Grieving For Who I Never Got To Be

[Deleted member 1860]

Have you ever done DBT? I'm asking because DBT has a concept of "radical acceptance." It is about being able to accept what is, without putting a value on it (good, bad, whatever). It is NOT an easy skill to accomplish. I have been struggling for quite some time to accept the fact that my life is nowhere near where I wanted it to be at this point in my life, along with accepting that I was molested and had a tumultuous childhood as a result.

 

[millicentcat]

Wow - it helps to read this discussion. I'm glad you posted the initial thread, Llama. I've been there, too, looking back and wondering who I could have been if certain things hadn't happened. It doesn't help me, though. It usually comes with blaming myself for not getting my life together and ends with me feeling like garbage and thinking that I can't do anything in the present that I want to do and might already have done had some things not happened to me in the past. I like the "works in progress" and the "starting with who I am now" ideas that She Cat and Lionheart777 mentioned.

 

[Aine]

LLama,

My heart goes out to you.

I grieve for who I never was too. I spent my childhood looking after my mother (she has a mental illness too) and my siblings. My GCSEs I spent taking care of my four siblings and my A levels supporting myself and I know it effected my grades. I know I will never trust truly or be able to do some of the things that other people do because my life was, quite simply, too difficult for me to manage in a normal way from the age of 5 upwards.
We were never children and most of us never had a time where we felt safe and loved and couldn't develop, didn't have time to do things, as children should do. Sometimes I imagine that the earth is covered in the ghosts of children who never got to be children and I cry.
But after I do, I imagine my future. I imagine having a nice house and a husband that loves me and children of my own that I can love, give a safe home to and watch grow proudly. It gives me hope, a reason to work towards getting better.

Grieving for who you could have been is a good start to letting go, I think. But don't let it detract you from who you can be. We are not the things that happen to us, we are the things that help us survive.

Love, Light and Strength to you.

Aine

 

[anthony]

A lot of PTSD guides, help books, therapists etc say that one of the first steps to healing with PTSD is to imagine yourself as you were before the trauma, and to use that as a light to guide yourself back. "You are simply aiming to return to a pre-trauma existence to the greatest possible extent."

This always makes me incredibly sad, because I never had a pre-trauma existence.

As stated, therapists, books, etc... usually total idiots who don't have PTSD or had a half arsed diagnosis of PTSD which should have been ASD, ie. they recovered completely. If they had PTSD, there is no total recovery, ever. What you need be more focused on, is that you are reading things about PTSD, not about CPTSD. What you outline is the exact issue with CPTSD, being that you have no pre-trauma behaviours or patterns to assimilate with. Any traumatic experiences during childhood pretty much rule that theory out. It only applies to adulthood trauma, where you have a clear and definitive pre-trauma memory of behaviour, attitude, etc. You cannot return to it exactly, but you use it as a guide to get as close to it as possible, or even scrap it entirely and become an even better person that you have ever been before. You can achieve that because its a completely new behaviour set.

The moral to this though, is that you can achieve set goals with hard work. You can achieve pre-trauma standards, you can excel beyond pre-trauma standards. When you have no pre-trauma standards to compare, you must then trust your judgement, society, the majority if you will, and achieve their behaviours and standards, which is exactly what we do growing up.

 

[Nicolette]

From memory my abuse started at 6 years of age but I have been told of some at a younger age.

I have no idea of who I was before 6 so I could never grieve for something I have no recollection of.

And also, a child is moulded as they grow so depending on environment, cirumstances & other variables they could have also changed who I was going to become without any abuse. I think life is a journey & a lot of us change due to the paths we take & the decisions we make. Who we are & who we become is an evoloving process.

 

[NIKI]

Wow, That last sentence..............

So here I am, this shadow of who I could have been, wondering who I would have been and wishing that she was here instead of me.

.....that was so intense that I cried for both you and me!! NIKI

 

[NIKI]

Llama, Like you I never had a pre-trauma existence, my emotional abuse started at birth. I am happy that I am a very loving and very caring person, but I do wonder if the abuse did't happen if I would have been a person with confidence. I believe parents do mold who you are going to be and when abuse of any kind is there they do change who you were going to be. NIKI

 

[TLight]

I'm in the same space too.