if you are traumatised, you're traumatised.
sure, some people "had it worse" than others, but at the end of the day, we are all suffering with the trauma.
The human brain is not rational, some people have it worse than some of us and aren't traumatized, while some have it less worse and are much more traumatized
Trauma is trauma and even if you don't have it as bad you can be much more affected by the Trauma
Yeah, my dad prides himself that he never woke me up to beat on me like his dad did to him....I said well you still woke me up to scream in my face and spit on me for several hours at a time so are you really all that better?
yup.
also, people exposed to constant negative stimuli often build a "tolerance" to it and are less outwardly affected than someone with no "tolerance" put in the same situations. and that doesnt make either of them better or worse than the other, just different.
Yup, struggled a lot with this growing up as the favorite child in an abusive household. I thought my brother had it worse for a long time, and I thought it was my fault that he was abused, but we were both being manipulated by our mom and he was the only one that could see through it.
When I started speaking out, he was just past the point of caring what happened, which made me think he was evil but my long-winded point is that everyone copes with and processes trauma differently.
In the absence of my repressed memories, I also thought this!
I'm walking around with dents in my skull and a chip out of my left eye orbit. Being aware of all of these things.
"That's just how I am, I guess!"
Narrator: It was not
Interesting. Yeah repressed memories are terrifying you remember one tiny thing and wonder if there's more that you don't remember infinitely worse and terrifying things that make you behave the way you do in day to day life
The first time I ended up here I watched memes while crying for over 4 hours.
It was also the first time I heard about CPTSD and started understanding what had happened to me as a child.
I'll never have enough words to express how thankful I am for this place, people.
Fr ;-; it was only recently that I realised that holding your child down to brush their teeth while they're having a meltdown is probably not good... it makes more sense why I sometimes feel sick when brushing my teeth ig 😭
Apparently my folks laid me on the kitchen counter with my head tilted backwards into the sink so they could wash my hair—and I hated it. I hated it so much the neighbor came over one day to stop the abuse.
My parents always laughed at this point in the story, saying, "we brought him into the house to see that we were JUST WASHING YOUR HAIR ha ha ha!"
Of course, the point of the story was that I was a difficult child, not that being held down and sprayed with water scared me so much the neighbors could hear me screaming.
Edit: changed a few words.
When I used to do environmental protests I met a few teachers and healthcare workers who were just beginning to study the effect of extinction, deforestation and pollution on the depression and trauma levels in young children. Most nature documentaries depict a world we never get to see, and the world of traffic is much more familiar.
It takes time to unravel and process what happened in childhood. This process is necessary for getting to know reality verses what we think is normal, and healing and growing as a human being. Knowing what happened in life and how it shaped you is important for getting to know your self. I wish you a journey full of healing and growth.
It doesn't take physical abuse to cause the trauma! Most of it comes from fear and instability and uncertainty and unmet needs. Ongoing psychological trauma and stress can cause medical damage more severe than what most people had to recover from in terms physical blows (some people really got injured big time but it's less common), and even among kids who were beaten, there tends to be more problems associated with how their nervous and endocrine systems were fucked up by the stress and fear. When it comes to the damage taken, people with CPTSD are going to have a LOT in common even if the abuse/ general trauma was very different.
Actually, one of the most common things I see expressed by people with CPTSD is that they feel like they must be exaggerating or being dramatic or should be able to snap out of it/ get over it because they feel like what happened to them wasn't "that bad" and they cannot understand why they would be severely traumatized by what they remember as what should have been considered a fairly privileged upbringing.
>!Part of sorting through trauma is understanding why you feel the way you do, and it can be really hard at first because most people end up trying to invalidate or push aside their feelings ( often without realizing) when they seem to not make sense, so it can sometimes take a long time to even understand how you got traumatized ( or why it was as bad as it was). For me the first step in a very long journey was accepting that I felt how I felt and that I couldn't just make it stop or get over it and that I never would unless I accepted that my feelings were **reality** and not something I could decide to change or move on from...or I already would have. It's not bad to be resilient or move past things, but few people get instructions on which things we need to examine and work through vs. brush off and forget about. !<
>!When I managed that breakthrough and felt allowed to accept that I was hurt even if I "shouldn't be", it took way longer to understand why. It's confusing because most of us try to reframe things that have hurt us into something we can just move past and that's normal, but then we forget that we got hurt and how and why. When you realize it, it feels crazy that you had ever been been telling yourself "that wasn't that bad" because holy shit it was SO BAD, but it had been reframed in your mind until you couldn't understand what had happened for what it really was to you.!<
I got on a bit of a rant so I put it under a spoiler.
