Sexual Assault Just Learned Something From My Past

[Anarchy]

@Trauma
you're a remarkable woman, you've already taught me some seriously good grounding techniques, you have one of (if not the) sharpest minds on here, and that's @ an age when most of your peers (we'll not go there).

Is it selfish of me to be looking forward to you're posts here because they're so damned good?

On the subject of wanting to die. What would you expect it to achieve that would be different to healing? No one ever came back to say that dying is in any way better than what we have _ indeed most living things struggle like hell not to die, do they sense something that we have learned mistakenly to dissociate from?

Kudos to Scout she's another who's mind and outlook I admire. From what she has written, and from what I'm reading else where, there's a lot which we can achieve in daily improvement from simple CBT and mindfulness techniques, before we need to go near our traumas.

Fwiw the latest trick i he learned is to remind myself that this is not the same oldshit again, its a whole new experience, some of it may be familiar, but it is new and I don't knowhow it will turn out. I've been using it today, I'm driving on the continent (it's Sunday and there were only Brits on the road, so we just drove on the left ;-) ) and previously I've always had a gf with me for company and as nagivator. They fell prey to my self isolating behaviours, and I missed them like hell on the drive. I kept reminding myself that there is a future, that it is all new, and it isn't all determined by my past. And it kept on working! I think that missing those women is one of my negative automatic thought patterns, and implicit in it is the assumption that I'll never have anyone like either of them in my life again. Rationally, I know that. Is not necessarily true, but I have to keep reminding myself.

More platonic hugs if you'll accept them.

 

[Deleted member 27340]

@Hope4Now I feel way more messed up. I don't even have my own identity. I'm no one, all of me has been stolen and what's left I can't access. I function like a robot; I know what I have to do and I do it, unless my system crashes (I'm poorly programmed).
I understand that I am, in fact, worth nothing because the universe is so big and I am so small, chances are also that there is something outside our universe... there has to be an end of it, because the light is bending. Light cannot bend unless something can shape it, and no gravity pull we know but a rounded edge working with the centre of the universe is great enough to bend the light so much that we are able to measure it. I'm just a little nothing on a little nothing of a planet in a tiny galaxy that just happens to be in a completely random universe full of nothingth (the *whatever* between the particles in an atom).
Also, life is so meaningless. Everything is big and nothing has a point. The only point would be to live as long as possible (survival instinct) and entertain yourself on the way, but that's also pretty meaningless unless you turn to selfish philosophies such as LaVeyan satanism -- please google it and do some reading before you think I sacrifice rabbits to the devil in the middle of a burning pentagram far out in the woods -- where I do, again, get a problem because of my lack of self-worth. You could probably add meaning to your life by helping others, but I don't really see the point in that either, because after all, we're just a bunch of ugly, naked apes wandering around on a planet we're about to make unliveable for ourselves and half the other species on it.

I seriously need to stop thinking, jeez.

here, on this forum, you come across as a pretty remarkable young woman. You just DO.

If not remarkable, I can agree to being a little weird.

All of that self hate and confusion isn't YOU, it's the PTSD talking. (OK, maybe being a teenager has a tiny bit to do with it too.

Then you may wish to start wondering where the self and the disorder ends and starts, as it's all in the brain and everything up there is mixed up and floats together. Chemicals and neurons don't sort themselves into buckets with "me", "PTSD", "depression" and "I DO NOT WISH TO REMEMBER THESE CHORES". There is some sort of system and parting up there, but after all it all works together.
Hormones probably play a big role, too, yes :p

you don't worry too much about what stuff means or why stuff is. Deal with getting your life as it is today, in order.

I might suffer from a huge inability to accept something without understanding its cause, preferably also its reason. I don't depend on the full memory to understand things, though. I'm now able to understand that I fear being alone with men only in smaller rooms, and not huge halls, outside or cars, because my mother would leave me alone with her buddies in my room. I don't remember much, but I can add 2 and 2 (and know it's probably either 5 or 6214354621532664^456+67b*m/9).

You learn to understand the effects and you make adjustments so that your life can go on and you can be more the person you were meant to be. The person you are now is pretty cool. The person you are working to become, is someone I hope I get the chance to meet and to know! :hug: (That emoticon MIGHT be one of those one armed hugs. ?)

That's about what I'm trying to do, but again, I need to really understand something to somehow accept it. I've always been like that. As a kid I would go on and on about something until I got a good enough answer, to the point where my dad once gave up and just put me in front of the computer and found a science page so that I could read about evolutionary development and big bang myself (I was 8 or 10 or somewhere in between at the time).
Wonder who I was "meant to be". If that's even a thing. I think it's all random as you go.
Nah, I'm not pretty cool. I do not agree. At all. Let's fight about it.
Sure :hug:

@shell Thank you :hug:
I'm not an adult, but thank you, I'm trying to become a good one as I go on with my life. Finding the motivation to do so is a little hard (depression is such a fun thing, right?).
My mother is so strange. She always hurts me, no matter what. I cut all ties with her about half a year ago...

you're a remarkable woman, you've already taught me some seriously good grounding techniques, you have one of (if not the) sharpest minds on here, and that's @ an age when most of your peers (we'll not go there).

