suckin-life-stuff

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Post-traumatic stress, post-traumatic stress disorder, and complex ptsd are all normal reactions to trauma, the ‘disorder’ is attached to it because it’s not widely understood that post traumatic stress can appear years later after the trauma is considered ‘over’.

This is more likely happening because trauma was not, in fact, over. Being alone and unsupported after trauma, having nobody to confide and get comfort from, is the extension of the trauma. So is overworking yourself, frantically trying to survive in terror of failure, being isolated from your own perspective and not feeling allowed to feel your pain, being caught in shame, guilt and doubt over what happened, numbing your feelings thru medications, addictions and self harm. Having to live exposed to abusers and at risk of more trauma, as well.

The truth is, a lot of people keep living in trauma even after it’s considered over. Nobody tells you that the way you live your life is and always was traumatic, and you won’t know until it breaks you down in the form of ptsd.

Living while having no way to let trauma out is traumatic. Living while nobody knows your truth is traumatic. Knowing that if you say something people will turn against you is traumatic. We love to play up how tough we are but trauma without support can shatter anyone.

It’s not your fault if you’re feeling it years and years later; it’s possible your life only now opened up to the option of feeling the pain you carried inside of you all this time. It was never ‘too long ago’ to still be traumatized to this day. Your body never forgot, even if you wanted to forget so badly. You’re having a reaction that is normal, no matter how delayed. You are not weak. You survived.

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hallucinations got weirder floating cranberry juice jug needs to go the fuck away.

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One of the trash things about childhood trauma is getting used to unhealthy feelings and thought patterns and being unable to recognize that it’s not normal. You don’t know what most people feel or how they think. Then you ignore some problems and exaggerate others because you don’t realize that some things are normal and other things aren’t.

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my parents, who have a home, handle every bit of stress by abusing their child, throw tantrums, use any manipulation to get their way, yell insults and slurs unprovoked and threaten murder at slight disobedience: you have it SO EASY

me, sitting there with my cptsd, dissociative disorder, anxiety of a person being hunted for sport, paranoia of being killed, fearing for survival and engulfed in deep shame and guilt over even existing: I what

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April 8th.

I hope that each year, your traumaversary gets easier and easier.

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Wanting to learn new things vs triggering the shame and self hatred from not knowing already and being bad at them at first, as well as internalized voices of discouragement, humiliation and scorn that your parents installed in you

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Sudden urges to rinse my mouth with aciddddddddd woooooooooo might do it cuz I'm feeling silly

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Mentally exhausted and in so much blunt pain but I don't feel like crying, I don't know what memory is causing this anymore.

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trauma processing information ahead: you doubt your feelings relating to a certain event because when it happened you don’t remember as if it hurt you, you remember it as it maybe it wasn’t that traumatic, maybe it didn’t affect you so much, you feel like you handled it just fine and you weren’t so scared or pained by it back then and you don’t feel you can call that traumatic but then in present you suddenly get overwhelmed with pain and fear and grief and even anger and you try to stuff it down because NO IT WASN’T THAT BAD and you keep convincing yourself you’re overreacting because you can remember that it was not that bad and you keep thinking it didn’t even matter

So now try to remember when it first happened, it could be that you were still really small, or you were directly faced with the abuser/danger, or you were in unsafe environment where you couldn’t freely express, but the thing is, it didn’t hurt so bad the first time because you were unable to both survive and feel that amount of pain. Children’s bodies are not capable of withstanding traumatic amount of pain and survive, that pain is repressed and dissociated for later when bodies are big and strong and able to survive it. You cannot allow yourself to experience pain and fear that would make you extremely vulnerable and thus less likely to survive in traumatic situation so in that case too, your body represses the emotions and settles on dissociation until you’re safe enough and strong enough for these to be properly processed. 

Only reason it “didn’t feel so bad” back then is because your body repressed the pain and fear to save you. But the amount of pain and terror and anger you’re feeling now is exactly how bad it was. You’re only now experiencing on your own skin how actually bad it was! That’s how badly you were hurt. You’re not overreacting or making a big deal out of it now, you were unable to feel how bad it was before. Your feelings are always there for a reason, they’re generated inside you by harm that was done to you and you can trust them. Your reactions are not wrong, your feelings are not wrong, it was exactly that bad.

