Edit: Im asking because I’m currently going through some serious depression and I’ve been forgetting stuff lately. I wake up every morning with a panic attack, I am too tired to do anything. I barely had any appetite to eat. I just wanted to see if I’m the only one. Hearing stories from others makes me feel less alone.
Sorry if I sound pathetic af, I’m just sad
Edit 2: I’m gonna mark this as NSFW because the potential very traumatic stuff.
It is a bit abstract, which makes it difficult to explain. For me, it basically means that I the experience goes through my mind with all details and the feelings that belong with it. The feelings usually increase until they are at their top and then they reduce again. After that, that feeling with the experience might not be as prominent, but I might have new feelings and thoughts about it, for which I do the same. This happens until I feel more at ease with the experience and it troubles me less.
For example, when I am processing the loss of my sister, I might think about when she was suffering a lot. Her pain is painful to me. So, I might cry about it and feel hurt myself. But after a while, that passes. Next, I feel guilty about not having been able to help her better. I might feel really bad about myself and almost wanting to hide. And I might feel like that for a time, until I think about that she never wanted me to feel guilty and she would never want me to beat myself up in this way about it. And that helps to comfort me. This goes on, until, in the end, I am somewhat more at peace with it. I might think, for example, something like that her suffering has been in the past and that at least she is not suffering now.
So, to me, processing is going through the experience in my mind and feel all the feelings that belong with it as freely as possible. There are like layers of feelings and you go to a deeper layer each time. This changes it in such a way that it is easier to live with.
I do have PTSD. For PTSD memories this is much more difficult. There I seem to get stuck in this process and never go to a next layer of feelings and it does not improve by just trying to process it. What does help for me is EMDR treatment for these memories. Often, after the treatment, I am able to process it much better.
I am not sure whether it is the samen for you, but this is how it works for me and I think for some other people as well. Processing things is not easy during the process, but for me, it makes my life much better once I am done processing. If I do not do it, I get stuck and I feel anxious and down.
Does this explanation help you?
Ah, this sounds like what I have been doing on my own my entire life without the help of therapists/psychologists. I’ve gotten a lot of pushback on this of course telling me that it wouldn’t be possible to have done that on my own or that I didn’t “really” process my trauma.
I don’t really know if I believe that though. I think I did process it and my trauma itself - all the stuff I posted, that doesn’t bother me anymore.
What bothers me is the aftermath. I’m a successful person with a full time job, my own apartment, and I’m responsible with paying my bills and getting everything taken care of like I’m supposed to. But I do that all alone. And while I keep trying to make friends, its like there is this disconnect cause I’m just not like other people.
Everyone has trauma and all that but most people weren’t isolated from society by a cult. And most people weren’t the victim of CSA in the way that I was.
I feel like I’m okay with it though cause I can just casually talk about it and it never really bothers me, but I do see it makes other people like wildly uncomfortable. So I don’t talk about it unless its something like this where people are sharing that sort of thing. But that’s just cause I don’t like making other people uncomfy. But if people weren’t uncomfy, I could talk about this in depth. Even most therapists get uncomfy when I mention these things though. Which is alarming to me.
I actually did try to see an EMDR specialist who turned out to be full of shit and didn’t really practice EMDR. She made off with at least $300 from me. Kept telling me for months that we would get to it and we never did. I was already seeing a different therapist at the time who was also confused as to why this women kept putting it off - but that therapist just kept telling me to be more assertive about it?
Well I was assertive about it and the woman had to admit that she doesn’t really do EMDR but we could try to “process” my trauma and then she dropped me as a client. And of course where I live, there aren’t many EMDR specialists and of course that scam artist was the one that was available for clients. The other ones aren’t taking new clients and don’t even have waiting lists.
All that said, your comment was very helpful because I think it breaks down what processing really is.
I am just unfortunately a weird case that most people don’t seem to know what to do with.
I believe you. And that you have been able to process this already, shows again that you are strong.
I am familiar with the feeling of being disconnected. My trauma is different from yours, but also difficult to understand or imagine for a lot of people. However, I found that other traumatised people are sometimes at least a lot easier to talk to, even if they do not understand completely. They are just not that scared by it, without minimizing what happened. I do have a couple of good friends now, who are very kind and very willing to talk with me about these things. Even if they might not completely understand, they do accept me. That helps a lot. I hope you will find people in your life like that as well.
I agree that it is very alarming that the therapist was uncomfy with what you were telling them. That should not happen. They should have been trained to be able to deal with difficult stuff. That is very unprofessional of them. The same is the case of the therapist that told you to just be more assertive and even more so for the scam artist. It is incredibly mean to try and scam people who are traumatized. You need to be a deeply pathetic person to do that.
I am in the very fortunate situation that I live in a country that pays for the costs of any EMDR and therapy that I need and we have well educated therapists here. So, fortunately, for me it is very easy to get that treatment. I can understand that for you it might be much more difficult to arrange this. However, if you ever get the chance to do real EMDR, it might be good to try. I am not sure whether you have these intrusive images, or sounds or feelings etc from your trauma, but for me it worked especially well for that. Of course it does not work for everyone, but it might be worth the try.