Still don't really agree to neither remarkable nor woman. I'm a strange teen girl. What grounding techniques? I can't remember which ones you're talking about. I highly doubt it's the sharpest. There are so many wise and intelligent adults on here, and I was tested, my IQ is actually not that high on the scale, compared to people like Einstein, Da Vinci and Hawking. My same-aged peers are f-ing retards and I can feel my brain cells dying around them.

Is it selfish of me to be looking forward to you're posts here because they're so damned good?

What would and individual be without selfishness? And no, it's not really selfish.

On the subject of wanting to die. What would you expect it to achieve that would be different to healing? No one ever came back to say that dying is in any way better than what we have _ indeed most living things struggle like hell not to die, do they sense something that we have learned mistakenly to dissociate from?

Relief? You're dead. There's no struggles, no pain, no gain, no depression, nothing at all. Your meaningless existence is eliminated from this world, and the star dust you were made of can be returned to nature.
Most living things struggle not to die because they're programmed to do so. Survival's instinct. For some reason, everything in nature is constantly fighting to live the longest and do the best. Where's the meaning in that? It's a neverending battle where no one wins and no one looses.
We don't dissociate from it, it's still there. Suicidal thoughts and depression has simply hidden it. It'll come out the minute you stand there with a gun to your head or your neck in a rope.

From what she has written, and from what I'm reading else where, there's a lot which we can achieve in daily improvement from simple CBT and mindfulness techniques, before we need to go near our traumas.

That's because there's no medicine better than understanding (which is why I don't understand why we don't read psychology instead of poorly written and commercial self-help books).

this is not the same oldshit again, its a whole new experience, some of it may be familiar, but it is new and I don't knowhow it will turn out.

I'll try to use that one more. I just need to stop draw connections between everything and anything (guitar - palm tree - moon: a logic line of thought. See my point? My associative system is too strong).

More platonic hugs if you'll accept them.

:hug:

 

[scout86]

If not remarkable, I can agree to being a little weird.

Ok, how about weirdly remarkable?

Then you may wish to start wondering where the self and the disorder ends

I DO wonder this! My understanding, at present, is that PTSD appears to involve a "differently functioning" amygdala. There are switches that are "on" when, in other people, they would be "off", is kind of the way I picture it. And they may turn "on" easier than average and "off" slower than average. I imagine PTSD as the filter through which I view the world. Some people see the world through rose colored glasses, I see it through PTSD colored glasses. I tell myself "that's the PTSD talking" when it suits my purposes. If symptoms are making life more complicated than it needs to be in some way, I try to notice and acknowledge that it's a function of the way my brain functions and remember the biases caused by the PTSD.

My T likes to say that we all have our own road map of reality. They do not have to be the same. He suggests that they be composed of the most up to date, accurate information available. He goes on to say that it's important to remember that it is just a map, it is NOT reality. In your case, as far as I can tell, your negative self image is not based on up to date, accurate information.

I might suffer from a huge inability to accept something without understanding its cause

Believe it or not, I tend to have the same "problem". Probably since birth, "Why?" has been my favorite question and I've been tormented by questions without answers. Turns out, there is a category of stuff that I label "Great Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe". They are interesting, cool to contemplate, and some of them might actually have answers that someone who's looking might find. But, driving yourself crazy trying to solve them isn't very useful. As long as it's fun, I'm up for it. When it gets to be "not fun" there's no point.

There is a quote that I vaguely remember hating as a kid. I've come to appreciate it more as I've gotten older. Don't remember who said it. It had to do with not worrying about the answers but learning to love the questions.

I understand that I am, in fact, worth nothing because the universe is so big and I am so small,

And yet, in this entire big universe, you are unique. Even if, somewhere, there is another being with exactly your DNA, that being has not occupied the same points in space and time as you have. You are one of a kind, never to be repeated. Small things have value too. We each touch the lives of others
everyday. You never know what affect something you say or do might have. We are all like pebbles dropped into a cosmic pond. Waves go out and touch shores we never see. And yet they touch the shore and have an effect. There are a lot of philosophies in the world. Nihilism is kind of a drag. Being a drag doesn't make it "true".

my IQ is actually not that high

Standardized tests are for standardized people. IQ measures how well someone does on a particular test on a particular day. Not of much importance, IMO. You like to think. You're creative. You're unique. Weird? Maybe, but, IMO, delightfully so. (Besides that, probably everyone else around here has been called "weird" at least once!)

