Life of trauma

[Neverending2020]

Is there anyone else who has gone through life experiencing trauma after trauma after trauma? Who has always tried to do the right thing - be a good child, study, work hard, pay your bills etc but due to circumstances beyond your control has just never had peace?

And yet Caroline Flack is dead. I cant say I was shocked because after her arrest, I took an intrest.

Her case had all the hallmarks of DA. yes, she probably did go for him but I suggest it was EXTREME provocation. And there us far more to the night than has been released.

She must have been in a lot of pain to do that. Bless her. And bless the people who genuinely loved her and are grieving for her.

Sorry to derail. I've attempted suicide three times now so it resonates with me.

@springydaff Thank you for saying that. It's really encouraging to hear that the C of E is facing up to the way they failed children who went through childhood SA in the past. The FIEC movement and other free churches need to be challenged to do the same, but while those in leadership continue to bury their heads in the sand, it won't happen.

I shouldn't have focused on the negatives I've experienced in church. It really hasn't all been negative. I've been to very supportive churches during my life. (I moved about a lot in the past.) We go to a Pentecostal church now, and the support I get there, particularly in prayer, has really helped.

It's just that I was very disillusioned when I realised that some churches were still covering up cases of child sexual abuse that they knew about, and believed that they were oh so pious.

It's that kind of attitude that's led to men like my F being seen as being deeply spiritual whilst concealing his double life from everyone including his own wife. I didn't even realise that what I was going through was wrong, because nobody talked about it.

Me too,neglected in many ways by my mother.Father (they were divorced when I was 6) died when I was 18 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.Bullied at school while grandmother who we lived with had dementia (early 60s,when it was not recognised).Unable to keep a job or relationship,depression etc..Now in my 70s,diagnosed with PTSD after doing some really stupid things i.e self destructive behaviour.Now could be facing prosecution for this stupidity.Live alone,no friends.Seriously considering suicide.Do not tell me to call the samaritans.All the above is just a very short summary.Many more adverse experiences.

*Dishing

Oh and don't get me started by people looking on the bright side etc - usually people whose most traumatic incident was a second cousin who died of natural causes when they were 103. Its easy to look on the bright side when your life is so ... bright!!*

^This. Although I tend not to speak about it to friends, unless it's a very close friend who I know I can trust, and who I know will be supportive.

But everyone is different. I thought my DH was one of those people when I first met him, as nothing terrible had happened in his life, apart from one grandma dying when he was a child and then of his Grandads dying at 96.

Then his dad died in a car accident, and over the next 2 years his paternal DGPs died (his DGM within 3 months of her DS, I've always thought she died of a broken heart).

Then we went through infertility and the adoption process, and he's had to cope with our DDs' issues and my traumatic memories coming back.

My DH retains a positive outlook; he really is good for me in that way.

Yes, I won’t go into details because blah blah, but my mother died in childbirth with me and that pretty much set the tone for the rest - bereavements, abuse, terrible relationships etc. Someone told me once my life sounded like a Catherine Cookson novel!

Things have taken a turn for the better lately, recently married a good man and pregnant after years but I find it very hard not to expect it all to go terribly wrong at any point. Particularly anxious (read. fucking terrified) about this pregnancy.

Having said that I have always considreed myself lucky in a lot of ways, and do try to focus on that - sometimes to the other extreme that I end up finding it difficult to admit there’s anything wrong and start to hate myself for being ‘self-pitying’ when others have it worse. So it’s about trying to find a balance I guess.

That should say pregnant after years of fertility struggles

Er yea, kind of. Every kind of abuse in phases from very young childhood to five years ago, get through/away from one thing and find worse waiting it seemed.
Touch wood, I’ve had a good couple of years but that’s come from being brutal and just detaching from a lot of my past, going NC or LC with certain family members etc. I was just absolutely determined to make a good life for myself with DH.. but there’s always that thought lurking in the back of my head that I don’t really have control, anything could happen, as it did before. I make good choices now but there’s always the factors you can’t control.

And actually, I’m an alarmingly upbeat, positive person irl. I love my life and am fortunate enough to be able to look at my past as having made me as strong and resilient as I am today. I feel some sense of pride in that, and the fact that, against all the odds, I am actually a good person.

I also don't feel it's fair to keep talking to friends about what we've been through. I tend to appear upbeat to most people who know me. And it isn't actually an act, because there are a lot of good things in my life now. And my DDs deserve a mum who acts positive around them. Their birth parents are badly damaged and the last thing they need is an adoptive mum who also falls apart.

