Memories

[greendreamdays]

TW

I’ve never had trauma therapy. I have had therapy for my eating disorder and other things which has been very beneficial. I have learned about trauma responses here and there from mental health treatment, books, articles therapists and other clinicians, and a few trauma groups, but not individual therapy with a therapist who specializes in trauma.

I don’t have all my memories of the abuse. I know some are missing, others are simply distorted and other are mixed up. It’s like the timeline of my memories are all mixed up in my head, not all in one place. I don’t have a strong timeline of when things happened. It also didn’t help that my parents divorced with joint custody of me and my sibling and switching between the two houses and school growing up was like living 3 different lives. I tried my best to integrate all my experiences when I left home for college. It was so healing to have the majority of my things all in one room for a change, not split between the two.

My memory has always been a bit weird, even since I was a kid. Apparently certain memory issues are common among certain neurodivergent conditions which I definitely have, so it’s not all trauma. But trauma is a part of it.

I remember a lot of the emotional trauma, the shaming, the punishment, and humiliation. More than the words themselves I remember how my abusers made me feel. Like my existence was a constant burden and I could never do anything perfectly. Mistakes were almost never tolerated and seen often as either completely thoughtless and careless or malicious acting out when most of the time I was just a kid doing kid things like accidentally knocking over expensive vases and having a lack of spatial awareness and frequently forgetting things. I was also hopelessly anxious. Even when I was in kindergarten, I was always in awe of the freedom with which the other children played, how uninhibited and unselfconscious they were, yelling, laughing, running around, making friends, flailing their arms around spinning in circles on the playground. I felt like I could never let myself be that free. They were behaving imperfectly with no concern for how their actions would inevitably affect others. I couldn’t do that if I tried, and I did try. I always felt like there was this block in the way. I used to think it was just anxiety and I needed to somehow get over it, or be braver. But now into my adulthood I realize it was deep and early programming that was that “block.”

I never really learned how to make close friends. I was almost always faking it. I didn’t realize it took real vulnerability to make genuine connections with others. I thought everyone was faking it all the time, but they were just better at hiding it. Growing up I felt painfully empty, emotionally cold and numb inside, not truly see or understood by anyone. I didn’t know why I felt I was always blocked off from others. Relationships/friendships were always this thing that other people had that I could never have no matter how much I tried. I got really good at looking like I was being friendly, or charming or vulnerable. Kind of like a perfect robot or a doll. That is exactly how I was trained to be. I felt so cold and dead and empty on the inside, but as long as I played my part of the cheery, silly, golden child, nobody inquired. Since it was all I ever knew I assumed that it must be normal and everyone must feel like that to a certain degree, I just didn’t know how everyone was so good at hiding it and not letting their pain bleed out everywhere.

Any kind of real closeness in relationships would make my alarm bells go off, so I couldn’t really ever know if my boundaries were healthy but uncomfortable because healthy relationships were new, or if it was a sign of real danger. I was terrified of closeness but always craving it. It made for some unhealthy relationships where fear and love felt just the same and both equally exciting and unpredictable. I don’t feel like this way much anymore, but it’s how I let during my whole childhood and into my early 20s. I never felt safe, I didn’t know how and I didn’t know any different. There were no external signals telling me there was danger. Just my feelings and I thought my feelings were simply wrong and assumed there was something deeply wrong with me. I was always trying to figure out why I felt so painfully empty, painfully lonely, why even the most mundane experiences were full of emotional, why I could never get my anxiety under control, or get my depression to go away.
I had some unhelpful therapists and psychiatrists and doctors at the beginning who all told me the wrong things, gave me the wrong diagnoses, and made me feel like I was going “crazy” (I hate that word), like I could never fully recover my mental health, that I was making things up, or lying about my experiences and symptoms. I had never felt so lost or lonely in my life.

I had panic attacks every day, I self harmed all the time but I told myself it wasn’t really self-harm because it didn’t break the skin which in hindsight was definitely denial. I didn’t understand self harm at the time I was just trying to get some relief and it was definitely real self harm. As long as I showered and covered myself up I could walk to classes and no one would know. I really don’t know how I kept going to classes in college. My mind was falling apart but I kept telling myself I was just making mountains out of molehills, that I was exaggerating and pitying myself, and pretty much invalidating my every emotion. That’s when things started getting really bad. I tried a number of medications that made my life a living nightmare. To be clear I am pro-medication, I’ve seen it save peoples lives and do what therapy alone couldn’t. But I have also tried so many meds, prescriptions and supplements, and have had severe and unusual side effects that make things worse. But I kept trying them because I needed to find something that worked.

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I realized that the abuse I went through affected every single relationship I have ever had. And now I’m in a place where I can process more of it, and as I peel back the layers to heal, I find relationships can actually feel good and I am able to connect with people more easily and can feel that emotional warmth.

I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. I told my therapist how I had a knife against my wrist the night before. It was my one steak knife and it was very dull and I wasn’t about to cause myself more pain if I could help it. I almost completely lost control of myself I was so overwhelmed with emotions that if I had gone one more night like that there was no telling what I would have done to myself. And it really scared me so I told my therapist and I was sent to the hospital.

