Trauma Recovery - Blog Posts

i will never allow anybody to make me feel shame about myself ever again

replacing empty thoughts and compulsive reassuring myself that "everyone loves me" with "i'm doing this for myself"

i love 🍒. i love myself. i love the people around me who are distant but kind. who want me to uphold my boundaries. who want things to be better for me. who i don't have to rely on and who don't rely on me. who give me space. who let me improve. we will make things better for me. i will make things better for me. and i don't ever have to go back

forcing myself to stop performing, freeing myself from relying on people who scare me, and letting myself use that energy instead to prioritise me and my joys and my future has made me so much happier than i expected

safe house checklist:

my clothes, organised, folded in kind of open shelving unit or hung in a closet

a bookcase for my manga, books, little plastic toys, and figurines

a bed with extra cushions and lots of different kinds of blankets (duvet, soft thin warm blanket, light blanket, heavy rough patterned blanket)

warm light (lamps, hanging lanterns near windows, star string lights)

at least one cat who loves me

plastic boxes for storing my cosplays

a jigsaw puzzle and other tactile activities for occupying my time

a (brown?) table with warm light for doing my jigsaw puzzles on

lots of soft rugs around my tables

a sofa with cushions and blankets maybe to have a second quiet place to rest

a kitchen with jars and containers of my non perishable safe foods (tea, cereal, pasta, rice)

a kettle, my small rice cooker, a toaster, a stove, a microwave, an oven, a fridge, a freezer, and a sink

a shower, a toilet, a bathroom sink, a bathroom mirror, some bathroom rugs

windows i can open to let kind air and sunlight in during daytimes

i hope i can see hills or trees outside

it will be quiet

it will smell gentle

i can sleep anywhere i want and be safe with my cat

it will not be dirty and it will be nice because it reflects me and i am nice

it is a nice place to be and i have control over it

nothing will make me hate it because i will endeavour to never let anybody make me hate me

i am a person and my space is good and safe

and one day i will live somewhere safe

and one day i will live

and there will be love for me there

35

They’re fascinated by the plane’s crash as much as the takeoff.

To some extent, I think people maybe enjoy watching reality shows (such as the ones on TLC) in hopes of witnessing someone act erratically or have a breakdown or behave in a way that makes the viewer feel better about themselves. “At least I’m not that bad.” I have friends who watch those shows and have said as much about their motivations for watching. Maybe this is normal. I can’t blame anyone for wanting some form of reassurance that they aren’t “like that” and that they’re fairly normal. This is based on limited information. It’s hard to fathom how many different events a person has gone through in their life. I still remember new things I had forgotten over the years. Some of them make me cringe.

But when is life a straight path from A to B? We don’t know the circumstances that led to someone being the way they are, not unless they provide that information. It’s never simple. Speculation can be cruel, if not outright harmful. There are some things people don’t learn or haven’t learned yet. My parents tried. It’s complicated when you’re raised by people who have to grow through their own immaturity and formative events. Both of them went through heavy circumstances, as did a few of my grandparents. What do you do when you’re growing up with parents and grandparents who didn’t have tools to cope with their own traumas?

They tried. I’m trying. I don’t know if it’s possible to come back from being so socially inept that I don’t realize what I’m saying doesn’t come off as well-intended as I think it does or that people need breaks from me or that someone stepping back to think about a situation doesn’t mean that they hate me or stopped loving me. But I do know that I can and need to make an effort to be warm, to try to understand. It’s my responsibility to heal no matter how upsetting it is to be in this situation. How many times have I hurt someone else with my incompetence? Probably many.

I often wonder how many others are like me or used to be like this, if it’s possible to change. I think my inner child wants to accept love and to give it back. I don’t know how. Sometimes I get the feeling that people don’t believe me.

The loss of my father is sinking in. He had nothing but love for his family and friends. I sorely wish I could have been as personable and loving as he was. He could talk to anyone. He helped everyone as much as he could. I wish things would have been different. So much of it.

And I wonder how many people out there have faced a similar struggle or are still grappling with their demons. Sometimes it’s a very public struggle, and sometimes you’d never guess it was happening because they keep it quiet. You don’t want to put it out there at the risk of being rejected. But then it’s not always easy to hold it in. I hate my explosive episodes, the fear, the paranoia that if I let people get too close they will hurt me or that they’re planning to hurt me.

