#processing trauma

[ariesearthangelwrites]

I’ve been wanting to paint this in the style of Tracey Emin for years and I finally drew it on my iPad on procreate. I can’t wait until I’m able to paint this on a canvas. This is about how I’ve only ever felt pretty while having my trauma re-enacted through rough and degrading sex with a partner who did not give a fuck about my well-being. I broke my own heart each time that I recreated my sexual abuse but I also laid it out on a silver platter for the predator to devour it as well. This was a partnered effort that made me feel at home during the act and torn with shame and self disgust afterwards. This piece is the visual representation of sex used as self harm. I know that many victims of csa/sa who have acted out in both sexual and self destructive ways because of what we suffered before. I make this art for many survivors who can relate but also for the survivors who have too much shame to speak out about it. The world has shunned us enough for something that was out of our control so please have compassion and grace towards yourself. Love, Grace <3

[unwelcome-ozian]

[cherry-pop-elf]

I love @regressionworldz art so much and admire them so I wanted to try do a cute little oodle doodle of em! It’s hard processing agere stuff but seeing their art helped me a lot like “woah! Cool people do it to?!” So um. Play date-! I really like legos! Lego Harry Potter is my safe space, and the concept of George Weasley ((Weasleys in general really)) as a care giver makes me feel soft and warm!

[thevoidwriting]

To a mother that never was, from a child that couldn't be.

You had a lot of dreams of how we'd be and turn out then your own dreams were crushed by your parents and the cycle started then and continued til none of us wanted kids, then one moved and your grip got tighter but as you got sicker that control became your everything since you couldn't cope being weak and needing to depend on others, now two kids are gone the oldest and the youngest.

I know your not holding up well and who could with how you were raised and how you decided to live your life, you choose to leave stop playing victim, stop fighting and just surrender. It's okay to admit weakness and seek help.

I love you mom but maybe you never really loved us just the control and worship aspect, maybe as a demon I've become I'll get better but as a goddess you took our trust and misused it and turned us against one another vs building us up. I hope others can learn from your mistakes and not hurt their own.

Like our lil cult at the college, I realized I missed those days cause it's when you were alive and thriving not so much me but you were. I miss seeing the smile the call center took, I miss Skyes laughter and roses dumb jokes most of all I miss who we all were at one time, a happy lil family waiting to be together after class. But now we're all grown and ready for our own path and it's time to let go.

Next page, next chapter and sometimes that means moving on in pieces and not whole, that's okay you started your life in pieces and so to will I. Only difference I know I will grow into a better person, did you ever?

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

the thing i love about Tumblr is that it feels like a Playground for us mentally ill trannies, like i see a Girl (or is that a boy?) bunnying over there, someone is playing with Touys over there, and im here watching Strawberry shortcake (and also trying to process trauma i forgot i had because i need to age regress and relax but something is stopping me)

im rmabling arent i this is incoherent

turns out certain pieces of media are really good at jogging my memory and things i used to find cringy (like Musical numbers in TV shows) are really good at exposing repressed trauma

[agracefulfall]

Funeral in my Brain

A series of little childhood griefs and their eulogies.

"And then a Plank in Reason, broke, and I dropped down, and down — and hit a World, at every plunge, and Finished knowing — then."

1. Touch. 2. Memory. 3. Body. 4. Identity.

---------

Liquid Love

A series of recovered passenger gems and little resurrections.

"I'm taking back all the pieces of me that were taken unwillingly. Offering myself up to the heavens. I'm ready to love what I've been given."

1. Heart. 2. Movement. 3. Dreams.

[bravegrumpy]

Is this anxiety? Is this a Trauma response? Am I being too careful? Or Am I just trying to get re-aquainted to blogging after a decade-long break?

I'm in the middle of writing a much longer introductory article for a different blog I run. (Not on Tumblr). It has no audience.

Throughout the blog post I have the following:

My original writing

images of my original artwork

photographs and diagrams I created

YouTube videos I did not create, but know how to attribute

text I did not create, but know how to attribute.

text I created with information I know how to attribute.

Text I created with information I do not know how to attribute.

Most of my external references are completely rephrased to further the points I'm trying to make in the text. When referencing outside information, I usually include a standard in-text reference, and an embedded link (and maybe a PDF of what I accessed) whenever possible. This is regardless of whether I'm using an exact quote.

When I do pull exact quotes, I do so within the limits of fair use.

When I say I do not know how to attribute information, I don't mean challenging attributions with difficult to find author information. I am talking about information I synthesized from a conglomeration of many different sources, most of which are unknowable to my audhd and dyslexic brain.

How do other writers overcome this?

Is it just my creative-writer brain stressing? Is there truth to this monologue?

