#trauma tag

[vithcy]

A comic about a sick inner child and suicide ideation

[rock-a-noodle]

Shout out to fellow neurodivergents who were shamed for covering/plugging their ears during fire drills and other similar experiences.

I see you.

[selectivechaos]

situational mutism is years and years of being frozen and forced to endure situations where you can't move or speak or communicate how you want.

🌹but you know what it also is?

being situationally mute is entering safe situations and spilling everything. it is a rushing sense of relief and safety.

it is the joy of speaking to someone for the first time. of having a social interaction that is so positive and beautiful that your brain can't twist it.

it’s when someone asked me a question and three people spoke in unison to answer for me.

it’s people who reached out when isolated self. it’s all the kind people.

it’s leaving the old situations behind, that were unsafe beyond just cognitive distortions.

and surviving. enduring hours and seconds. counting down.

only to enter new places with anticipatory anxiety, but maybe it’ll be okay. maybe it’ll be better, safer, gentler.

you deserve the dream you survived for. 🌹🌹

[dying-weeds]

[abbadoabbadon]

The EP I'm listening to is ANTAGONÏZER's new EP (AWAY and Crywolf's side project)

[ix-c-999]

i don't know how to be more of a person

[This post has no DNI other than not to involve it in discourse, mockery, or other harassment]

[traumatizedjaguar]

[ohnoitsthebat]

How about we don't tell people how to feel about their personal trauma? How about we try doing that?

[trans-axolotl]

i've been thinking a lot lately about my trauma and my teenage years, and something i've been coming to understand about myself recently is that the things that stand out to me as the most harmful and still impacting me isn't even the actual violence or abuse, but the experience of never being believed, being denied the right to define my own narrative, and the process of learning with certainty that there was no one i could actually rely on to provide help if i needed it.

i had amazing friends, who really truly cared for me, that made so many things better in so many ways and made me feel loved, then and now, but they were kids too and they could not fix anything and never should have been in a position where that felt anywhere close to being their responsibility.

i think there was a lot of things i had to internalize to survive. i had to internalize that fact that expecting people to help was going to be dangerous when that safety net never was there, i had to learn how to avoid feeling my emotions and processing the things that were happening to me, i had to learn how to survive by myself and know deep down that i was the only one who i could rely on, at the same time as i was navigating this really, really deep desire to be seen and known and heard and loved.

a lot of things i did at the time that felt crazy and out of control make a lot more sense to me now looking back on it. it makes a lot of sense that i would start self harming intensely when i consider the fact i felt so scared, hurt, and isolated when no one believed my distress the times i did ask for help, and i felt the desperate need to have physical proof that i was in crisis. it makes sense i would continue to turn to self-destructive behaviors of all types because they were short term ways to avoid thinking about what was actively happening to me. it makes so much sense that there were all these bizzare or confusing ways that i was acting because i wanted and needed attention, and because when it came down to it, i had no control over anything in my life except for what things i could do to my body. so yeah, it makes sense i used to be addicted to self harm, that i have an eating disorder, that i used to be intensely suicidal. that there's other types of self destructive behavior that i still feel more ashamed about and don't want to talk about publically. that my go to coping skill anytime i start to feel stress in my adult life is these self destructive things, because that's what i had to learn to survive a violent, chaotic, and dangerous set of years.

i don't know. i really do think that the things that have stuck with me and kept haunting me isn't always the memories of physical or sexual violence or transphobia and intersexism and ableism but rather the experience of just knowing, without a doubt, that i needed help, but that i had no one to turn to, that i wouldn't be believed, that often i just would get hurt worse. of not having any options to get out of the situation and feeling so helpless and stuck and trapped. and i think that's the hardest thing about trauma healing for me right now is that now, i am in a much safer situation where i generally can expect that i have people who care about me, i know that i have so so many more options for help when i do get into bad situations, and that i am much more secure in my own autonomy and narrative. these self destructive things that once did serve the very important purpose of keeping me alive--now get in the way, bring their own distress, disrupt my relationships, make it hard to function. and i wish it was as simple as just being able to go "okay, it's over now, we can stop using these skills to cope because finally, finally you have so many more options to choose from."

but i guess i do actually finally feel really hopeful. not that i'm cured or recovered or that either of those things feel meaningful to me, but that i can be in a place where i'm ready to learn and try and practice all these new options for coping. and that i dont know. all these things that i carry a lot of shame about because they were/are things i am doing to myself, that sometimes i can look at those things and go "i'm so glad i survived and that I'm actually proud of myself for doing what it took to save myself and get to this moment where now, i have a life where I do have options and do have people." that i'm not a failure or crazy for having done self-destructive things for so long, for still doing those things--but being able to actually hold space in my life for the fact that it was good that these things helped me survive, that i can look back on those times with a lot of love and gentleness instead of anger. i don't think i would be here, healing and hopeful and proud, if i hadn't done the things that i did to survive those really, really shitty years. and while some days all i feel is SO fucking frustrated that these self destructive coping strategies still are something that i have to grapple with, i think i like the idea of having room to view them with compassion, and to be able to acknowledge the vital role they once did play while affirming that i have so, so many more options of coping skills to choose from now.

