Do you ever just realise you're broken?

[user7994326]

I barely cry. I try to remain strong. And then something clicks once in a while, I remember the traumatic abusive childhood and I think, fuck I'm so broken. It's kind of hidden because I mostly function well but fuck, I'm just a broken little girl inside. I feel like I'm crying out to relive my childhood and have just one person to love me

Yes. I am the happiest person you will ever meet but I am desperately sad and lonely. I don't like myself at all and always wish I could be someone else.

I consider myself an oddity, I've had many mental challenges over the years, that's helped shape me to me, yes it's left me emotional cold most of the time, mainly because when I did try at being emotional and embracing my emotional side, it almost resulted in a complete meltdown and took a good few years to pull back from.

Basically I grew up always suppressing my expectations e.g. Waiting an see if x event is going to be good rather than over excite myself, or I used to get my hopes up when younger to them be dashed, and then their was the bullies at secondary school, so it was trying to compartmentalize my emotions and survive each day, and hope if I get to the end of the each day in mostly good shape, then thank goodness.

Then I got to sixth form, and the bullies left, and I did not need the survival mentality for each day, so I went into overdrive absorbing my emotions relishing each day, music 🎶songs hyping my emotional states, basically the complete opposite from how secondary was, but then the risk was that due to letting go of the restraints, I did not always consider different perspectives or various avenues, then combined with the emotions I guess I had a mental reset, when it all over stimulated my emotions. Then between completing sixth form and university, I was trying to recover and rebuild my emotional states and try to put on the front of seeming and appearing as "normal" as best as I could, it was certainty an roller coaster,

As for now, I've pretty much regained my emotional restraints, but I try to not let the music over stimulate my emotions, as I do like music. The flip side I guess is that it has left me mostly emotional detached from day to day interactions. I can understand and process different perspectives, but emotional I don't always feel the same , if that makes sense.

Yes. I've had masses of therapy and on the surface I'm fine. Yesterday, in a deep prayer session, I somehow unlocked the prison my anguished child-self now inhabits. (That's going in a story or poem!) Anyway, she's still there, suffering and crying out to God for death. It's sobering to know that's who I am. A bit like a Dr Who monster, a shell with something distasteful lurking within.

Ahhh @TooManyPJs really sorry didn't mean to make anyone feel worse. I think I've interpreted that quote as meaning that even if I don't feel strong I have survived some pretty horrible stuff and have come through the other side, but like the OP and others have said, I appear to have it all together and be really high functioning despite feeling like an utter mess at times.

@Alonelonelylonersbadidea love the reference to kinsugi.

@RedRocketGirl

Ahhh *@TooManyPJs* really sorry didn't mean to make anyone feel worse. I think I've interpreted that quote as meaning that even if I don't feel strong I have survived some pretty horrible stuff and have come through the other side, but like the OP and others have said, I appear to have it all together and be really high functioning despite feeling like an utter mess at times.

@Alonelonelylonersbadidea love the reference to kinsugi.

No need for you to apologise at all. You were talking from your perspective and if that works or resonates with you that is fine, you are entitled to your feelings and opinion. Us broken people need to take what we can from where we can. I was just giving my perspective. No criticism was intended of you or your post - we don’t need any more of that, certainly not from other people who should understand!!!

I hear you.
Massive childhood trauma for me. It’s like pressing a button and I’m back there, lost, sad and small.
I’m 44 now and in a very ‘grown up’ profession and some days I just have to go and sit in the loo till the feeling passes.
It’s like a little fault line running through me leading straight to my most vulnerable self.
Therapy hasn’t really eased it for me if I’m honest. I live alongside it and around it now.

Me too. Another with a job where I need to be grown up and responsible for lives. And there are days I have to stifle screams from the wee girl inside.

The older I get the more I hear her pain. My whole life is just one big acting role, keeping the smile on and keeping on keeping on. I thought I’d found a partner who would let me be me. But he muffles me more than I muffle myself.

There’s a scene in the Krays film where Frances is going up the steps in the club. She stops and screams. I’m scared if I start screaming I won’t stop.

Thinking of you all in this thread, may we find our peace.

