What could’ve brought you comfort with the trauma?

[Charbella]

First I had no idea where to put this so if it needs to be moved, have at it.

I was thinking about how so many people struggle with the care they didn’t receive when the trauma happened. Then I started wondering, What would that look like? I mean what kinds of words of comfort can anyone provide that helps a 10 year old CSA victim feel anything but terrible?

What do you say to a victim of rape that somehow could help them be whole again?

It’s kind of like what can anyone say to the war vet that could bring them comfort for the people they killed and the comrades they lost?

How do you bring comfort to someone who’s been through something so terrible? I honestly can’t think of anything. Like nothing would be significant enough to actually make any sort of difference.

Maybe it’s a symptom of the issue that I can think of nothing that would change how that memory is held.

Hopefully someone has something that can help me see it differently.

 

[Defaultxlove]

My grandma but she’s gone and was nearly gone already

She’d probably have told me it’s gonna e okay and to heal

But she had such a soft touch with words and care

 

[Charbella]

It would have helped me when after I told my mother about the abuse, she didn't say; "are you talking about it again?"

Yeah I hear you. I told my mom about the one and then two family members and her response was yelling at me “is that all!” Like it was my fault there was someone and then more. Fact, no it wasn’t all but no point telling her. After that she never wanted me to bring it up or show I was going through anything.

they stand too far away from my reality.

This is so true!

My grandma but she’s gone and was nearly gone already

I wish I had someone squishy in my life. All my people are hard and sharp tongued. I’m glad you had someone you can at least visualize what it would feel like to take comfort from someone.

 

[Freddyt]

Does anyone else struggle with people who try to provide comfort? Like, I hear it, I can tell the intent of the words, they just fall flat.

Yup....
Because it was one piled on another followed by more and worse. There is no comfort in words - only actions. Sort of cements the old saying "talk is cheap".

I wish I had someone squishy in my life.

A little Squishy for you....

 

[Friday]

All kinds of things helped… none of which were what I expected would or might help, beforehand. A helluva lot of which were classic “don’t do this”; like handing me a firearm when suicidal, or putting me in a position of trust/responsibility when I was off my head.

 

[Charbella]

All kinds of things helped… none of which were what I expected would or might help, beforehand. A helluva lot of which were classic “don’t do this”; like handing me a firearm when suicidal, or putting me in a position of trust/responsibility when I was off my head.

So when you shared you shared a lot. I truly don’t believe anyone could handle the I’m suicidal discussion, it makes people panic which would definitely make it worse.

I do think you’re right though, sometimes the thing you wouldn’t even have dreamt of would help, helps.

 

[Friday]

N

So when you shared you shared a lot.

Not really, no.

That was a more of a certain people noticing certain things, and telling me to put up, or shut up, and get back to work. My choice. Shrug. I chose. I’ve seen maaaaaany other people given the same choice. The end result? Is about 50/50. Some eat the gun. Some go back to work. Either way? Crisis past. At least the crisis inflicted upon / poisoning others. I lived in a violent place. Where life mattered. If you were going to be f*cking off getting others killed? Better you eat your gun, now.

 

[Applecore]

I truly don’t believe anyone could handle the I’m suicidal discussion, it makes people panic which would definitely make it worse.

Training helps. That's what suicide hotlines are for - and they have saved millions of lives with words. I am relatively thriving today but I called one once, many years ago.

When the nice young woman volunteer picked up the phone and confirmed I had found the right place, I said "Oh, God" and broke down into tears. It was probably just to know I had someone to talk to about my distress who was there to be able to handle it, and maybe also realising I had reached a very bad point.

As I began sobbing, her reply came: "Take your time." I will never forget those words. She said the right thing. She let me keep on crying a while longer, and then gently got met to talk things through. I told her everything in lurid detail, knowing that she is an anonymous stranger who is there to listen.

As far as I recall she may have acknowledged my layer upon layer of misfortune, shock, horror and pain. She may have given me the impression that my suicidal was understandable under the circumstances.

She asked me if it helps to voice my story, and if so whether voicing it more in therapy would help. She got me thinking less about the past and more about the future. She also verbally empowered me to go and do something about it, and very gently drew the conversation to a close after about half an hour.

She did an amazing job with her words. All I can do in return is emulate her kind effectiveness with others. I hope life has been good to her. Today, in many ways, it is good to me.

 

[Charbella]

Training helps. That's what suicide hotlines are for - and they have saved millions of lives with words. I am relatively thriving today but I called one once, many years ago.

When the nice young woman volunteer picked up the phone and confirmed I had found the right place, I said "Oh, God" and broke down into tears. It was probably just to know I had someone to talk to about my distress who was there to be able to handle it, and maybe also realising I had reached a very bad point.

