Not feeling like I went through something bad (enough)

People like to crap on external validation but sometimes you need other people to say damn that sucks and is terrible and traumatic. I started feeling like it was bad enough when my friends started telling me, without pity mind you (I hate pity) what you went through is (pardon my language) fucked and absolutely disgusting. I found validation in the fact that my therapist cried when I told her what I’d been through. In the faces adults make when they hear. Sometimes we’re not the best people to validate ourselves because we’ve lived so long in it to see how traumatic it really is. Sending love 🩵

I was abused by my brother both physically and emotionally, and it's taken a lot of opening up on my part to accept that because, we were just kids, right? He was just angry? Right?

Nah, it was abuse.

I was emotionally neglected by my parents as well, which is the worst part of my trauma, but since it was neglect it isn't this big, flashy event(s), it is more of a quiet, slow, slide into darkness, like something descending quietly into the water to drown out of sight.

That's abuse as well.

I didn't even realize I was a trauma victim until I read Pete Walker's CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, and I read the 'common symptoms'. I read that list fast at first, and my brain told me to read it again, slowly. As I reached the bottom of that list, taking time to read and think of each item in my life I realized that I had, at one point or another in my life, suffered with ALL of them. That was a major turning point for me.

Don't diminish your experience, you are valid.

Yes. I read about things that are so evil and violent and think that my experiences are nothing in comparison. My case is more neglect and death by a thousand paper cuts.

Funnily enough, not thinking that you went through something that can leave scars is a classic symptom of trauma. You minimize your feelings as you've always done and think lesser of yourself. Me? With something that might explain that maybe I'm not a bundle of suicidal thoughts? That the anxiety and terror are symptoms and not part of my personality. Preposterous!

Your feelings are valid. Whether you went though traumatic events or not is kind of irrelevant. You are suffering and deserve attention and love, hugs and compassion. If you have the need to explore your own feelings, do so. I might be speculating here, but are you afraid that other people might judge you if you think yourself a victim? If that's what's going on, then you need to learn to value your opinions and feelings more. You have value and deserve to get out of this one.

Everyday I think. I was emotionally bullied in primary school for 8 years or so. That's at an age of 7-13/14. I feel like I should have been raped or physically abused to call it a ''trauma''. Otherwise, this is really not a big deal. Like, people have gone through something way worse. Mine is not bad enough and it's unfair to those who have actually been raped or physically abused. I feel like I'm just kinda trying to buy people's compassion or something with my story. I don't deserve to call it a trauma. This is what my brain tells me.

Totally relate to this. I think part of the problem comes from the DSM requiring someone to have had their life threatened to qualify for a PTSD diagnosis. It totally assumes that only bad events that happen to you qualify as traumatic, as opposed to recognising that the absence of fundamental needs (I.e. neglect) can be just as devastating. The research basically defines trauma as an entirely subjective experience where the victim’s response is key, not the objective severity or nature of the event itself. And yet the DSM and even some mental health professionals don’t seem to get this. I think even Pete Walker mentions that abandonment depression is the core wound of CPTSD. You don’t need to have been physically or sexually abused to feel abandoned. Abandonment is like death to a helpless child. No wonder there’s a whole segment of survivors of CPTSD from neglect who don’t feel validated and continue to feel ashamed. The fact that they still don’t include CPTSD in the DSM just baffles me despite all the research and support for this.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Know that you’re not alone in feeling this way, I’m with you there, and clearly there are many others too.

i think i am too numb mostly to make people understand the severity of my problems... people usually don´t take it seriously, but a lot of times also i think they don´t understand them. but i think being unable to function socially for ten years and being castrated are reasons enough for a trauma response and thats maybe like 5 per cent of the shit that happened

I went thought school with red hair as an empathic male. With a cruel dad and a favoured brother. I was the less gullible one.

That’s what gave me cptsd and yours sounds just as bad.

Your feelings are relevant and so is your nervous systems response to it.

❤️‍🩹

My abusers say what they put me through "wasn't that bad," at best & "never happened" at worst. There isn't even language to describe some of the things my abusers did to me. Consequently, I had trouble identifying abuse & saying I was abused. I'm so used to people dogpiling on me that I've never even said "I was abused," out loud. However, I know the things I went through were absolutely awful. You have to maintain your self esteem & have conviction about what you went through because in the end, very few people are validated for their struggles. A lot of people go through horrific things & their story dies with them. Carry your story with you wherever you go.

All the time

Yes I really do. I feel like a spoiled rich kid crying about how their parents grounded them is abuse.

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