arguablysomaya:

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biglawbear:

furiousgoldfish:

Trauma symptoms caused by childhood abuse

Early symptoms (childhood and teenage years):

• Inability to show pain and vulnerability to others
• deep belief that you ‘have to be tough’, secretly fearing that you’re weak and pathetic if you ever shed any tears or break down in pain
• personality changes from outgoing and social, to isolated and quiet, trying not to be noticed
• feeling like there’s something deeply wrong with you, deep belief that you’re some kind of monster who deserves to be punished
• fear that if someone finds out about whats happening to you, they will blame you and hurt you worse
• anxiety around adults, always being scared you’ll annoy someone and be hurt for it
• very low attention to your needs and wants, feeling pride in neglecting your own well being, even neglecting your pain
• belief that your value is tied to how much pain and mistreatment you can endure
• urge to self harm, or outright hurting yourself
• feeling like you want to disappear, or not be born at all, contemplating suicide
• self hatred, feeling extremely negative about yourself and feeling like things would be better if you didn’t exist
• spending phases of time being emotionless, feeling like a zombie and not caring about anything
• foreshortened sense of future (belief that you wont live for much longer, inability to see your future or plan for it)
• not feeling the consequences of events in the real time, or not at all; for instance, being completely unphased by a violent outburst or screaming, not feeling pain when you’re hurt, or not feeling the exhaustion when you’re clearly overworked
• strong urge to not think about certain topics or events, or inability to do so
• fear that your body is wrong and disgusting, anxiety about anyone seeing it but desperate need for validation that you’re normal
• deep sense of shame in yourself, your actions and your appearance
• strong investment in finding excuses for people who do bad things, always trying to see things from their angle and to forgive them
• feeling like the blame for any bad thing in the world can be put on you
• not feeling like a human being, belief that you’re less than human
• feeling like your home is not here and you do not belong on this planet
• feeling uncomfortable being touched and wanting people to back off
• uncontrolled ourbursts of rage
• looking for anything to soothe your pain or distract you, indulging with obsessions or drugs
• early development of anxiety disorder, depression, insomnia, ocd
• trying to regress your age and force yourself to stay younger than you are, because you feel like your value is dropping with age and nobody will care for you anymore
• trying to desperately take control over some aspects of your life, which can result in overdoing or completely neglecting school, losing yourself in virtual life, eating disorders, self harm or magic thinking that enables you to believe you can control your circumstances
• in case of a sexual trauma, innapropriate sexual behaviour, deep shame tied to your body, indulging in sexual interactions even before puberty, feeling like you’re meant to be used, violent or forceful sexual fantasies accompanied with shame, fear of touch, fear of anyone finding out, reaching out for pornographic material to put your experience into perspective
• feeling desperate to appear normal and clinging very strongly to the perception that your childhood is normal

Later symtoms, can develop anytime after puberty, can be in 20s or 30s or even 50s:

Emotional

• Flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, freezing up in terror, beyond average amounts of fear and dread
• Trust issues, either trusting without suspicion even when you shouldn’t or trusting nobody and feeling completely alone in the world
• Episodes of re-living traumatic events from childhood or later in life; emotional meltdowns
• Being unable to leave the past and feeling frozen in the moments of trauma
• Emotional flashbacks, feeling the events from past as if they’re happening now, except this time you feel it thousand times stronger and completely fall apart from the horror of it
• Feeling unstable, ashamed for not being able to control your emotions, fear of being judged, mocked or humiliated for it, trying desperately to not feel it, using distractions or drugs
• Self doubt, struggling to know what is real and what isn’t, doubting your memories and emotions, trying to only feel what you believe is obliged from you
• Questioning the past over and over again, trying to find sense and who to blame
• Trying desperately to put your relationship with your abuser(s) into perspective, feeling both guilt and obligation towards them, but also rage and desire to take over control from them
• Self harm, self-destructive behaviour, suicidal behaviour, wanting to die to end the pain
• Deep and overwhelming grief over loss of childhood and loss of trust in people you believed wouldn’t hurt you, or believed they were doing it for your good, which now proved not to be true
• Depression, loss of joy in anything you used to like doing, loss of optimism in life
• Losing the courage to try anything, regardless of how much it would benefit you, if there’s even a slight chance of getting hurt in a way you find impossible to endure, living passively
• Feeling irreparably damaged and ruined
• Getting lost in maladaptive daydreaming, fiction, or the virtual world, feeling unable to face reality, falling to obsessions or addictions to endure the pain
• Feeling other people’s feelings as if they’re your own, especially feelings of pain, anxiety, fear, nervousness, anger or grief; trying to soothe them and especially having strong reactions to anger
• Feeling overwhelmed whenever around people, feeling the urge to self-isolate and to be completely alone
• Being hit with extreme amounts of rage and struggling to process it; worrying about misdirecting the rage or acting on it, violent fantasies
• Getting stuck in a mindset of a child and barely able, or unable to do any grown-up tasks
• Struggling to achieve even minimum function, or not functioning at all
• Losing the will or the energy to participate in any activities you used to enjoy
• Fighting or indulging the urge to normalize what happened or make it ‘not that bad’, trying to re-live it in a way that wouldn’t be traumatic, especally with sexual trauma, needing to perceive it as if it would be normal only if it was ‘consensual’ or more controlled and trying to find a way to frame it as ‘not that big of a deal’ and denying it’s hurting you
• Beating yourself up horribly for still being upset and traumatized by events that happened long ago
• Inability to have friends or form connections with others, high alert for betrayal and manipulation
• Avoding places and people connected to the trauma, getting easily triggered and forced to re-live something that needs recovery time of days or weeks
• Losing your sense of reality; not being sure where you are or what year is it for some periods of time, feeling like you’re going crazy
• Only being able to focus on surviving a short amount of time (just trying to get thru the day or week)

