Poll Who Traumatized You

[Anna]

With me it is a mixture of both. Family with a mental illness, emotional and physical abuse. Then a close friend- sexual abuse. The grand finale was committed by a stranger.

 

[Red Feather]

Both my mother and exhusband believed fully that they had full right to treat me the way they did. My mother maybe because that was the way she was treated and didn't know any better. Or maybe because she has PTSD and has enormous anger issues and has no knowledge of how she treats people.

My ex to this day does not know that he sexually abused me all of our marriage and how deeply traumatic it was for me. He does not know I was under his mind control. He thought his actions were the right thing to do and even spiritually and religiously qualified as supporting the higher good.

 

[kdblossom]

My 2nd grade teacher who was also my Mom's roommate(long story). I attended a private 2 classroom school. My principal thought something was not quite right even though I denied it. I spent the last half of the school year in his classroom.

 

[Bubba]

It was a young middle school boy who was being sexually abused by his father. He attempted to rape me by the side of a house when I was just 7. My other traumas came from my parents, who were emotionally neglectful and then bad relationships on top of that.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

My parents were my original abusers who groomed me to be the perfect victim and I was retraumatized many many times with alot of secondary wounding.

 

[bluehairedstevo]

I voted "did not understand their behavior was wrong" - she told me the story of how she had converted, and it sounded like she was one of those 'walking wounded' that cults exploit. It is kind of sad but doesn't excuse the horrible things she did. I do not believe she is capable of making amends or changing.

 

[JoAnnD]

My traumas were varied. My mother's illness and death at a young age (32) was among them. Childhood sexual abuse and rape at age 8 were others. So Nobody Was at Fault and Criminal Behavior are my answers.

 

[missmary]

I chose "drugged or intoxicated" although I'm not sure. My parents were alcoholics. My father was an alcoholic, abusive cop. My mother was a battered woman from her own childhood and then her marriage. She was emotionally, spiritually and physically abusive herself. Both parents had brief periods of being suicidal.

I had an abusive relationship in high school with a boy who was masochistic. We moved in together when I was kicked out of my parents house at 17 years old. He graduated from cutting himself in duress to making me cut him. Then he just plain lashed out at me. The final straw was when he attacked me with a knife in front of a friend who rescued me. He also sexually assaulted me once in the relationship although I don't remember it. But I had letters he'd written to me apologizing for what he'd done. I remember the experience around the experience, but not the attack itself. He stalked me and threatened me for a year and a half after.

I had another dysfunctional relationship after that, with a man 10 years older than me, at the age of 19/20. He was very sweet and romantic, but when we'd go to sleep I'd regularly wake up with him halfway inside of my rear-end which was a big no-no for me. I'd just play dead and freeze and try to keep him from fully penetrating without letting him know I was awake.

I recently discovered in therapy from a repressed memory that just surfaced, that I likely was sexually traumatized as a very young child.

 

[circe47]

Multiple traumas, but the event(s) that shaped my life come from my experiences with my mother.

1. Born two weeks premature; lack of maternal bond.
2. Mother showed obvious favoritism to my siblings.
3. Mother physically abusive, i.e. slaps, pinches, hair pulling, whippings with belt, tree switches, wooden spoons, hairbrushes, whatever weapon was at hand.
4. Mother emotionally disconnected; lack of affection, called me derogatory names like "lazy" "argumentative", or disparaged my physical appearance "forehead too high" "too skinny", "knobby knees"
5. Ignored or invalidated my suffering at the verbal abuse of my peers all through school
6. Ignored the signs that I was being molested by multiple people, i.e. a priest, the neighbor, my uncle
7. Not only did she ignore the signs, she punished me physically for my sexually explicit drawings and over-sexualized behavior at an extremely young age.
8. Hit me so hard on the side of my head as a teen, I was almost knocked out of my chair.

This is just the "mommy baggage". Being verbally abused by my peers was also very defining for me. It compounded my already low self-esteem into non-existence.

These early experiences left me feeling LUCKY to find love....with two different men who abused me on all levels over the course of twenty years.

