The first cause of my trauma was from secondary traumatisation from my father (who almost certainly suffered from PTSD from complex traumatisation), as a child I started to blame myself and question myself unnecessarily. My second cause was bullying at school of a psychological nature, this caused self blame also. This self blame became highly schematised and l as I kept delaying and dissociating my trauma I kept blaming myself for handling it badly and for over dissociating. I had a previously existing pattern of severe dissociation that I had used to manage a different syndrome, this dissociation was both adaptive and non-pathological to start but as I gained more and more symptoms of ptsd from complex traumatisation and kept fragmenting and dissociating more I developed the symptoms and profile of a severe dissociative disorder with persecutory parts/ personalities.
I kept blaming myself and kept making mistakes as I became more and more overwhelmed. This led to further fragmentation, whereby parts of myself would start attacking myself and making myself even crazier. This is similar to the persecutory parts often seen in highly dissociative internal family systems, seen most commonly in persons with DID/ MPD and other severe dissociative disorders. This kept me away from therapists and doctors for years as I feared being able to explain the madness I was experiencing. I finally had a full blown break down about two and a half decades after the original traumas kicked the PTSD into clinical levels of symptomology. Most of my PTSD had been delayed onset, but I kept blaming myself for delaying it because I had learnt to dissociate before I was traumatised. I realised I had PTSD, which I had seen a decade before at least. Finally I found a trauma and dissociation specialist privately, who assisted me in working through and processing the self blame. Thus circumventing the need to produce persecutory dissociative parts and states, which I had done to protect myself from making more mistakes ironically, even though it ended up having the opposite effect overall.
Stopping blaming myself was central to overcoming the effects of severe trauma and severely maladaptive dissociative responses. It also helped me overcome and adapt the pathological voices that occurred more and more as I developed persecutory parts and perspectives through various forms of dissociation within my own internal family system. For me embracing the dissociated and separated parts and perspectives and understanding and adapting the reasons that I had done this originally, helped me massively. It was using Internal Family Systems Therapy models, Ego State Therapy models and other dissociative therapy models, combined with a well experienced, open minded and reliable counsellor that helped to tame the severe dissociation and voices.
I think that self blame can occur from any type of traumatisation. It is funny that I used to blame myself for karmically attracting the shit towards myself, both as a child and when I re-engaged my spirituality as an adult. Seeing a specialist therapist has helped me re-asses and own both my spirituality and dissociative abilities in a much more adaptive and harmonious manner.
I hope this makes sense and assists you in seeing other peoples perspectives. Best wishes upon your journey Abstract.
