Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
There is a part of me that is always at least a little bit convinced that all of my mental disorders are self-induced and that I make everything up for some insane reason. (I supposedly have add, anxiety, depression (i definitely have depression), and ptsd).
I had traumatic experiences in my life when i was young but i never seemed to have any negative mental consequences because of it. For instance, from the ages of 5 to 10 i would frequently get molested by my neighbor and he'd whip his dick out and sometimes jerk off. It was really weird, but it only started "haunting me" after society insisted that it was something traumatic.
This has happened with a lot of stuff. I feel like i'm just acting traumatized and have symptoms because of ideas that society and people close to me have put in my head. But it would make sense if i WAS really affected by it.
I just thought i'd throw this out there and see if anyone else feels this way.
I had traumatic experiences in my life when i was young but i never seemed to have any negative mental consequences because of it. For instance, from the ages of 5 to 10 i would frequently get molested by my neighbor and he'd whip his dick out and sometimes jerk off. It was really weird, but it only started "haunting me" after society insisted that it was something traumatic.
This has happened with a lot of stuff. I feel like i'm just acting traumatized and have symptoms because of ideas that society and people close to me have put in my head. But it would make sense if i WAS really affected by it.
I just thought i'd throw this out there and see if anyone else feels this way.
-
Hey all, i know its been quite awhile since i posted on here. Its been a summer all right. Its been something else........... You know how they say not to open the can of worms? Well a few months ago i decided to find out what my due date would have been for my first baby, the one conceived by r***. My baby would have been due on March 4th of 2006. They would be 20 years old. I was R**** on June...
-
My day...today...misplaced my debit card...didn't realize it until I got to the register after shopping to a full cart. Used a different debit card and pulled apart everything looking for missing debit card before I left parking lot. Got home, dropped keys. So now I have a missing debit card, missing keys. A full cartload to unload and put away. I got everything put away.Dumped purse for a...
If you're in therapy, have you asked them about the validity of your reactions? If there's any elements of denial, dissociation, and what I guess I'll call "induced emotion"---that is, trying to feel as bad/good as people tell you to in order to please them, that knid of thing?
I hope you can get some wisdom and insight from others, I'm not too good at this sort of thing yet, but I wanted to offer what I've got.
Healing vibes,
Leo
For me, when I was a child and my boundaries were violated, it was confusing.... I had no concept of boundaries.
Oh how I/we love to shame and guilt ourselves for stuff we never knew, were never taught. We judge ourselves so harshly and our only crime was innocence.
How am I supposed to feel, I ask myself?
Perhaps the reason you never felt any negative consequences was because your brain was using a coping mechanism called dissociation?
Perhaps now you can address the feelings that you never got a chance to feel...? This is my experience, I hope it helps you.
In my family ... my eldest brother sexually abused me in my childhood, and then -- as a disabled adult (me, not him) -- sadistically abused me (along with his wife).
And both he and most of my family wonder why I "was okay with it for so long, but suddenly am NOT okay with it."
Pretty sure I was NEVER okay with it. Pretty sure I just repressed it, and tried to put it out of my memory, to get ON with my life.
Pretty sure I just survived it.
Sometimes we simply don't KNOW that what's happening to us IS wrong, or awful, or horrible, or illegal, or abusive ... while it's happening. Particularly if it happens to us when we're kids.
But that doesn't make it any less so. Sometimes, we just have to learn -- over time and with experience -- how wrong and abnormal it was.
Which is when it can get verrrrry painful.
I wish you peace, health, and strength.
I didn't state that well. I meant that ... he AND his wife sadistically abused me -- what the Geneva Accords define as "torture."
:-)
Sorry, yhtorod. Don't mean to divert your highly relevant question.
Those conflicts of perspective are heavy duty in my own mind. I gave up a long time ago trying to sort the yin from the yang. Simple acceptance gets me further, I think. Things are as they are, whether I understand them, or not. I don't even get to go for accuracy. I can't verify physical location of my most innocent memories, much less the traumas that no one is going to admit. I work with the info available. Basic logic assures me the accuracy of childhood memories is not likely to be anywhere near 100%.
Then we get to the conflicts of being proud I could make grown men so happy before I had a clue what THEY call girls who can make anybody that kind of happy.
Excuse me. I have a sudden urge to chase myself around the yard with a butterfly net. Wanna join me? Maybe we can coin a new name for it.
Yes, I often feel similar to what you seem to be describing.
Yhtorod, I think I know what I was trying ot say earlier---and it's that for me "normal" was what others saw as "horrific". I didn't realize till I got *out*---and by then I'd repressed so much I still didn't know how bad it was till it all popped out in my head again, so....
You feel what you feel. SOmetimes, asking why isn't too helpful. I'm finding it's a huge big wall for me---I'm such a nerd I want all these answers illike I'm back in chem lab. but that's not how PTSD works.... Maybe re-frame the quesiton to find the answer?
Very interesting. Having that perspective on it makes things seem a whole lot more resolved than looking at it in a way that will only work if you figure everything out and put all the pieces together. I get so worked up when it comes to trying to connect every single dot together in hopes that things will settle once i find the answer to the long equation. I'm so happy you commented on this haha.