[Story] Processing Relationship Trauma
I’ve been diagnosed with ptsd, anxiety and depression and taking therapy for many factors and is largely due to experiences with my past relationship. I was in my first serious relationship with a guy I truly loved. We were both young and immature and I wanted nobody else for me then. Before I met him, I was seeing this guy who cheated on me and broke my trust so I was hoping for the best now I’m with someone who I thought that was best for me. During the course of our relationship, he started expressing an interest towards one of my friends who is seen as the prettiest girl in our class and who everyone likes. He wouldn’t compliment me as much as he would to her and even told me that he had a crush on her. I felt second best so I wanted to leave until we managed to sort it out briefly. Things began to go well for us until he expressed his feelings towards his “beautiful and cool” ex who seemed like the one that got away for him. I confronted him about it and our relationship went downhill. Eventually, he admitted that he pretended to have an interest on both girls because he was jealous of an acquaintance of mine who liked me. The damage was already done and I felt incredibly stupid that I let myself stay in it and allowed myself to get hurt. I felt absolutely horrible. This was years ago and I thought I moved on from what happened but everything got triggered when my friends were talking about my old classmate. All the memories came back and i keep getting flashbacks about what happened. My friendship with the girl has become pretty distant even when i wasnt angry at all. Its been hard and i feel stupid because i allowed it to happen to me. Lesson learned
@Yan3398
Hey Yan, Thank you for coming out and sharing your story, it must feel very tough to be in a relationship and having your loved one cheating on you, I would like to share with you how we can try to cope with the flashbacks; We can help this process by allowing the flashbacks to happen, rather than fighting or avoiding them. We can cope with them by getting our heads out of the past (trauma) and into the present (safety). I hope you feel better very soon. ❤❤❤
Yan, that was so brave of you to share! It makes sense that you had these emotions that popped up. I’m so sorry to hear that you had these experiences. We are here for you and you are not alone