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Trigger, disassociation/denial, emotional overwhelm

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This is something I have lived with all my life. I learnt to cut off from my body and emotions in order to cope with the incest I suffered as a kid and teenager then just carried on doing it as an adult to survive domestic violence and being repeatedly raped and sexually abused by multiple abusers in the years after my you kid was taken into care.

It was easy to do while drunk and stoned. It kinda happened automatically with me need to be consciously aware I was even doing it at all. I just glided through life in a moreorless permanently numb feeling state. Now I'm mostly sober and completely drug free the feelings are slowly returning to my body but if I'm triggered (like I was yesterday on seeing one of my former abusers in a pub in town and him threatening me verbally to and in my face) those emotions come flooding in like a tidal wave and I get overwhelmed.

I didn't show this bastard or his friends any fear outwardly but inside I was bloody shitting myself scared out of my wits. The worst of it was I wasn't expecting to see him in this particular pub as it was my understanding he had been barred from going in there for either violence or drug dealing. And I didn't even go in there for a drink, only to use the toilet as I was caught short and busting to go having done some shopping beforehand and not being near a public toilet and having a weak bladder, otherwise I wouldn't have even gone in this pub at all.

As this c*nt stood there threatening me I could literally feel myself shutting down emotionally. I got away as soon as I could without running (I certainly felt like running away but I didn't want to lose face in front of him and his mates). I got half way down the road then I started shaking and sweating. My legs felt all wobbly and I felt sick to my stomach. I had cold sweaty palms and my vision was blurred. I knew from past experience I was on the verge of having a full blown panic attack so what did I do? Yep went in the nearest off licence and bought myself some beer.

Probably not the wisest thing to do but it's an old coping mechanism. I had one beer sitting on a bench in the grounds of a church near the bus stop and calmed myself down enough to get home. Then when I got home I got proper good and drunk. I wasn't even intending to have any booze yesterday at all, I was even tempted when I went in the pub for a wee, but after what that shithead did to me I was a total nervous and mental wreck. After 5 beers I wasn't feeling any fear or pain anymore. I literally used the alcohol to deny my emotions. I was even lying to myself in my head that my former abuser hadn't frightened me at all, I was that desperate to pretend he didn't manage to shake me up at all. I don't like feeling weak or humiliated, so I tried to convince myself that I'm actually really strong and that I should be proud that he didn't see my weakness or manage to get me to react in such a way that I would degrade myself in front of him or his nasty friends. That's always been my way, you know, full of bravado and bluster in public, but behind closed doors or even inside myself, a quivering blubbering mess.

Anyway, I invited my partner over last night as it's his birthday today and I didn't want to be on my own after this upsetting experience I was desperately trying to deal with by killing the feelings with the lies I tell myself and the booze. He arrived and we had some more beer and then somehow ended up in bed together. He inadvertently did something to me sexually which triggered me (he wasn't abusive at all, quite the opposite in fact) and I got angry with him then he felt hurt and got angry himself. He went downstairs in a huff while I lay upstairs in bed trying to figure out the root of the trigger and upset with myself for inadvertently upsetting my partner.

Well I worked it out quite quickly given how drunk I was and went and told my partner. Basically he was really gentle and tender with me but given how abusive this other bloke that I saw yesterday was to me sexually in other words really rough and violent, and given how I was conditioned to find that kind of sex exciting through the incest I suffered at my brother's hands in my puberty, I wasn't getting turned on in the present with my partner with him being really loving and kind to me in bed last night, and being drunk and triggered from my run in with my former rapist earlier in the day, I blamed my partner for my inability to respond appropriately to his sweet care and attention and punished him for what was inside me that I wasn't dealing with.

So I went downstairs and apologised to my partner for being so mean to him and explained myself and he was so lovely about it, I then burst into tears and spent the next half hour sobbing in his arms about all the sexual trauma these other men have put me through. That I have taken out on my partner for years because I'm too scared to get my former abusers punished for. Several of them including my brother and this bastard I saw yesterday should be in prison for what they did to me but I've let them get away with it. Now I'm wracked with guilt over hurting the wrong person for what others have done to me and angry at the others for violating so badly and angry at myself for not being brave enough to do anything about them.

So I've gone from being triggered to disassociation to overwhelming emotions and now I'm sat in the middle of those two extremes. My emotions have calmed down to manageable levels and I'm trying to figure out what to do with them. I know what to do with the guilt regarding my partner, I will allow it to impel me to make amends to him, which I started today by buying him a thoughtful birthday present and treating him to a nice Indian takeaway, running him a nice bath and giving him a nice massage after (that's all I felt able to do for him after yesterday and he was perfectly happy with that I'm pleased to say). But it's the anger at my former abusers and the anger at myself I'm clueless as to how to deal with.

Logically I know I must try to forgive myself for being so severely abused as it was the abusers choice to hurt me but my Christ I kept putting myself in harm's way over and over again, I kept going back like a bloody glutton for punishment. It's been years since I stopped doing that, and I broke that particular bit of the dodgy programming I received growing up. But I let myself get hurt, I never protected myself, I guess for so long I just didn't know how. So I guess I have guilt about not valuing myself enough to look after myself plus a healthy dose of shame as well as the anger at myself.