Then there’s the ever present feeling of having no place in the world. Do I belong here? Why am I not normal and what’s it like to be normal? Do people compare their worst behaviors to mine and thank whoever for not being like me?

Show me someone who hasn’t fucked up. Show me who someone who has never erred. Show me someone who can honestly claim that they’ve never hurt someone without meaning to do so.

We are flawed.

How to Survive Fourth of July With Hypervigilance:

Independence Day can be rough for Americans living with hypervigilance related issues. The loud noises can make your heart race and your head spin. It may even feel hard to breathe. You’re gonna have to be strong. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to help.

Put in your earbuds. Listening to music will not only drown out the sound, it may also help you calm down. Music has been shown to help reduce anxiety and stress levels by up to 65 percent.

Use noise reduction headphones. If you want, you may even be able to see the fireworks! Just make sure you slip on a pair of noise reduction headphones. They can reduce the noise by more than 70 percent!

Spend the day with someone you love. Just being around someone we love can help steady our heart rates and calm our breathing. While it may still be rough, spending the time with a loved one is likely to make it a little less torturous.

Take a shower. It’s gonna be a long shower, but the noise of the water will drown out the fireworks.

Cuddle with a furry friend. Pets can be hugely therapeutic to people struggling with any sort of mental health issue, and even more so for those struggling with anxiety and ptsd. (Note: this may not work if your pet is just as panicked about fireworks as you are.)

But most importantly, especially for anyone struggling with any past trauma, remind yourself that you are safe. Do something that requires you to interact with your environment to help yourself stay in the here and now. It can be hard to stay in the present when faced with certain triggers, especially if you are alone.

You are strong and you will make it through this. Everything will be okay. I promise.

The deep ache in my chest when I hear that family members who claim to love me are traveling to visit my trafficker (mom).

The degree to which I wish she would just fucking die already.

Fuck fuck fuck.

So I'm visiting my grandma today which means I'm also visiting my stepmom, who doesn't believe 80% of my trauma even happened.

A series of very fucking unfortunates events has taken place. The details are unnecessary. But I'm triggered as all fuck and TRAPPED here until my bus comes, then trapped on the bus for 2.5 hours. All the while I have to pretend I'm fine, like I'm not experiencing feelings about the triggers, like I'm not fighting for my life to keep from dissociating, like my dissociated parts aren't freeeeaking out.

I am so mentally unwell it's making me nauseous.

I hate this fucking place and my fucking brain and my fucking trauma and this fucking disorder. Hate hate hate.

I don't generally do a whole lot of graphic trauma dumping in therapy anymore because I'm usually trying to ~figure things out~ and ~implement systems to help me live~ and talking about horrific shit doesn't necessarily help me do that.

But today I definitely spent half an hour talking in detail about some of the injuries I received at the hands of my stepfather and mother and Woo Boy did my therapist have some Looks™ about it. She definitely corrected it right away but a few times I caught her being like 😬👀, and I hate it but at the same time it's validating as fuck.

Like yeah, therapist, it's fucking cringe inducing what they did to me. It was bad. It was, in fact, ~very bad~.

Idk it's been a hard two days guys. But I'm out here surviving it.

My stepfather was acquitted fifteen years ago today. I'm really not handling it well. My brain feels all over the place and I keep having episodes of dissociative amnesia.

This is going to be a hot take to some, but I think people with CDDs should step back from using online platforms and avoid them if they're too sensitive to getting influenced by them. Especially if they're a newly discovered DID person.

Like genuinely... My experience with DID (symptoms wise) was funnily enough better before I discovered I had it because yeah, I had really bad barriers, but I wasn't constantly encouraged into amplifying them?

With that I mean that I often see public platforms encouraging and promoting splitting alters? Which for me it just resulted in having me and my own alters even more confused about everything?

Genuinely, I still struggle with this shit it's so annoying, because my first instinct is to separate myself more and more instead of at least lowering the dissociative barriers. And seeing public spaces completely encouraging it and in general encouraging stuff like "sourcemates only chat" is just- idk... I don't think that's how you treat dissociative barriers? Feeding into introjects believing they ARE that character/person is the same thing as just believing that character from that universe was taken out of it and put in your head which is completely nonsensical for DID. It can certainly FEEL that way but it is not-

Y'all I went to an Al Anon meeting for the first time tonight, since my therapist has been mentioning it for like 6 months, and it actually wasn't as awful as I expected

Recently I keep thinking about how I wasn't allowed to clean myself properly as a child. My mother was obsessed with ridiculing me for my general hygiene making her look bad, but didn't allow me to condition my hair or moisturize my face or use soap on certain areas of my body. Like why? If you're so obsessed with how I look, why are you trying to make me look bad?

