Did you experience a trauma that really messed you up?

Yes, I was sexually abused as a child. it still affects me to this day even though I have worked through most of the issues.

In the ‘80s I went through the triple whammy of serious illness, serious debt, and what I thought was a serious new marriage. Oh yes, and I was out of work for a year. It took a lot of time to get through it all, which I did quite successfully thank you very much, but the lessons I learned about health and health insurance, personal finances, and marriage still benefit me to this day.

My mother died when I was 12 and my father physically abused me for years afterward. It was very traumatic and has had lifelong implications.

I experienced various sexual traumas through my pre-teen and teen years, and they have severely messed me up, more than I originally thought. I’ve recently finally admitted to myself that I truly don’t like having sex. I can joke about sex, and flirt with every jelly in a suggestive manner and have fun with it, but offline, the reality of it sucks. I said for a long time that I just didn’t get off, and sometimes it wasn’t enjoyable, but the fact is, I pretty much hate having sex. I only do it to please my husband, and I can never, ever, tell him I hate every minute of it. I’d love to hurt the men responsible for making me feel like this.

Three: a brother’s death when I was four, sexual abuse for many years, and my husband leaving me after 37 years of marriage.

You people are all AMAZING! You have got through loads of heavy shit in life yet you are all on your feet and are normal, functioning human beings with a great attitude to life. I have no idea how people do that without falling to pieces forever!

No, I managed to get this way without any outside villain to blame. Like the song goes, “But more… Much more than this, I did it sideways…”

I, too, was molested and verbally abused in childhood, and spent my first 40 years deeply depressed.

I have accepted the past for what it was. I have forgiven the parties responsible for their selfishness and ignorance of the impact that their actions (or inactions) had on an innocent child. I have freed myself of the guilt and shame by fully realizing that I did not deserve it, I did not ask for it, and I am not any less of a person because they treated me as such.

In fact, I now appreciate that I feel and understand things on a much deeper level than many people do because of my shitty childhood. I had to accept and forgive myself for spending so many years caught up in self-pity and making many poor choices because I saw myself as a victim.

For any who have been traumatized, mistreated or just found themselves caught up in the mind-games of expectations that we have developed in western society, don’t give up hope! Keep challenging your own mental ruts. Make a conscious effort to change those habitual thought patterns. Look in the mirror and congratulate yourself for making it this far. Know that you can continue making progress, and commit yourself to moving past it, because you are worth it!

Pretty severe depression and some anxiety for much of my adult life, more than likely induced by a defunct thyroid, but also out of heightened sensitivity to the breadth of suffering in the world. It made me wish I was dead six days a week and twice some Sundays.

Last year, I stopped taking my medication mostly out of denial, but also out of a sincere wish to heal naturally and become normal again. After a few months, I started to really look like shit. One day, my sister and brother-in-law noticed that I looked horrible, and my sister dragged me into urgent care. This is when I basically surrendered for good to the inevitability of my condition, because despite all my wishing over the years, it was obvious I wasn’t going to do the job myself. It was also obvious to me at that point that something else was driving the bus.

And that seed of realization has grown to give me not only hope, but resolution in the idea that some other force or intention is moving me down the road of life, and that I’m more aligned with that than I am with the idea of me as my body and the identifiers that would describe me. Instead, I have this body, which needs certain things to function, but the body isn’t me. That line of realization has opened up greater and greater space for feeling out what I am and what I’m borrowing for the time being. All the depression and trauma is an experience, but the experience only lives as far as I take it and as long as I keep breathing life into it or identifying it as me (like I used to identify my body as me). So, it’s a lot easier to let go of that stuff and focus on enjoying what I am and what “I am” would like to do today.

The death of an adult child three years ago. He took his life. I went back to work after two weeks because I thought I had to. I pushed on, crying on a daily basis. Within six months I suffered major physical symptoms, a few months later I screamed at my assistant (she was a major pain) shortly after I screamed at one of my bosses. HR could do nothing because I had asked my immediate manager for months to help me with the assistant, and the other manager was blatantly trying to manipulate my sales so I made less commission. I won that battle, but started seeing a therapist. Her advice was I would not get better mentally until i no longer worked in such a stressful environment. I went on FMLA, and was let go at the end of it because the company would not make accommodations for my physical illness. I gave up my lucrative sales career and have not worked for two years…in fact I have not done much of anything for two years. I have stayed in therapy, went through hell, wanted to take my own life at the lowest point. I applied for and was approved for disability.
After all of this, I am beginning to think I want to do something constuctive, but I have no idea what.
I don’t like to hear how strong or brave I am to keep going. My mind was in the “suicide spiral” at the lowest point. I wanted the pain to stop, I thought the world would be better without me. I came very close to not being here today, but I think I had to have that experience to understand where my son was and to start healing.

