PTSD and Trauma recovery

[yotlyolqualli]

I wasn't diagnosed with PTSD until two years ago. There are so many things that I've been through, some of my own doing, that sometimes it amazes me that I can crawl out of bed in the mornings.

I'm not going into great detail here, I'd rather not relive the details.

Molested at age 5, neighbor boy.
Molested at age 7, brother (I have to say here, that what happened with my brother, would probably have not even registered, if not for the previous abuse)
Molested at age 9, female cousin
Molested at age 10, elementery school janitor.


The first happened in the dark basement of an abandoned house, our old house. Daddy had built us a new one.
Home no longer felt safe for me. I became terrified of the dark.

The second happened in our new home.
No where felt safe to me, except my woods.

The third happened in my woods.
I was devastated.

The fourth took place over a two week period in the basement of my elementery school.
I had no where to go. He had his daughter call my house and ask for me, then he would get on the phone and just breathe. He was a very heavy man, bald, smelly.
I became perpetually terrified that he would kill my parents and siblings and take me away. A threat he made often.

Of all the incidents, I recall each one in vivid detail. Except, I never remembered what happened in that school basement. I remember him meeting me at the top of the stairs, touching my ass as we walked down those stairs. This happened every day for two weeks. My next clear memory, on each day, was walking up the driveway, crying. My mother, after two weeks, threatened to spank me if I didn't tell her what was wrong. I did. It stopped.


As an adult, I have been raped, by a woman. I have been whipped, beaten, kicked, bitten, burned, punched, flailed and chained.

There are triggers, that can send me into panic mode. The scent of an overweight man. The sound of his breathing. Being approached by someone from behind. Darkness. Basements. The scent of a cigarette. I never know what will trigger me, but the reaction is always the same.

A sick, twisted, vulnerable, churning of my stomach, a need to self harm, a need to rid myself of that memory, that feeling.

Tonight, in the chat room, I was triggered. Nothing happend that was bad, or wrong. Nothing was said that could possibly be thought of as sick or twisted. But just the same. I felt a need to scream, to cut my skin so that the crawling bugs sensation on it would stop. A nausea, and a NEED to scream out NO! Stop!

I hate being triggered. Something else was triggered as well.

In my last relationship, because my partner was not yet ready to "settle down", I was not permitted to openly show a sexual/or even intellectual interest in her, in or on any public forum. Once, I misposted on her myspace, and her reaction was over the top. She screamed at me, ranted at me, made me apologize to her "toy" (her word) of the day who was so hurt by my comment. Made me go delete the comment from her myspace. The relationship was IRL and she made me feel like nothing, over an online comment.

Tonight, I posted something that was meant to be private, on someone's visitor board. When I realized I did it, I started crying. I immediately tried to do "damage" control. I worried and was, quite literally, a basket case.

Until I realized what I was doing, and why. While the post was definitely not supposed to be seen by anyone but the person I posted too, it was not something that would cause an uproar.

I was allowing my past, to project my ex's abusive behavior, onto someone else. Not fair to her, or me. I am still sitting here, nauseous, but at least I recognize it for what it is. I've been "triggered."

Anyone else out there, that deals with this kind of thing? Most of my triggers have been physical... scent, darkness, sound... but this was purely psychological.

If not for my faith and belief in God, I would have long since gone off the deep end.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Lissa

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by yotlyolqualli

I wasn't diagnosed with PTSD until two years ago. There are so many things that I've been through, some of my own doing, that sometimes it amazes me that I can crawl out of bed in the mornings.

I'm not going into great detail here, I'd rather not relive the details.

Molested at age 5, neighbor boy.
Molested at age 7, brother (I have to say here, that what happened with my brother, would probably have not even registered, if not for the previous abuse)
Molested at age 9, female cousin
Molested at age 10, elementary school janitor.


The first happened in the dark basement of an abandoned house, our old house. Daddy had built us a new one.
Home no longer felt safe for me. I became terrified of the dark.

The second happened in our new home.
No where felt safe to me, except my woods.

The third happened in my woods.
I was devastated.

The fourth took place over a two week period in the basement of my elementary school.
I had no where to go. He had his daughter call my house and ask for me, then he would get on the phone and just breathe. He was a very heavy man, bald, smelly.
I became perpetually terrified that he would kill my parents and siblings and take me away. A threat he made often.