Here's something that's been mindfucking me for the past two damn weeks. So not only do I need surgery to have my colon and rectum removed & to get an ileostomy, but I also have to see a pelvic floor reconstruction surgeon.

Because with my Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, I'm high risk for prolapses, and guess what being sex trafficked for the majority of your childhood does to your developing pelvic floor? Spoiler: nothing good.

So because of this blessed combination of genetics and abuse, I have multi-pelvic-organ prolapse, and no ability to withstand pelvic floor therapy. I tried. I just literally cannot fucking do it. And there's the fact that pelvic floor therapy might not even work for the severity of my issues anyway. Ergo, surgery.

Now I get to have two surgeons argue over the best way to butcher my body into something livable and I can't even explain how fucking tired I am. I don't even know what to feel about it beyond exhausted.

And then I have friends who are also going through things and I want to be supportive & I try to be, but I just can't do all the things I want to do because I'm spending half my fucking day in a dissociative fog because I just don't know how to process any of this.

Skills you shouldn’t have to learn to survive yet child abuse forces you to:

moving around without making any noise

moving around the place without turning on the light

locking/unlocking doors in complete darkness

staying stoic in the face of screaming, threats, and violence

pretense of being calm even if in deep panic

perfect pretense of being fine even in the middle of breakdown

silent crying, crying without making any noise or even tears

doing physical work while crying or injured and not stopping

sensing when someone is angry or stressed because now they’re a danger to you

comforting and calming people down in desperate attemt to lower the amount of danger you’re in

recognizing a person by their footsteps, or a car by the noise it makes when turning to a stop

turning all injustices and anger inwards and making it into self hatred

hiding scars and injuries

expertly making excuses for marks or scars on yourself

dissociating in a second if there’s danger of new trauma

repressing mountains of trauma

surviving emotionally completely on your own

the main reason I don't want kids is because I don't want to become my mother. but here I am, supposed to be reparenting my inner child, instead beating this part of myself up internally because it's so needy. somehow I still became her.

I have a medical issue that's triggering sensory flashbacks multiple times a day for the last couple of weeks and I'm SO TIRED AND OVER IT.

There were people complaining about how I'd ruin my rapists life by reporting him but I'm 32 fucking years old and cant function like a normal human. Someone complain about how they ruined MY life.

Being sex trafficked as a kid in broad fucking daylight in the United States is dystopian af, and gave me a dissociative disorder. I'm on three psych meds. Every time I go to the hospital or a new doctor, they see "PTSD" in my chart and tell me my symptoms are anxiety, and that has almost killed me THREE TIMES.

My trafficker is free. My rapists are all either free or dead. The one I took to trial got everything expunged from the records. Somehow he even got the news articles taken down.

And I'm just... Still here. Still trying to cope. Still living in fear of people who probably don't think of me at all.

So I'm reblogging this from a fandom person I follow but it's on brand for the shit I post so, hello! I have OSDD and CPTSD (both of those disorders have a HUGE amount of symptom overlap and are caused by severe, prolonged trauma). I have different types of flashbacks, triggered by different things, so I'll try to organize my answer below but please be aware that my answers might be triggering especially for anyone who has experienced childhood sexual abuse and/or child trafficking. These terms are just what I use to discuss them with my therapist, so idk if they are official terms or not.

• Tactile flashbacks, also called tactile hallucinations

In these, I am entirely aware of where and when I am, but I feel sensations that were occurring during my trauma. It's usually triggered by experiencing pain from old injuries. For specifically (TW!!!!), I occasionally get nerve pain in my vulva from an injury where I was penetrated with an object and it damaged my cervix severely. Sometimes that nerve pain triggers a tactile flashbacks, where I can feel hands and the object touching me exactly the way it felt when it was really happening. It is so realistic that the first few times it happened, part of me was shocked that I wasn't bleeding or hadn't sat on a knife or some weird shit. It makes it feel like I don't even have pants on. It's fucking disorienting and PAINFUL and scary.