A friend isn't a therapist and it isn't right to treat them like one. My DM does that to me, because of how upset she's been at what happened to us.

@Mittens030869 - and others who feel positive - I'm interested in your outlook. Because of the number of close people that have died young recently in our family, and because my mum died young, my DDs tend to think that dying young or relatively young is on the cards - its affected their outlook. I always say to them look A B and C died from completely random unrelated things, there's no such thing as "fate" or "luck" it just happened, but that's not been much comfort to them. How could I have made that positive - genuinely interested in your opinion there's no agenda to me asking that BTW.

Also saying a friend is not a therapist - again my friends know these people died, most know that I am separating from H and that has been delayed by DD2 not being well and my then needing an operation. Now DD1 is having tests for something quite scary and my operation has been put on hold as I need more tests. In a normal conversation some of these things would come up surely? Is that using a friend as a therapist? (I certainly wouldn't tell people what happened to me when I was a child that would be too much for a friend to cope with)

I don’t talk to new friends about any of it, I find it pushes people away (if they don’t understand and think you are either revelling in it or making it up.) My old friends all know, most of my friends are from school and have been either through it with me and love me unconditionally. I’m so lucky to have them.

New friends prefer a sort of breezy surface friendship I find so I only mention any of it if it comes up in conversation unless I know the person is the sort to really care or listen. If a friends parent dies, that will be when they first find out about my dad. But if someone mentions addiciton, or neglect, or poverty, or EA or SA, I just don’t say anything. There’s just too much to get out and properly explain to someone who probably won’t understand or care anyway. Some people do the competitive sadness thing too and I have to walk away from people who do that because I can get a bit triggered when they try and compare a dead pet to my dad dying and being the catalyst for a lifetime of shite. DH has a friend who comes over once a month to moan about her parents (who still pay her rent, drive her everywhere, make sure she had everything she ever needed) and I can’t listen to it. I don’t ever say anything, I just go out when she comes over. She has a therapist (paid for by them) so I don’t need to listen to it as well and give her sympathy that she was only taken to Eurodisney twice but not Florida.

I think all of that stuff as a kid has created a kind of survivalist attitude. I just keep going and then worry about the emotional side of things after. I feel slightly sad sometimes that I am so hard and suspicious and distrusting, and that I never had the chance to develop the person I might have been, but again I’ve tried to catch up on anything I lost as a child and create opportunities for myself. I’m not a sad person in real life, I love a good time, laugh loads, have loads of friends and am grateful that I can deal with a lot.

to everyone x

I dont really talk about it much, I might allude to it in during an (appropriate) conversation but find if I go into too much detail it stops the conversation dead and I get the pity/shocked looks.

to put it into context I have discussed it in much deeper detail with a social worker friend of mine and she was shocked ( and shes exposed to lots of awful things in her line of work) so I dont think normal people can 'handle the truth'! but also I didnt have it as bad as other people and you never know what other people have been through.
Also to those saying about people moaning about thier kitchens etc. I still moan about trivial things that go wrong, so you dont know that those other people havnt also had awful trauma in thier lives. if we could only moan about the worst thing thats ever happened to us then no-one would ever moan about anything ever again!
Also some people are better equiped and stronger and more able to cope with stuff. I have learnt never to judge anyone. to be honest though having an ASD child taught me that lesson rather than my past.

@IamPickleRick
DH says I always look at the negative side of things so if we are making a decision I always go through all the worst case scenarios etc and also am very distrusting of people but as you say due to our childhoods we have learnt to be that way and most of our thought processes and emotional states are formed while children, anything that disrupts that creates a lasting effect.

@DishingOutDone I experienced multiple bereavements from a young age and have effectively lost 4 parents (birth and sort of adopted, though never officially), all of whom died relatively young - my adoptive mum was 70 so not that young but because I was still quite young to lose my mother, and because I’d always had some bullshit bargain with the universe that surely they wouldn’t take her from me as well as everything else, that one felt like the biggest shock of all. I definitely understand where you and your DDs are coming from seeing dying young as almost to be expected.

I started therapy after loosing my adopted mum and kind of wanted to focus exclusively on that, but she was a good therapist and teased other stuff out, and i realised that because my birth mum died at 36 I somehow wasn’t really expecting to live past that age either. It wasn’t conscious like ‘oh I will die at 36’ but I just never saw a life for myself past that point, couldn’t envisage a future old age etc. (Still can’t). I’m having similar odd thoughts now with pregnancy, because my mum died in childbirth.