Am I old to instinctively want to call it my bibliography?

I also will have some sort of bibliography or footnotes section at the end, with a complete IEEE or MLA style reference.

Does IEEE with footnotes, vs a verbose MLA reference truly matter?

Outside of including links and attribution, I don't include a "call to action" for the reader to subscribe to the outside source. I simply use references that are directly related to the point I'm trying to make.

While this might be an obsessive thought, I also don't really know what to do.

Has anybody else gone through the questions of "How do I appropriately reference synthesized information?"

[mixedbag-o-beans]

okay but listening to this song but imagining it as your current self talking the version of you that existed before the Big T trauma is WILD

“still want to politely and properly warn you, this is Armageddon”

“when all i do is think about the past, make it a universe you can live in”

[judethebrood]

More than friends.

Months move by like minutes, and I’m still here like it’s that night. I’m distant, but all over you, keeping my mind unsaid, but skin to skin. Head in hands, again and again, sleepless, no solutions. I’d kiss you a thousand times before I ever tell you what I went through. What I’m going through. Transformation… Occupied mind,mushroom clouds with silver lines, soured brain. You can’t even look at me without hating yourself, and I keep loving you. Biting back the tongue that’s wanted to taste you, and tell you, for so long, we’re such children, like that. I’d wake up to you forever, but I’d never let you see me cry like he did. I’d never let you inside in your arms, only on your knees. Feel sick with Summer air and October flu. Go swimming just to drown myself. Distract from the way the sky is falling, violently. My thighs are a catalyst for all the tension. Release me with regret and aggression. scars bleeding and you can’t even see me. You’re somewhere, wasted, at a party, and I’m dying in the bathroom. I come back when I’m ready to sleep it off, but I don’t sleep without you, so It’s never ending. Bedrooms humming with stale air and I’m just sweating it out; the fever you gave me. I’m losing my shit, and you lost it a long time ago, yet your discomfort is more comfortable than losing it alone. I might be open when you’re extra closed off, maybe to show you what you could be doing, or maybe because I’m selfish. Maybe I want your attention because it’s the healthiest thing I’ve experienced in the last six months. Maybe you are.

[imblocking-you]

Sad to know why :((

[agracefulfall]

Identity —

Like holding water, everything I've ever known slips. Time erases body, memory, touch. A weathered shell, bones beaten by drowning tides. Attempts to strengthen, rebuild, make sense of it all falls short.

Vet. Dancer. Screen writer. Novel writer. Poet. Philosopher. Barista. Librarian. Professor. Paris. Iceland. San Francisco. Greenwich Village. Portland. India. Sicily. New Orleans.

A thousand different dreams, a thousand different lives. And I managed to lose them all. Each withering in my hand like draining water or dying fish. A piece of me in each.

But is death decay or is it life changed? I don't know anymore. Were these dreams and lives ever real or just weighted blankets to cocoon from the nightmares? I don't know anymore. What is me and what's the collateral damage, the "life-long" impacts?

I don't think I'm getting answers any time soon. So I'll sit and let the mourners weep for ever lost dream down the drain.

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods

[auxins-insanities]

There's something about meeting an estranged parent that just makes the whole thing different.

Normally you are stuck grieving nothing, more sad about the experiences you don't have than the person themself's absence. You see other people's parent, observe your remaining one, and pick a mix of traits that would make sense to balance out what you know. (I personally got a lot of my trauma from my mother, which led me to imagine my father as a more gentle person who I would be able to hide behind and be close to.) You see things designated for you to do with that parent, see other people doing that, and feel sad. You feel a touch of anger, too. Why would they leave you? You should be able to experience this too. You look at the holiday dedicated to that parent with longing, with grief. You have no idea who this person may have been to you, but you miss them nonetheless. Or, you at least think you miss them; this is different in a way you can't quite understand. You look at the parent you have, analysing their features, determining what parts of you must be from the other.

And then you meet them. You make a few memories, albeit shallow ones with little emotion. You take in every part of them, try to place them in older memories to make them feel right. You feel that almost-missing every time they have to leave. You look more deeply at yourself, every detail, and see what all you actually got from this parent you just met; you learn which ideas you were right about. You adjust to a dynamic you might not have imagined, but one that you should have had from the beginning. You learn everything you can about them - what they do, what they like, things about their life. This almost-missing becomes almost-loving as you spend time with a stranger that shares your blood. And it's so different than just knowing they exist, but at the same time, it sometimes feels like all that's changed is having a face to associate with the name. In my case, I met my father when I was 11. He was quiet and awkward and neither of us had a lot to say, but it was okay. I knew this was big, and this should be something that I was very happy about. I started meeting him every weekend that I could, and I learned. I observed. He didn't quite have my eyes, but his were closer to mine than my mother's. He was closer to having my hair; my personality. The more I saw him, the more I knew him, the more I realised I got from him. I also learned the little that I know about him. He built bikes. He had a cat that he found. He lived in an apartment. He liked drawing. I eventually started to feel like we had an actual connection, and that almost-loving started to lose the "almost."