After I got out I had more tools in my toolbox for coping with emotions but nothing to help me actually process trauma. That’s not what hospitals are for. Psych hospitals are meant to keep you alive, give you some tools, and get you out as soon as you are no longer a danger to yourself. There were no therapists, only social workers who did the group therapy (and nurses, techs, and doctors). I stopped the meds, stopped seeing my psychiatrists and counselor and life got a lot better.

Then I dated someone for the first time. Looking back I realize I only went out with her because she was constantly “love bombing” me and giving me so much attention, telling me how attractive I was and all the things that she thought were amazing about me and how we had such a strong connection. I had read books on relationships but I somehow didn’t see those as red flags. I had never had anyone so interested in me before and it felt so nice. I never had that kind of attention so even though I was not attracted to her we saw each other for about six months. I was terrified and my skin was crawling so much of the time but I just thought I had to retrain myself how to be comfortable in a romantic relationship because I never experienced romantic intimacy before.

It turns out those alarm bells were right. It was an abusive and manipulative relationship but I didn’t really see it until I spent some time away to visit family and I found myself avoiding her texts and pictures.

She was my first date, my first kiss, and my first time or so I thought. Except I only realized in retrospect that it was rape. I didn’t want it but she kept pushing me and pushing me to give her oral and let her give me oral. I was curious about all of these sexual things, but I almost always kept my shirt and underwear on as long as I could. My refusing her made her more insistent and I think it excited her. I was afraid of telling her no too forcibly because I knew she would be upset, and she would not have taken it for an answer anyway. I was inexperienced and confused with my emotions and reactions. It wasn’t until I was triggered by an anti-domestic violence campaign video I saw for class that I had a real flashback. I had never been triggered like that before and I wanted to leave the room so badly. But it was during the class we shared. Everyone knew we were going out and if I had left the room during the video everyone including her might have assumed she was abusing me which at the time I didn’t believe.
We had many other sexual dysfunctions. She asked me repeatedly if I had ever been molested as a child and I remember getting really irritated and defensive and saying I hadn’t. And later the memories of the sexual abuse I endured as a kid came up. A lot of inappropriate touching, incessant and intrusive tickling, the inability to have boundaries, never feeling physically or emotionally safe, not be able to defend myself or my boundaries without being punished for being “disrespectful.”

I was emotionally abused at one house growing up, and emotionally, physically, and sexually at the other house. It wasn’t mostly my parents, but my parents’ partners.
My mom’s second husband turned out to be a pedophile. I had no idea at the time. He would forcibly hold me down on the couch, or bed and tickle me until I didn’t even have breath to scream at him to stop. He was much stronger so I had no chance of escaping no matter how hard I tried. He would hold me in all sorts of uncomfortable and painful positions so if I tried to move it would hurt, then he would tickle me. It didn’t matter how many times I screamed at him to stop or to get off. He would just keep doing it until he felt satisfied. And he did it all the time. I had no idea there was anything wrong with this when it was happening as a kid. I had never heard of tickling as abuse, and if I ever mentioned it to someone as a problem I didn’t think they would take me seriously. My mom and sister hated it when he did it to them. But I deliberately asked for it on a number of occasions because nobody else gave me that kind of attention. I couldn’t let myself hate it because it would have happened to me anyway and it was beyond my control even when I wasn’t asking him for it.

He would also talk about sex all the time. Claiming since his parents never talked about it he wanted to do the opposite. But it was just an excuse to treat my sibling and I like sexual objects. Constantly making sexual jokes, innuendos, commenting on our bodies and clothes, slapping our butts as we walked by him, and walking in on us while were changing clothes or using the bathroom. And many other things.
I was so young I had no idea what I was even asking for. Sex was this strange abstract idea. And after talking about it so much and sexualizing me all the time I figured this was the natural progression. I asked him if he would have sex with me. And I think he did, multiple times. I have fragments of memories, but mostly I just remember the terror. And then my mind goes blank.

Lately I have been triggered by all kinds of things and I know I need to heal from this and I don’t know how. I’m finally in a place where talking about it doesn’t make me completely paralyzed or dissociated. I used to go completely still when I tried processing it in therapy. I would go into full central nervous system shut down. I would cover my eyes and lean over my knees on the therapy couch and I freeze. I couldn’t say anything. I would just be frozen with that terror. I could hear my therapist but I couldn’t respond. Other times I couldn’t hear at all. I couldn’t thinking about anything. I didn’t want to remember. But mostly I just felt the terror. The first few times this happened I didn’t understand what was happening, I didn’t even think I went through real abuse. I thought I had a basically happy childhood. My therapist wasn’t very helpful when I would get shut down like that and didn’t try to help me out of that state because he thought I needed to be able to bring myself out of it even though I couldn’t. It would wear off eventually but it made me extremely angry when it happened a few times and he didn’t help me. Maybe he didn’t understand how to help. I attempted suicide shortly afterward.