It doesn't help that this bastard I saw yesterday doesn't feel an ounce of guilt or shame himself, in fact I would go so far as to say he does even think he's done anything wrong to me and he acts like he is the victim in this situation because I reacted to his abuse of me by sending him dozens of letters and thousands of texts which he holds up as 'proof' I abused him in the first place not the other way round as it really was, because he did all his abuse of me behind closed doors where nobody could see, whereas he has shown my letters and texts to loads of people, therefore publicly as well as privately humiliating me and making me look and feel like the 'bad one'.

But he's plenty angry at me because I kept confronting him about his abuse of me in those letters and texts and he doesn't want to feel the guilt and shame he should be feeling for the wrong he did me, and I suppose he doesn't want to be reminded of that, so when he saw me yesterday that's why he was horrible to me again, because he wants me to go away and not show my face in that pub again. Well he needn't worry about that because now I know he's allowed in that pub I will be avoiding it like the bloody plague. And avoidance is a big part of my PTSD as well, and I have enough material about the role that plays in my life for several other threads lol. And thinking about it, isn't disassociation just a form of avoidance in and of itself? Because I'm avoiding the feelings I don't want to feel, I suppose. But I know I have to feel them in order to heal from them, and to learn from them, so I can get off this hamster wheel of triggers denial then emotional flooding. At least I stayed relatively sober today, I recognise that drinking yesterday after the trigger was the worst thing I could have done. I've got to learn a better way of dealing with this problem.

So I'm sorry about another novel you guys lol. Support and positive comments and feedback welcome.

Cheers

Crazydiamond47

This thread should really be entitled 'Trigger, disassociation/denial, emotional overwhelm'. Can a moderator change the title for me please if possible? Thanks.
 
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This thread should really be entitled 'Trigger, disassociation/denial, emotional overwhelm'. Can a moderator change the title for me please if possible? Thanks.
Please use the report function or open a help-ticket to bring things to the attention of staff in future.
 
This is something I have lived with all my life. I learnt to cut off from my body and emotions i...
I am trying to get my life back together after childhood physical and mentle abuse, domestic violence, rape repeatedly and electric shock treatment. Finding that my abusers seem to have won not me and for some reason I am left with the shame not them. Society has accepted that abuse is tolerated, not spoken off and oh dear is it happening again poor you. How pathetic is that ? So stay strong and remember that all though you ha.ve been abused you are a beautiful person who did not deserve any of that crap. Sorry if I have offended anyone as I am trying not to leave my body and mind and accept what has happened to me and leave it where it belongs in the past. Stay strong and as we brits say chin up, you are better in every way than they are.
 
Thanks shimmerz and Lady. I didn't even talk to this bloke last week in the pub, I was happy to just ignore him and pretend I hadn't seen him but he deliberately sought me out and came up to me and growled at me about me seeming to keep coming in the pubs he drinks in and how it was pissing him off. But I'm not even doing what he's accusing me of, because the last thing I want to do is see him.

I stopped writing letters to him years ago because as you correctly pointed out, shimmerz, it was a waste of time and effort to try to get him to see things from my perspective or to understand the hurt his behaviour towards me caused me. It only served to wind him up and provoke him into being even more abusive towards me than he was before. I even confronted him in the pub about his abuse of me in front of all of his mates and he then reacted by smashing my head into a jukebox 3 times from behind. This was 6 years ago now and I've done my absolute best to keep out of his way since then but I was caught unawares last week in this pub I didn't expect to see him in.

He saw me in the other pub a couple of months ago and tried to be friendly with me but I rebuffed him. A couple of weeks ago he was outside this other pub with his new squeeze, as I was walking by, having done some food shopping nearby. The woman he was with called out 'oh look it's the letter writer' and I just smiled and walked away without retorting. Last week I was walking past the pub again having been to the library nearby and they clocked me again and the woman made a great big deal of blowing this bastard a kiss goodbye in front of me and telling him she loved him then looking right at me to gauge my reaction. Again I just smiled without saying a word and carried on walking. Two days after that came the incident that triggered me, him being nasty to me and intimidating.

I really don't know what this bloke's problem is or why his new bird is also trying to wind me up and frankly I don't care. But I now know I need to do my shopping elsewhere, go to a different library and even if I'm about to wet myself in desperate need of a toilet I don't go anywhere near where this arsehole might be because he scares me shitless and that terror triggers such a horrible reaction in me that it literally takes me days and weeks to recover from seeing him. This was almost a week ago now and I still don't feel right, I've been so deeply depressed.

I'm tired and in a lot of pain both physically and mentally and emotionally. To my credit I'm still clean of cannabis but the drinking has crept up steadily. I was careful yesterday, only had a few beers and plenty to eat. But today I'm laying off the sauce altogether because I really don't feel well at all and I know and accept that alcohol really ain't the answer or cure for how bad I feel or the dark thoughts I'm having.

So I'm just going to curl up with a good book and snuggle with my dog and maybe have a little nap later. These are the days when I have to practise self care instead of drowning my fears and sorrows in beer and puff like I always used to do before. It doesn't help that I haven't had a key work session with my support worker at the local drug and alcohol clinic for 3 weeks now, because she has been on sick leave. I texted her earlier but the text didn't get delivered so I can only assume she's not back at work yet. I could really use her help at the moment so instead I've just got to make use of this website, batten down the hatches and sit the emotional storm I'm currently experiencing out until it passes. And it will pass, I just have to be patient with the process.

Thanks, both of you, for your kindness and support. Lady I don't feel very beautiful today lol :) it's hard when you're having ugly thoughts and feelings. I'm so sorry for what brings you here love but glad you're here nevertheless. God bless you both xx
 
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