 

[Hope4Now]

Oh, @Trauma. As I read your post, I hear my own therapist's voice in my ears: "Don't overthink it." I continue to fight against the overthinking. Thinking and finding the answers is sort of mapped into my whole being, so I resonate with your comments about accepting something without understanding it. Oh, how I resonate in so many more ways than I can describe here. After a year+ of fighting it though, as well as trying to wrap my head around this completely absurd but very powerful type of trauma work I am engaged in (called Internal Family Systems therapy), I'm just beginning to realize that sometimes you just have to take the leap into embracing the absurd. The paradox of meaning in lack of meaning. Have you read Camus The Myth of Sisyphus? (I wouldn't normally ask this, but you seem to be rather an intellectual type. He offers an alternative to "faith" in some bigger meaning and to pure nihilism.

I don't even have my own identity. I'm no one, all of me has been stolen and what's left I can't access. I function like a robot; I know what I have to do and I do it, unless my system crashes (I'm poorly programmed).

The WORK of trauma therapy is to find access to the bit that hasn't been--can't be--stolen from you. Your deepest self. It gets lost in layers of traumatized parts and other parts that work desperately to prevent you from feeling the full brunt of pain of your traumatized parts. On most days I feel like I don't have my own identity. This is after daily practice of all sorts of things to keep me present and grounded, and twice a week therapy sessions where I try to understand and make space in all the chaos so my deep self can be revealed. It peeks out now and again, and I wish I knew the recipe to keep it there. I don't yet. It takes so much time and patience and focus and energy. You are not "no one." Right now you are a whole bunch of functioning parts...one of which is the robot who does what needs to be done until you crash. I am mostly this too. I recognize your description. It is a part that's extreme. It's the part that allowed you to survive thus far, and is protecting your more vulnerable parts, and hiding your deep self.

I'm just a little nothing on a little nothing of a planet in a tiny galaxy that just happens to be in a completely random universe full of nothingth (the *whatever* between the particles in an atom).

Now you're talking my language...I'm a scientifically and mathematically ignorant but philosophically fascinated geek of quantum physics. I won't go on and on here. Yes you're small, but you're not nothing. Even black holes and dark matter aren't nothing. There's power in their energy and it affects reality. We know there are more dimensions than those of which we can conceive. What seems random may not be. We need to be humble in recognizing our place in the universes and dimensions, yet we also need to embrace that we have a place that we can choose to take.

Everything is big and nothing has a point.

Everything IS big and sometimes seems to have no point. There's no denying that. Yet here we are, little vulnerable creatures that we are, stumbling around in our lives. The point IS the stumbling.

Then you may wish to start wondering where the self and the disorder ends and starts, as it's all in the brain and everything up there is mixed up and floats together.

Yep. It is. A good trauma therapist can help you start to untangle it though, if you're willing to tolerate the absurdity of it...and the pain and chaos it causes in the process. It is all about perspective. Here's two ways to think about it. The scientific: google quantum entanglement and emergence (there's some debate and some of it is mathematically impenetrable to me, but here's a more quotidian explanation: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxi...w-time-emerges-from-entanglement-d5d3dc850933.) And here's a poetic way to consider it: "For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out, and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction." --Cynthia Occe (I'm not really sure who she is, but I really like this quote.) Shall I go on? There are musical ways (think Philip Glass as just one of many examples), artistic ways (think Picasso or Duchamp), mathematical ways (see Cartesian vs. non-Cartesian theories of perspective), etc. I won't rant on.

I just need to stop draw connections between everything and anything (guitar - palm tree - moon: a logic line of thought. See my point? My associative system is too strong).

No! Don't stop drawing connections! Eventually many of them will link up. Really. I make some of the strangest associations sometimes, then months or years later, they'll make sense. The associative mind is complex (and deeply exhausting and frustrating when you have PTSD), but it is the wellspring of true creativity. And @Anarchy is right...this is not the same old sh*t...it never is...nature of existence is change. And in change there is always possibility.

Sorry so long-winded here. Your post got me going. I wish for you the energy to believe in yourself and in possibility.

 

[RussH]

In fact, I'm a terrible person because I'm so freakishly selfish and lazy, but that's a whole other story.

This may sound prejudicial but it really isn't, when I read this statement my first thought was, this doesn't make you a terrible person, it makes you a teenager. Many teens haven't yet learned to reach out beyond their own wants or needs to help others.
You, sweetheart, have been traumatized beyond what most people your age should have endured, and yet here you are striving to heal, and become a better person, and that makes you pretty wonderful in my opinion.

I understand that I am, in fact, worth nothing because the universe is so big and I am so small,

This statement is something I completely identify with; the feeling of insignificance. This is one of the lies our abusers tell us, and it is a lie that PTSD continues to tell us, that we are worth nothing, but it is a lie.

We have great value. We have this life that we have been given, and the opportunity to live this life to the betterment of others. We have people who love us, and see value in us, even if we don't see it ourselves. so Trauma, this statement of not being worth nothing is a lie that you have bought into, and now my friend start recognizing it as a lie, and focus on the truth, that you are a person of worth.

 

[Deleted member 27340]

I'm trying to get around answering you all but it's sorta not really working...

 

[RussH]

@Trauma feel free to pm me if you need to talk.