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I feel sorry for her (me) Disassociation?

1 reply

MyMorningHasBroken · 18/06/2017 23:03

Hi,
I've been wondering for a time whether what I've experienced is fairly normal part of getting older (now 36) and my memory disappearing or something more.
Ok, so as a child, I had some psychological abuse along with some sexual from a parent. ( the sexual was nothing traumatic but fairly discreet or hidden) Both went on for years until I left home really. Nothing was ever brought into the open and nobody discussed t until we were adults. My sisters experienced the same and brothers to some degree. I think we probably processed it in different ways.

In my teenage years (14 tbp) I was sexually assaulted by a group of men in a foreign country which was very frightening and caused me a lot of distress for a long time. I became very depressed and withdrawn for years.

Anyhow, until my mid twenties, I always felt sad for what had happened and realised the effects on myself.
However, I have a lot of determination and i didn't want all this to effect my future goals. I've matured and changed a lot and can empathise (too much sometimes)with other people.

For the past few years however, I don't see what happened, happened to 'me'. I look at 'that' person and feel sad. I don't feel as if it happened to myself but another young person. I don't feel regret or embarrassment anymore or any sort of anger that I felt in my 20s.

Another significant event since then is that, that parent died a few years ago.

Sorry about rambling - it's late!

OP posts:
erinaceus · 18/06/2017 23:38

Hi MyMorningHasBroken

What you are saying makes a lot of sense to me. Does your current sense of what happened to you when you were younger cause you problems in the present? If it does, there are things that you can do to address any problems. If it doesn't, then how you have processed your experience is not bad or wrong, and you can always go back to it later if your thoughts and feelings start to trouble you. As you wrote, different people process things in different ways.

In the mean time, take care of yourself. It sounds as if you have been through a lot - you wrote that your sexual abuse was nothing traumatic, but sexual abuse is always in some sense traumatic, and almost always discreet or hidden as well.

Flowers
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