I've spent years training myself to show it as little as possible if it happens in public, because it's not the kind of thing that's easily explainable. But the added stress of hiding it triggers me even more- because hiding was an important job I did to cover up for my abusers, so hiding pain is both instinctual and triggering now- that it kind of just makes it worse. So if I'm around someone, they might see me grimace or shift on my chair a bit, I've also heard that I get pretty pale, but I almost always lie and make up an excuse like cramps, which people tend to believe.

But in reality it's horrific and once I'm in privacy, I am pretty useless for the rest of the day unless I have a close friend or my husband around to help me stay grounded and get back on track.

•Emotional flashbacks

This happens a lot when I'm triggered by an everyday normal occurrence that in normal life, is totally fine, but in my past was something I used to know whether or not I was in danger. Probably the most annoying one is the sound of dishes clanging as someone puts them away. If that happened in my childhood, it meant I hadn't put away the dishes in time, and would be punished (but not grounded because my parents were fucking monsters- punishment for me was things like being locked in very small spaces, being forced to braid my hair in high pigtails and hairspray it and go to school looking stupid, not getting food for a few days, having things thrown at me, sometimes the dishes themselves being physically broken on me).

So imagine what a child's emotions might be, knowing they're about to undergo a severe punishment- fear, regret, remorse, defence, desperation- and then transplant all of those emotions into my 32 year old body. It makes me have some wacky ass responses to my husband putting away the clean dishes. I've spent YEARS working on it but we've been together since I was 19, and just last year I got to the point where I could let him put dishes away without me actually yelling at him, or apologizing, or crying. Thank god for therapy.

Emotional flashbacks can really have drastic, immediate control over my behavior, which makes them pretty dangerous when it's not a situation as innocuous as putting away dishes. It's very hard for me to control what I say and do during these episodes, and it's one of the reasons I was diagnosed with OSDD, because my therapist thinks that when I have emotional flashbacks, I dissociate and another part of my personality kind of takes over. And it really is a dramatic personality shift. Still a part of me, but a much younger version. I used to have total amnesia of these episodes and only knew they were happening because my husband would explain them to me. Now I manage to stay conscious (sometimes called co-conscious by people in the OSDD/DID communities) but still have partial amnesia. It makes it very difficult for me to understand what someone is saying to me long enough to formulate a response that makes sense. It's horrible and really challenging to hide or control.

•Visual/dissociated flashbacks

These have only ever been triggered by sex, and they're very similar to the way flashbacks are portrayed in the media, like in movies. Either all or most of my visual field changes from the current situation to a traumatic sexual abuse memory. I completely dissociate, have no idea where I am or what's happening, but the difference from this and movies is that even within the memory, I don't understand what's happening. I don't go into it with my knowledge of what's happening and 15 years of therapy, I'm right back in the exact mindset I was when it was happening, just with the added idea that something is very wrong. Sometimes it feels like I'm asleep in a nightmare, sometimes it feels like I'm literally living it. They don't last more than maybe 30 seconds or so, and my husband tells me that he knows it's happening because my eyes get really wide, I go totally limp, and don't respond except in a way that's similar to how people might talk in their sleep. Once I come out of it, it's straight to having a panic attack, which as you can imagine is kind of awkward when you're in the middle of trying to fuck your partner. My husband is amazing about it all, but when we first got together it scared the shit out of both of us.

•Some other notes: I often try to ground myself so that I don't dissociate during or after a flashback, but for years the only way I knew to ground myself involved pain. I eventually tried to switch to methods that would hurt but not injure me (pinching the skin between my fingers, punching my thighs). But now I do grounding in a way that doesn't hurt myself- or at least I try to. I talk to myself, out loud, to remind myself where I am, what year it is, what's happening, etc. I do breathing exercises, sing loudly, try to hold a conversation. All of those things can help me stay in the present moment. Unfortunately they don't always work, but hey ya can't win 'em all.

@z-mizcellaneous-z I know that's a LOT but lemme know if you have questions or want any more details/info! I'm happy to share!

Call for People who Have First Hand Experience with PTSD

(Part of The Research Game, question by @z-mizcellaneous-z)

We are wondering if anyone who has first-hand experience can share with us what PTSD flashbacks look or feel like to you, as well as what it might look like from the outside perspective (such as witnessed by friends/strangers).

(please only share if you're comfortable. You can also send me an anonymous ask instead!)

Everyone else, reblog this around until we can find someone who has the answer!

