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Undiagnosed Hi everyone! come read my life story, I spent more than 2 hours finegraining this post ^_^'

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BlueRaccoon

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Hello ! 👋

I've written a lot, so I divided my post in sections so you can choose to skip things if you're not interested :)

General introduction: You can call me Blue, I'm 20 years old. I'm a Literature & Linguistics student, majoring in Ancient Greek & English. I'm into music, writing, all artsy stuff basically, and also games, and some psychology in my spare time, since I'm interested how the mind works (which is part of why I came to this forum.) Mostly I'm into the Myer-Briggs stuff (I'm in INFJ/ENFJ), I'd love to discuss psychology topics! I'm doing my bachelor paper about representation of mental illness in videogames. I don't know which specific mental illness yet - I was thinking PTSD, but that might be too triggering. I'll see.

Symptoms: I was never diagnosed with PTSD, and I'm hesitant to say I have it, because what I've been through seems "insignificant" in comparison with what you'd normally think of when you hear the word "trauma". But I do have symptoms such as intrusive fantasies, nightmares, panic attacks, problems with intimacy and sexual activities, avoidance (I tend to compensate this with humour and positivity, which you'll notice in this post), hypervigilance, not being able to relax, workaholic tendencies, ... I've come to think of those things as normal, but I don't want them to be normal, so I'm trying to allow myself to "recover", rather than taking on a "just get over it, you c*nt"-attitude. But it's difficult to take myself seriously, especially since everything else in my life is going great. So basically, all that's wrong is "just in my head", and not tied to any material problems.

Trauma & "PTSD". I have done one EMDR session with my therapist, but for external reasons, my therapy is on hold atm. We were working on sexual abuse, ignoring other "friendship trauma", I'll call it, because we want to have a look at one thing at a time. The therapy was intense, and it was costing me energy I'd normally put in my studies, but at least it felt like someone acknowledged my trauma, and that I was working on my mental health. My therapist isn't a fan of terminology, that is, she found it important to label what happened to me with my ex-boyfriend as "rape", but she never brought up the term "PTSD". So I've only started thinking about PTSD when I had a panic attack earlier this week. It made me want to talk to other people with PTSD, and that's what brought me here. Tada! To the moderators if anyone of you is reading this: does this community have a Discord? I'd love to have some conversations over chat or voice call with y'all.

My Story, Mostly About Denial (possible trigger warning for rape victims): It's sprinkled with that humor compensation I told you about, so I hope it's fun to read in a sense. I'll keep this as short as possible, I might be more elaborate in some other post.

I was raped by my boyfriend at the time when I was 16/17 years old. I think neither of us really understood the concept of consent back then. As soon as he realized what he was doing, after I asked him to stop multiple times, and after saying that he had absolutely no respect for me at that point, he stopped and apologized. I don't remember feeling scared or disgusted or whatever at that moment: I just remember that throbbing, and being confused. The most surprising thing: when it was over, I forgot about it for two years. Hence, I still can't say WHEN this happened, whether it was early or late in our relationship. Scary stuff. During this relationship, there was also some stuff with a mutual friend who was either manipulative or just had a dominant personality I couldn't cope with, that's something for another post perhaps.

Not long after we broke up, I was 17-18 years old, I started a long-distance relationship with an Englishman who was 11 years older. I was his first girlfriend, kiss, and sexual partner - he didn't have much experience and was hence very anxious about it, and our sexual relations were just one big cloud of angst, but neither of us had the means to communicate about it at the time. The circumstances in which we broke up weren't perfect. After him, I started feeling weird feelings of being distanced from people I was intimate with, anger and guilt, and tendencies to hit myself, all for seemingly no reason. I chose to ignore this, and those confusing feelings went away (for now), so: yay! Fall 2018, I started university, was in immense denial about everything that happened to me, and felt great. Then second semester, I met a guy, he got together with our new mutual friend, I was big sad.

Summer 2019, I had met up with this random guy from a party to have sexual relationships. But sex hurt, and I didn't know why, so I thought it was a great idea to just ignore that fact and keep going. I had to walk home with a burning between my thighs, and I had an infection a few weeks later. I went to the doctor, she asked me whether I felt comfortable having sex, and then I had the big revelation that maybe I didn't. After three tries, I found a therapist I felt comfortable with, told her my story, and asked her if what had happened was rape, I mean, it had only taken only a couple of minutes, so it wasn't technically rape, right? But yeah, she nodded, it was rape. Around that period, I had some encounters with men who didn't respect my boundaries, and I started losing faith in all men.

Second semester of second year in university, covid happened. Spring/summer 2020, I needed my friends but they didn't know what I was going through, because I'd only just discovered myself. Not only did I hate all men now, I hated humankind. "The only person I can trust is myself"-attitude. But I eventually told some friends I was disappointed in them for not checking in with me, and they reacted empathically. I realized sometimes people have so much going on in their own lives (covid), that they forget about other people, but that doesn't mean that they don't care. Fall 2020, first semester of my third year at the university, I've become a new person in comparison to last year. I'm trying to put myself first, and be very clear about my boundaries. I now have a boyfriend, whom I've first been close friends with for a year. I trust him, but intimacy is still difficult, and I have fantasies in which he hurts me, even though I know he would never do that.

Conclusion, I guess: I realize there's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm in a different phase, in which I can talk about all of these things. Which is why I've joined this forum. I hope you're not scared away by this huge post, I know I would probably be. I'll try and spend more time reading your entries, because I want to learn more about your experiences as well, and help if possible.

Thank you for reading (parts of) this post, please do react if you have thoughts/questions, and I look forward to meeting all of you!
 
Hi and welcome!

You express yourself very well! You seem very tuned in to yourself, which will be a plus in your recovery. I wish you the best!
 
Welcome to the site. I’ve only just found it myself, and I hope you find some relief here.

I’m glad you’re drawing boundaries, and I was happy to find that you’re in a relationship with someone you’ve known for so long. It’s much more likely you know the ‘real him,’ as it’s very difficult to keep character flaws hidden for so long.

Again, welcome.
 
Welcome to the site. I’ve only just found it myself, and I hope you find some relief here.

I’m glad you’re drawing boundaries, and I was happy to find that you’re in a relationship with someone you’ve known for so long. It’s much more likely you know the ‘real him,’ as it’s very difficult to keep character flaws hidden for so long.

Again, welcome.
Thank you! Yes, it's so great to get to know each other as friends before starting a relationship, I'd give that advice to anyone. Welcome to you too!
 
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