Of all the incidents, I recall each one in vivid detail. Except, I never remembered what happened in that school basement. I remember him meeting me at the top of the stairs, touching my ass as we walked down those stairs. This happened every day for two weeks. My next clear memory, on each day, was walking up the driveway, crying. My mother, after two weeks, threatened to spank me if I didn't tell her what was wrong. I did. It stopped.


As an adult, I have been raped, by a woman. I have been whipped, beaten, kicked, bitten, burned, punched, flailed and chained.

There are triggers, that can send me into panic mode. The scent of an overweight man. The sound of his breathing. Being approached by someone from behind. Darkness. Basements. The scent of a cigarette. I never know what will trigger me, but the reaction is always the same.

A sick, twisted, vulnerable, churning of my stomach, a need to self harm, a need to rid myself of that memory, that feeling.

Tonight, in the chat room, I was triggered. Nothing happend that was bad, or wrong. Nothing was said that could possibly be thought of as sick or twisted. But just the same. I felt a need to scream, to cut my skin so that the crawling bugs sensation on it would stop. A nausea, and a NEED to scream out NO! Stop!

I hate being triggered. Something else was triggered as well.

In my last relationship, because my partner was not yet ready to "settle down", I was not permitted to openly show a sexual/or even intellectual interest in her, in or on any public forum. Once, I misposted on her myspace, and her reaction was over the top. She screamed at me, ranted at me, made me apologize to her "toy" (her word) of the day who was so hurt by my comment. Made me go delete the comment from her myspace. The relationship was IRL and she made me feel like nothing, over an online comment.

Tonight, I posted something that was meant to be private, on someone's visitor board. When I realized I did it, I started crying. I immediately tried to do "damage" control. I worried and was, quite literally, a basket case.

Until I realized what I was doing, and why. While the post was definitely not supposed to be seen by anyone but the person I posted too, it was not something that would cause an uproar.

I was allowing my past, to project my ex's abusive behavior, onto someone else. Not fair to her, or me. I am still sitting here, nauseous, but at least I recognize it for what it is. I've been "triggered."

Anyone else out there, that deals with this kind of thing? Most of my triggers have been physical... scent, darkness, sound... but this was purely psychological.

If not for my faith and belief in God, I would have long since gone off the deep end.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Lissa

Sorry it has taken me so long to post back. I have been and am very very anxious.

I totally get the trigger thing. It can indeed happen when we least expect it. A smell, a song a word and I am undone.

I hate the nausea I feel when I am upset..the burning in my head and ears. How sound pulsates in my head. How I have stims that irritate people I am around.

I have a lot of psychological triggers. Some so bad I hit my head for them to stop. I am learning to set boundaries and just do what I can....if I post something wrong or say the wrong thing I am learning to just let it go and mostly I can...but sometimes out of the blue I just freak and I am a scared little girl again.

Like you, I think the details are not the important thing. How we get through our lives is what matters.

Today I am so anxious, triggered by someone wanting to fix me up with their friend. I don't want to go out with someone I don't know, especially with expectation of sex. HUGE trigger. My brain is on fire. I hate this. I want to be the me people see. Fun and bright and free of the past and pain and the desire to chop myself into little pieces.

Peace to you Lissa!

[Apocalipstic]

One more thing.

My therapist told me that predators can tell if a person has a past of abuse and they are drawn to us.

Stay safe.

[KayCee]

“When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

This is so true, and every single time you think about it, it hurts as much as if it happened just yesterday.

[Apocalipstic]

Remember that there will be fireworks and lots of loud sudden noises the next few days.

I have to remind myself its fireworks, not guns.

[Glenn]

The air show is happening here and i live right near the lake. One jet flew so low over my house while I got my mail that the ground shook, the sound was nerve shattering, and I could see everything under it. I had an immediate bowel movement right in my driveway, and am still emoting. It reminded me of that hot night my family and i sat on our porch, when suddenly we were looking under a nose diving plane that crashed only a couple of blocks away just missing the house.

[Apocalipstic]

I hope today is better Glenn!

The fireworks always sound like bombs and guns to me. It's been 36 years since I have been a round bombs and machine guns firing, but unless I am mentally prepared it takes me right back.

[aishah]

hey y'all. i keep admiring this thread from afar, trying to decide what to post. so, hi, i'm here

i feel lucky because i only had to deal with a small amount of fireworks noise last night. i'm not sure why...this is the first place i've ever lived where it wasn't wild and crazy. i hope everyone's doing okay today. *hugs*

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

PTSD, the gift that keeps in giving.