But I am generally quite positive - not saying I don’t have my moments of thinking ‘the future is just another list of everyone I love who is going to die’ - but I recognise them as just thoughts now, I’m able to let them pass and go back to enjoying the here and now. Yes I will experience more pain and loss but one thing that past has taught me is that I’m resilient and that I will find a way to live with it and still have moments of happiness and joy.

I’ve found something called the ‘three principles’ approach or ‘inside out’ approach to mental health massively helpful to me. It’s different to a lot of our current thinking and can sound a bit woo and ‘out there’ particularly if you read the more American style coaches etc. But it honestly helped me massively and I’d go so far as to say changed my life. I don’t suffer from anxiety in nearly the same way anymore - I still get anxious, down, have dark thoughts etc because I’m human but this has really helped me to see them as just that - thoughts which will pass. There’s a lady on Facebook called Sarie Taylor - coaching healthy minds. She has some free videos and content if you want to look and see if it could be helpful to you - possibly not but I mention it because I know she does a lot around children and families too in a very accessible way so it may help your DDs. There’s lots of other people too if she’s not for you, podcasts etc. Again - just a suggestion and won’t work for everyone but I’ve found it a helpful way to frame not letting negative thoughts and past traumas shape the rest of my life.

I should qualify that DH is also friends with this woman’s sister and she has told us that she has always been like that. She was always spoiled and would phone childline if she didn’t get her way. I get that she’s emotiobally fragile and unable to cope with things but I still don’t need to hear it. If I mention my diagnosed brain condition, she’s definitely got it and hers is worse etc. So I just don’t engage. I’m also wary of doing that to new friends (but it being truthful!) and so that’s why I don’t say anything, I just let them vent. And a lot of my childhood trauma is old pain now, it doesn’t affect me day to day unless something else is upsetting me. I’m able to talk about it quite unemotionally.

Obviously I do moan about daily struggles too, but it’s how all encompassing they are. We had a really tough time in 2017 because of circumstances and I was able to keep thinking - we are all alive. No one is hurt. Everyone loves each other. So life is still good, I just need to look harder to see it.

DH says the same to me BrieAndChilli about always looking at the worst case scenario, but I actually think being distrustful gives us a slight advantage because we are able to see through bullshit much better!

Dishing

Some days I don't feel positive at all. I've just been crying my eyes out because of my Chronological Fatigue Syndrome. I'm exhausted after taking my DDs to gymnastics, which is a roundabout 20 mile round trip, a journey I'd have thought nothing of before this. But a year ago, I had bad flu that turned into pneumonia a year ago and I've never properly recovered. I also visited my home town to see where my baby was buried. (My DSis was there so she could tell me roughly where it was.)

I'm just so tired, and the last straw was discovering that DD2 was being groomed. I'm constantly supervising her, though she appears to have got used to chatting with her actual friends now.

So it's not about actually feeling positive all the time, I obviously don't. But I find that focusing on other things helps. And nice things do happen, like our DDs' birthdays and Christmas. I think that if I were single and without DC, then maybe I would find it harder to cope with the past

My Christian faith helps me too, as well as my lovely DH and my DSis (we support each other) and a couple of very close friends.

@Mittens030869 see I really struggle to reconcile 'God' with all the traumas children go through who are innocent and dont deserve any of it! How can god give a baby cancer or let a small child be abused? I cant find any of that a comfort!
Sorry - I dont mean to say you are wrong to have faith, more that I'm curious about how you can connect god and these events?

I feel the same Brie. All the time I wasted praying would have been better spent in counselling.

Actually, if anything I can be a bit naive. I think it's denial - yes, probably. Or trauma!

I think it comes from having grown up in a very toxic family - systematic emotional abuse, think and fast and vicious - and generally not knowing wtf was going on when I was a child. Nothing made any sense so I gave up trying and lived in my own world where everything was sensible and good (and kind) and made sense. I suppose I had enough of a model in my dear mum who, although up to her neck enabling the family dysfunction, was kind and good and loving.

So for me it hasn't been tragedy but sustained and serious, corrosive, emotional abuse throughout. I still have a sense that I don't know wtf is going on a lot of the time. I also have a tendency to move on and not fight, to just close that door and push off.

Thank you for discussing this I've found it very helpful - and yes I do complain about builders not finishing kitchens as well - seems to be a recurring theme, but the sort of people I am talking about put this forward as an example of how they have suffered in life and have constant problems, rather than something thats just a bloody nuisance!

@AliasGrape I will google that thank you.