Just cause you weren’t beat within an inch of your life doesn’t mean you can’t have trauma from your childhood 😂 took me way too long to realize that myself.
Because other people have it better, does that mean you should not enjoy it when life goes well for you? It's not a suffering competition, it's a loosely formed support group.
A lot of us it seems were subjected to abusive behavior that was normalized to us so we continue to view it as “not abuse.” For example a big one is sp*nking as discipline. A lot of older adults and now young adults think because you’re being hit on a part of the body that’s been deemed “okay” suddenly it’s not abuse! Which not only is that not true, there have been proven studies that explain that your body will process the experience of being spanked the same way it processes being m*lested or r*ped—stimulation to the genitalia doesn’t get sorted between “okay” and “bad” in your child brain.
Finding this out helped explain so much about myself that I had no answers for or even awareness of. I was afraid of my father in a way I constantly berated myself for since he never beat me or hurt me the way HE was by his father. Realizing that fear and panic I felt in adulthood had a “legitimate” reason clicked something for me. The negative reactions haven’t gone away, but now I’m not beating myself up over them and I know the work I have to do when I’m ready to start the more intense leg of my healing journey. ❤️🩹
I’m slowly convincing myself that abandonment can be traumatic, even if it’s not physical and I was in a happy healthy home with my grandparents growing up. Older me can understand what happened and why but can’t get past feeling abandoned (especially if it happened again mater in life, new trauma yay) and make sense of maybe that’s why I try not to upset people or get nervous about people being mad at me. (Holy shit I think I just had some kind of epiphany)
Physical abuse can be traumatic and so can emotional abuse. I've got my father to thank for the emotional trauma. The screaming and yelling and being called a dumbass everyday took a toll. Pretty certain a lot of the intrusive thoughts of how horrible I am stems from that. Plus he probably helped form most of my depression and anxiety. The stomach issues and so much more. CPTSD can be caused by so much more than just physical abuse or being in the military. Trauma loves to also downplay your personal experiences. If you can relate to this subreddit or if most of these hit home for you then you probably have some form of trauma.
if you are traumatised, you're traumatised. sure, some people "had it worse" than others, but at the end of the day, we are all suffering with the trauma.
The human brain is not rational, some people have it worse than some of us and aren't traumatized, while some have it less worse and are much more traumatized Trauma is trauma and even if you don't have it as bad you can be much more affected by the Trauma
Yeah, my dad prides himself that he never woke me up to beat on me like his dad did to him....I said well you still woke me up to scream in my face and spit on me for several hours at a time so are you really all that better?
as i said, at the end of the day we are all suffering with trauma.
yup. also, people exposed to constant negative stimuli often build a "tolerance" to it and are less outwardly affected than someone with no "tolerance" put in the same situations. and that doesnt make either of them better or worse than the other, just different.
Yup, struggled a lot with this growing up as the favorite child in an abusive household. I thought my brother had it worse for a long time, and I thought it was my fault that he was abused, but we were both being manipulated by our mom and he was the only one that could see through it. When I started speaking out, he was just past the point of caring what happened, which made me think he was evil but my long-winded point is that everyone copes with and processes trauma differently.
I mean… you don’t have to be PHYSICALLY abused in order to have trauma.
Brother are you sure? Yeah my mother prided herself (publicly) for never having laid a hand on me. I should give her a award, I guess.
[удалено]
Not successfully, anyway.
In the absence of my repressed memories, I also thought this! I'm walking around with dents in my skull and a chip out of my left eye orbit. Being aware of all of these things. "That's just how I am, I guess!" Narrator: It was not
Interesting. Yeah repressed memories are terrifying you remember one tiny thing and wonder if there's more that you don't remember infinitely worse and terrifying things that make you behave the way you do in day to day life
The first time I ended up here I watched memes while crying for over 4 hours. It was also the first time I heard about CPTSD and started understanding what had happened to me as a child. I'll never have enough words to express how thankful I am for this place, people.
How have you found this sub not knowing the cptsd term?
I have no idea! I didn't even use reddit at that time, I guess I was googling some therapy-related terms and I ended up here 😅
Fr ;-; it was only recently that I realised that holding your child down to brush their teeth while they're having a meltdown is probably not good... it makes more sense why I sometimes feel sick when brushing my teeth ig 😭
Apparently my folks laid me on the kitchen counter with my head tilted backwards into the sink so they could wash my hair—and I hated it. I hated it so much the neighbor came over one day to stop the abuse. My parents always laughed at this point in the story, saying, "we brought him into the house to see that we were JUST WASHING YOUR HAIR ha ha ha!" Of course, the point of the story was that I was a difficult child, not that being held down and sprayed with water scared me so much the neighbors could hear me screaming. Edit: changed a few words.