(Otherwise, there's a Youtube channel I know of that aims to spread awareness of PTSD and may help you here: https://youtu.be/vdLfrJSzMY8, though it's important to note she has Complex PTSD, which is slightly different and is characterized by prolonged trauma rather than a single event)

Here's a thought: if a child begs to be allowed to see a counselor and the parent's response is to prevent them from accessing mental health care because you're afraid CPS will be involved? That's a red fucking flag.

If a kid carries around a window crank and a screwdriver in their bag, tells you it's secret from their parents, "just in case," because their windows have been screwed shut and the cranks removed? That's a red flag!

If a kid tells an adult they trust, "my parent is an asshole and I'm afraid of them," that's a red mother fucking flag.

If a kid wears shorts to school with bruises covering their legs and makes teary eye contact with their teacher through the entire class period? Red. Flag.

If a straight-A student fails an exam, looks like they haven't slept in two days, is holding their arm awkwardly to the side as if it is hurt, and stands in their guidance counselor's office, shaking and crying, convinced that that failed exam is the end of the world? guess what color the flag is. RED.

If a kid passes out after a hot day of outdoor activities and when their parent arrives to take them home they scream at the kid for making them look bad- the flag is red!

All of the fucking flags were red. Fuck.

This was my 4th Christmas without my mother. Every year, I am struck by how much of a fucking relief it is. I was told by so many people that I would regret my decision, that I would miss her, that "she's your mom and you only get one."

I don't miss her. My life has been objectively better without her.

I miss believing I had a mom who loved me, but that started a long time before I cut her out.

I don't miss the panic I felt seeing her name on my caller id. I don't miss her manipulation. I don't miss her parentifying me. I don't miss the burden of caring for her in her old age looming over my head like a fucking guillotine. I don't miss her guilt or her lies or her abuse.

I don't miss her. I don't miss her. I don't miss her. I feel free.

That trauma survivor feeling when you wake up from a nightmare that was a memory and it fucking clings to your bones like a maladaptive koala

listen, bad poetry is self care, this is the hill i die on

It's like:

Sometimes I want my nanny back even though I know she was selling coke on the side and probably endangered my life, all I remember is her hugs and teaching me to sew and making me snacks and not letting anyone hurt me.

And then I'm forced to reconcile how a literal drug dealer who harboured her fugitive adult son was a better mother to me than the woman who brought me into this world.

My parents: what trauma?

Me: uh-

I can't believe I'm 31 and still putting pieces together.

Shortly after reporting my stepfather to the police for rape, his father, the man I had called grandpa for a fucking decade, started coming to the burger joint I worked at. I couldn't get a restraining order because he didn't do anything but order a burger and sit at a table directly across from the register and stare at me. He'd leave when he finished his food.

When I told people, their reaction was always "why would he do that? That's so weird." But knowing what I know now, knowing he'd been paying my mother thousands of dollars over the years to keep both of us quiet, knowing he had effectively been paying my mother to let his son use me-

It was just intimidation. Money wasn't keeping me quiet so he wanted to scare me into silence. Wanted me to know he had more power, more resources, more time.

And they did win the court case. And he did scare the shit out of me. So much so that I nearly quit my job.

I was just faulty merchandise to him. God.

Just thinking about how, as an under-medicated, severely mentally ill 18 year old, living 800 miles from the only home I knew with no support system other than the fundamentalist cult I was wrapped up in-

I was supposed to sit in a court room and point a finger at the man who hurt me for over a decade, and know how to explain what he did to me, and remember events I was completely dissociated during, and understand that I wasn't lying, I just didn't have access to all of the parts of me that experienced all of the things that happened.

With an undiagnosed dissociative disorder, I was supposed to explain to a jury why my three witnesses knew different details of different events and why I'd only reported one instance.

As a minor, I was supposed to understand that if I told my mandated reporter therapist about one specific situation, I'd be expected to then disclose every instance of abuse, or pretend that it all only happened once.

As a child, I was expected to behave in a way that "makes sense" to the middle aged, rural, conservative jury of my abuser's peers.

Fuck. That.

Sometimes I have an impulse to just cry and yell and scream, over and over, until every mother fucker hears me when I say how fucking terrible she was to me

She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. She sold me. Shesoldmeshesoldmeshesoldmeshesoldme.

Sincerely, with emphasis: fuck.