But then, he disappeared again. Like he did the first time; like he likely always will. And there's something so, so different about knowing who you've almost-missed your whole life. There's such a difference between never having memories with them and now having to watch them fall between your fingers. I still have a pretty good picture of my father - what he would wear, his hair, eyes, the expression he often had, and the way he carried himself. He had his hands in his pockets a lot. I know what it felt like to touch him, and very faintly what he smelled like. I now know who I'm grieving. I hold onto fading memories and places we've been and scraps of paper that my mother wrote his name on years ago. I am now left with something; I am left with a person I should love, but who has not given me enough reason to. I am left with a person who I could describe if I really tried, a person who reminds me of myself. A person that made me. However, I was not given enough time to form a connection with this person. I could almost feel it; reaching out, on the tips of my fingers, there was warmth. There was not enough warmth, though, and he is now gone.

You are back where you started, but now forever changed. You have met them, you have tried to love, tried to convince them to stay. They didn't. You got a taste of the holy water, but were denied entry to heaven.

[merkova2-0]

I have done things to survive that make me want to unzip my skin and burn it all in a big pile under a bridge

In an oil barrel.

Underneath him to win back my ID,

Half-wondering if he was about to pull a gun out from behind the pillow,

Half-wondering what it would feel like to smash the bedside lamp into the side of his skull.

My guts hurt and I can’t clean them or sew them shut.

My guts hurt so I spill them on the floor at his bitch mother’s funeral.

[bravegrumpy]

I like having people in my life who have less empathy. My trauma has conditioned me to either apologize for my existence or thank others for existing near me.

It is very useful when a person asks me why. It reminds me that I do have self-worth, and I am allowed to be in the room.

I don't know why I'm saying sorry. And I definitely don't understand why you apologize to me if I passively reference an atypical childhood memory that I didn't know was abuse until you pointed it out.

Can we please normalize some people not having empathy, or having low empathy.

Sorry that the low to no empathy neurodivergent person doesn't understand why they should apologize for your dog dying. Sorry that they don't see how it's their fault. Maybe you should've asked to vent too, because I know your ass didn't.

[tired-lime08]

There comes a point in life that one has to admit they will probably never truly be okay again. And that is an extremely harsh reality to face. One I recently had to face.

When I was younger, maybe 5 or 7 years ago, I frequently watched videos of people who had healed mentally. At that point I was already pretty messed up and, though undiagnosed at the time, almost certainly had depression, PTSD, and OCD already. (However, nothing compared to now.) When I watched these videos, they often said things like "this feeling will pass, and your life will move" on"—simple, empty reassurances that might make you feel better in the moment, when you are young and have yet to heal, only to fall again. I know healing isn't a simple path. Nor is it a completely straight line; there are dips and spikes in happiness that slowly build to being better. But recently I really had to think if this is true: can I ever achieve happiness like I see others experience, with full families, functional in society, little anxiety, and hope for the future? Will I ever stop flinching or fearing when someone raises a hand near me? Will yelling eventually become background noise, instead of being the only thing I can hear when it's near? Will I ever be able to depend on someone?

These are all questions I've been pondering the past year, genuinely spending time if I really believed I could change. Wondering if all of these people are lying and whether or not you really CAN be healthy after being ill.

I finally came to my final opinion and truly believe that it's just not true. Maybe you can heal from some things, genuinely process it right, and deal with it. The problem was I was never given enough time to ever process something. Some people have a dog die, and they process it, and maybe later something else bad will happen, and they will process that too. They are given enough time to move on. And I think that's why I and those people on the TV differ. Simply timing. I was never given enough time to process anything. One thing would happen, then another, and another, and it would basically cause a full stop on my healing from the previous traumatic event. Leaving it half healed, like stitches that are ready to come undone at the slightest tug. So when anything that could relate happens, it reopens that wound. Causing all the emotions to gush out. Often leading to severe depressive episodes or breakdowns.

When I finally understood that, I had to understand that no, I probably will never be okay again. Which hurts. I frequently dreamt of the life of someone healthy, wishing upon a star I could have a shot at that. But now I know it's impossible. At least for someone like me.

I hope someday, maybe, I'm proven wrong on this; maybe I'll finally have that life I dream of. Maybe people really can heal; maybe they can't. I'm not sure if there is a true, provable answer.