too minor to be traumatizing?
TRIGGER WARNING!!!!
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alright, so, i'll keep this short.
i was sexually assaulted twice as a kid, once at 6 and once at 10. i don't know much about when the first one happened, i think i repressed most of it. i know i ended up touching an older man. i think it was in a bathroom. the second one was with me against a wall, an older girl that went to my school pushed me up against it and touched my chest and my junk. i don't think about those occurences much, because i barely remember them, but if anyone except my boyfriend makes any sexual advances toward me i completely shut down.
i was also bullied as a child. they'd steal my lunch, push me, exclude me from anything they could without getting in trouble with the teachers. i'm not sure, but i think they tried to drown me once on a field trip. my memory of anything before 2 years ago is very, very hazy. my kindergarten teacher was also abusive verbally, she'd scream at us for the littlest things. my best friend as a kid tried to indoctrinate me into evangelical christianity multiple times, and forced me to say bible verses. she'd say manipulative things, put me down constantly, and generally wasn't the best friend
my mother was never the best to me, but it got worst around the ages of 11-13. we had moved away from our grandparents' house, and she would constantly put me down, scream at me, when she was angry, and not buy food for me or my younger sister if she was angry, but she always had money for food for herself even though we were poor. it's since stopped, but it got very, very bad for a while, and i was admitted to the hospital for self harm the first time because of her at the age of 12.
the hospital was traumatic in and of itself, the staff were strict and required doors be open always, and there were older children there that scared me. i still can't sleep with the door open, and i get delusions of people watching me. i was cut off from my (online) support system for a few days, and it screwed with my head.
after that was my online relationship with an older teen. he was 16-17, i was 12-13. four years older than me, minus a month. he would constantly talk about sex with me, force me into sex and violent acts, and made me see myself as a fictional character that i'd created that we would RP violent things happening to, making me delusional and think that the things that we RPed had happened to me. he would threaten to kill me sometimes, and wanted a suicide pact. he was a sadist, but he was nice at times, and that was why i still loved him. he was incredibly supportive- when he wanted to be. he'd also make me skype call him and do sexual things there. he left me around the time i was mid-13, the relationship went on for close to, but less than, a year. it was incredibly traumatizing, and it still bothers me today. i don't know if it's "enough" to traumatize, though, especially because we never met in person.
this year, i had a psychotic break that resulted in me being hospitalized again. i threatened to self harm to get hospitalized, and to avoid seeing my mother. it was, again, traumatizing, for the reasons you can probably expect. my mother cut off contact with my boyfriend and my best friends afterwards, and i had to use a school-provided ipad to contact them. I felt life wasn't worth living if i had zero way to contact them. she found out that i'd called her abusive by reading my skype conversations, and the verbal abuse increased.
now i'm 14. almost 15, in a few days. my mother has stopped verbally abusing me, mostly, and i'm going to a therapist who is going to be diagnosing me with DID and PTSD. does all of this sound actually traumatizing? i constantly doubt myself. i can't tell if any of it counts. thank you for reading, regardless of what your opinion is on this. i hope you have a great day.
edited by dancingRainbow to comply with community guidelines and added more visible trigger warning
@sonofrageandlove Hi sono, Thanks for posting here and sharing your experiences with us. Im sorry you went through the experiences that you did and that perhaps your mother was not able to be there for you to protect you from these kinds of experiences. It sounds like you have been through such a lot for someone so young. You seem to find it difficult to know whether or not what you went through has traumatised you and ask at the end about how others may feel with regards this. I would say the fact that you spent the time to post what you did, may be a sign in itself that what happened to you, still causes you difficulty and bothers you. I wonder what led to you posting here? Whats more important is how you feel about what happened to you and it sounds as if your experiences have led to you being hospitalised, would you say? It sounds too that your now getting some help from a therapist. Have you actually had therapy with them yet? How do you feel about the diagnosis? For someone to be diagnosed with PTSD, their symptoms which are often linked to trauma, much be disabling or affect them day to day and for a period of time, anything from a few months to much longer. Have you received a specialist assessment for DID?