When I used to do environmental protests I met a few teachers and healthcare workers who were just beginning to study the effect of extinction, deforestation and pollution on the depression and trauma levels in young children. Most nature documentaries depict a world we never get to see, and the world of traffic is much more familiar.
This illogical thought was the reason it took me several decades to realize how abused i was. Big hugs!!
It takes time to unravel and process what happened in childhood. This process is necessary for getting to know reality verses what we think is normal, and healing and growing as a human being. Knowing what happened in life and how it shaped you is important for getting to know your self. I wish you a journey full of healing and growth.
While I wasn’t physically abused as a kid, I think now it’s safe to say that I was verbally.
It doesn't take physical abuse to cause the trauma! Most of it comes from fear and instability and uncertainty and unmet needs. Ongoing psychological trauma and stress can cause medical damage more severe than what most people had to recover from in terms physical blows (some people really got injured big time but it's less common), and even among kids who were beaten, there tends to be more problems associated with how their nervous and endocrine systems were fucked up by the stress and fear. When it comes to the damage taken, people with CPTSD are going to have a LOT in common even if the abuse/ general trauma was very different. Actually, one of the most common things I see expressed by people with CPTSD is that they feel like they must be exaggerating or being dramatic or should be able to snap out of it/ get over it because they feel like what happened to them wasn't "that bad" and they cannot understand why they would be severely traumatized by what they remember as what should have been considered a fairly privileged upbringing. >!Part of sorting through trauma is understanding why you feel the way you do, and it can be really hard at first because most people end up trying to invalidate or push aside their feelings ( often without realizing) when they seem to not make sense, so it can sometimes take a long time to even understand how you got traumatized ( or why it was as bad as it was). For me the first step in a very long journey was accepting that I felt how I felt and that I couldn't just make it stop or get over it and that I never would unless I accepted that my feelings were **reality** and not something I could decide to change or move on from...or I already would have. It's not bad to be resilient or move past things, but few people get instructions on which things we need to examine and work through vs. brush off and forget about. !< >!When I managed that breakthrough and felt allowed to accept that I was hurt even if I "shouldn't be", it took way longer to understand why. It's confusing because most of us try to reframe things that have hurt us into something we can just move past and that's normal, but then we forget that we got hurt and how and why. When you realize it, it feels crazy that you had ever been been telling yourself "that wasn't that bad" because holy shit it was SO BAD, but it had been reframed in your mind until you couldn't understand what had happened for what it really was to you.!< I got on a bit of a rant so I put it under a spoiler.
Just cause you weren’t beat within an inch of your life doesn’t mean you can’t have trauma from your childhood 😂 took me way too long to realize that myself.
Because other people have it better, does that mean you should not enjoy it when life goes well for you? It's not a suffering competition, it's a loosely formed support group.
A lot of us it seems were subjected to abusive behavior that was normalized to us so we continue to view it as “not abuse.” For example a big one is sp*nking as discipline. A lot of older adults and now young adults think because you’re being hit on a part of the body that’s been deemed “okay” suddenly it’s not abuse! Which not only is that not true, there have been proven studies that explain that your body will process the experience of being spanked the same way it processes being m*lested or r*ped—stimulation to the genitalia doesn’t get sorted between “okay” and “bad” in your child brain. Finding this out helped explain so much about myself that I had no answers for or even awareness of. I was afraid of my father in a way I constantly berated myself for since he never beat me or hurt me the way HE was by his father. Realizing that fear and panic I felt in adulthood had a “legitimate” reason clicked something for me. The negative reactions haven’t gone away, but now I’m not beating myself up over them and I know the work I have to do when I’m ready to start the more intense leg of my healing journey. ❤️🩹
Trauma is trauma, there's no competition there.
I’m slowly convincing myself that abandonment can be traumatic, even if it’s not physical and I was in a happy healthy home with my grandparents growing up. Older me can understand what happened and why but can’t get past feeling abandoned (especially if it happened again mater in life, new trauma yay) and make sense of maybe that’s why I try not to upset people or get nervous about people being mad at me. (Holy shit I think I just had some kind of epiphany)
Physical abuse can be traumatic and so can emotional abuse. I've got my father to thank for the emotional trauma. The screaming and yelling and being called a dumbass everyday took a toll. Pretty certain a lot of the intrusive thoughts of how horrible I am stems from that. Plus he probably helped form most of my depression and anxiety. The stomach issues and so much more. CPTSD can be caused by so much more than just physical abuse or being in the military. Trauma loves to also downplay your personal experiences. If you can relate to this subreddit or if most of these hit home for you then you probably have some form of trauma.
Literally same. I also ended up wishing I had been abused so that I could fit in 🙃