finally broken down after years of constant activation and are failing them, allowing very old experiences to finally emerge and wreak havoc.

so comparing your experience with others’ is natural but isn’t really very helpful. Your feelings are valid and do not depend on anyone’s interpretation of events but your own.

Thank you. It is hard to do so but I know it’s what is needed.

 

[Defaultxlove]

How's it going?

 

[Syd.vicious]

Hey sorry I got off track for a little while and stopped checking here. I am doing okay. Still battling with some of these questions but I know it takes time and that really these are just wounds that need to heal. I’ve done some more opening up to my girlfriend which has helped a lot. Even though she still won’t ever truly understand she has learned how to aid me in my bad times which has not only helped me but brought us closer together.