@IamPickleRick I know what you mean about expecting the worst and being distrustful! Me too. I think maybe we can all identify with that. But I feel that I haven't been able to rise above the trauma I suffered, I am still suffering it - I feel I have no resilience, and that somehow as I have let past trauma affect my parenting for example that I am somehow a bit useless frankly. My eldest DD was in a "grooming" situation and I wonder if I somehow made her vulnerable? Both girls suffer from anxiety - surely my outlook, the way I am after what happened to me - must be a contributing factor? That's the hardest thing to bear - the feeling that you had a chance to put things right through them, and you didn't. Does that make sense?

So because of that, my experiences are represented to me every day, in my DCs? (you can see you wouldn't say all this to a friend!!)

Okay, I've done a lot of soul searching, as you can imagine. The way I see it, it's human beings who hurt us, not God. I could feel that God was with me during the worst of those times. It's hard to explain it, it's one of those things that you have to experience to understand.

In short, I blame my F for the abuse, and I've been able to let go of my anger with him, which has made my grief more acute.

The only way God could prevent bad things from happening would be to have created us as robots, unable to experience love or hate, and unable to make our own decisions. And unfortunately, there are many people that choose to do evil and not good.

If you read the gospels, you will see how much Jesus valued children and also the harsh words he reserved for those who hurt children. So, the way I see it, God is as angry as we are towards those who hurt children.

The charity I help with that supports Central Asian women also helps me to see how God can change their lives. A lot of them have suffered horrendous abuse, and then they want to help other women too. They form projects in their own towns or cities training women in skills that will provide them with a means to support themselves (otherwise so many of them end up in prostitution, which happens because so often they're ostracised by their communities because women and girls are blamed for abuse they suffer.

The way I feel about church is more complicated, obviously. I've found it incredibly difficult to keep going, and I often don't. (Though that's also because I'm often not well enough.) I'm starting to accept that churches are full of sinners, as much as society in general.

I can't set foot in a free conservative evangelical church again, though, not unless they start to face up to the damage they've done to the lives of so many innocent children. I can't expose it myself, sadly, because of the hurt it would cause to my DM and my DB.

A long-winded answer, I know, but I studied theology years ago and this obviously is something that I've spent a lot of time figuring out.

The God thing - I suppose my experiences of God's comfort (when I was out of my mind with loss, grief, horror, trauma) is where I'm at with God. I feel that God grieves with me, too. For the same things. I have no control over my kids' choices, not really now they're adults, and I grieve about their choices. Do I force them to do the right thing? That's not love, that's control. Not that I can force them now anyway. I only ever forced one of my children twice in their life 1. to keep going to rangers because there were some good male rule models there and 2. to keep playing a musical instrument. He still talks about the amazing times he had at rangers and got to grade 8 in his instrument, which he loves. But that was when he was a kid, I can't - won't! - do anything like that now.

I do think the human race makes its choices and the results can be catastrophic and far-reaching. I don't think God gives a baby cancer - wtf kind of God would that be?!? But s/he/it comforts and grieves with. Big time.

I feel for you, often it’s only when the storm lets you breathe for a moment that you can gather any resilience and if you are still in it, it’s very hard to have any time to build your strength back up. In 2017 I had no let up, but I just kept thinking - get through this day. Get through this week. This month. It won’t be forever. And eventually things calmed down and I was able to look back and think, wow I didn’t crumble at the time because I had detached my emotions from all the issues and was just letting the universe punch my body while protecting my emotional self thinking, I’ll help about you later, let me get through this first.

I agree totally, a friend who doesn’t know any back story, no experience of big trauma, no training, or who came a loving home would have absolutely no idea how to respond to any of this unless they were a very close friend who had a deeper understanding of you and your situation. I think of the school mums for instance, and there is only one lady who I feel I could really trust with my past and current hurts.

I think our childhoods will definitely have an effect on the way we parent. My own kids don’t have anxiety (never say never) but they are used to arguing a lot because my takeaway from it all is that I become argumentative when faced with adversity. I can’t help it sometimes, I know and recognise it in myself so at least that’s something I suppose. I always felt bad about that, and my narc mum would play on that saying how can you let your kids see you angry type digs but actually I reflect that they’ve seen their mum stand up for herself in a stressful situation and not allow a man (in one particular situation) to be spoken to in a derogatory way. They know I won’t take any shit and I am never angry at them and my anger is always when I am made to feel like a child again in an unjust situation which I have no control over. I guess we don’t know how any of our kids would have turned out even without our own issues, but at least because we have had trauma, we examine ourselves and our actions and check our behaviour more closely than someone else who thinks they are 100% perfect.