Multiple Trauma - Not Just Childhood

[Meadowsweet]

Firstly, I do recognise that experiencing childhood abuse is serious and severe by itself and my own issue right not doesn't reflect any thoughts of minimising childhood trauma.

My own history in brief - I was abused in early childhood (not by my biological father) and it was stopped and never talked about - instead I grew up as the over-emotional child who just couldn't be good (or good enough), but this child that couldn't be good went drinking and was raped aged 14/15, got into a violent relationship aged 17, ran away with a dominating 44 year old when aged 23, left him aged 30 and was violated and nearly killed after a brief encounter with the next man that came along, aged 33.

But when I first started going to therapy my therapist lent me a book about childhood sexual abuse, and it had some good points, but spoke as if the only perpetrators of CSA were parents or close family (incest). Then today I was on the website of my local rape and sexual abuse charity and I looked through their recommended book list. All of the healing talked about was childhood sexual abuse and when I looked at a workbook that sounded good, again the focus was on CSA within the family unit. And it spoke about the 'healing process' as if once you've grown up and have got away from the abusive family, you can start this healing process.

So to me, the whole focus of written help and studies is so narrow in it's outlook that it excludes what must be a significant number of people who have experienced CSA outside of immediate family, and then totally denies the trauma that can result in adulthood as a result of childhood experience.

The words "it's not the child's fault/ you were just a child" have a habit of grating on me and really not helping because of the multiplicity of my trauma history as a whole. The voice in my head responds with "yes, no child is responsible for being abused... but what about a 14/15 year old out getting drunk? ok, still young, So then what about the 17-23 year old, can I still say aww, it's not the child's fault? Then what about the 33 year old, what happens then, whose fault is it then?"

So yes, it's not the child's fault, I never thought it was. But the child grew up. I didn't get to adulthood and think that I've been abused in childhood. I didn't think along the lines of surviving or escaping abuse, like once grown up I can ask for help and heal my wounds. It was ingrained unconsciously that I walked the wrong path, and I did.

And none of those books recognise that person. And that complexity of trauma seems little understood and even denied by people in the field of helping - like they will only help the child that was abused, not acknowledge adult life and abuse.

 

[Friday]

What I've come to learn is that this is a very new science applied to a very old problem.

There simply aren't books written... Yet.

The books that will deal with the whole, @Meadowsweet? We're the ones writing those.

Spoiler: The long part that got me to the short part

This is an ongoing problem / why I usually stay away from complex trauma resources in general.

My stuff gets complicated. It always loops around to my primary trauma schtuff, but that's still from adulthood onward. Until I went and actually started researching, to find -oh!- complex trauma is "supposed" to cover the whole kit... I just assumed it was childhood stuff only.

In many ways, the way complex trauma is treated reminds me of the old ADHD paradigm: where everything was supposed to magically vanish on your 18th birthday. :rolleyes:

LOL... I swear, all my trauma stuff made sense... At the time. Combat trauma rolled into working working in 3rd world shitholes, rolled into being taken hostage a few times, rolled into rape & torture, rolled into working disaster zones rolled into (a few others), rolled into... What the hell other kind of relationship would anyone lay money on my getting wrapped up in after 5-7 years of bloody chaos? A sane normal healthy one? Pfft. Of course not. Let's go ahead and strap on an abusive marriage. There we go!

It's not exactly that linear, more like a daisy chain, but it's close.

The only piece of the whole I can actually deal with individually is my primary trauma stuff (and I avoid it like the plague). It's got its teeth in each and every single other piece of it. It's the single most pervasive constant in my life. Other pieces might add facets, or a quirk here and there, but they all spring rather too naturally from where things began.

Are you going to find any of that in complex trauma books? None I've found. The natural flow of the way things get f*cked up and stay that way? That's purely from being around others who have virtually identical ways of adding trauma after trauma, in which flavors and where. And what those results look like.

I think it must be harder for people for whom there are a lot of resources to start and then they just stop dead, than virtually no resources at all. That's the way ADHD stuff used to be. Everything was focused on childhood... Completely ignoring that you aren't issued a new brain on your 18th birthday. Used to make me want to bash my head against concrete, and I did go on a nazi-esque book burning spree for awhile. Cough. Also shredding, throwing, and a few times I actually stomped on the suckers. I just couldn't wrap my head around people being so stupid. Hello! We don't get new brains!!! We're still the same people we were before.

What I've come to learn is that this is a very new science applied to a very old problem.

There simply aren't books written... Yet.

The books that will deal with the whole, @Meadowsweet? We're the ones writing those.

 

[scout86]

Can I somehow "like" that twice? Because I liked both the short AND long versions.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I hope nobody minds, but I'm going to carry on writing the book on my trauma in my own voice here. The main part of my therapy was with a charity that deals specifically with sexual trauma, and they do a good job, but they also speak about things that I don't consider rape, as being rape, and say 'you're not to blame' a lot.

And it's like I'm not allowed a voice on this. It forces me into the position of being a victim with no control. By allowing me to have a voice about what I consider my mistakes, I feel that I can change my future to some extent.