A few months later after leaving that therapist I attempted again. I was trying to recover from my eating disorder on my own but I would get this overwhelming terror when I would eat normally, and restricting kept it at bay. I tried pushing through it anyway and attempted again, much more lethally.

Went to the hospital again, found another place to get treated for my eating disorder. It was a mixed bag but it saved my life. I was able to do some healing while in treatment there like I had never done before. I didn’t know it was even possible for me to stop feeling suicidal, to get my anxiety under control, or to recover from depression. But after a lot of time, work, and support I was eventually able to leave treatment.
The thing about eating disorder treatment is that you don’t leave fully recovered. They give you necessary tools for recovery you didn’t have before so you can continue recovery on your own with a little outpatient help, not 24 hour care.

There was one time in group I got so triggered by another group member I completely lost control and I covered my eyes and started screaming. I couldn’t even hear myself. I didn’t think anything I had been through could have triggered a response like that. But the more I work through my emotions, the more I understand exactly where that could have come from.

I was cleaning out my room today and I discovered some old artwork I had tucked away. It was the silhouette of a face completely blackened with many layers of dark paint. I had forgotten I had even felt that dark once. I have more art like that, I keep it separate from my other work. I am not sure what to do with it. Sometimes it’s helpful to paint exactly how I feel even though it seems a bit extreme and uncharacteristically dark. I have a folder somewhere of this dark artwork. I don’t look at it and most of the time I forget it exists. I don’t want to throw it away because they contain so much emotion I don’t understand. Someday I want to let them go but I’m keeping them for now until I can understand them better.

It’s been a few years since I was in treatment, but I have continued outpatient therapy. Now I’m at the point where I can process a lot more on my own. I’m thinking about seeing a trauma specialist but I don’t know if I want to yet. I’m trying to take things one step at a time. The things I have talked about have transpired over a number of years. I am doing much better now, but I still have many things to heal.

[Crow]

Hi greendreamdays,

Firstly, welcome to isurvive. Sorry for the reasons that bring you here, but I am sure you will find plenty of support here.

You have clearly been through a lot and have done a great job putting it all down here. This comment below of yours really struck me, because it is over the past year or so that this has been a realisation for me also...

Even when I was in kindergarten, I was always in awe of the freedom with which the other children played, how uninhibited and unselfconscious they were, yelling, laughing, running around, making friends, flailing their arms around spinning in circles on the playground. I felt like I could never let myself be that free. They were behaving imperfectly with no concern for how their actions would inevitably affect others. I couldn’t do that if I tried, and I did try. I always felt like there was this block in the way. I used to think it was just anxiety and I needed to somehow get over it, or be braver. But now into my adulthood I realize it was deep and early programming that was that “block.”

Regarding trauma therapy, I guess only you can decide that. What that looks like to different therapists and at different places I suppose varies. I am four sessions in for the first time having Trauma Focused CBT, but I was told from the start that we wouldn't talk about my childhood or the abuse, but rather focus on the now and my thinking and behaviour. But that to me seems half of the issue. I mean, how can we address triggers, anxieties and thinking/behaviour without looking at the reasons and conditioning? But for me, that is all that is available because I don't have the money for private therapy, and this is free on the NHS (I'm in the UK). And so far, it feels like regular CBT... just with the word 'Trauma' tagged onto the title...

It does sound like you have made huge steps to aid your healing over the years.

Crow

[greendreamdays]

Hi Crow,

Thank you for your response.

Yes, it can be really frustrating to get into therapy and do present focused CBT work if you haven’t explored your childhood first. And especially if no one explains to you that symptoms management is not just a bandaid, there is important healing in validating your symptoms and emotions without always knowing the cause. It is not always necessary for healing, and even if, like me, you don’t have all your memories it is still possible to heal those parts of yourself. But if getting to the root cause a different way is something important to you maybe that’s something you can bring up with your therapist. CBT is great but it has its limitations.

It was years before someone finally told me that you can’t heal when you are overly triggered because the body and brain get stuck in protective mode. If you are overly triggered or overly withdrawn the brain can’t process the healing like it would if you were present. There are real physiological reasons for this I won’t get into in this post but you can read all about it in the book The Body Keeps the Score. But there is a place somewhere in the middle where it is uncomfortable, but not unbearable, and to my knowledge that is the best window to work on exploring past trauma.

[Crow]

Hi greendreamdays,

CBT is great but it has its limitations.

Indeed. I've had numerous CBT interventions over the last fifteen years, and until recently I hadn't realised that my childhood was ultimately the cause of a lot of my struggles.

If you are overly triggered or overly withdrawn the brain can’t process the healing like it would if you were present. There are real physiological reasons for this I won’t get into in this post but you can read all about it in the book The Body Keeps the Score.

Yes, I have found this myself actually, and was one of my concerns particularly when offered TF-CBT. I sort of felt like I was being judged and told that my thoughts and responses were wrong, and they couldn't see what I was suggesting that it may be conditioned and automatic survival responses that were hindering me, and as such, saying these were wrong was invalidating.
I have recently read the book and it was very insightful.

Sorry to detract from your original post.

Crow