After summarizing my life story and explaining that I didn’t really have any trauma, my therapist looked at his notes for a moment and told me he figured out the problem: I didn’t know what trauma was.
The problem is knowing that there are worse situations in the world.
I at least, always compare my own situation with others as a way to cope. Thus minimizing the actual trauma. While others may go through worse it does not diminish the events that took place in my life.
Then I use to think everyone was traumatized. No. Just the people I end up getting along with the most.
It comes with the territory of your needs and concerns are minimized all your life.
Lemme just settle into the very back corner of the room with a view of an entrance so i know nobody is behind me while i think about this…
Could all of you please stop being so extremely relatable? I might see it as orchestrated manipulation attempt otherwise.
*Tunes out of discussion and focuses intently on book until the background noises stop*
Abused probrally wouldn’t be the right word, I mean yes I do have severe childhood trauma but I wouldn’t say I was abused.
Sure, I watched her try to kill my dad, and I feared she would kill me during the beatings, but I wouldn’t call it “abuse”.
That’s only slightly sarcastic; my brain tells me the same thing yours does.
For me it was just that my mothet was completely emotionally absent and my father was physically not absent. That and being constantly told I have no future by just about everyone.
So… neglect. While not abuse, still an impactful form of maltreatment.
I know this is entirely semantics, but neglect is a form of abuse.
If someone had roughly similar experiences I would respect them if they called it abuse, thats just not how I define it for myself.
being constantly told I have no future by just about everyone.
How is that not abusive?
It absolutely is abusive, and I don’t the other poster meant to sound like it isn’t. That said, it’s easy for the abused to waive off their abuse. From my own experience with CPTSD, that kind of thinking doesn’t just appear; it seeps in, sets up shop, and eventually convinces you it’s a “truth.” We learn to justify our abuse with neat little stories: that we deserved it, that we’re broken, that others had it worse and therefore our pain doesn’t count. Therapy helps, but the hardest part is undoing the belief that we are rejects, never meant for real society.
People rarely said it out loud, they just consistently treated me that way. I was an outsider in a community that isnt mine and someone with Autism in a community thats centuries in the past.
Nuts to that! You have a future that I’m very keen on hearing about!
Well they were partially correct, I do have a future they just arent a part of it :3
Are you my long lost twin?
Mayhaps :3
It’s funny that. Everything is normal until you learn it isn’t.
Hahahaha
Haha
Ha
Yep
:/
I wouldn’t say normal, still I also wouldn’t say abused.
Sorry, gate kept
I remember seeing memes like this a bunch back when I used reddit, and being a bit confused about what to make of them, because on the one hand the showcased feelings are usually quite relatable to me, but on the other I feel pretty confident that I didn’t suffer abuse as a kid and if anything had a pretty good childhood compared to most people I know.
I’ve just ended up with a sort of “constantly worry about everything while not seeing to know how to function in situations that I feel I should know how handle” out of a combination of anxiety disorders and ASD instead, among others. I’m never sure if I should feel lucky to not go through that kind of childhood trauma or unlucky that my brain apparently has ended up functioning in such a manner regardless. Somehow I can think of a way that either one of those feelings could be disrespectful to someone that did go through it all and that just makes my confusion worse.
I feel your situation resonate with me so maybe this’ll help.
I’ve recently been diagnosed for PTSD due to neglect. Not extreme neglect like locking me up or abandoning me or anything. Just an emotionally exhausted and depressed widowed mother and an inability to connect with most my family.
My brain is deeply unsatisfied by this explanation, to the point of searching for a repressed memory or almost “envying” what I considered “real trauma”.
But it is just that simple, I was emotionally neglected as a child combined with undiagnosed ADHD, Autism, Depression, and being trans. This has resulted in PTSD that got so bad that thunder gave me a panic attack from inside my bedroom.
It’s rage inducing how unsatisfying that is.
Basically everything I post was stolen off reddit a couple years ago because I am deeply uncreative and boring. So that’s probably why it looks familiar.
But yeah, it came from r/trollcoping where they have a disclaimer that none of these are cries for help or targeting anyone. it’s just people with mental illness using humor to vent. I saved it because it because I saw myself in it. I’m sorry if anyone feels disrespected, I’m feeling out fediverse as I go and will post different memes based on the kind of feedback I see
Oh I wasn’t trying to say you were disrespecting anyone, I was just idly commenting on how it’s the kind of situation that, since it relates to things other people can be touchy about and because I don’t know how to feel about it, my brain unhelpfuly comes up with plausible (to me) arguments for how all possible feelings I might get disrespect someone, therefore adding to my confusion. That was more thinking out loud on my part as it were.
oh my bad. well then I concur. I enjoyed memes from that place because they felt like double edged swords but I’m both the recipient and also holding the sword. shit’s raw, sometimes
“I am worried, and I ought not to worry, but because I cannot stop worrying, I am worried because I worry. And that is what we call Anxiety, trembling.”
- Alan Watts
i was not abused as a child ~ ~ ~
Hm 🤔
What’s a CPS?
Probably Child Protection Service.
One of wolf growling from the corner, the other is licking itself.