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Trauma from the past

Trauma from the past

I have noticed that I am playing scenarios from the past over and over again as if they were a movie. In this movie there is just a barrage of things I've experienced that were negative. I'm constantly going back into it. I can't sit still with these feelings, I feel horrible, gross, ugly. Sometimes they come out of me and I end up hurting those closest to me.

I hate myself for this. I am struggling to move past it. I want to understand it better so that I can move on.

I think I need to take some time now to write out what I'm actually experiencing.

I don't know where or how to start. I would approach this whole thing chronologically if I of course could, but it feels like I can't. All I really feel is my soul getting crushed slowly and the pain from that is piercing into my heart. It's a sharp pain. It makes me want to get up walk away.

Even just now I pretended to look away at something on my phone - it's like I am distracted completely by things.

I overcompensate with things. I feel like I'm not good enough. I'm down on myself. It's very hard.

Last night I had a bit of an argument with my partner about something trivial, we made up but I feel woeful. I spoke to her about how these traumas from the past are affecting me. I need her empathy and at times I just don't know how to speak to her about things. She said I can and it'll be okay. But I don't want to burden her.

You see there is so much I want to say but don't know how to say it. In one minute I can't speak, then the next I wish I could say everything all at once. It's like I have unconscious experience before I am able to articulate exactly what it is - if that makes any sense?

I feel a rush and sense of urgency behind everything in my life except for that which matters most to me - my actual mental health. The one thing that should be prioritised. In my own way. I can't ask the world to prioritize it for me or indeed for the world to slow down for me. I can't fake being strong because that is a form of weakness. So what is the strong thing to do? Cultivate a new world view? Articulate a strategy to get better? Search the deepest elements of my pain and come to a resolution? Maybe it is a combo of all three.

last night I spoke to my sister on the phone and told her that the traumas from the past are getting to me a lot lately.

as I meditate on them now I find that there are so many. Call them traumas or bad experiences or whatever, but the point is that they are real and they are there. IT's like they are happening now in the present. But I know, intellectually, they are not happening. The divide between the present and the past is not there - everything is the past and everything is the present. There's too much mixed up between the two of them.

I grew tired of my old psychologist because he was looking like he was falling asleep in the sessions which really bugged me. It made me self conscious. Like I was meant to be entertaining. He also made some suggestive comments about onlyfans (something I personally disagree with but moot point), it bugged me.

My issue too is that I am intelligent and perceptive enough to know things in myself, but lately I have wondered down a path that has taken me so far from who and what I am.

Similar to Raskalnikov, I have gone far down a path of unsatiated brutal reason and logic. But my own conscious, intact as it is, has rubbed up against myself. I haven't murdered anyone like he did, but I have done things I cringe at. Not on par with murder but things that I no longer see as ethical and I see no other reason behind it as psychological abuse and shame within the church atmosphere I was at when I was young. I used to visit massage parlours for sexual reasons and I feel gross for talking about it, but I must say that it comes with the additional context of sexual shame and guilt in the church environment. This also factored into the way I behaved in the past with regards to dating and trying to hook up. Part of me thinks this is an excuse. But the other part of me sees this as an explanation. Now that I am more self aware, it is a different story altogether. My reason and desperate attempt to try and blot out the pain from the past is rubbing against me and causing me harm psychologically. Even now as I mention it, I feel a bit better. But I don't just want to "feel" better, I want to "be" better.

Being placed into a state of shame and guilt at a formative age really screwed me up. Last night I said something truly shocking, I said that I wished I had been abused sexually because at least that way I would be able to understand why I am the way I am now. It is a horrible thing to say, but it comes from a place of confusion and torment deep within.

This place of torment and confusion - this is something I have experienced for so long now and I am done with it.

I've already beaten suicide. If i can do that, then I can take the next step towards betterment and improving my own state of mind.

It's hard. Very hard.

