Regression To Childhood Fantasy??

[jeeps for now]

I'm new here, so I hope this comes out ok.

Do any of you, when feeling traumatized, feel like you are regressing to an earlier traumatic era of your life? Do you feel prone to childhood-type fantasies when triggered?

 

[ronin47]

What exactly do you mean by "childhood-type fantasies?"

 

[jeeps for now]

Tendencies created by childhood trauma?

 

[mohsen]

Hi jeeps,

There is no simple answer to your question. First you have to know what the dissociation and attachment are.

In the face of trauma, the child dissociates from himself or herself and Holding oneself entirely responsible for a negative event blaming the self to preserve a sense of personal control and ward off feelings of helplessness and powerlessness may contribute to the development of an omnipotent fantasy(or any kind of disorder of fantasy) of protection, allowing the victim to imagine she can sustain not only attachment and an illusion of power but also hope that s/he can prevent painful recurrences of the trauma.

Fantasy and symbolic functions in traumatized people are quite different from those in nontraumatized people.

dissociative trauma survivors have unusually restricted imaginal lives; they actually tend to fear deployment of fantasies in problem solving, as if getting too near their inner worlds for any reason could be dangerous.

As Bromberg once said:

It is humanly impossible to become fully alive in the present without facing and owning all of the hated, disavowed parts of the self that have shaped and been shaped by one's earliest object attachments"

So when you feel like you are regressing to an earlier traumatic era of your life, it's really happening.

 

[liv now]

Hi jeeps. Quite often I am triggered by daily life into past traumas. When this happens I do feel very young, almost like I have regressed or something. My coping skills also change and I revert to coping skills I used as a young person. I quite often get caught up in a"fantasy world" that I have created. This is what I did to cope as a child. I would create fantasies so that I could escape from reality. And some of these fantasies were quite aggressive or violent. Fantasizing about something worse than what i was experiencing for some reason helped soothe me. At the time it helped me, but now as adult, when I am safe and not being abused, I find these fantasies a hindrance because they are usually "drama filled" fantasies that I create, and are very exhausting emotionally. For me, they stop me from working through stress as an adult and keep me in the past. However, I have found that fantasies are a great tool to use for visualisation when I am stressed or want to retreat to a safe place internally. I can use fantasies to create soothing and relaxing images. this is just my my take on things, and may not reflect how things are for others. Take care.

 

[LaurenRose]

When I expose myself emotionally to a friend or my therapist or even in here, I can feel like I am five years old again. I now understand that because I experienced a significant trauma at five and did not receive any kind of processing around it, I wasn't able to have the reassurance of safety outside of myself. Now as a 46 year old adult, it is very distressing and confusing when emotionally I can be "popped" back into that young fear. My coping mechanisms of a world that could hurt and I don't know how to protect myself envelope me. I have thankfully done some work in this area. I am now (for the most part) able to identify that is what is going on usually after I have been immersed and lately sometimes just as it is happening. I look forward to the day I can take that five year old by the hand and tell her it is okay, that this adult will protect her and not abandon her. I lived in fantasy as a child, it was a coping mechanism to not only deal with the horrors I experienced as they were happening, but how I dealt with life and my own self when it wasn't happening. It was beyond my scope of reasoning. Thank you for posting this topic. It has given me a moment to reflect and to once again reassure that very young part of me.

 

[OKRADLAK]

Yes, if I feel safe.

But if I feel cornered I feel like the singer from Judas Priest or other metal band dripping with focused and expressed anger!!:eek: But I do not look like or act like them, just FEEL like them

 

[scott_1971_h]

In a word... Yes. If I'm being gaslighted, especially.
Scott

 

[yellowfields22]

Yes, I do, if I am understanding your post correctly.

This is embarrassing to admit, but I still sometimes regress to talking to an imaginary friend I created as a child, to deal with the trauma and isolation at that time. No, I don't think he or the scenarios are real, haha (although that would be awesome if he was). When things become too hard, I fantasize about him, that I will find him someday, and that he is my spirit guide or something, or a soulmate in another dimension. I spend a lot of time in childhood fantasy...but luckily as an artist, I can turn that into a craft and source of inspiration. There are times where it is not entirely healthy, I spend too much time zoning out and being romantically idealistic about these things, or get caught up in the womb of a fantasy. It makes me depressed as a result.

 

[yellowfields22]

I strongly relate to what "liv now" said above, except my fantasies were not necessarily violent or aggressive, usually dramatic and romantic, usually centered around me helping someone else.

 

[jasmin]

I echo what Livnow said. I often had violent and aggressive fantasies and still do when I feel the need to escape. Though I know that when I was a child I often had romanticized simple fantasies (that I can recall but I don't know whether I had them during traumatic events or just when I was bored and needed to escape the immediate reality) I don't get those anymore, maybe that's just something that comes with age.

 

[MrBill]

I live with PTSD caused by my entire infancy-childhood-adolescence-teens. I find a strong longing and comfort by and I know this will sound weird maybe disturbing to some, wearing diapers to the point of being a diaper lover (DL) I do wet but I don't mess. I have personal physical sexual response happen when in a diaper such a as an out no where dry orgasm. I can only conclude it being caused by pleasure brought on by comfort and security of wearing the diaper. I also find my self fantasizing that I am a little boy again only with a well adjusted childhood with an actually loving father with an actual father son bond. Being gay it gets a little weird cause it becomes sexual and the man is not my real father perhaps an actualized ideal of what a good attractive father would have been. I know it all sound too weird, but then again PTSD has shaped my and made weird.