I am no therapist, but if you need a listening ear sometimes, just send me a message. I have had different life from you, so I might not immediately understand or I might not always say the right thing. However, I am not easily shocked or uncomfortable.
Thank you! You have definitely been very helpful to talk to. Way more than most people lol
I have encountered various people who had trauma that while not the same as mine, was probably on par with what happened to me. Some of those people didn’t have issues with me talking about my trauma but then there were usually other issues you know? Like we didn’t mesh well as people. It seems more like a communication mismatch. I tend to have a lot of nuance in the way I speak and use sarcasm a lot. I’ve always kind of enjoyed being sarcastic since I was a kid. But I’ve come to learn that a lot of the general public doesn’t get it. Or they see it as mean.
Then I have met a lot more people I would say, who also had trauma, and they did not want to hear about my past because it was triggering to them and they called me out for trauma dumping. I have a seamstress I message sometimes to get things altered or ask about other things and because I know her from going to parties back in the day, she still calls me a trauma dumper. So there’s definitely some kind of weird stigma where I live with trauma.
What’s scary to me is that it was more than one who like visibly reacted. And their tone changed. Usually therapy would turn into just them telling me how strong and accomplished I am which often didn’t make sense considering I started going to therapy on a sliding scale fee more than a decade ago now. So like I wasn’t doing well at all. I barely had money to pay my rent and any food had to be paid for with food stamps, so like government food only.
I don’t really have intrusive thoughts about my trauma from my childhood but sometimes the more recent stuff, like my ex that tried to choke me out. But that’s only because I have no idea if he still lives in the same city as me and it would be terrifying to run into him again. Where I live cops don’t really help in those situations. I should probably just go get a pre-emptive restraining order just in case.
I’ve also done my own research and learned about thought tracking through doing bullet journals which I found pretty helpful but unfortunately it fuels my obsession problem.
You’ve been incredibly lovely to talk to and I will definitely take you up on that sometime. Obviously, I can be a little long winded.
That is okay, I can be quite long-winded as well! Thank you also for saying that I was helpful to talk to. I like talking to you too.
Understanding each others trauma is not enough for a friendship, I agree with that. You need more than that. Personalities that fit well together, same level of intelligence, same sense of humour.
I am not that sarcastic myself, but my sense of humour can be a little bit dark sometimes. Especially me and my sister could make some dark jokes together. I miss that. Some people might be offended a little bit by some jokes, but if they are not really hurt by it, just slightly offended, that is even funnier sometimes to be honest. I think humour is a very healthy way to cope, including sarcasm. It can be a way to still find joy or to reduce tension or put things in perspective. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe you need to have experienced dark stuff to get the sarcasm and dark humour?
I think accusing people of trauma dumping is a very unempathic way for people to create a distance between them and the things you are telling them. They are scared by it and this is their way to cope. My boyfriend had a fairly normal childhood and life. I used to be quite open with him about what happened to me and he would just almost shut down and not respond (some of the time, other times he was supportive). We had some issues with that, because I was really hurt by that. He used to say that it was just too much for him to deal with. And I actually would get a little bit angry about that. I had to deal with these things that happened to me. I had to and and I could, while at the same time even only hearing about it was too much for him. I just could not understand. However, after a lot of discussion, I now think that what you can cope with depends very much on what you have had to cope with. I can deal with the things that happened to me, because not dealing with them was not an option. They were happening and I had no control. My boyfriend, however, does not strictly need to hear about my trauma, so he has the room to be unable to deal with it. He also had not something worse than that happening to him, teaching him how to deal with this stuff. So, he just did not respond and tries to ignore it.
In short, your seamstress probably cannot or does not want to deal with it probably for similar reasons and is mean to create a distance. It could also be that it is a trigger for her and that is why she creates a distance. Traumatised people can also just be assholes.
I addition, I told you you were strong as well. It is very obvious from your story. However, I am not a therapist and a therapist should dig deeper than that. Things are not magically solved because you tell people something positive. You actually really need to get to know them and know what they need and try to provide that. These therapists seem to lack that basic skill. I am sorry to hear that the therapists are so bad where you live. A good one can really help a lot, but bad once only cost money or even do damage.
If your ex still could be a threat to you, then it is quite functional to be scared. It might help with protecting yourself. A restraining order might help with being and feeling more safe again.
I have not heard about thought tracking (but maybe that is because English is not my native language). What do you do exactly?
I also like to talk to you! Definitely let me know when you want to talk. :-)
I totally agree! Sometimes I feel like I’m asking for too much out of other people because I need someone who understands a lot more than the average person.
I agree with you about the people who say things like “trauma dumping”. It really comes across like they just don’t want to deal with it which always left me confused in the past until recently - I know I’m just sharing things with my past but it made people uncomfortable so they put a label on it as a way to get me to stop talking about myself. Because you’re right. They didn’t want to get that close to me.
Thought tracking is kind of fun. Basically, anytime I had an intrusive thought, I’d write it down and then try to figure out what actually led me to the thought in the first place or if it was truly an intrusive thought that came out of nowhere.
Turns out most thoughts were being triggered by something and now I just backtrack my thoughts naturally if something weird pops up in my brain.
I have to learn lemmy more but I’ll find some way to message you!