i don't know. i'm slowly learning that i don't need to pretend everything's perfect all the time when it's not, i don't need to act like i'm always moving in a linear direction, i don't need to always be in control and solving my own problems. but i think i geinunely am feeling like some things that have been hurting for a long, long time are starting a hurt a bit less for now. and that's pretty fucking special to me.

[rock-a-noodle]

What I'd give to never remember those who have traumatized me ever again.

Though on the flip side....does that mean that I would forget them but then accidentally befriend them again? lo

[selectivechaos]

love the people who had to do stuff in unconventional ways.

love the people who did fucked up shit to survive fucked up situations.

love the people who never saw how sick they were till they were forced to.

love the people who can’t bear their own memories.

love the people whose world just got smaller.

love the people who get so exhausted that lying down isn’t ‘down’ enough.

love the people for whom everyday stuff is the last straw, and they don’t know why but they just keep going.

love the people no-one came to save.

love the people doing things they never thought they’d have to.

love the people doing things they never thought they’d be able to.

love the people finding new hope because old dreams corroded and decayed.

have some roses🌹🌹🌹

[tacgnologist]

-While thinking about this post-

(child abuse, religious tw ahead)

Y'know, I was very VERY young (think 6 or 7) when I remember telling my grandma that I didn't believe in god. (Sounds edgy but, hear me out.) I remember her turning completely white, then angry- I'll never forget it. Asked me 'where did you hear that from, who told you that, etc. I told her I didn't hear it from nobody, but simply because I prayed and prayed for my mom (my main abuser at the time) to stop hurting me. Stop laying hands on me. Stop... the other stuff I won't mention here. (Use your imagination.) I told her that if he really did love me, if he was actually real, he wouldn't let her do those things to me. She told me I needed to be afraid of him, and I told her I wasn't, because I already had somebody to be afraid of and he didn't scare me none. She never did like me after that, but that's a whole other story.

Point is, when your whole modus is fear-based, and you're trying to threaten a kid that already DONE been through it with that shit, what do you expect? Who even is the boogeyman after that point?

[soong-type-notinuse]

cn: mention of s/a and other related stuff

i don't know why but a lot of people keep equating "having sexual trauma" with "having been s/a'd", because there are so many more ways to be sexually traumatised.

it's especially bad in queer communities when people coin identities specifically for us, but flipflop between who they're for (because they think they're the same thing). i've seen people create terms for people with sexual trauma just to go on to say that this term is only for people who experienced s/a. that last addition excludes many people with sexual trauma that's not due to s/a.

and the assumptions. people make so many assumptions about me because i'm caedsexual. the definition of this is "having your sexual attraction cut away because of trauma" (or i use it as "being asexual because of trauma" for multiple reasons). it does not specify what kind of trauma it is. it does not specify what happened. yet people will assume everyone who uses this label has been s/a'd.

truth is, my sexual trauma comes from something else, something that doesn't involve any touch whatsoever, but has fucked with my head also because of at what time in my life that happened.

whereas the thing someone did to me that actually involved touch wasn't actually traumatising to me at all.

stop promoting such a one-dimensional idea of trauma. stop acting like a certain kind of trauma can only exist because of one specific thing. even trauma is diverse and you keep excluding people.

[aceyanaheim]

I have got to stop almost splitting before an 8 hour shift bejesus

[loyalhorror]

wait. i just remembered that when we studied lo.lita in uni, i had to leave a lecture because hearing part of it read aloud triggered me so badly. or... did i leave because i Wanted it to trigger me? like. was i overexaggerating/hyping it up in my own head to justify walking out, rather than actually being super distressed? like. did i decide "this is how i should react to this" and then follow that rather than just sitting there or.

but... then the question is. if i was performing. who was it for. why would i do that.

and the other question. why did it bother me and why would i want it to bother me. why do depictions of that particular thing bother me as if they're too close to home. why do those things FEEL like they happened to me even though they didn't. etc.

i know it doesn't ultimately matter, what i went through falls under the category of CSA no matter what it looked like or who did what to me, but. euhgghghghhrrrghghg.

[abbadoabbadon]

[love lets you know you are safe,

but violence lets you know you are pure]