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“noo my parents didn’t abuse me! they just accidentally made me lose all my faith in myself and caused me to feel like a worthless failure who’s never gonna be good enough to survive, and they might have hit me but it might have been just once or twice so it doesn’t count, right? they just happen to worsen my anxiety and depression constantly but I’m sure they don’t mean it!! I’m sure they have no idea how much I’m suffering and I don’t want to throw such harsh words as “abuser” around because they might find out I said such a thing and get angry, and it generally doesn’t end well for me when they’re angry! I also have bunch of holes in my memories and blurred events I’m not even sure happened in which I get hurt but who knows if I just made those up! Better be safe and assume I’m making things up and overreacting! I know if I confront them and ask them if they knew they hurt me they’re going to tell me I’m just being hysterical and imagining things for attention! They just really think they’re right! I need to keep in mind I’m indebted to them for feeding and sheltering me, god knows that was tough for them! They had a rough life too, they don’t need me accusing them of being abusers as well! Maybe it would be easier on them if I just died-“

These are the thoughts of child abuse victims. If your parents comments make you feel worthless and like a failure, they’re abusive. If your parents worsen your depression and anxiety, they’re abusive. If you’re scared of your parents they’re abusive. If they used violence to control you even once, they’re abusive. If they accuse you of being crazy or making things up when you confront them on hurting you they’re abusive. If they made you feel indebted for simply not letting you die on purpose, they’re abusive. If they forced you to focus on their lives and their perspective of you to the point where you can’t even acknowledge your own pain, injuries, and your own point of view, they’re abusive. If your parents make you feel like it would be better if you had never been born, or if you died, they’re abusive.

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I sometimes find it validating to find out that something from my childhood that traumatized me wasn’t normal. It being abnormal makes it feel like I’m allowed to be traumatized by it more. But the truth is that you can be traumatized by anything. Trauma isn't necessarily about the event itself.

There are also things that were considered normal that traumatized me. And I just want to say that if you too have trauma from “normal” experiences, that your trauma is valid.

Also another important thing to note is that “normal” doesn’t mean “okay”. Some things that were considered normal were still abusive and being normalized doesn’t change that.

But even if you have trauma from something that really is not abusive, that’s still okay. That’s still valid.

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Im not really using this blog anymore, just to hold info and dm now.

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Someone asked me privately 'How to break out of brainwashing', and I thought the response might be useful to anyone else abused and going trough this. It goes into personal experience and osdd, as well as having mentions of suicidal thoughts, so be ready for that if you're reading on.

"I'm unsure that I can tell you exactly how to break brainwashing, because I can only ever partially do it, and only because I also have a dissociative disorder, I think without this disorder I wouldn't be able to do it alone, even partially. I can explain what I did though, and how I think a person might be able to do it with some outside help if it's available.

So for example, when I was small I've been brainwashed to believe I was a demon, and would often be punished for that crime, and I was too little to have any way to suspect that my caretakers would have any reason of lying to me, and a lot of the stuff that was done to brainwash this message into me was done under circumstances of pain. That's how brainwashing usually goes, it's a repeated message that is given to you when you're specifically vulnerable, have no defenses or arguments against it, and often under circumstances of either physical or psychological pain (if you're badly berated, humiliated, treated with contempt, that also causes intense pain that would seal the brainwashing).

So because I have a dissociative disorder (I have osdd), I split into two parts, one who had all the memories, and beliefs from the brainwashing, and was convinced they were a demon, and a second part who had only minimal memories, was completely detached from all of the pain of the situation, but still also believed to not be human because there were no messages received that would lead to any other conclusion. So basically similar, only one part had complete brainwashing, and the other had some, but was detached from the pain situation, because that's how osdd works, it enables part of you to live as if you weren't traumatized. Because this second part did not have the memories of pain, they were able to break trough brainwashing just using logic. It was still painful, because you have to acknowledge awful things like, your caretakers lying to you, for an evil purpose, having to acknowledge that you weren't safe, that you've been exposed to some extreme cruelty, sometimes having to cut your bonds with people you love because you see them for who they are. Your worldview shatters and that can take months or years to make peace with.

But the thought process was just questioning and breaking trough the logic of the situation. I questioned why I feel constantly guilty and ashamed for even existing, and what caused it, and the reason for that was intense shaming, guilt tripping, accusations, character assassination, punishments. I was receiving messages that I deserved only pain and shouldn't exist. So I questioned why was that, and what did I do to deserve that, and it turned out basically nothing severe; I was acting as a normal kid and would get shamed for stuff like, needing to eat, needing resources or money, saying no, standing up for myself, accidentally annoying someone, being perceived as a nuisance when I was just being a kid. So then why the shaming and the violence and being called a demon and punished for it? Because people who raised me were insane and needed some excuses for torturing a normal child who just happened to live there. Studying the situation further revealed that their acts of punishments coincided with when they were in a bad mood or just annoyed at something else and needed to lash out, rather than anything I did or caused.

