Hello, I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm saying but I think I'm just hoping someone will understand what I mean.
I suffer with anxiety/depression type issues, with roots in trauma, although not what would be termed 'serious trauma' or even count as 'trauma' to MH professionals. What I mean by this is that I can trace back feeling terrified and unable to protect myself and having to live in chronically (low level) traumatic situations, and appear to be having a compex trauma reaction, but I've not had any experiences that would, for example, point to a diagnosis of PTSD. I don't want to go into diagnoses, just trying to set the scene.
Anyway, I often have nightmares and almost always wake up feeling crap (get better throughout day). Usually there are specific things on my mind, and sometimes, like today, I awake too early with stuff on my mind and can't get back to sleep. Today I kept remembering/thinking/feeling things about a situationa few years back.
I was groped by someone repeatedly who woudn't take no for an answer until I had to physically shove him off me several times. This was in my own home and the guy had seemed really nice, and was friends with lots of my friends/aquaintances who would be horrified at his behaviour. Because I didn't really know how to stand up for myself I felt guilty I might have accidentally led him on (even though I'd made it clear I wasn't interested in that way, and he'd said he wasn't) and also obviously he made out I was wildly overreacting. I hate it when men do that, or anyone actually, they act as if you're totally unreasonable and you end up having your boundaries wildy violated and feeling you're somehow in the wrong. Eg. I let him stay in my bed, for some reason I cannot fathom now, when I should have been kicking him out. He kept sort of being embarrassed and apologising then doing it again. I do remember telling him he needed to leave and him saying the friend's he was supposed to stay at would be all in bed now so he'd have nowhere to go.
The worst aspect of it is the manipulation of what others think - I bet he swaggered back in to his friends' in the morning as if we'd had a one-night-stand (eugh!). Also there was an event that day that we were all going to, and I kept trying to tell him what a twat he'd been but never got the chance as he kept bobbing off, saying "I'll be back in a mo" and making it look like I was chasing him, ffs. It's actually the trappedness, the fact that I coulnd't tell peope, the way he manipulated how the situation looked, that gets me much more than the actual gropyness. Unfortunately he now lives nearby again (was away a few years) and shows up at parties and things, and he has a firm base of friends who've known him years, whereas I'm a bit of an outsider (though I know a lot of the same people). I think I'm viewed as a bit of a hysterical attention seeker, obvs not by my friends (who also know what happened with him), but those that also know him don't seem to want to stop being friends with him or anything, and I suppose why should they, kind of... Anyway those people don't see him that much/he's not around my friends unless it's a party or something. But it's this awful feeling... he has all the power. And why, when I'm trying my best to be a decent human, do people view me badly yet scum like him have loads of friends, and in fact the same people would believe him over me?
Throughout my life, things have affected me and I learnt to supress it all, which has really messed me up. I realised in good time and trotted off to get help around the age of 19, but services basically reinforced it! There seems to be an expectation that us 'mentals' are resistant to/should put up with a much higher level of stress/abuse/trauma than 'normals'. It's a form of dehumanistaion, I suppose. I mean, some of the things I've had brushed away by psych professionals has been stuff others would be horrified about. I'm getting proper help, privately, now, but it does still hurt that services rejected/judged me, and it makes it so hard to know when to cut myself slack or when I'm actually being unreasonable.
I've noticed it's like there are certain buzzwords, or something, that mean people switch into auto-sympathy mode. If you don't tick a buzzword, you're 'overreacting'. So eg. using the above example... That guy appeared, very late, at a party recently. He stuck his head round the door and I started. The friend I was chatting with at the time asked what had distracted me, and, being pissed, I said "Oh, the guy who sexually assualted me a few years ago just stuck his head round the door". Even though technically, true, using the words "sexual assualt" made me feel I was overreacting, and my friend was totally on board and sympathetic which made me feel guilty too, somehow. But people have really hurt me in other ways I find equally distressing (and wake up thinking about, years later) which don't have a 'buzzword' and so people don't get it. I feel weird and guilty if someone empathises with something I went through that has a 'buzzword', if I know they wouldn't understand more painful stuff that doesn't. I feel like I'm a fraud.
Anyway, I'm findng it really hard to deal with all this stuff, now the memories are coming thick and fast. There are an awful lot of things that I didn't realise were allowed to be traumtic, as such. I feel I've been taken advantage of, and that MH professionals were complicit in this, by encouraging me to just do whatever others wanted, and assume all my feelings were irrational. It feels so good to say "No, that thing was WRONG", but also tears me up inside because I feel so powerless and violated. Some of the things involve police, and friends have been horrified when they've fond out, but I just didnt know at the time. Or rather, I did feel it was wrong but didn't know anyone else would understand because I felt so ashamed.
Im sorry if I seem to be overreacting, I know there are people here who have been through serious assualts etc., and I'm not trying to make out I can understand that, or anything. It's just trying to deal with feeling intermittedly terrified/powerless, and wanting to scream from the rooftops "THIS IS WRONG AND EVIL" but then I'd definitely be considered hysterical...