As I began sobbing, her reply came: "Take your time." I will never forget those words. She said the right thing. She let me keep on crying a while longer, and then gently got met to talk things through. I told her everything in lurid detail, knowing that she is an anonymous stranger who is there to listen.

As far as I recall she may have acknowledged my layer upon layer of misfortune, shock, horror and pain. She may have given me the impression that my suicidal was understandable under the circumstances.

She asked me if it helps to voice my story, and if so whether voicing it more in therapy would help. She got me thinking less about the past and more about the future. She also verbally empowered me to go and do something about it, and very gently drew the conversation to a close after about half an hour.

She did an amazing job with her words. All I can do in return is emulate her kind effectiveness with others. I hope life has been good to her. Today, in many ways, it is good to me.

I think this is exactly what people who are trying to tell you things will be fine like to see. I love that you had that wonderful experience. To me it’s completely unrealistic.

Crying tops that charts for my nope response, in front of someone else, I’m being literal when I say I’d rather die. If I’d had your experience it would leave me worse than I started. Which might be part of the problem I’m trying to figure out.

I’m pretty good at reading people so I can see their discomfort when they’ve said the kindest thing they can think of and it has zero impact on me. I leave the situation confirming telling people and seeking comfort is just not me. Not just for the childhood stuff but for the now stuff. When my dogs died I spent a month with only those who I had to tell knowing. If you didn’t plan a visit to my house you weren’t going to find out so you didn’t need to know. Nothing anyone said brought me any sense of lightness. Telling people seems to always turn out as me supporting their emotions. Which I realize could be way more me than them, but it still adds to the burden.

I will say that the dog example does make me see @Friday is right. I had a friend at the time send me flowers to my work. It was completely unexpected and she knows I’m not really a flowers person, but in that moment I could tell that someone was trying and understood the depth of my grief. The card said something about her just wanting me to know I was in her thoughts and she knew how rough things were for me.

 

[Applecore]

I think this is exactly what people who are trying to tell you things will be fine like to see. I love that you had that wonderful experience. To me it’s completely unrealistic.

Crying tops that charts for my nope response, in front of someone else, I’m being literal when I say I’d rather die. If I’d had your experience it would leave me worse than I started. Which might be part of the problem I’m trying to figure out.

I’m pretty good at reading people so I can see their discomfort when they’ve said the kindest thing they can think of and it has zero impact on me. I leave the situation confirming telling people and seeking comfort is just not me. Not just for the childhood stuff but for the now stuff. When my dogs died I spent a month with only those who I had to tell knowing. If you didn’t plan a visit to my house you weren’t going to find out so you didn’t need to know. Nothing anyone said brought me any sense of lightness. Telling people seems to always turn out as me supporting their emotions. Which I realize could be way more me than them, but it still adds to the burden.

I will say that the dog example does make me see @Friday is right. I had a friend at the time send me flowers to my work. It was completely unexpected and she knows I’m not really a flowers person, but in that moment I could tell that someone was trying and understood the depth of my grief. The card said something about her just wanting me to know I was in her thoughts and she knew how rough things were for me.

It's lovely to read that you love that I had a wonderful experience.

At the same time I'm just a little bit puzzled here, so maybe you could clarify this a bit for me after I go into a bit more context.

You had said, "I truly don’t believe anyone could handle the I’m suicidal discussion, it makes people panic which would definitely make it worse" to which I responded with an example of a suicide prevention volunteer handling it really well. I assume that was thanks to a little training, even though that angel was an unpaid volunteer.

Your reply to that was also say, "I think this is exactly what people who are trying to tell you things will be fine like to see." and "To me it’s completely unrealistic" and then: "Crying tops that charts for my nope response, in front of someone else, I’m being literal when I say I’d rather die. If I’d had your experience it would leave me worse than I started. Which might be part of the problem I’m trying to figure out."

So I'll add that for this one angel on the suicide hotline who could cope with my feelings presumably thanks to training, there were far more people without training who could not cope with my feelings. I have literally lost count of the number of friends who have f*cking infuriated me with their abysmal responses to me telling them about the suicide in my immediate family.

I mean I have walked away from most of them, such was their total emotional ineptitude. And I didn't tell them while sobbing, I told them in a very composed way, many years after the event. When I called the suicide hotline, that was were I was melting down - in the right time and place. I was not going around telling everyone that I myself was suicidal, and I was right not to.

I also hate being told "everything is going to be okay" to things like sharing my father's terminal medical diagnosis. Like literally I told someone I was preparing for my father's death, and she told me doctors get it wrong and he is not going to die. Then he died. She remains an idiot.

