Childhood "my (childhood) Trauma Is Not As Bad"

[reallydown]

Hmm this is a tough one for me...I have childhood trauma but it's different and I do have recollections of a happier life before the trauma...Having said all that, and being perfectly aware that it's useless to compare traumas, I still often feel like so many others have had it way worse than me (regardless of when their trauma/s occurred), that really mine isn't too bad and that I have no right to complain. It sort of took one of my former counselors (one of the two good ones) to point out that what I went through was not normal and was scary and life threatening etc.

 

[FindingMyself88]

I see both sides because I dealt with early childhood trauma and abuse. Then I was also sexually assaulted in 2013. I think I do somethings underestimate what my childhood trauma did to me. I think it goes back to it happened as early as I can remember. It was my "normal". I just learned to cope. But as someone else said, with my sexual assault it has been hard accepting that I am not the person I was before the attack.

In reality I think they both affected me equally, I was just use to the earlier form.

 

[ghotiff]

I think childhood and adulthood trauma typically is very different. I don't see either as "worse" but I really do feel sad for those who had a pre-trauma life and can't (or are still fighting) to get back there....that must be very difficult. I had no pre trauma, so I don't have that particular challenge.

I have found that I resonate much more with those with childhood trauma. I have also found that when I post looking for advice/input on an issue I am facing, the replies from those with childhood trauma tend to be more helpful for me....not always true, but mostly.

 

[Friday]

Goodness this topic is complicated.

<grin> This is why I don't really compare trauma for the differences. I like the similarities, they're useful as f*ck, but the differences are isolating.

I had to leave an awesome (in all other ways) counselor, because his training was in flight-response. He couldn't bridge the gap between adrenaline & fight response. I "should" be reacting XYZ, but was reacting ABC. It was something he really struggled with. I wasn't hiding because I was afraid of being hurt, I was hiding because I was afraid of hurting someone. The 180 degree differences that often happen with PTSD. Same stressor, same symptom (hello sympathetic nervous system :p), even the same end result (isolation)... But different motivation. Telling myself "I'm safe"? Not useful to me. We need to back up a step. Past the differences, into the sameness.

We can sit here all day long and posit whether not knowing any different is a blessing or a curse. People will fall on both sides of that line, I suspect. Depending on whether they view it as a blessing or a curse in their own lives.

I don't have it. I have trauma from my (late) teen years onwards. My personal belief is that early childhood trauma is far worse than anything I went through. And I can tick off the reasons one by one. Your belief as I understand it, having early childhood trauma, is that mine is worse, for reasons you can (and have) ticked off. But there are those with early childhood trauma who feel the opposite of you, and people with later trauma who feel the opposite of me. Shrug. Some from column A some from column B. Generally, whenever I come across and either/or question in Psych? Is it this or that? The answer is simply "yes". Which is harder, this or that? Yes. Both. For different reasons. LOL... The 'Oppression Olympics'. Just a distraction.

I think recognizing that there are differences is important. It lets us back up a step. Find the common cause. Deal with that. The expressions, different as they are, are also important. We each have to deal with those in our day to day lives. But, at least in my experience, those also sort themselves out as we work backwards. When we deal with the root issues, everything else falls into place.

Easier said, than done.

 

[Viosinger]

Yes and no. Through my sister and a close friend, I came to find I have a fairly limited memory of the worst things from when I was really small. My best friend remembers my own childhood much differently (and more gruesomely) than I do until I was about 8, when they found a doctor who gave into their insistence that I MUST need ADHD medication despite having no symptoms except daydreaming... in a horrible house... where any normal brain would try to find escape routes.

I spent years struggling with feeling that my trauma was lesser not because I was younger, but because my abuse was mostly emotional and verbal...and explaining the kind of hell that is always sounds to adult ears that "mommy and daddy weren't nice enough to me, whine cry" when really my life was pretty horrible, it just didn't leave many physical scars, so I got no validation by being able to say "ouch."

 

[RussH]

Here is a thought, and I may be way off base,but it is worth considering.
What if your feeling like your trauma is not as bad as the trauma suffered by others is a symptom of the trauma?
We, who have suffered abuse, especially at a young age, have feelings of low self-worth and insignificance. So, because we feel we have less worth, or significance than others, then our trauma is not as worthy, or significant as others?
Trauma is trauma, and yes there are some whose stories are absolutely horrific, but our perception of our own trauma can be marginalized by our own sense of self worth.

 

[Lucycat]

Just wondering if anyone else with early childhood trauma experiences this feeling of being separate from people who had trauma later

Separate yes. Worse no.

 

[Suzetig]

@RussH This rings true for me, it's been a relatively recent thing that I've even acknowledged my childhood experiences as being traumatic. Not because they weren't "that bad" but because I thought I was to lame, a bad child with a bad core. Even listening to others' experience of childhood trauma, I'm likely to consider theirs as being worse than mine. My therapist is working with me to help me name what happened to me as being abuse, I still really struggle to see myself as an abused child and think I should have coped better.

 

[garden]

@Viosinger trauma is trauma. Emotional and verbal abuse have left scars for me that I believe are far worse than having been beaten, or sexually abused, or neglected even. For some reason, the emotions are what haunt me the most. With the emotions come the physical stuff...bad breathing patterns, inability to sleep, etc, but the emotions always seem to be the ring leader.

I was abused from early childhood all the way through the age of 18. However, when I was finally able to get away at 18 I experienced a rebirth of sorts. I had a job, I enrolled in college courses, I had a boyfriend, and I was not living under a cloud anymore. I felt optimistic, and I believed I was going to be happy. I went about things feeling like I was creating a better life, and then I started to feel depressed, and soon after that I had a panick attack in which I believed I was going to die, and I could not understand where this was all coming from. I literally did not connect any of this with my early life. That was over, this is now, and no one's hurting me anymore. I started therapy and talked about how I was happy before, and suddenly I'm a mess... Slowly it all unfolded, and I learned that the things that happened to me when I was a kid were the cause of my distress. 22 year old me didn't like what I heard, nor did I totally accept it. I gained some coping skills during my 2 years in therapy, and moved on. It was not until I became a mother that things really got crazy. So I have a 'before' in my mind because I see the childhood stuff as the period prior to my escape and then there's the happy time 'before' I became a mother and came undone. My daughter will be 8 this April, and I have not been able to return to the functional person I was 'before' I became a mom. I thought I was almost there...now I'm accepting that this really is how it's going to be now...

 

[Viosinger]

@Lewa I absolutely agree, had some similar experience with the emotional abuse being the worst of it. I used to wish they'd just hit me so I could have physical pain instead. I've described it as having someone take a cheese grater to your skin every day of your life until you're nothing but exposed nerve endings & scar tissue... Except nobody can see it.

But I still struggle explaining that horrid experience to people in person, especially people without traumatic backgrounds. It's something I really like about having this community, I don't have to feel so alone. I spent years feeling like a crazy person because of my childhood abuse and what I now know to be PTSD symptoms I handled for years alone.

 

[RussH]

But I still struggle explaining that horrid experience to people in person, especially people without traumatic background

I have learned that if a person doesn't have PTSD, then they cannot understand it.

 

[anonymous]

I have believed for years that I might have suffered what could be called emotional/verbal abuse from a parent.

But I suffered multiple sexual traumas and emotional/verbal abuse later from an abusive partner.

So I struggle with assimilating early possible emotional abuse into my identity as a trauma survivor as well as this larger issue of feeling my trauma was not as bad because it was early and just the world I lived in.