My first memory was my dad coming home sober. My mother my older sister and I were sitting at the coffeetable involved in some type of activity.

My dad started yelling at my mom and she rose to meet him in the kitchen. He started hitting her and my sister flew inbetween them. I was just learning how to walk. I sat their for a while wishing and hoping then carefully walked over to the bar between the living and kitchen.

I reached up and steadied myself on the support below the bar I hung on and waited. Surely they would stop. I don’t remember what was or if I understood it. I was a delayed talker so it is possible I didn’t understand.

Tears were rolling down my cheek and I felt like I should be inbetween it all too. But I was cowardly and my legs were tired. I crawled to the stairs and sat waiting… forever…

This scene or something like it was a cyclical scene in my life. When they didn’t fight the tension was worse. Things eventually got worse as those things do over time. That view… of me standing apart from my family too cowardly to stand up and having no idea who to stand up for….

How did I get over it, I didn’t, at first it became my banner and it poisioned me and everything I touched and that verified every feeling of self hatred bitterness etc. I was so stubborn, proud and alone…I brought more traumas on my head by being who I was.

I eventually realized I didn’t want my life to be like that, there was no point.. So time, talk therapy, confrontation, work, accomplishing things, reiki, music, nature, art therapy…meditation.

Want something different better for yourself. You are worth it.

@Beantowngal – (((hugs))) My only son attempted overdose 4 years ago, and it is a parent’s worst nightmare – even as close as I came to that tragedy, I know that I can not fathom what you feel. I hope that you are able to find a way to heal and to live again. You say that you are starting to feel that you want to do something constructive… did your son have any interests or causes that he felt strongly about? Perhaps being active in something that mattered to him might help.

I lived in a building that burned in a fire about 15 years ago, and without going into the details of the fire (I had nothing to do with it – it started in an apartment two floors above me), I am now paranoid about fire. I don’t fry food, or own an electric fryer. I don’t like using a barbecue grill (I have one but guests can use it, I will never use it), I don’t like using a toaster oven because things seem to burn too easily, and I try to be cautious with similar things around the house.

When I was 2 and a half I looked inside the toilet lid and I broke the tank. My older sister was blamed and I believe I caused $12,000 water damage to a $48,000 house, my parents divorced within months.

Like @hearkat, I spent most of my first 40 years experiencing abuse and trauma. It was physical, sexual, emotion, mental and verbal abuse from different people in my life- family and “friends” both. I was put the hospital due to abuse and have lost probably years of opportunities from the resulting depression. When I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I experienced workplace bullying and 7 years of community ostracization. I was diagnosed with PTSD by three different therapists.

Because of the variety of incidents, I have very strong opinions about abuse, abusers, victim/survivors/accusers and believe that abuse and trauma are not black and white at all. There is NO blueprint, no one size fits all.

For me, the worst thing is when someone says, “I’m sorry you went through all that,” or “Wow.” I don’t want anyone’s pity or awe—I’ve compartmentalized the experience into something external that happened to me, not something that I am or something that I want to internalize. I do talk about it on Fluther, but not IRL.

I worked a lot on myself, and still am working. I have ways to go, and to help me through, I developed an eclectic mix of spiritual beliefs and viewpoints. Sometimes I still wonder how I ended up with this life, but can’t dwell on that. Mostly, I try to turn my experiences into something valuable by offering help to others.

Fluther’s a great place to get support—for everyone… {{{hugs!!}}}

Few people would consider divorce traumatic. But for me, it was life changing. I never had any anxiety whatsoever in my life until a year before I left a 20 year marriage in which I, in my childish naiveté, was totally convinced I had the best husband I could ever have chosen. My trust in him was complete. I had him on a pedestal for many years like a prince. I felt all women wanted him who met him. Then when he was 45 he fell in love with a girl half his age and became verbally , emotionally and physically abusive towards me. I began having panic attacks. I married a year after I left but the panic attacks continued for two years . I’ve had varying levels of anxiety ever since 1985. I’ve lost interest in meeting people, in going out to eat and in almost anything. I force myself to go places with my 2nd husband. I continue to compare them. I’m a changed person. When I see him now I feel sort of disgusted but he doesn’t know it. I’m friendly but not overly so. I’d give up so much if I could only be the fun, social person I used to be. If only I hadn’t protected his image with our daughters they might understand me more. My parents never were told what he did. They didn’t ask and I didn’t have the heart to drag his name through the mud with them or with his family members. I only told some of it to one psychologist and left him that month. He never remarried but has been living with a woman ten years younger than I for fifteen years.

Yes, I was under the age of 5 and witnessed aggressive and violent behaviour between my parents, constantly on a day to day basis. It made me question what love is and what to expect from it. I never thought I was truly loved unless I was beaten. The on,y thing my therapist has helped me with, and that is to know that that isn’t true.