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If You Didn't Have A Chance To Build A Self Before Complex Trauma

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ms spock

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If you didn't have a chance to build a self before the trauma/s then how do you find out who you are?

My abuse started young around 1-2 when we were living at my grandfathers and grandmothers - that is why I know an approximate age.

What have you done to build a self when you didn't get a chance before the trauma/s began?

I do understand...

People do experience traumas and traumatic life events and don't develop PTSD. Just because you live through a trauma doesn't automatically mean you will get PTSD. Most likely there will be changes in that person to adjust to the ways in which they coped with the event/s.

That people grow and change over the course of their lives.

No one is exactly their pre PTSD self, even if their trauma/s happens in their 20s, 30s 40s etc.

Just to be a little clearer if your trauma takes place in your mid twenties or thirties or even when you are 15 then you have a whole lot of stuff to draw on including relationships, friends, schooling, jobs, networks, ability to be present in the world, ability to be present in your body, hobbies, likes and dislikes, routines, exercise, family, eating habits, managing money skills, sleeping habits, personal hygiene habits, body image, that you don't have if your traumas start when you are a small child.

What I am interested in is how, if you are a small child when your complex trauma begins, how you build up a self and a life.

Please note I have responded to some posts multiple times as I think about and reflect on what was said. Some new neural pathways were formed during the reading of this thread.
 
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I don't think I have ever built a "self" per se. I spent all my life trying to gain acceptance from my mother, so who I am today is an overachiever that did everything for the wrong reason.

I just realized after an incident involving my mother, that I will never get the love and acceptance I wanted/needed. Now, I'm in the same boat as you. I spent my entire life being whom I thought would get my mother to love me, rather than who I really am
 
Ms Spock, I cannot say that childhood sexual abuse etc is my story so you may want to ignore my answer. I don't remember any early trauma although I did have many indications of being traumatised or at least distressed from a young age and certainly never developed a self. I am not assuming any trauma pre 5 as I don't know of any. Arg.

The first time I feel like I started developing a self and finding a me was about 5 or so years ago. I think. I am very bad with time. Before that I had no self.

I consciously decided I was going to try to do something about it. At the time I was battling a serious eating disorder and was attempting to find some sense of stability somewhere.

I did some NLP exercises which were good. I am suspicious of NLP in general as it is so often used to manipulate but some of the techniques are powerful.

There were various visualisations that encouraged insight into how I felt or thought about things. These were done in a group setting and with music which was very powerful. Another exercise was about my values. In the wider sense. What I truly value and what isn't important to me. What are actually my parents values and not my own.

I also started writing in my diary every day and connected to what happened to me in the day and how I felt emotionally in and about each situation. I did it for many many years. Hours of it every day. Eventually it became more and more automatic. It may sound strange but I also had a makeover. One where there was a personality questionnaire. Looking behind the trauma reactions for who I really was and how that would be expressed.

The other things I have found key when it comes to a self are:
emotion regulation
knowledge of likes and dislikes
assertiveness (assertiveness is actually about boundaries and one needs to know where one is to have a boundary).
self care (it again reinforces a sense of being a person).
reminding myself continuously to to be authentic. Checking in with my authenticity barometer. That doesn't mean I have to tell anyone anything that I don't want to but rather that I feel I am doing the right things for the right reasons - for me.
actively embracing my shadow side and dismantling perfectionism

Let me know if you want to know more about any of these things. I have a long way to go. It is mostly trauma related stuff that knocks it out of me now and confuses me as well as me often having two or even three very different simultaneous opinions or agendas going on and tearing me in pieces. But the progress I have made has changed my life and made the trauma stuff much more manageable.

I don't see it as being about going back and rather look at as me always being there inside me. That it is about finding me and allowing that authenticity to come through. My experiences and everything is part of that but I want to allow my true self to be expressed.

I will edit and add things if I think of any more.
 
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I have no pre-trauma time. The abuse started when I was in diapers and I potty trained at 14 months.

I was actually writing this morning about how I don't have much of a self. I feel like a support unit for other people. Sometimes I bounce all the way to feeling like a worthless whore--I have no value but the hole between my legs.

I paint. I write. I exist loudly in the world in whatever broken form I have. The people who know me think of me as someone with a very distinct presence. I have a lot of self-worth issues though and I don't see it very well.
 
You are a self!!! You're shaped by difficult events as well as others. We are all shaped by our histories, and our reaction to trauma has positive and negative aspects: I'm much stronger in certain areas for having lived through the things I did. Please don't feel you are less than someone who had an easy or uneventful life, if anything, I'd say you are more, as we have the capacity for our deepest lows to be matched by equal highs.
 