Rape exists and sometimes there is nothing I could have done to change it. But my dissociation also exists when I'm faced with intimate situations. The fact that I have not seen my vulnerability in situations in the past and that making boundaries is something that I find difficult, is a real thing. And being told,' there's nothing you could have done about it', translates in my mind to 'there's nothing you can do to prevent nasty experiences in the future.' Whereas being allowed to talk about the mistakes that I've made is what enables me to feel more in control.

I'm angry at not being allowed an opinion amongst people that deal with sexual abuse and feeling pushed out every time I try to actually assert my own voice. It's like brain washing.

 

[joeylittle]

And being told,' there's nothing you could have done about it', translates in my mind to 'there's nothing you can do to prevent nasty experiences in the future.' Whereas being allowed to talk about the mistakes that I've made is what enables me to feel more in control.

I really understand this feeling. I was raped when I was 13, after being at a party I shouldn't have been at. There are things I want to take responsibility for (like, I shouldn't have been there and I knew it at the time, but chose to stay), and things I don't know about. When the answer to everything is, "you had no choice" - it washes everything out, and then devalues the times when I need to hear that I truly did have no choice, vs. the times where choosing differently wouldn't have mattered.

Like if every flower is the most beautiful ever, there is no such thing as a beautiful flower. Bad analogy, but. Just saying, I hear you.

 

[Meadowsweet]

When the answer to everything is, "you had no choice" - it washes everything out,

Maybe that is why it is done, to make it clean and clear cut and easy to put together a neat package of support and recovery. And people like me end up nodding, saying thank you for the support, and retreating back into silence again.

Just saying, I hear you

Thank you, that means a lot at the moment. I feel like I have no voice in my life at the moment and am struggling with that feeling.

 

[RussH]

I read a book one time, and I don't remember remember which on, so I cannot cite the source, but the author said it takes three things to cause a shipwreck, and if any one of those three things are removed, then the ship does not sink. (I don't remember the three things).
The same is true for almost any tragedy to happen.
Were there things you did that helped precipitate the event? Yes, there were things you could have done, or not done that would have prevented the rape from happening. However, when you went out to get drunk, did you intend to get raped? I think the answer to that is no. If you had known, by going out and getting drunk, that you would be raped, would you have gone out and got drunk? Probability not.

Your going out and getting drunk does not lessen the guilt of the guy who raped you. You put yourself in situation, but he is the one who took advantage of the situation to commit a criminal act.

If a person decides to open a store, then three weeks later a robber comes in and kills him. Was it the store owner's fault for opening the store, or was his decision just one of the factors that lead up to the tragedy? It was just one of the factors, but the fault of the tragedy lies solely with the perpetrator, and not the victim.

I am not trying to invalidate your voice; I am simply putting the blame for the rape where it belongs, on the rapist.

 

[Meadowsweet]

@RussH the way that I choose to deal with my own trauma is not something that it is helpful or supportive for you to change. You seem to have followed me to this thread from another thread where you told me what was support or not and how a situation should be seen. And it seems that your post is not even relevant to what has been written here.

You are completely invalidating my voice. It is not supportive. It is damaging to me.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Everything that I'm dealing with at the moment keeps bringing me back to this need for a sense of control. In childhood there was no sense of control over anything, I was controlled. But in teen and adulthood and the trauma that I've experienced, I've always managed to find a sense of what I could have done to avoid that situation, and that has helped me to move on. Also, as a mother I've never left my children with babysitters and if my son isn't with her, my daughter gets the bus instead of walk down the quiet road she would need to go down to get to school etc.

But that incident in my 30's, I can't find any sense of control. So the control my mind finds is by just not having any friendships, by not letting people get close to me or getting close to them. I've survived multiple trauma by finding a sense of my own safety, and on this final trauma, I can't.

 

[The Albatross]

My own experience @Meadowsweet was similar to your opening post. And like you I found the models too narrow, also had (sometimes still have though not as often) difficulty with squaring up what happened to me once I emancipated myself and became a young woman/adult. In the end, I concluded that it was a combination of several major detriments:

• Having survived/withstood abuse long term made certain personalities/situations "familiar" and I was for a long time unconsciously drawn to the familiar for a sense of misguided/misplaced competency (which was largely false).
• Stunted/missing social intrapersonal skills and a deficit in appropriate relationships.
• Assigning fault to my adult situations where problem solving is/would have been the more appropriate response.

There was another one that was significant, but I lost it (monkey mind this morning). In truth, though after the child grew up/became an adult and the adult became awake/aware of the difficulty... and a crime by a stranger occurred for me... it shattered the idea that I could control though I could guide or cultivate situations.

@RussH I don't think it's helpful to cross over to this thread or that it's appropriate if that was your intent.

 

[RussH]

@The Albatross I did not cross over threads, I simply responded to what was written here.

 

[The Albatross]

Thanks, coming off the other thread I was confused... but I did afford the benefit of the doubt.