And so based on my experience I would encourage you not to generalize that people can't handle this subject. There are people out there whose job it is to do so, and they can. And none of them "want" us to be sobbing about it and nor to they "want" to tell us everything is going to be okay.

Being emotionally numb is probably a more common response to emotional suffering than my sobbing. I may be slightly unusual in that I trained myself to become more emotionally open. When I was a shy, inhibited, emotionally repressed teenager, one of the ways I chose to survive was not by resorting to drugs or violence but to a theatre workshop club with the aim of becoming more emotionally open through improvisation, games and playing.

That may have saved my life. Coincidentally I recently met a psychiatrist socially who does one-to-one drama therapy on the side - and she said it can work better than drugs. That's because through play and make-believe we can experiment with expressing emotions without any risk of the terror of being unmasked.

If you are trying to figure out your own discomfort about expressing emotions, based on personal experience I would think drama therapy might be a really interesting area of exploration for you. If you force yourself to pretend to sob about something ridiculous like say Taylor Swift going for the Sinead O'Connor look, it's actually pretty harmless.

From my point of view, in this dynamic you have described there is an unclear boundary between what you are feeling and what other people are feeling. If you currently feel numb, I am sure you have good reasons for it; if you aren't privately numb but currently uncomfortable about expressing your emotions with others, I am sure you have good reasons for it too. But let's not falsely assume that all other people can't handle your emotions.

There are certainly people out there who can.

 

[Anne-Ana Mouse]

It helped me when, at age 12, the counselors told me it wasn’t my fault. I learned what’s mine to control and what’s others which helped me to not develop codependent patterns and also to not blame myself. It helped to do a paternity test at age 22 to finally know my abuser wasn’t my bio-family. At age 32, It helped to read my medical records from that time with a doctor who explained to me that I was only hospitalized as a way to protect me from the home and that when I was told that whatever was wrong with me was incurable, that was another lie they told me to shame me and in fact I was not diagnosed with anything other than domestic violence and was not medicated.

I used to want many things like validation from my abusers and family or friends but now I am grateful I didn’t get what I wanted because now I am free from abusive relationships entirely. I don’t need reassurance and have high self efficacy today that could only have developed out of having to develop it.

 

[Anne-Ana Mouse]

I think money would have been good because the statutes of limitations were so short that by the time I was old enough to know what that even means, it was too late. I think having my bills paid and tuition paid for college would have helped because I lost my full-ride scholarship from the physical effects of the abuse. I worked harder than any of my friends because I was fighting to keep from living on the streets while they had parents who helped pay bills, co-signed leases, and brought home-cooked meals. Many of my friends still had bedrooms at home, happily untouched by loving parents, single or not. I was the only person I knew who had dealt with what I had who wasn’t strung out, in the psych ward, or dead.

But then I knew of a girl who was assaulted over a year at a middle school, whose Dad fought to get him fired, others who were in on it, and the State awarded her over a Million settlement. Her entire life is now about that tragedy. Her Dad is obsessed with getting his cut, her Mom divorced him due to his obsession with her experiences and the money, and not advices her not to speak to him. He can hardly have any normal relationships due to his obsession. She seems beaten down, depressive, and deeply unhappy.

Compare her to me at her age. I was a ferocious tiger with nothing out to prove myself to the World. They were wrong about me and I’d prove it. I knew who I was and what I wanted in life. I was driven and alone with no support. She walks with her head down, hair covering her face, in a cloud of depression. So perhaps I am wrong. Now when she buys her home or business or car with that money from her rapist, how can she ever escape it? She won’t be forced to make her own way. No she’ll be dragged into counseling by her Dad in order to “salvage’ the relationship and establish himself as her hero while he secretly connives to take it from her. What a story! Wow.

 

[Applecore]

I used to want many things like validation from my abusers and family or friends but now I am grateful I didn’t get what I wanted because now I am free from abusive relationships entirely. I don’t need reassurance and have high self efficacy today that could only have developed out of having to develop it.

This is very interesting and I could say something similar. However, as a self-care reminder I often caution myself about wishful thinking and quote the phrase, "none of us can see the back of our owns heads."

So while I do have high self-efficacy also, I also look for and sometimes see those old patterns inadvertently coming back into my life.

When friends and family and even strangers now cross certain boundaries or behave in ways that are not in our best interests, how soon do we realize that by tolerating them we are unconsciously seeking validation?

So take something small, like that friend who is always late - are we letting it slide, because we want their friendship? And in doing so, are we encouraging them to mistreat us in other ways?

And how not to be like that in an effective way, so that intolerance of others' misbehaviour does not cause us to cancel them instead of communicating with them effectively? Might we too quickly shut out the world, leaving us isolated?

All these thoughts remain front of mind as part of a daily commitment to mental fitness and sustaining the recovery.