My abuse started when I was only a few weeks old. I realise now that it was the first abuse (the insertion of a finger in my vagina) that made me wake up to the fact that I had a body at all. So the issue you mention is something I am thinking about a lot. How to return or build on a prior sense of self. I should perhaps say that I've always had a strong sense of soul (though I know that's that is not something everyone can buy into) and I have done a lot of work with people about my life's or soul's purpose, though I am not utterly clear on that and think it changes over time anyway. But when my suppressed traumatic memories started to emerge, I really did lose the sense of who I am and what I am for. Apart from anything else, I had to realise that everything I've done and achieved in life and who I thought I was has been completely affected by the abusive relationship I have with my parents. All my relationships, my view of myself, how I have undermined or let others undermine my achievements and my gifts. I know I won't be the only one to have to realise this. It is massively shocking, but I hope the realisations will also free me eventually.

The day I was raped aged 20, we were on holiday as a family and my parents and a sister heard me screaming for help and for the rapist to stop, and they did nothing. They did nothing to help afterwards either and this has always been deeply hurtful to me, of course. And I have been bewildered about why they should have reacted in that way. It made it impossible for me to get any help, so I suppressed everything very quickly. Realising what happened to me as a child has suddenly freed me from a lot of guilt and shame and has given me some answers about the context of my rape at 20. I realised that a tiny child cannot be said to have in any way caused what happened her nor should she carry any shame for it. I do still, of course; it is early days in my therapy and route to healing and it goes so deep, doesn't it? But it was this realisation that made me feel I could stand apart from my parents and say to myself that I am a good person (not perfect, of course), and that I, unlike them, have never taken my abusive past out on anyone else. That was the first building block to a sense of self. I decided I didn't want to allow what has happened to me to corrupt me any further and I'm hoping to use that decision as a means to standing up eventually and start to tell my truth. I don't want to live anyone else's lie any more. So, if you like, I am starting to define myself in opposition to the abusive behaviour and selfish values I have experienced in my parents, my other rapist and several abusive boyfriends. I am trying to love and cherish the many terrified parts of me and appreciate how brave and strong I have been to survive it all. I also think that it takes great strength and bravery to be as vulnerable as CPTSD makes you and to keep going. I don't like labels and I certainly don't want to be some kind of professional victim, but I do find it helpful to define myself as a survivor.

Like Abstract, I have done some coaching (and in my case, healing) work, specifically around values, as Abstract mentions, though I would want to do those exercises again now that I know so much more about myself and my past. Another thing I have found useful is to think about what I have achieved in life and really try to congratulate myself for those things - it's a work-in-progress, that one, but I want to stop believing all the belittling comments and dismissive behaviour that I've faced from abusers, and try to see that it was amazing and very strong of me to have been able to do those things despite everything that has happened to me in life. I think it would also be useful to ask people who do really love me what they value in me and my friendship, though I haven't plucked up the courage to do this yet. I know I have always tried to help others, many times to the detriment of my own well-being, so I need to sort out some boundaries there, but looking back over my career and the way I have run my life, I think there are things to be proud of and which can help me to define myself positively. Things I can build on. I hope to be able gradually to separate myself from the members of my birth family and other abusive people without precipitating World War III, and to find the space to build a new life for myself, based on my values and a healing, positive and nurturing way of life. It is a big struggle now to start, but I hope I can and that I can help others along the way. Then there will be a point and a purpose to my life, I hope. It all seems massively daunting at the moment and it is not easy to do anything except survive another day at times.

Anyway, I'm just hoping that some of this might help you. I'd love to hear what you find helpful.
 
Abstract said:
I don't see it as being about going back and rather look at as me always being there inside me. That it is about finding me and allowing that authenticity to come through.
Coming from early trauma, I agree with this thought. Our authentic self can never be robbed from us, thank goodness, (even though it may feel like it can be). I use, and used, all of the activities that Abstract mentioned to develop a sense of identity with myself.
 
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I just want to say something about a topic that is discussed on the board all the time and that I think causes people unnecessary further distress.

The idea of going back to a time before any experience. That is not how the world works. For anyone. Ever. Experiences are part of our life story and as much as we want to magic them away that is never ever going to happen.

The idea that any discovery of self or any type of recovery relies on going to a time before the first trauma is particularly unhelpful in my book.

Noone can go back. People who are not traumatised don't try to think this in the same way. They have their experiences integrated into their lives. Their experiences are part of their life story. Even when they have been potentially traumatic experiences.

Our experiences are part of our life story and influence us. They are not us. We are in there regardless. The difficulty is finding those aspects of ourselves underneath the trauma symptoms etc.
 
You are a self!!! You're shaped by difficult events as well as others.

Leah is right about that, although I feel that there is a difference between your "real self" who indeed gets shaped by painful events, and those aspects that you can feel, intuitively, don't belong to you. Then as you go through trauma, you might confuse those two things, and in the end up with a vague blur instead of a personality. Which is more or less what happened to me even though my abuse wasn't sexual literally.