But the thing is I recall a time in my life where I was better, both psychologically and physically. It was about April-May 2022. Two years ago. I've gone far down a path and I've now decided to leave it. To simply just ditch it. To just move off into a new one. One where I will not be bothered by the same things , one where I stand up for myself , one where I will seek the help I need , one where I won't shy away from saying what I truly feel about anything in a given moment. one that will not feed paranoia and overly skeptical thinking.

I feel a bit better for making this post and I will now call a help service to guide me through feeling so overwhelmed with things.

25 replies

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In response to: Trauma from the past

Re: Trauma from the past

Copying this from good morning and sharing it here with some of you

@TAB @Glisten @PeppyPatti @lavenderhaze @PizzaMondo @Shaz51 @BlueBay @outlander @StuF @BlueBay

I hope and pray that the person I become or am becoming is the best version of myself

Those dark nights of the soul are some of the ones where I have done most of my self reflection. Those flickering lights in the distance that the bird is looking at - they speak to me - much like bird I have wings to fly from them. THAT is how I'd like to look at my trauma from the past.
This analogy was used in therapy yesterday and it tells me a lot because it means that I am able to distance myelf from the dear in the headlights. Sometimes those lights (fairy lights if you will which are actually objectively cool and pretty nice to look at) will seem like headlights and oncoming danger - only for them to pass me by for the beautiful thing it is.

MY main concernatm is work - the vibe, the culture, the sense that I'm being singled out..... all such notions. I had a job interview today and I genuinely feel it went well. I do not wish to get my hopes up. I do not wish to start accting like I have the job in the bag. But the last time I felt this good it was good news for me. It'll take a few weeks to hear back. Those few weeks - well I just want to focus on my job and do the right thing - that's all. Play it cool in other words.

It is often in quiet reflection that I find peace and answers and so I must return to that as often as I can.

In a few weeks when I have an answer then, and only then can I get excited or disappointed. In the meantime, steady as she goes !


I turn to the words of Nietzche once again who said

" “No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!”

In response to: Re: Trauma from the past

Re: Trauma from the past

some people can just do their job and stay under the radar @MDT Hams its an art. 90% of work is getting on with people.

Are you still taking meds ?

Prob just a stage you are going through at your age.

dont know that 'best self is valid or realistic, Dr Phil it How's that working for you?

Take it easy.

In response to: Re: Trauma from the past

Re: Trauma from the past

Nah tabs off meds @TAB
Would rather work on the thing that'd bugging me - meds wouldn't remove it for me. Only I can

In response to: Re: Trauma from the past

Re: Trauma from the past

fair enough Hams @MDT guess they helped you put up with things

In response to: Re: Trauma from the past

Re: Trauma from the past

Yeah for a while there for sure


But I found myself distracted by things and was also trying to push myself in other ways

Now that I've moved out I don't recognise the old version of me.

Yeah last few weeks I've been dealing into trauma work and figuring out how best to resolve things from the past.

I like the rod resolve because it implies peace. Ending a civil war/turmoil that seems to be plaguing me so much.

So much of the religious stuff that affected me in my youth reared its head recently. It hits me in moments where I don't expect it, and I've had to relearn how to challenge a thought in the moment rather than let it dictate how I ought to feel. The distinction between thinking a feeling was muddled for a while there. I refrain from telling the average punter this because I'll get labelled with Autism or something. Plus I am actually social, or at least can be social with the people I wish to be social with.

Anyway

I'm skirting around the main point


My point is that I'm struggling with the present feeling of things that happened in the past. What I mean by this is that things from the past will enter my mind and have an emotional response to them now in the present as if they were here in the present.

A lot of it comes from self image and how I view myself because i struggled with that in the past.

Comments, whether off the cuff, or direct can be taken with a grain of salt or as legitimate by me. Could be good or bad. The point is that I get mixed up and idk which is real or fake.

Anyway

The road forward from the trauma is straight but it's a hard road. Keep putting one foot forward in front of the other.

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