What Is A " Core "?

[intothelight]

I read a lot of posts where the poster states they "do not have a core" or do not have a "before" to return to, refer to, or to identify with, etc. Sometimes I think these terms are used loosely and in reality all of us have a personality which is based on core values or beliefs. PTSD can confuse our perceptions, our actions or our emotions at times, but it doesn't mean that "who we are" does not exist.

One thing that isn't addressed very often is that people change due to age, experience and circumstances. We cannot ever be the person that we "were" because of that change. That isn't a bad thing and most of the time it is a neutral thing. In other words, it just is.

For myself, I felt fragmented and confused about who I was. There were a lot of negatives, that I knew muddied the waters and to find that strong sense of "self" I had to start with who and what I was not. Then I had to decide what things I held true and would not waver or bend on. It was then I started to define myself on my own terms.

I am curious as to what other members think and how they view the concepts of self and core. We see the terms used a lot, but what do they really mean?

 

[wyrd_dragon]

On not having a strong sense of 'self' or 'core self' I think it can have to do with the kind of abuse you survive. Judith Herman's definition of CPTSD explains this well, I think, when it talks about survivors of childhood sexual abuse, long term torture, abuse, confinement as lacking a sustaining sense of self, or having a negative sense of self.

My abuse started at 2 years old. My earliest memories are dominantly ones of abuse and torture. Combined with this, I was subjected to drugs, hypnosis, and was deliberately taught that I was worthless, ugly, etc.

I lack a defining sense of a 'core' self because so much of my early self was deliberately influences and constructed as something entirely negative. In order to overcome that, I've had to deliberately construct a healthier (or less dysfunctional) self, but I am very aware of its construction, and 'at core' -- without all the things I do every day to combat it - I still 'believe' I am worthless, ugly, etc.

Now, I think that can be overcome, and I am working on that, but I get the feeling, when listening to survivors who experienced trauma after they had already had a 'core self' that was positive, that it helps to have something not-the-abuse to base your recovery in.

We all change and grow over time, and I am more than the child I was, I know that. I just have to work against this fractured 'core self' that is composed of trauma.

 

[Sandstone]

I frequently say to others and to myself, that I want me back. The "me' I want is not the person I was born or grew up being, but the person I slowly and consciously forged over twenty years after I got away from home. I liked her, I enjoyed being her.

Yet now, after 4 years after the delayed onset of active PTSD I'm much more like the scared, oppressed person I grew up as. I have to wonder which is the true, core, innate me.

To take one simple example - socialising. I grew up totally isolated, and did not meet anyone outside my immediate family until I started school. Visitors and social conversation were to be avoided and repelled. By my thirties and forties I had a wide circle of good friends, and loved nothing better than to to fill the house with them and to spend time chatting and enjoying one anothers company. I took pleasure in finding ways to include others. Now I would be delighted not to see anyone from one week to the next, and often manage not to.

I'm left wondering if I've simply reverted to type, and the thirty intervening years were the falsehood.

 

[jaccat]

It's a bit of a nature versus nurture thing, perhaps.

I don't recall a pre-trauma me. Sometimes I imagine an early life where I am happy, innocent. It is rose-tinted and, I acknowledge now, a complete fabrication. But I do find myself wondering who I would have been had my childhood been different. Would I have a definite sense of self?

I seem to be a total contradiction at times, for instance I am both quiet, introverted, a lover of my own company, and at other times brash, outgoing, confident, commanding. Which is the real me? I imagine perhaps the confident me is the person I could have been if...

But then again, perhaps that person is strong because of the trauma? I don't know which one of them is the real me. I tell you I manage to spectacularly fail those kind of personality tests which try to tell you what kind of person you are:roflmao:

 

[shimmerz]

Yet now, after 4 years after the delayed onset of active PTSD I'm much more like the scared, oppressed person I grew up as.

I feel that I am attempting to set a core me that is scared when appropriate, sees oppression before it totally cripples me, can speak clearly when I need to set boundaries. I feel like my emotions are 'out there' to a large degree (although this has changed quite a bit in the past few months). I want people who deal with me to be able to anticipate (because I am fairly consistent) what my reactions will be when they deal with me. Just a few of the things I am striving to when searching for my core.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

@intothelight your question reminds me greatly of a novel. Do you know the novel All Quiet On The Western Front? The novel is based in World War 1 with a group of German soldiers and the main character is positive that because they are so young that they will never be able to return to a world without war, that they wont know themselves. War is all they know. They have simply lost their identity and their core and wait for their death.

“I am young, I am twenty; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow” (263).

A young solider named Kropp says: “You’ll be dead one day, so what does it matter? I don’t think we’ll ever go back” (87). He goes on farther to say “The war has ruined us for everything” (87).

“I find I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world” (168)

I no longer feel as hopeless about a future as this book. At one point in time I agreed with it completely. But to me it does show how deeply wounds/trauma can run and how difficult the damage is to heal. How do you heal death?

 

[garden]

I remember parts of myself that seemso intact... I have moments of familiarity with myself...Like I do something that reminds me of myself from 'before'...but then it's just a fleeting memory and I feel sad like I'm mourning.

