When You Had Ptsd From Very Young Age

[StressyJen]

I am always trying to figure out what I would be like if I hadn't had the trauma and started all the PTSD stuff, i.e. what WOULD I have been like, so I can try to be more like that, and I was just thinking about that, and I had a new thought.

It's sort of like trying to explain what sight is like to someone who has always been blind or what sound is like to someone who has always been deaf, isn't it?

Maybe it's something I will never fully grasp and I should sort of let it go. But then I feel sort of... totally SCREWED and like I can never win. But I'm still thinking this new idea over.

 

[brokenchild]

I often find myself wondering that.

 

[Deleted member 5760]

Without sounding too 'out there' - I've seen blind people with the most incredible sense of hearing and touch. Why? Because they've learned to rely incredibly well on their other senses when they didn't have that one.

 

[jesse]

I was just thinking the same thing the other day. I was feeling down on myself like why am I letting what happened to me as a kid ruin my life? Then I realized that I didn't ask for this, it happened and it just really sucks. OK maybe I'm not being too encouraging right now (LOL) but it is frustrating. Don't you hate it when you try to say stuff like this to someone "normal" and they reply with "but you wouldn't be you if these things didn't happen", Umm yeah thats the point! I just want to slap someone when they say that stuff to me.

 

[Deleted member 5760]

That's just it as far as I see it jesse. It did happen - that you cannot erase. But you are a NORMAL person reacting normally. Focus on the positives of what this has made you be able to do.

The past is............... well..... the past.

 

[jesse]

Thanks superjen "normal" isn't an adjective used to describe me very often LOL. I take it as a compliment:)

 

[becvan]

I have had PTSD since I was little and for me accepting myself for who I am today is much more important. There is no way to know what I might have turned out like for sure, but I could have been many negative things. I could have been shallow, cruel, money-hungry etc. I may have been nice things too, who knows? What I do know is that everyday I value me as me. I am proud of myself and like myself. I'm a good person.

It took a lot of work to get to this spot. I hope you can get there too.

bec

 

[stuff]

I try not to dwell too much on how I could have been. I know that I have gained an amazing ability to read other people and their moods because of the extreme stress I endured as a kid. I used to feel different and weird about it but now I embrace it. I try not to freak people out with it. I'm grateful that it's one beneficial aspect of my hypervigilance.

 

[AdamAnt]

SJen, I get what you're thinking, and I can see why, but let me relate an analygy I make about my SO.

I collect a certain type of hiking stick that is made from a sapling that has had a vine growing around it since it was small. It's not as big as a "normal" sapling that didn't have the vine there, and it looks different for sure, but what you'd never guess is that that piece of wood is super strong. The grain grows in a spiral instead of straight, and it is as stiff as steel!

I see traits in her that are so much stronger than she would have been otherwise. I don't mean to say that the trauma was a good thing by any means, but in some areas she IS so much stronger, and as stuff has pointed out, you can find those strengths, develop them, and use them the best you can to enhance your life.

 

[Sethe]

Jen (OP):

I've thought about this question A LOT. I find that I resent my past and sometimes think that I would be more successful if I had a healthier childhood.

But, it's all water under the bridge- the events have happened, we're only left with their lingering aftershocks.

 

[just me here]

yeah, I think about this alot. My initial trauma was early, my PTSD onset coincided with another major trauma ( a car accident) that left me addicted to pain meds at 15. Of course I didn't know where to get codeine on the street, so when my scripts ran out I started self medicating with available street drugs , mostly marijuana.

What I have to keep in mind is that something inside me drove me back onto the right road, something put there by my mother before she died, something that gave me the strength to stop the drugs, remove myself from the traumatic situation at home and clean up and go to school and start my life on my own.

That drive to do the right thing was in place before the PTSD and the addictions, and I don't know if it would have been as strong a muscle without the exercise.

I only wish it was a stronger and better trained muscle, I don't know if I would trust it if it hadn't been proven, if it had been allowed to atrophy.

There is no way to know where we could be, only where we are, and how to make it better from right here. Right here is what we have to work with. give up on having a better past.

 

[Jade-]

Right here is what we have to work with. give up on having a better past.

Another statement that stuck out for me...and has helped me.....I seem to keep finding things that I need, without looking for them. Thanks just me here.

I have spent alot of time being really pissed off because of my past. Wishing things would have been different, wishing I hadn't gone through what I did. Being pissed hasn't changed anything, things still were what they were, the things still happened.

I think I need to find a way to accept it. I need to be able to say yea, these things did happen, and they made me who I am today. And then figure out the things about myself that I don't like and change them.

I don't know who I was supposed to be. There's no pre-trauma time in my life. Maybe I need to find out who I want to be now and focus on that.