I'm looking at it as a gift because it is forcing me to take better care of the me inside, to make sure she feels safe.

We never know when it is going to kick in, blindside, trigger.

In the most unexpected moment, we can freeze, "over-react", jump, withdraw.

I can identify with this, Apocalipstic, because growing up in a day to day events of on-going abuse (emotional, physical, sexual etc) and experiencing sets of similar events over my lifetime has placed an incredible burden on me to develop the skills and language and boundaries/barriers to keep this type of abuse from having any place in my life. When I began therapy last year, it was the mass social acceptance on part of the majority of people in America that brought forth the placement of a perpetrator of epic magnitude to be elected to an executive office, that person clearly should not be in, nor should that type of culture be an acceptable culture in our American society, yet it is -- sadly. Once that perpetrator was elected to office, it sent me into massive panic attacks and spiraling into a full blown case of PTSD, which I only learned recently, is classified as Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

One of the things that most helps me is the love of pets. They never question me, or tell me I should chill or that I am being ridiculous. They love me no matter what.

They know when I am upset. They lick my tears away.

This is absolutely my experience with pets too. For years now, I always wondered by dogs would lie down on top of my feet and schlick my feet to their hearts' content or why my cat Petunia intuitively knows I am cycling through a stressful event that affects me in deep physiological ways (escalated blood pressure, racing heart beats, cold sweat, migraines that impair my eyesight and ability to think, etc). Animals are so incredibly intuitive and they know more about our own physiological events, moreso than we do, I think.

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I am finding that there are people and things that trigger me, and to be able to fuction and go to work every day and do the things I need to do to take care of me, I have to avoid many of those things and people.

I want to please everyone, I do. I want everyone to know the truth, my truth, but most people can't handle it...they just look at me aghast if I am so inapropriate as to answer in truth to their prying questions...or they don't believe me, even if they were near and knew all along.

I think when they know they did nothing to help it makes it easier for them to sleep at night if they rewrite history for themselves.

Peace is fixing my vaccume cleaner on a Saturday alone with no loud noises, yelling, pressure. I never expected this.

I appreciate your personal experience which you have articulated in ways that I totally understand because it's nearly the same experience I have. Recently, about two weeks ago or so, my therapist asked why I basically had only a few close friends (of many years) that I could even talk to about such things. I explained to her that many of my close friends, outside my immediate family, never had an inkling of the type of things I have endured over my life time and that even when I gave a glimpse of the types of things I have endured, there were a couple of friends who could not even grasp the magnitude of having to live with acts of abuse or violence committed against me, by members of family or those whom I was in a relationship with in romantic type ways. I told my therapist that at appropriate times, with certain clients in my clientele (hairdressing), that there were times I could share a personal experience with them, so they'd know that I knew what it was like to be violated, abused, etc., and not have any way to extricate myself from them in immediate ways. In some cases, I could remove myself from those prior situations, but growing up, when you're the kid who is being violated, there wasn't a way or remedy to help me be removed from the on-going perpetual emotional, physical or sexual assault committed against me. But I can relate to your experience when you say that ''people look at you aghast as if I am so inappropriate as to answer in truth to their prying questions." My sister-in-law, when I first began to share about the long-held secrets of my immediate family abuses and misrepresentation of who my family is (because they do an awful lot of facework, keeping up their social face, so people won't know about their dreadful secretive, ghastly, behavioral issues which they keep well hidden from public view) could not believe my family was capable of such egregious behavior. In fact, for the longest time, I could tell she would never be able to grasp the depth of abuse I've endured by the types of comments she'd have in response to what I would share with her. The past two years she has demonstrated to me that she better understands what I've been through, but at the same time, in my own opinion, I feel that people who have never endured traumatic experiences of any magnitude have a really hard time understanding how such things can even happen. In my sister-in-laws case, her inability to grasp the level of abuse I've endured was not entirely out of sheer ignorance, but sort of like what some people do when they hear about such things -- turn a blind eye on what they hear or see? I'm grateful that my sister-in-law has the capacity to learn and accept what has happened to me, but as a survivor I can't help but think of all the emotional burdens survivors of abuse carry by not only trying to make sure these types of situations or events of abuse are not kept from public knowledge but also so we can not be held prisoner by the events themselves.

I hate it that as survivors, we end up with more emotional types of labor to endure (sharing our accounts with those in our lives) and yet for all the ways we disclose our lives in support groups or with therapists, perpetrators still never pay the price for what they've done to us.