Recently I verbally committed to doing something for a friend. When I made those arrangements I was confident and excited. I had some thoughts that were not kosher, but I managed to get through them. Two days before I was to meet this friend my neice fell from her high chair and broke her elbow. She had to have surgery on her elbow, and she's a year old. This scared me. I am a mother, and the thought of a baby going under anesthesia is terryfying... I got so wrapped up in this situation that I was unable to sleep, and I was pacing the house all hyper vigilant...and I had to cancel on my friend because I had been awake for more than 48 hours and was not functioning very well... I had been doing so well, and had not let anyone down like that in such a long time...I felt so much shame and it felt like I had made no progress... I am struggling now with how to explain myself and hopefully save this friendship... but I have never had success in the past with similar situations... I want to tell the truth, but so few people can swallow the truth... " I was discombobulated cause of stress over my neices surgery, and could not rest enough to function properly..." or "I needed to lay low for a couple of days so that I could return to a more functional state..." makes no sense to most people...and they don't know me enough to understand... It's so hard to make new friends...and I get tired of hiding out, so I try...

Sometimes it feels like groundhog day....here we go again...

I feel like my core is fragmented, but it ebbs and flows, and sometimes the pieces fit okay, and at other times the pieces are floating around and need me to remain calm so they can re align... I'm finally beginning to accept that this is okay... again...

 

[The Albatross]

I am probably one of those, who has said, I don't have a concept of "before" (before traumas) and that I was fractured by traumas some of which happened before I was a toddler by accounts of other family members though I do not recall it and was pre-verbal and very early in child development. Though when I think about it, it was not a topic of any therapy I had... I guess it was just the best way I could express at the time that something was clearly very wrong, very early in my child development and my personality was and continued to be affected by trauma, abuse, or witnessing domestic abuse since before I could remember Here's an article written by an evolutionary psychologist that discusses how Trauma Resets Personality and Traumatic events as "deep" as personality.

Link Removed

I guess at some point, it is natural to wonder traumas aside who I was before my personality was affected. I guess that's what it means (best way I can explain it at the moment) to me.

 

[Sandstone]

The idea of "who I could have been" is fascinating, haunting.
When I was first diagnosed and started treatment I hoped to become that person. How naive that hope looks now.


Returning to intothelight's original post

Then I had to decide what things I held true and would not waver or bend on

I think one of my central beliefs is the need to be kind to and support others, and I think that possibly that, from an early age increased the negative impact of my childhood. I "knew" that my mother was incapable of meeting needs, so I 'had none".

 

[joeylittle]

I have two different perspectives on this.

When I was diagnosed with depression - well into my adult life - I had a very common experience, which was realizing that I had never understood what depression is, and that I had been depressed since childhood. This was borne out by some physical things that were boggling to me - the biggest one being that I had never felt hunger physically, not since I could remember. I assumed that fat people didn't get hungry and left it at that. When I started anti-depressants, I began to experience that physiological sensation of "my stomach is empty". You know, growling. It was an entirely new thing to me. Having physical evidence of something led me to questioning other kinds of thoughts/experiences that I always assumed I just "didn't have". I think there are a good number of them.

So, in that regard, I know there are aspects of me that don't have a "before depression" memory. This makes it hard to know whether I'm expecting enough out of myself or my medication, because to me the world is always grey, it's just a question of darker or lighter. I had one experience that is commonly described, the whole "colors got brighter" thing - it didn't last, but it was also revelatory, and has become a touchstone for me of "what not-depressed could be like". But I am still struggling to get to just depressed "me" on a good day, and have not found anything giving me a leg up to non-depressed "me" on a bad day, if that makes sense. I lack context for it.

On the other hand, I am fortunate in that I remember clearly the time before I understood that I was a wrong-thing; chicken or egg, because there is an event I can source my neglect back to, and it's likely the neglect created the depression or the depression made me prone to absorbing the neglect.

Anyway - I can remember being happy about a few things, before I was 6 years old. I do remember what "happy" was. And I've felt it a few times in my adult life, enough to count on one hand. So while happy-me before the age of six, and my moments of happy-me as an adult are kind of different, they aren't really that different. The feeling is quite similar. I think of that as the best part of my core self, something that I will recognize if it ever happens again. The grief I feel for the absence of that feeling is pretty deep. I couldn't type about it just now without having a big cry, it's just that triggering.

 

[garden]

stenni, I totally relate. I had no needs for similar reasons. I learned to be invisible, and not draw attention, because if they noticed me It would not be a good thing for me. Bringing up needs was something I learned not to do from very early on. Similar to you, I was socially isolated, and only interacted with people outside my immediate family at school (where other traumas were occuring). I did not bring up basic needs because of fear. For example, I out grew my shoes in the first grade and was scared to tell anyone. I brought it up to my Mom only when I could no longer live with the pain of squeezing my feet into them, and I approached her with such fear and shame because I had already learned that my existence was a problem. I was made to feel as if I had done something wrong, even though I had no control over the growth of my body. Going to the store to buy things for me was always a horrible experience. I was always made too feel like a burden, and there was nothing I could do to help or change this. Going shopping was torture, I remember how I could not speak because of the lump in my throat, and I would struggle to not show any emotion, because if they saw me cry it was worse.

Maybe this is why I have always hated shopping.

 

[The Albatross]

My father was the abuser, my mother the doormat and being abused herself... so the lower the profile the better for me as well.