just-a-corvid-with-ptsd

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

There's this interesting phenomenon where when you're a child, or some other vulnerable minority dependent on a job for shelter, you are actually under duress almost constantly. You can't say "I don't want to work today," you cannot say "I don't want to do the dishes, actually," you cannot choose not to participate. In a lot of cases, the punishment is explicit. Your parents might yell at you. Your boss might fire you. But in other cases, it's implicit. The mood will sour. You lose leeway. People get mad at you. And that creates a really shitty environment where you're constantly being coerced to do things!

And here's the kicker; you're not allowed to acknowledge that. You cannot acknowledge that you are being coerced, you cannot acknowledge that your free will is not being respected, because that's punished too. Your boss insists that you act excited. Your parents punish you for acting surly. You are forced to fake enthusiastic consent, constantly. It's a fucking nightmare. Your hand is being forced, you do not have the option to say "no," and if you ever, for a second, try to acknowledge that, everyone acts like you're the aggressor.

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

it’s okay to be bad at things you enjoy.

it’s okay to draw even if it doesn’t look how you imagined. it’s okay to paint even if it ends up messy. it’s okay if you can’t memorize formulas or do mental math. it’s okay if you can’t describe a scene perfectly with words; or if you can never get your tone just right on stage.

You can do things just to do them and because you enjoy them. You don’t need to be the best ar something to love it. You enjoying it is enough reason to keep doing it. It’s okay

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

“My kid lies about everything” have you considered that maybe it isn’t that they’re lying to you, but that what they’re saying is their reality in that very moment?

Like, if your child is telling you that there’s a monster in their bedroom - just because you know that there’s probably nothing there, doesn’t mean that they’re lying to you. To them, there is something scary there. And it’s your job, as the parent, to help them work through that. Not by telling them that they’re wrong, that there’s nothing there - but by making them feel like they’re protected from their perceived dangers.

Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real to them. Remember that.

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

this is just a bunch of text and barely a comic sorry, but i really wanted to talk about this stuff even if i don't have the energy to properly draw

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

having ptsd isn’t just about being triggered by things that are directly related to your trauma. having ptsd is also about the very real possibilities of being triggered by completely innocent, random things that aren’t related to your trauma at all; our brains don’t need something to be directly related to our trauma in order for them to trigger us. sometimes our brains will see innocent, random things and will somehow find a way to connect them to our trauma and trigger us. this is why it’s a fucking struggling having to live with ptsd. we can’t “just avoid things that are related to our trauma”. we don’t know when we’ll see something innocent and random and be reminded of our trauma.

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

I havent been posting on here as much partially bc I made the choice to go back in contact with my parenrs for a bit for the sake of my brother and his birthday and bc I had hope bc my fiance was able to work things out with his parents when they had some similar issues.

I wrote about it on my main and reblogged it here. My app is being weird so I couldnt just write this attached to the post when I reblogged it.

I still might not post a lot or only post randomly but I will keep talking about my experiences because I believe that it will help other people identify when they're in an abusive relationship/environment and help them get out, and I want other people to have that because I didn't, so I didn't realize just how bad things were until college and I might have done things differently if I had known what I do now.

Stay safe, stay strong, be informed 💜

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

If you're no contact with your parents and after a year or so your sibling or someone who is still in contact with them for one reason or another says they're doing better and one of your parents has shown some growth dont go back in contact.

Below the read more talks about what I dealt with when I went back into contact with my parents recently and what happened to my brother who is okay now.

Violence/abuse mentioned/talked about below.

I just wanted to plan my brother's birthday party and my brother is disabled so he gets help from my parents and now thankfully lives nearby with ppl who help him with what he needs but bc my fiance and his parents worked things out when they had somewhat similar issues and my dad was doing okay I had called him to see if they wanted to come up here with my brother for his birthday and try to work things out. I did not want to speak to my stepmom but I was encouraged to and she was always worse than my dad but she had apologized on the phone.

Everything seems to go great. They come up for my brother's birthday and meet my fiance and everything is great and stuff. (They do not know I'm engaged and in glad I didnt tell them)

Then a few weeks later they go to see family in another state. This is a family reunion and a big thing for my family and we used to go more often. They didnt tell me they were going, didnt invite me, didnt even think to. I only find out from my brother when they're already halfway there.

They invited our uncle though who lives on the othet side of the country. He is very tall and broad and intimidating, ppl dont pick fights with him, he's broken a lot of the insides of cars before including one that was my stepmom's that she let him have for a while and it came back with doors and console stuff taped together.

Then from what I heard from my brother is that my brother didnt want to watch a movie with my uncle and told him no and that he wasnt interested. My uncle then violently chokes my brother out on a couch in the place they were staring at while our parents watched and did nothing. My brother was lucky someone else was there with them to get my uncle off, someone who I think came with specifically for my brother to help when he's overstimulated and whatnot.

My brother is mad at my parents and asks why they did nothing and they then blamed him for stuff he did years ago when he was a kid even though they are always the ones starting those fights and getting in our faces until someone snaps.