 

[Serasen]

I posted on here officially as a supporter because my H has civilian and combat ptsd but I also have been traumatized. I hope you don't mind me posting on here about mine. I feel like his abuse and ptsd has overshadowed mine for a long time and it would be nice to get it out.

I was sexually abused from age 2 or 3 to about age 8 (the timeline is a little fuzzy) by my grandfather (on my mother's side). He didn't stop the abuse. He died from lung cancer when I was 8. It wasn't until I was a mother myself and 22 that I told my mother about the abuse. I never got closure really.

My mother was and still is very very religious. My only childhood memories besides the abuse were of my parents fighting because my father was not religious and my mother would try to push him into attending church with us. She would take us to church every time the doors opened. We literally had to be running a fever to miss church. I remember she would tell me the devil was working in me when I misbehaved. It scared the crap out of me.

When I was 10 my mother and father divorced. My father moved in with my mother's mom (my grandmother). They got married a year or so later. They said it was for financial reasons but they have since learned to "love" each other.

As I got older I learned that my father consistently cheated on my mother from the first year of their marriage. They stayed married for 20 years. This was because her religion did not believe in divorce. I also learned that I wasn't the only one to be abused by my grandfather. My mother and a couple of other female members of the family were abused.

I resented the hell out of her for going through it herself but not being able to see my abuse. I resented my father for cheating on my mother and making me not trust men. And I resented everyone after my grandfather died for saying all the "good" things he had done. He was a horrid person and was clearly mentally deranged.

About 7 years ago, right before I met my husband, I was raped and held in a hostage situation with a man I barely knew but thought was decent enough to hang out with. Later that year I was attacked by a man I was seeing and the girlfriend I knew nothing about in my neighbor's front yard.

I have gone to therapy for these issues and have dealt with most of them. I refused to try hypnotherapy because I was told I have repressed my memories and am quite frankly scared of what will come to surface.

I was diagnosed with Bipolar type II and generalized anxiety. I was last told that I had Borderline Personality Disorder. My H jokes that I have multiple personalities but it is a very real thing I deal with every day.

I was diagnosed with ptsd but never really worked through it due to so many other things going on. :confused:


Thank you for letting me post here. It means a lot to vent it all and know I'm not alone. :)

 

[Deleted member 16543]

The perpetrator was checked in to the hospital for Schizophrenia, he killed 2 women, decapitated one, slit the other's throat ear to ear so deep I could see her spinal cord. I tried to save them, by sneaking past him while he was otherwise occupied, I didn't know he had already killed them. He could have killed me easily if he caught me or knew what I was doing. I knew there was a woman in there, I didn't know if she was dead or alive needing help to survive. I had to go through the bathroom, where I realized later he slit one of their throats before placing her on the bed in the bedroom. There was blood everywhere in the bathroom, all over the mirror, I remember looking at myself in the mirror and it looked like I was covered in blood. One woman was in bed, I checked on her and her head separated from her body, it almost fell and hit the night table, I had to put her head back on her body so it wouldn't fall and make noise and notify him I was in the room. She was cold and stiff. I turned around to leave the room to find another woman on another bed with a pillow over her head. I lifted the pillow off her head and I could see he slit her throat from ear to ear, I could see her spinal cord, she was still warm, I was probably two minutes too late.

How can I check myself in for help if people like him are there? I am terrified of the hospital because crazy people that can kill you are there, so how can I go there for help??? The doctor's don't seem to understand this. Also, I can't go into the bathroom, it triggers flashbacks, I can't go into the bedroom, it triggers flashbacks as well, I am terrified of both places and have not been in either since it happened, how do you go to a hospital and stay there if you can't go to the bathroom or stay in a bedroom or a bed???

I sleep on the couch and have a make shift toilet in the living room take sponge baths in the kitchen sink and wash my hair and brush my teeth in the kitchen sink.....gross yes, embarrassing, yes, mandatory to my sanity, yes!!!!!

 

[Loveneverfails]

I didn't really know how to gauge which was my worst trauma so I'm not sure how to vote. Person(s) with mental illness and those without did horrible things to me, so did people who didn't understand. This is an interesting study, though the thought of amends being entirely impossible thus far in my case makes me feel rather depressed.