Even today I have trouble figuring out who I am, partly also because having borderline, I tend to shift moods/opinions often and then I get confused as to which mood or opinion I can really identify with. But also, I feel like I have learned a destructive behavior from my parents, and that's not really ME, either. I also don't feel like the anxiety is a part of me, or the negativity, the list is endless.

My answer is dual: first, figure out what and who you really love. Because it speaks volumes about you. Personally early on I loved philosophy, spirituality, I was adventurous, curious, headstrong. Later on I learned I love flying. Also the people who you dearly love (I'm talking unconditional) say something about you. It's often those qualities they have that you admire, which you recognize because inside you may also have them, or the potential to achieve them....

Second, identify moments at which you feel confident, if there have been any. Note how you feel at those times. I don't think it's either one thing or the other (either having a primordial self or having a self shaped by experiences). It's probably a mix of both. I remember when I was very, very small, I used to have a happiness within me that later on helped me to get through the crap.
 
It's a really good question Ms Spock, and one I'm thinking about at the moment too.

I didn't start learning how to interact until I went to school aged 6. It was painfully obvious I didn't know how to act and that the behaviour of my family at home wasn't how other people behaved, so from that point onwards I calculatedly watched people and practised what they did that seemed to work. For example, memorising things that people said and referring to them the next time I saw them. Asking questions to get to know people. Talking enough about myself. Not talking too much about myself.

As a result, people have always seen me as sociable and friendly. But am I that person, or did I just invent myself that way? When my denial and amnesia broke down four years ago, I became the complete opposite - sullen, withdrawn, isolating - and I didn't have the energy to turn on the sociable version of me that takes so much effort. Now I'm trying to find a new equilibrium that's right for me (the actual me) I wonder if I can tell what's me, what's trauma, and what I adopted for social survival.

I have to think that there must be something essentially sociable about me, or I wouldn't have identified those particular traits to copy, and I couldn't have achieved them well. I might have focussed instead on my peers who were quietly academic, or religious. I could have modelled myself on the girls whose ambition was to marry and have children the instant they left school.

I think our true selves do find expression in some way, even if not fully or freely. @Ms Spock would you say for example that you love birds, or nature? If so, then that's part of your true self and you've found it, despite your history. For myself, I've realised that I've always escaped in books but never in scenery. I've always been physically active but not in competitive sports. If there's a pet in the room I ignore it. If there's a picture in the room I immediately go over and look at it. I like reading, activity, art. I have no interest in nature, competition, animals. If I hold those ideas up against the other things I do and don't do, they ring true. The little things can tell us a lot about who we are.

Some things are distorted or get slammed down. I think they do cross our paths again though, and at some point we connect with them as we were "meant" to. My religious upbringing put me off spirituality completely, but a kind of spirituality has still managed to find me in the end.

I'm another person who finds thinking about values very helpful in understanding who I am. In my case, working with archetypes has also helped (similar to the idea of sub-personalities in psychology). It's working with archetypes that has taught me to see patterns in the little things I like, or say, or do. Those patterns are the clues to who I am. (One of my archetypes is the Detective, lol.)
 
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I thought to add, as mysterious as connecting with my authentic self seemed, it wasn't far away at all.

On an outward level, I was revealed (to myself) in everyday moments, of my likes and dislikes, etc. On a soul level, I let myself notice and listen (to my intuition) for, open-endedly, what I cared about, what I had interests in, and what I had a bit of a knack for, naturally. Kind of like a treasure hunt, and re-parenting myself.

This process reminds me of watching a child develop between 0-3 years old, in a healthy household. They naturally express what they are attracted to, or not, and explore different ways of engaging and expressing themselves. This connectedness is communicating their authentic self.
 
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The idea of going back to a time before any experience. That is not how the world works. For anyone. Ever. Experiences are part of our life story and as much as we want to magic them away that is never ever going to happen.

I agree that some people visualise a complete return to their "before trauma" and that's unrealistic because we're always changing through experience of all kinds.

I also agree that we can know who we are without being able to look back at a self before trauma.

I do think there are two things about having a clear "before".

I don't have a "before trauma" but I relate to the idea in terms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) because I do have a "before OCD". It's very helpful to know from experience that I have a non-OCD reality, rather than just trying to imagine one. That doesn't mean I'll be exactly the same person as before, because I won't. Only that I remember being a person without OCD and that helps me to look ahead to once again being a person without OCD (in the sense of no longer being dominated by it). If I'd had OCD since birth then it would be harder, although I could and would still recover.

In terms of developing a self "before trauma" I think that must start us out with a clearer picture of who we are. Or maybe not so much a clearer picture as a less muddied one. I feel that, as someone who doesn't have a sense of self before trauma, I have to find my way through additional complication, doubt and confusion about my identity. If I hadn't been traumatised until I was 20 or 30, I think I would have a better sense of self and my own personality from the start of this journey.
 
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