I wait a couple days and then decide to write a long text and call out my parents (I would have called but then I would have never gotten a word in). My stepmom is angry. She says I dont know both sides and that she wasnt even in the room and doesnt know what happened and just that the next day my brother was cussing at them. (I only didnt ask for their side bc the same type of thing has happened over and over for about 15 years with the violence aspect only getting worse and worse)

I wait an hour bc my dad has seen it and I'm kinda waiting to hear his side but he never responds. After an hour I get a notification, my stepmom sent me an angry face emoji.

I wait a little bit longer and then block them bc stop putting your hands on ppl and preaching about trust and lying and everything when you dont meet your own standards basically. I did not respond to her messages and deleted the extra FB account I made to contact them.

My parents have been lying and exaggerating about my brother and I and telling everyone in our family and their friends everything we've ever done wrong for a while. They have been lying about me and what I've been doing to the people we know even though I got in trouble when I was younger for lying by omission bc I forgot to tell them something about school or I didnt tell them bc I thought they wouldnt care.

I just dont want my parents or other family members or family friends hurting me bc of something my parents didnt like. And the one time I opened up and trusted one of my aunts, who is my bio mom's sister (and my bio mom is a completelt separate issue), I found out on the phone before my parents came up that when I told my aunt about the abuse and showed her my list of things they did to me and my brother she turned around and showed my parents. So they have something to use against me too if I ever run into them and another family member and accidentally piss them off (worst case scenario).

My brother is okay and he might go low contact with my parents but in trying to convince him to get away and that I can help him.

It's been a little bit since that happened but I'm still very mad bc choking and strangulation are only used on someone to show that that person can kill you or will kill you.

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

My last post on PTSD being more than flashbacks and nightmares kinda took off, so I wanted to talk about something many people mentioned in the reblogs: flashbacks are probably not what you think they are.

The depiction you see in movies where someone is suddenly thrust into this vivid hallucination where they see everything in extreme detail and completely forget where they are is possible, but certainly uncommon.

For a lot of people, it's kind of like a mental image. Like your brain just involuntarily starts strongly daydreaming the trauma, and you're seeing it in the back of your mind. Sometime it's an "I close my eyes and see it again" that kind of thing. But there's also other kinds than visual.

There's auditory, but that can happen without a visual component. And it can feel like a hallucination, but again it can feel like your brain is playing the audio from the back on your mind, like a vivid daydream.

There's also somatic (sometimes called tactile or physical) flashbacks, which is where you physically feel yourself being touch like how you were again (very common in assualt and physical/sexual abuse survivors), sometimes as a hallucination, sometimes as the same sort of back of the mind daydream thing.

And then there's emotional flashbacks, really common in abuse survivors and C-PTSD, where you feel like you're emotionally back where you were when the trauma happened. You're feeling what you felt when the trauma happened vidily enough for it to feel like you're back there. This is different from emotional reactivity after being reminded of trauma, because it's this exact sort of re-experiencing of the emotions you felt. Emotional flashbacks actually feel like you're back there, emotional reactivity doesn't, it feels like you're reacting to it but it's not happening again.

All of these can occur together in the same flashbacks, or separately. So you can have an auditory-somatic flashback or just an emotional one, etc.

People also said this is similar with nightmares, but I don't experience them myself so I can't say (people with PTSD nightmares feel free to share your experiences!)

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

"It doesn’t matter how you perceive things, it’s how your child does. Don’t ever let them doubt how you feel about them."

--on a post about parents estranged from their adult children, by G1optimusprime

I love this. It's like the opposite of gaslighting. Sometimes I sit there and think, "Well, but while *I* saw this as abuse, it doesn't mean that THEY did...." But he's right: If their behavior to me was so far from good that I didn't even feel they loved me, then they failed as parents. End of.

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

one of the best ways i’ve found to combat that inherent depressive pessimism without veering into toxic positivity territory is simply the phrase “i’m open to the possibility”

this particularly works with anything negative i’ve forecasted. “i woke up feeling like shit today, so my day is gonna suck” isn’t a particularly helpful thought, but “it’s a great day to be alive!!!!!” feels hollow and insincere when i have a pounding headache & am running on three hours of sleep

instead i’ll tell myself, “i really don’t feel good right now, but i’m open to the possibility that coffee and breakfast might perk me up a bit.” or “i’m in a lot of pain today, but i’m open to the possibility that my workday might still have fun parts despite that”

sometimes, when your impulse is to slam the door on anything good, but you’re not exactly up to going out & hunting it down yourself, leaving the door open just a crack makes all the difference

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

"Your trauma made you stronger!"

Maybe I didn't want to be stronger? Maybe I wanted to be safe? Maybe I wanted to be cared for? Maybe I wanted to be able to trust? Maybe I wanted to be soft and light and happy?

And maybe I deserved to have all that - instead of being forced to be strong.

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

[just-a-corvid-with-ptsd]

Its so important to ✨feel your feelings✨ because that's what abuse does- abusers take away your right to feel anything they don't want you to feel. They tell you shit like "you're crazy," "that never happened," and "your anger doesn't matter! I'm more important!" And it's imperative to fight back against that. No one ever has a right to tell you your feelings don't matter. Regardless of who they are, what they've told you, how long you've known them, or how much you care about them. Your feelings are much more important and it's imperative you protect them.