Why does it still hurt? *trigger
When I was 18 (I'm 22 now), I was beaten and raped by a guy that had been somewhat stalking me for a couple years. I've been through all the motions that you make after something like this happens. Therapy, antidepressants, etc. I'm just so frustrated because here I am, 4 years later, writing this because I feel empty. I feel nothing, yet I feel everything. I can be fine one second then a smell, voice, or name can send my thoughts back to being pinned on that bed with his grip around my neck. Sometimes I can still feel it. I avoid tight collared shirts for that reason. I keep waiting for it to get better, but the older I get, the crazier I feel. Sometimes the thought of getting out of my house is exhausting in itself. I'm slipping into depression. I try to remind myself that there are people in this world that are struggling with issues that make mine look like a paper cut. I guess I just need some peace in my life.
It is actually pretty common to have problems with flashbacks in this kind of scenario, so just know that nothing is wrong with you and your feelings are legitimate. For traumatic events where someone feels so scared and out of control, such as in post traumatic stress disorder, people usually relive the event for a long time until they eventually (hopefully) come to termswith what happened to them. Therapy helps, and even if you feel like you aren't making progress, you really are. Try to really think back on how you have improved over time during the last years. I'm sure you have come a lot farther than you realize.
Hello BeautifullyIntroverted,
I am so sorry that you are going through such horrible time. It looks like when we go to therapy, we often feelworse while we are processing the traumas before we can get better. Is thatsomething that you experienced during yourtherapy?
About traumas I often talk about EMDR therapy that can bea very efficient techniquefor many peopleto work theseout, although it can be felt as a tough therapy for some. If you don't knowyetabout EMDRmaybe you could get some information about it, what do you think?
You wrote in your thread "I try to remind myself that there are people in this world that are struggling with issues that make mine look like a paper cut". Would you accept to considerthe ideathat comparisons between stories and their awfulness could slowdown your own self-healing? The reason would be that making these comparisons would make you believe that your story is not that bad after all, which would go in complete conflict with what your body tells you. You would even generate guilty feelings because of these comparisons,like a "how come I feel so bad when others lived so much worse things than me! I am just worthless and selfish" type of thoughts... Does any of what I just wrote make sense to you?
An idea would be that we are all different: Any event that can destroy someone's life could just bother another person for a few days or weeksbefore she/he moves on. Then another event would traumatize that last person while the first one would not even feel it as a so big deal.
Please feel free to share any point of view about these things.
I wish you the so very best on your healing path,BeautifullyIntroverted. Please take great and gentle care,
Gilles
I completely feel u. I've also been sexually abused. It's been more than 10 years, though I only recently recovered the memory 3 years ago, but I'm still so distraught by it. U know, for traumatic experiences, sometimes they are too overwhelming for the brain to handle and process on its own such that it gets locked up in a 'memory network', where there is no time, age. So in order to ease your symptoms, you gotta access that memory network and process it. Emdr is really effective for this, since it taps on a natural way of how our body processes things after every long day - eye movements, just like in a REM cycle. It's amazing, tried it before, though I'm going through emotional processing and talking it out instead to process my trauma.
