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

[RussH]

Irregardless of how severe the trauma; the bottom line is you did not deserve it, and the perpetrators were absolutely in the wrong for traumatizing you.
The real issue is not the severity of the trauma, but the lasting effects it has on us, and how we continue to suffer from it.
So, don't beat yourself up, or diminish the trauma you suffered, but rather focus on overcoming it.

 

[Mit]

I couldn't even start to compare traumas. But as a child and even now as an adult I don't think of my trauma as being as bad as most others I read about on this forum. My trauma arose from years of medical procedures on my genitals. So because it was being done in theory to help me and by doctors and nurses I never felt justified I'm speaking out about how it made me feel or affected me. This perception has been a big barrier in my mind to seeking help and recognizing I had been harmed, even if unintentionally. Hence I don't think it helpful to try and compare.

 

[garden]

@Mit I suffered trauma from having 4 consecutive miscarriages. After each one PTSD symptoms flared up. I felt like my body had been traumatized from the D&C that was performed. I woke up feeling totally violated, and I could not stop crying, and shaking for what seemed like days. Everyone believed it was the grief, but I could not actually grieve until later, I was just overwhelmed by the physical trauma and being in my body was frightening. It wasn't for weeks that I was able to process my loss. I believe that medical procedures can be very traumatizing regardless of the reasons for the procedure. It's invasive, intrusive, and it hurts the body; requiring a healing process, which is both physical and mental. It's not helpful to compare, but it is helpful to acknowledge that your trauma, is trauma, and just because doctors and nurses had the intention of helping you, does not mean that there was not harm done, because there was, and you have every right to feeling how you feel about it. Thank you for expressing yourself here, with us.

 

[Ladyghosthunter]

If ANYONE states to a PTSD sufferer that their trauma was "not that bad", take them off the planet NOW! Worse yet, let me have a discussion with them....

 

[Dissociated1]

Dissociation divided my mind into a system of 5 alters in response to the things that happened to me as a child. Until the age of 49, this amazing coping mechanism helped me live a normal and happy life. I went into therapy believing my childhood trauma was "not as bad" as the things I have seen others go through. I have come to understand over these last six years that a developing child's mind is much more fragile than an adults. Devaluing my own experience, normalizing what was happening to me, was part of how I survived (An excellent reference on the topic is Shengold’s “Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation”). What traumatizes one person may not traumatize another. The adult mind is much more robust than a child’s. It helps put into perspective the degree of experience required to traumatize it. But the effect of trauma on those who experience it are all devastating.

 

[fyredrift23]

I have certainly struggled with ( and continue to struggle with) comparing my trauma situations to others and believing that whatever I have gone through just "isn't as bad as [insert here]"

I kind of identify with both sides of the life trauma coin, though. I've been through many different traumatic and difficult times, like most of us have, but I can pinpoint 2 instances that really seemed to have caused dramatic and very lasting changes in me.

When I was 6, my family was in a horrible car accident that we all should have died in. I miraculously flew through a side window and landed out of harm's way, but I was able to watch our van roll down the hill with my family trapped in it. Now, 20 years later, I *still* do not feel safe or comfortable in cars, trucks, SUVs, vans, or buses. I struggle with others of all ages seeing a car, bus, etc as simply an effective means of travel and not as a potential metal death trap. I wish I didn't have such a negative and terrifying memory attached to cars, and I wish they didn't cause me such anxiety and stress to be in them.

A couple years ago, I was in the deepest throes of my Depression and had a gruesome plan to kill myself. I've never felt that bad in my life before, and I (thank God) haven't felt *that* low and hopeless since. I'm in therapy, and was at the time, on meds, building my support network (including this site and you guys!), but I'll never be who I was before all that. I'm hoping I'll be even stronger, but that before chick is gone for good.

Both events seem equally daunting and incredibly hard to face and deal with even though I was at 2 very different points of my life. Sure, I haven't really known a life of equating cars with comfort, but I've also experienced enough shit in my childhood and teenage years to lead to a Major Depressive Episode in my early twenties that almost killed me. It's all tied in. I'm one person with one long life. I can't break these pieces up because then the puzzle of me won't ever be complete.

 

[Sammyiam]

We are all so very different it's how it affects you personally and your ability to live a normal happy life without living in fear or freeze or flight modes automatically ingrained in your system, without you having the choice wether they come out or not. When the automatic button is pushed by someone else and you have no control over it.

Sammy

 

[Beech]

Experiencing trauma under 5 is actually worse for your brain development than if it happened when you were 10. Even if you can't remember it.

 

[Stickler]

We all fracture differently, I guess?

I wish I had fractured in a way that left me an ordinary amount of energy to do things.
I wish I was more functional and more quietly miserable, instead of the sprawling, ineffectual mess that constitutes my illusory self-artifact.

I still don't know everything that happened to us; nor am I able to believe the really weird stuff coming out lately. The fact that I'm (we're) plural inside says it was bad enough, we suppose, but it was just what it was. Horror and cold cereal in milk. *Shrug*. You live or you don't.
Part of us survived.