Now if I was still connected to the emotions and pain inflicted on me during this brainwashing, I would not be able to break trough it using logic and arguments because the pain would completely overcome my logical side of the brain and I wouldn't be able to argue it out with myself because the pain of just thinking about this would make me suicidal. That's why brainwashing is so difficult to break trough under non-dissociative circumstances, it's just too dangerous to be exposed to that level of pain, and non endurable. It's also why brainwashing is usually done under circumstances of severe pain, so that the person trying to break trough it would be stopped by pain from having access to any kind of logic and they would submit to any message being told to them, just to avoid further pain.

This is also why I haven't been able to un-brainwash the part that is still connected to that pain, they cannot under any circumstances accept that they were a kid who was tortured for no good reason because that's too devastating and there's a barrier in their mind stopping the from even thinking in that direction. They won't indulge with logical arguments.

I do think a person who doesn't have a dissociative disorder could break trough brainwashing with some outside help. Brainwashing relies on the person always receiving the same messages about themselves, and on being resistant to any opposite messages; they make you believe that anyone telling you otherwise is trying to hurt you, lie to you, trick you, etc, it makes any opposite messages difficult to accept or process.

But if there was an environment where the person was consistently receiving un-brainwashing messages that counteract what the brainwashing was, eventually their brain would adapt to the new message, even though it would still be very painful, and there would be a lot of inner conflict, going from one view to the other, being unable to see which messages are true, sometimes succumbing to the pain of trying to fight it because the pain is overwhelming. But for example, if someone is brainwashed to not believe themselves as human, but they're in an environment where it's consistently pointed out how they have a lot of things in common with humans, if their similarities are amplified, they're treated as human, and any abuse or ham of them are being depicted as wrong and evil, it would eventually cause the person to doubt the brainwashing. Not right away though, at first you'd just think 'all of these people are fooled and they're just not seeing the reality of what I am' (that was me for years). But after years of consistency their brain would have to consider that maybe they are human if there's overwhelming proof of it and that maybe something was off with the original messaging. They would still have to go back in memories to challenge it and they would need support in fighting those messages.

Sadly the current environment of capitalism doesn't offer many options of breaking such brainwashing because people often treat each other transactionally and as resources and indulge in some level of manipulation and devaluing others to get their way, so abusive messages might just get amplified instead. Which is awful for people who were brainwashed and can't fight that kind of subjugation due to painful triggers that stop resistance.

I'm also not completely out of brainwashing myself, it's still very difficult to conceptualize that I didn't deserve everything that happened to me, and that I was just a kid. When I think about it I have to distance from myself and re-affirm to myself that it was 'a child', I can't think about it as 'me', because I still hold some connotations of having deserved this, or it being correct that it happened to me instead of anyone else. It helped me to find out that similar things happened to other children because it's very easy to see that no other child deserves this, other people are truly human and never deserve anything like this, and I could start comparing myself to them to some extent and grasp the idea that I also don't deserve this, since nobody does. But I still find myself somewhat tainted by it and different on some fundamental level, in which all of this had to happen, even though I wish it didn't. I guess it's complicated! I don't think I am able to completely break out without outside help, but since I don't have any, this is how far I am able to go."

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Neglected children will sometimes go ‘okay time to dangerously deteriorate to see if anyone cares about me’ and then if nobody does, they don’t know how to stop deteriorating on their own, they’ll need help to pick themselves back up.

 And if that help doesn’t arrive, they’ll conclude ‘I was right to destroy myself in a world where nobody cares for me anyway, why should I live at all’ and it sets them on a miserable life path where all they see is chances for self destruction and proof of nobody caring, and from the very start it’s not their fault at all.

Because someone should notice when a kid starts losing themselves and step up and help. Children are not meant to know how to take care of themselves in an environment where they’re neglected, ignored and uncared for. Putting them in such an environment then blaming them for deteriorating is absolutely ridiculous. It takes paying attention and realizing when something is wrong and pulling a kid out of the black hole they’re falling into, before they can no longer crawl their way out on their own. 

It’s not acceptable to let children deal with abandonment and neglect all on their own, and expect them to not grow up miserable, resentful, struggling, and doing harm to themselves. It’s the same harm we never stopped them from doing when they were kids, when they needed to know that someone would care if they’re hurt. If we want functional and healthy adults in the society, we have to notice what is going on with the kids and make sure they’re helped in time. 

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Were you ever spanked as a child AND do you think that spanking is ok?

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I hallucinated an exact copy of my dog and reached out to pet him only for my hand to go right through it :/

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“Who got you smiling?”

The voices in my head cracked a joke leave me alone.