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

One more thing.

My therapist told me that predators can tell if a person has a past of abuse and they are drawn to us.

Stay safe.

I agree with this, completely, due to my own life long experiences. I recently told my therapist that I feel like there's some invisible target on my back that is some sign to perpetrators, abusers or any type, where they seek us out and are drawn toward us. In fact, I'm grateful for that 'moth to flame' type of effect because once that begins to happen, I can shore up my boundaries to keep people of that type of disturbing mentality and behavioral issues from having any place in my life.

Thanks for all your posts, Apocalipstic…. naming and sharing about experiences helps survivors in so many ways.

[FireSignFemme]

I have a difficult time and am very careful about sharing anything about the abuse I've been through with anyone outside of therapy because of the way some of the things I've shared in the past have boomeranged back around to hurt me. For example I once had someone I'd confided in about some of the abuse I experienced as a child later in anger say to me – I wish he (my abuser) had gotten you in the ass! Another time someone I was living with flew into a rage and asked why was I telling them about things that had occurred in my past did I want to provoke them, make them angry, was I trying to get her to kill my abuser? No? Then why was I telling her this shit! She went off about how she was sick and tired of being with women who'd been abused because she felt like she was constantly being punished, made to suffer for someone else's sins. Then she stomped off angry to go who knows where, to do who knows what, only to return late that evening without saying anything. She never explained her behavior and certainly never apologized for her outburst. I felt completely abandoned when she left me to just sort through it, work it out on my own. It also felt like a major mind f**k because she was the one who told me I could tell her anything about my past and she wouldn't shame me, judge me, hold it against me, use it to hurt me like that male partner of mine had. Yet she did.

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by FireSignFemme

I have a difficult time and am very careful about sharing anything about the abuse I've been through with anyone outside of therapy because of the way some of the things I've shared in the past have boomeranged back around to hurt me. For example I once had someone I'd confided in about some of the abuse I experienced as a child later in anger say to me – I wish he (my abuser) had gotten you in the ass! Another time someone I was living with flew into a rage and asked why was I telling them about things that had occurred in my past did I want to provoke them, make them angry, was I trying to get her to kill my abuser? No? Then why was I telling her this shit! She went off about how she was sick and tired of being with women who'd been abused because she felt like she was constantly being punished, made to suffer for someone else's sins. Then she stomped off angry to go who knows where, to do who knows what, only to return late that evening without saying anything. She never explained her behavior and certainly never apologized for her outburst. I felt completely abandoned when she left me to just sort through it, work it out on my own. It also felt like a major mind f**k because she was the one who told me I could tell her anything about my past and she wouldn't shame me, judge me, hold it against me, use it to hurt me like that male partner of mine had. Yet she did.

My first butch lesbian partner did the exact same thing, the mind-f*ck thing you describe, where they persuade you to believe that you can tell them anything and they won't use it in controlling ways by shaming you or blame you when you're the victim, etc. I've actually seen that type of control pattern among the abusers who've had access to my life. So, now a days, when I hear someone say something like that, it's like a giant red flag about the person who makes that claim because in my own opinion, based on past experiences, to me? When someone says that? It's like they want you to believe they'd never do that, then they do exactly what they say they won't do, which to me, is like gas-lighting or as you aptly describe it -- the 'mind-f*ck'. They want you to think and believe that they own some modicum or shred of compassion. But, it's never been my experience that any abuser or perpetrator has any ounce of conviction about what they do or say (a form of narcissism, maybe?); like it's their favorite line to parrot, hoping you won't see them for who they really are or catch on to how manipulative they are or their level of secretivity, yanno?

Because to me, that's how abusers are: They are masters of control. It's like a perverse sickness, if you ask me. You mention that your abuser was male; but abusers/perpetrators in my past were both male and/or female.


It hurts, suffering through something like this, what you went through.

I read your other post, where you said you got booted from therapy. Hopefully you will find a competent therapist you can see on a regular basis, outside the quarterly visits you have with your psychiatrist. My insurance at work does not pay a cent toward mental health services at all, so the burden of paying for services to see a therapist is on me. Luckily, my primary physician referred to me a teaching clinic, which is licensed by the Board of Psychology and Practical Medicine Boards. I make a small payment every week, and I'm grateful I can afford the small payment I incur weekly. I also have to pay for parking because they don't have free parking.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for you as move forward in your recovery.

--K.