Physical

• Extreme anxety; trembling, spending prolonged amount of time tense and expecting danger and pain at every second, inability to calm down, limbs not working properly, fainting out of fear
• Continually activated “fight or flight” response, always feeling endangered, trouble digesting food because your body shuts down your digestion in order for you to be able to escape faster, vomiting, stomach pains after eating
• Hyperventilation, problems with breathing, feeling there’s “no air” in small or crowded spaces
• Chronic exhaustion, feeling heavy weight over your body, having difficulty moving at all
• Chronic pain, tension in your body never leaving, physical pain appearing when you’re experiencing emotional pain, chest pain, heart palpitations
• Problems with blood pressure, fainting easily
• Dissociation (feeling detached from your emotions and/or body, feeling numb and unreal, your body not feeling yours, feeling outside your body or like you’re stuck in someone else’s body)
• Memory issues, not being able to remember whole parts of your life, weak short term memory, not being able to look back on your life in linear way or put the events in they order they happened in, mixing several events into one, remembering feelings but not events
• Increased sensitivity to noise, getting very upset at any non recognizable sound, reacting with irritability or rage to background noises, or with terror at loud noises; needing complete silence, or constant soothing background noise
• Extreme sensitivity to stress, having to block out stressful things from memory, having physical reactions to stress, like shaking, your hair falling out, feeling incapable of dealing with even minimally stressful tasks
• Dry mouth in the night, overheating during the nightmares, getting so distressed after sleep you can’t move from the bed for hours, not calming down for days
• Not being able to control your body, falling down and shaking uncontrollably, even trashing around as your body processes violence done to it
• Not being able to relax or calm down without experiencing physical pain, feeling addicted to abuse and indulging in self harm, or letting someone else hurt you so that you might gain a moment of not feeling tense, stressed and scared
• Feeling sensations of pain or discomfort on your body even when nothing is happening to it, especially the body parts that have been violated in some way; in case of sexual trauma it would mean private parts, in case of overworking yourself or break yourself with effort, pain in all muscles and joints
• In case of sexual trauma, reoccurring memories of it, trouble figuring out your sexuality, wanting to escape your body or perceiving it in a distorted way, urge to repeat the trauma to get desensitized to it, hypersexual behaviour or complete lack of interest in sexuality
• Weight gain or loss, hatred of your body and desire to change or hurt it, or complete neglect over body, lack of any self care of even acknowledging you need it
• Difficulty sleeping or being awake, feeling too high alert to fall asleep or dropping out of consciousness from overexhaustion
• Inability to focus or finish tasks, procrastinating or feeling sick just knowing there is a task you have to do.

 If you struggle(d) with 5 or more of early ones, or 5 or more of later ones, you’ve been dealing with trauma.

furiousgoldfish:

Subtle signs of long-term psychological abuse:

• Intrusive belief that you have to do everything perfectly and flawlessly or you are no good, deep drop in self-esteem upon making a smallest mistake or being criticized, feeling that your value is tied completely to how well you can finish tasks, perfectionism
• Low self-esteem, feeling you’re less smart, less capable, less valuable or less lovable than the people around you; struggling to feel like you’re an equal part of something, worry that people don’t find your worth keeping around, always worrying about being left behind
• Over-taking responsibility for everything, bending backwards to make things go well for everyone, feeling guilty and ashamed if something goes wrong that wasn’t in your control, always taking tasks other people wouldn’t do, doing anything to feel useful
• Making excuses for other people when they hurt you, always being ready to ‘look at it from their side’ and assume they had a good reason to hurt you, or didn’t mean it, or didn’t realize they were doing it, or were ‘just lashing out’ and doing it because of their own pain – but you’d never make those excuses for yourself, or forgive yourself if you did that
• Double standards for yourself and others, you feel it’s okay for others to be selfish, unreasonable, short-tempered, assholes, hurtful, impatient, self-centered, but it’s not okay for you to be any of that, judging yourself way more harshly than others
• Constant fear of abandonment from your friends and loved ones, fear that you won’t be able to go on if you’re rejected and abandoned by them, over-pleasing them in fear they’ll leave
• Feeling there’s something deeply wrong about you, always looking for a way to blame yourself for anything that went wrong, feeling cursed, impostor syndrome
• Inclination to hide as much as possible about yourself, only showing an image to people you socialize with, fear that if anyone knew the ‘real you’ they would be repulsed and grossed out
• Shame for feeling pain, shame for crying, feeling weak and despicable for being vulnerable and hurt, urge to hide and isolate whenever you’re in pain, feeling others would hate you for it
• Constant pressure to prove yourself, never feeling like you’re 'good enough’, rarely or never feeling happy or proud of yourself, every day is a battle to show that you’re still worth something
• Feeling you have to be always open to scrutiny and criticism, even if it comes from people who don’t know you and don’t wish you well
• Arranging your life only to please others, acting a role of support or a servant in other people’s lives, feeling selfish if you try to think of what would be best for you
• Worrying that every nice thing anyone has said about you was out of politeness, and every horrible thing someone said about you is secretly true; inability to hold a consistent self image that isn’t affected by everyone’s view of you, imagining that others are thinking the worst of you
• Spiraling into feelings of not wanting to exist anymore, wishing you weren’t born, not being able to find anything good about yourself, seeing yourself as a stack of flaws and past mistakes

furiousgoldfish:

So this is something I’ve learned only recently but boosted the speed of my recovery:

When the voices in your head start criticizing, shaming, blaming and terrifying you, you’re supposed to fight back. And I mean Fight. Back. Viciously. Come for their intelligence, come for their sense of reality, come for their competence, ask them to show you sources and proof, insult them back, physically beat them back with a wrecking ball in your head, expose them for lying and go ballistic at them for constantly sabotaging your life with indecent lies.

You’re compelled to listen ‘just in case’ or because ‘you deserve this’ but know this: These voices are almost identical in every abuse survivor’s head.

We all hear how we should be ashamed of ourselves for existing, how we’re guilty and deserving of abuse, or how we’re stupid incompentent waste of space, or how everything is a clue that we’re going to end up alone, abandoned, homeless and dying on the street. And it’s never true for any of us. These scenarios repeat in our heads despite us never being less worthy of happiness, peace or security.

Also note that the voices are talking shit about things they DON’T and CAN’T KNOW. If they’re talking about how everyone is judging and hating you, how could they possibly know that, are they claiming to read minds? If they’re criticizing your every move and tearing you down, they’re trying to cause you to freeze and never be able to feel good doing anything, WHY? If they’re constantly threatening you with catastrophic scenarios, they want to keep you terrified, not safe! And they don’t know if any of it is true! Literally making shit up and relying on the hope that you will never fact-check their shit and be drowned in too much pain and shame and fear to process what just happened to you. Much like what abusers do!

Tell the voices you will refuse to doubt yourself any longer. Tell them you refuse to spiral into shame for who you are. Tell them you’ve had enough of lies. Tell them they have no place criticizing whatever the hell you’re doing, seeing that the voices do nothing but bully; nobodies are not allowed an opinion about you. Tell them how fucking dumb it is to pretend to be omniscient and predict the worst scenarios. They’ve been wrong every single time.

And once you learn to fight them, you’ll do so instinctively, you will shut them up at their very thought of opening their ugly mouths, and your self worth will restore to surface.

laufire:

lunah:

Catherine Lacey, “Cut” / Robin McKinley, Deerskin / Bruce Springsteen intro to “I’m on Fire” / Mary Ruefle, “Woodtangle” / Dick Lourie, “How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?”

[Caption: series of quotes from various sources, about fathers.
-Catherine Lacey’s “Cut”: “If you’re raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house. You will find him even when he’s not there.”
-Robin McKinley’s “Deerskin”: “Some things grew no less with time. Some things were absolutes. Some things could not be gotten over, gotten round, forgotten, forgiven, made peace with, released.”
-Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire”: “I remember growing up… at night… my dad would sit in the kitchen… with all the lights out… and he’d wait for me to come in… and he’d sit there and drink… and I’d stand in the driveway… I’d look in through the screendoor… I could see the light of his cigarette… then I’d rush up on the porch and try to get by him… he’d always call me back… and it was like he was always… algys angry, always mad… he’d be sitting there thinking about everything he wasn’t ever gonna have… until, until he’d get me thinkning like that too… and I’d lay up in my bed… at night, I’d be staring at the ceiling… and feel like if something didn’t happen… if something didn’t happen that soon… I felt like I was just gonna… like someday… like I was just gonna…”
-Mary Ruefle’s “Woodtangle”. “I remember thinking my father was mean but knowing he was kind. I remember thinking my father was kind but knowing he was mean.”
-Dick Lourie’s “How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?”: “If we forgive our Fathers what is left?”.]