Cleft Lip / Palate Support Group
Cleft is a congenital deformity caused by a failure in facial development during gestation. It can be treated with surgery shortly after birth with highly successful results. Cleft occurs in somewhere between one in 600 and one in 800 births. Cleft occurs in several severities and is divided in two major categories: cleft lip and cleft palate.
Just curious to know if anyone else in here has experienced trust issues or problems emotionally connecting with other people? I think I've put up a very thick wall emotionally and I just don't know if I want to let anyone in ever again. I keep everyone at arms length I think because it means I don't have to really trust them with my thoughts, opinions or emotions. Kind of like I don't have to care. As far as trusting anyone I feel like I have reached a point of no return and that I may never be able to trust anyone again much less enough to be in a relationship again.
Even walking down the street and seeing people look at me. I never know if they r just going to smile and maybe say hello or if they are going to act unkindly. What have been y'all's experiences?
Even walking down the street and seeing people look at me. I never know if they r just going to smile and maybe say hello or if they are going to act unkindly. What have been y'all's experiences?
I only started to open up a little since last year, but I suspect the trauma of CLP will follow us most of our life.
How can I logically go from being called so-ugly-how-can-you-exist by random complete strangers in high school to grow a relationship, however small, to that classmate who pretended to be interested in me ? Was she joking ? Was it a dare game ? Did she want to humiliate me afterwards ?... (typical thought process).
The thing I noticed though is that most people aren't really that bad, in fact a decent amount of them are quite nice.
People stare at each other often though, and not only at cleft lip people.
But wankers will be wankers, so everytime someone says hurtful things , I'd rather shrug it off and go punching bags at home. Falsely confident people always try to bring others down to make themselves look better/normal.
It took finding good reliable people who encouraged me to believe that I was as good as anyone else, to help me trust that I had something to offer. Confidence and the way we carry, ourselves makes all the difference.