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I Feel Like a Fraud or That My Trauma isn't Severe So I Am a Failure

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So I got diagnosed with PTSD with complex trauma by several therapists due to abandonment, medical treatments, emotional neglect, and inconsistent caretaking. I never knew if my caretakers were going to be nice or mean, if I was going wake up in pain, when/if my physical and emotional needs were going to be met, if people would leave forever from my life and I didn't have any trusted adult to turn to for the first few years of my life. I got adopted into a nice family with a history of trauma. They are quite loving but I never received resources to transition into a whole new environment so all my early trauma got brushed under the rug until 20 years later. I feel like a fraud because it happened so long ago. But it keeps popping up like after my adoptive family broke apart and getting out of a psychologically abusive relationship.

Also, half of my therapists and some people were skeptical of my diagnosis because I didn't have constant recurrent nightmares and I couldn't identify a singular terrifying experience. The thing is that I have had probably close to 25 triggers to varying degrees since I was a little kid and had full-blown 3 hour+ temper tantrums well into my mid-twenties. To protect my psyche, I numbed myself out to oblivion and tried to control my emotional expression.


I feel a bit like this. I am seeing a therapist and he tells me I show very typical sign sof CPTSD and that my officially diagnosd BPD/EUPD is actually a manifestation of trauma. I suffered mental emotional and some physical abuse form my dad who was also raging and angry a lot and suffered paranoia. I lived with a lot of fear of him but the violence only happened rarely. sometimes it would be threats of violence but not every day. His would switch- he could be nice or very nasty and controlling. other times he also dismissed, ignored, belittled me. I do get flashbacks but I don't feel they are debilitating. It is the emotional responses that are a huge thing with me either numbness or anxious or rageful or all at once. feelings of abandonment too, even though I was not physically abandoned. also lack of trust, shame, fear, strugle to make eye contact, feel afraid of people.

There were some nasty incidents- I witness my siser being threatened with knives by my dad and my mum as well. with me it was threatening beatings for doing badly at schoolwork (I had a slight learning issue which went undiagnosed as my father was hyper religious and did not believe in testing for this kind of thing telling me it was demons or some sin I had committed causing it). but often it was the fear, the walking on eggshells and just feeling unsafe alongside the constant invalidation. sometimes I feel the constnat inavalidation and belittlement is the biggest thing of all. Like I don't know who I am and I doubt myself.

It took me along time to call it abuse or accept that it was. For my sister it took even longer and it is only recently we been able to talk about our experiences. She goes back and forth on it a lot but then so do I. accepting it then doubting, accepting it then doubting again. I feel like a fraud still struggling with it- I was brough tup to believe expresing pain was just self pity and a grave sin.
 
You were abused and traumatized by people that convinced you or the experience itself convinced you it was your fault - this is the trauma of what happened to you. Then when you went to get help, no one ever asks you so what happened to you but they throw labels at you that are more or less no different than words that were thrown at you when you were being traumatized. You were put into a box and were forced into a state of helplessness and then when you went for help, you are looked at as another one that got stuck in the past. It is a serious pigeonholing. I do not have solution but I completely empathize with your conundrum.
 
You were abused and traumatized by people that convinced you or the experience itself convinced you it was your fault - this is the trauma of what happened to you. Then when you went to get help, no one ever asks you so what happened to you but they throw labels at you that are more or less no different than words that were thrown at you when you were being traumatized. You were put into a box and were forced into a state of helplessness and then when you went for help, you are looked at as another one that got stuck in the past. It is a serious pigeonholing. I do not have solution but I completely empathize with your conundrum.
Yes, this is very well put for @mytearsaregenuine situation. It does sound very difficult.
 
I was in group therapy, briefly, and as we went around the room, I ended up feeling like my case wasn't severe enough. Everyone else seemed to have a much more difficult life than I had. When I said that, the moderator gave me a very valuable piece of perspective:

It's not a contest.

If it is, we will all surely lose.

As it turned out, I was a bit blind too to the full severity of what happened to me. As I aged, I retrieved a few more buried memories, and spent a great deal of time thinking through my life history. I realized things were a lot worse than I once thought; the proof of it is my nearly constant suicidal thinking between age 14 and about 26. That has to come from somewhere.
 
I was in group therapy, briefly, and as we went around the room, I ended up feeling like my case wasn't severe enough. Everyone else seemed to have a much more difficult life than I had. When I said that, the moderator gave me a very valuable piece of perspective:

It's not a contest.

If it is, we will all surely lose.

As it turned out, I was a bit blind too to the full severity of what happened to me. As I aged, I retrieved a few more buried memories, and spent a great deal of time thinking through my life history. I realized things were a lot worse than I once thought; the proof of it is my nearly constant suicidal thinking between age 14 and about 26. That has to come from somewhere.
I can relate. Strangely, since I created this thread, I realized how much I downplay my experiences, because I didn't want to deal with the emotions. But my soul still wanted to be acknowledged so I was just being a walking contradiction.

I realized that I was probably physically abused as a little kid.
 
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