I am broken. Not only do I realise, I fully accept it. That means that I cut myself some slack when I break down, or I have an anxiety attack, or I struggle. Because I know that even if it's a small thing , it's on top of a foundation of abuse and neglect and trauma. Others might not, but I know. So i know it's not that bad, I'm not weak, it's not me being stupid or immature or reckless or that I deserve it or whatever the voices of my past trauma tell me. It's just my way of coping and making sense of things and still staying above the surface.

I haven't achieved much by anyone's standards, but I'm still here. I didn't think I would be. I honestly didn't believe I would reach 30, given the path I was on, the self harm,the destructive and dangerous behaviours.Yet here I am, and I'm going and fairly functional. What I do I do well, And when it gets too much I know it's not my fault. Even if I don't believe it in the moment, I get there eventually.

I am broken. Held together with super glue and sellotape and a prayer.I'm still here. I'm functioning.

I've had so many rounds of counselling, tried NLP, hypnosis, more counselling and the best thing that has ever worked for me was the crappy childhood fairy on YouTube and her take on AAs daily practice. Basically she taught me how to regulate myself. Once you can do that (and it's not that hard honestly) it's great. I'm now in counselling again and actually unpicking thought processes and where they are coming from rather than just sobbing about my childhood.

I am completely with you. Don’t think my DH realised how much I am pretending. I’m there for plenty of other people, but I am shattered inside. Don’t want to go into detail as to why - but helps not to be alone

I know the voices on this thread very well. They are those of the crying, still suffering child who is always still there, under the surface, no matter what the successes or failures her adult self has achieved. I was one such child.

You are not weak. You haven't failed. You're still standing. You're still here. Others have failed you but you have not failed yourself. Sometimes, when the next setback knocks us back still further, it feels like the last straw and we wonder where we are going to find the energy to keep living.

And we find it.

I hope these words of Henley's comfort you as they have me:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

You are heard. ❤️

Nb, I too have read, and loved, 'Damage'; unpalatable though its content sometimes is. Josephine Hart knew what she was talking about.

Survive, we will.

I'm 65 now. Ancient I suppose but I don't really feel it. There was a time when I considered myself to be damaged, broken and unlovable. But it is important to take steps towards healing and somehow I think I have done that through the years. We need to choose our own 'tools' for recovery and pick them up frequently. In my case that would have been reams of counselling, meditation, Reiki, poetry etc. Now I am finally at a stage where I can love myself for myself. I treat myself to birthday and Christmas presents. Spoil myself. Oh I have my eye on thus dinky little retro caravan. It is set up as a little office and would be a great feature in my garden. Bet someone beats me to it. Cute, cute, cute. You know we can choose to drop the burden of those memories and feelings around bad life trauma? Just put it down and walk bravely on with our lives. Good luck to you.

I feel broken also. Like a huge wave washing over me, ‘how can I still keep doing this’, and yet I still do, one foot in front of the other.

I think I need to allow myself just to feel broken sometimes. I have been carrying way too much all of my life, not parented myself, no happy childhood, just rejection. But worked hard and bought up two boys one disabled on my own. I really wanted to create a different better life for them, which I did, and found somehow some inner strength from inside as I had no one to ever lean on.

But it’s just relentless and I don’t feel like I’m ever going to get a break.

Lately I just feel anxious all the time, and a few events have just snapped the resilience. I’m saving all my strength for my child, and then made a promise to myself that for the next year or so I am going to make my life as simple and as stress free as possible. I still need to look after my son and my mother, but I’m going to just cut back, cut down and hunker down for a while to regain some stability again. It means loss of income, not seeing so many people, but otherwise I don’t know if I can keep on like this.

“I am the captain of my soul” love ❤️ that. @MarieIVanArkleStinks

I know how you feel OP. Normally, I kick ass, and hard. But it took just one sentence from someone last week to open all the past trauma doors and send me spiralling again.

I have been through every type of abuse there is. One parent abandoned me, the other openly hated me throughout my childhood and the persistent need to be loved by someone, anyone, has had me make many wrong decisions when it came to partners, who went on to physically, sexually and emotionally abuse me.

I had therapy, happy pills, CBT, the lot. These days, I am on my own and bury myself in my work. I have so much to give, many talents, but no one nice has ever had an interest in me; even in friendships I am the one who gives more and always has to maintain contact, and in times of crisis all my so-called friends scuttle.

So, yes, broken. I have nothing to say which might help you, other than reassure you that you are not alone, and to remind you why we are strong. Bceuase there is no other way.